Peru: A law has been passed to cremate the body of Abimael Guzman | The prosecution can order the measure this Saturday even if it does not have the permission of the family

From Lima

A controversial law that allows her body to be cremated without family permission and to keep the fate of the ashes a secret has ended uncertainty over the fate of the body of Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán, who died a week earlier. got pneumonia at the age of 86 while serving a life sentence in a military prison. Guzmán’s corpse, defeated many years before his death, has been transformed into a dangerous ghost, a dreaded object that was to disappear. With 70 votes in favor, 32 against and 14 abstentions, the unicameral right-wing Congress passed the law on Thursday evening to eliminate Guzmán’s body. The law was promulgated on Friday by the left-wing executive, amid strong political and media pressure, to have the remains of leader Senderista go missing and prevent him from having a grave. A pressure that has reached levels of hysteria, speaking of Sendero, inactive as an armed group for more than twenty years, as if it were militarily operational.

Although the ruling caucus opposed the rule, President Pedro Castillo quickly enacted it. In the government, pointed out by its opponents as being close to Sendero’s political heirs, they did not want to give any arguments, opposing this law, for these attacks to be reinforced. The law establishes that the body of an inmate who died in prison serving a sentence for “treason or terrorism, in his capacity as leader, leader or member of the management of terrorist organizations”, the delivery of which to his relatives and burial are considered as “endangering national security or internal order”, it must be cremated and order “the dispersal of cremated remains in a place and time of a reserved nature”. A prosecutor will be the one who will decide in which cases this law applies and his decision will be final, must be completed in 24 hours. The rule will come into effect this Saturday, immediately the body of Guzmán, who has been in the morgue for a week, will be cremated and any remains of the remains of the leader Senderista will be erased.

The argument for refusing the return of the corpse to the family, as established by the law in force at the time of the death of the founder of Sendero, was the fear that his tomb would become a place of pilgrimage for his followers. It is spoken as if it were a mass of followers who threaten the security of the country. But in reality The remaining followers of Guzmán are few in number, and many years ago they gave up armed struggle.

Abimael Guzmán, who called himself “Chairman Gonzalo”, lawyer and philosopher, founded Shining Path in 1970 when he was a university professor in the Andean region of Ayacucho. In 1980, as the country was preparing for elections to emerge from a twelve-year military dictatorship and the left was participating in this new democratic stage, the Maoist group entered into an armed struggle in Ayacucho. He started his field operations. The violence quickly escalated and spread to the rest of the country. Civilian governments handed over control of the response to Sendero to the military and to state violence, with kidnappings, disappearances, assassinations and massacres of peasant communities, it was the response to senderista violence, which was executed by the authorities and also popular and peasant rulers who did not do so they bent their actions. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the internal war has left around 70,000 dead.

In September 1992, Guzmán was captured in Lima, along with much of his party leadership, including his wife Elena Iparraguirre, currently in prison and who unsuccessfully claimed Guzmán’s body. A year after his arrest, “President Gonzalo” publicly declared his prison surrender and called on his supporters to stop the armed struggle. With the fall and surrender of their leader, whom they worshiped with an obsessive personality cult, the hike was struck to death. Guzmán’s successor, Oscar Ramírez Durando, alias “Feliciano”, decided to continue the armed actions, but already very weakened. In 1999, “Feliciano” was captured and Sendero, as such, defeated.

Of what was Sendero as an armed group, only a small active column remained in a mountainous coca growing area, a column that broke years ago with Guzmán, whom she described as a traitor for having renounced armed struggle.. This column has allied itself with the drug trafficking that operates in this region. Their actions have nothing to do with Guzmán and Sendero, but a good part of the political class and the media continue to speak of the two groups as if they are the same, and use the isolated attacks of this column, which take place in the context of clashes between drug traffickers and security forces, to fuel Sendero’s fear. A fear used to promote authoritarian policies and attack the left, and now the Castillo government, granting them supposed senderista sympathies and thus claiming to discredit them.

After having abandoned the armed struggle, The senderistas decided to participate in legal political life through the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (Movadef), but for claiming the figure of Guzmán, they were not allowed to appear in electoral processes.. It is this small marginal group that we fear to justify the refusal of burial to the founder of Sendero. A refusal which is a way of extending Guzmán’s sentence after his death. The right links Castillo and his government to the leaders of Movadef, which the president denies, in order to discredit him with the intention of destabilizing him.

El Movadef, the political heir of Guzmán, has as visible spokespersons the lawyers of the late leader Senderista, Alfredo Crespo and Manuel Fajardo, who coordinated with Guzmán. With the death of “President Gonzalo”, it is stated that Elena Iparraguirre, his 74-year-old widow, would be his political heiress, but in prison and without this mythical aura that Guzmán had for his supporters, her role would not have the same weight as her husband. And Movadef has lost its main reason for existing in recent years: to seek amnesty for Guzmán, now deceased.