Peru: Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path terrorist gang, has died

The founder and leader of the The Shining Path terrorist gang, Abimael Guzmán, died this Saturday, September 11 at the age of 86 while serving life imprisonment (He spent the last 29 years of his life in prison) for terrorism at the Callao naval base, in Peru.

The cause of death was said to have been sepsis suffered in a hospital in Lima, where he was interned for a month after making a hunger-strike in protest against denial of the matrimonial right to meet his now widow, Elena Iparraguirre, number two in the organization and whom she married in prison.

Both went arrested on September 12, 1992 by the Special Intelligence Group (GEIN) and, from that moment, they were in the special prison built inside the Callao naval base, until a punishment, Iparraguirre was separated from her husband and admitted to maximum security prison located in Ancón, north of Lima.

Peru: 18 dead in an attack attributed to the guerrilla group “Sendero Luminoso”

The terrorist gang Luminous path, It is classified as a Peruvian Maoist guerrilla, He was the architect of the greatest genocide in the history of Peru, when on May 17, 1980, he was leading a war against the state that lasted more than a decade and where, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), around 70,000 people died and they stay more than 20,000 missing.

Guzmán Reinoso was professor of philosophy at San Cristóbal de Huamanga University in Ayacucho (east of Lima) where he married Augusta Latorre and with whom he formed what the Shining Path terrorist gang was going to do since the end of the sixties. La Torre died in circumstances that have never been clarified.

“The terrorist leader Abimael Guzmán, responsible for the loss of countless lives of our compatriots, has passed away. Our position condemning terrorism is firm and unshakable. It is only in democracy that we will build a Peru of justice and development for our people ”, defended the president of Peru. , Pedro Castillo on Twitter.

Who was Abimael Guzmán, Peru’s most famous prisoner

Guzmán ended his days as Peru’s most famous prisoner, without specifying his adventure of reproducing in his country by blood and fire the model of his icon, the emblematic Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

He embraced Maoism and the bloodthirsty methods of Cambodian leader Pol Pot, and formed the image of a tough and relentless revolutionary ready to order the slaughter of the inhabitants of a village in the Peruvian Andes as punishment for not doing so. to support.

In 2006, during a trial whose hearings lasted more than a year, an unknown part of his profile became known when his lieutenant Oscar ramirez, known by the pseudonym of comrade ‘Feliciano’, accused of “cowardly” and be unable to pull the trigger of a firearm.

“Coward, alcoholic and whiny”, said of Guzmán ‘Feliciano’, who led a radical Shining Path faction that continued the war after its leader was arrested in 1992, in defiance of his order to end the conflict.

Life sentence for Abimael Guzmán, founder of the dreaded Sendero Luminoso guerrilla

Abimael Guzmán established himself in Peruvian politics when, in the early 1960s, he left his chair of philosophy at San Cristóbal de Huamanga University in Ayacucho, one of Peru’s poorest regions.

From there he created and promoted his party, whose task was to “build communism on the luminous path of José Carlos Mariátegui”, intellectual and creator of the Socialist Party of Peru. Hence the origin of the name of the guerrilla.

Guzmán cultivated the cult of personality and those who knew him should treat him like “President Gonzalo”. Starting from his own interpretation of Marxism, he transformed his followers into fanatics of his ideas, which they described as the “guiding thought” and “fourth sword” of Marxism, behind Marx, Lenin and Mao.

The so-called “great leap forward” began in 1979, when it went underground and announced that the conditions were ripe for a Cambodian-style revolution from the countryside to the city.

On May 17, 1980, he exchanged books for dynamite. That day, he marked Peru with fire. Sendero began the fight with a symbolic act: he burned ballot boxes in an Andean city on the eve of the elections that ended 12 years of military dictatorship.

OF