The founder of the Shining Path, Abimael Guzmán, died in prison

“Dr Abimael Guzmán has died, the Navy informed his wife Elena Yparraguirre of the death,” said the lawyer for guerrilla leader Alfredo Crespo, adding: “She asked the authorities to hand over the remains”, according to the report. AFP news agency.

The prison administration said in a statement that Guzmán’s death occurred “on Saturday September 11 at around 6:40 a.m. (8:40 a.m. in Argentina) at the maximum security detention center at the Callao naval base (…) due to complications. in his state of health “.

Guzmán’s wife, who was number two on the Shining Path, is imprisoned in Virgen de Fátima prison in Lima, sentenced to life imprisonment for terrorism, the same charge her husband had.

The death of the Maoist guerrilla leader was announced on the eve of the 29th anniversary of his capture, on September 12, 1992, and sparked reactions across Peruvian politics.

“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. “ Castillo defended himself on his Twitter.

Along the same lines, other members of the ruling party, such as the Minister of the Economy and Finance, Pedro Francké, who affirmed that “his death will not erase his crimes” and urged to build “a more just country, in democracy and in peace”, or the deputy of the leading force Peru Libre, Betssy Chavez, which asked to inculcate in the new generations to work for “Peru only in democracy and never in extremism”. The President of the Congress, Maria del Carmen Alva PrietoAt the same time, he expressed his solidarity with the victims.

“The testimonies of orphans, widows (who have also lost children) and all who have seen someone die at the hands of the Shining Path have torn our souls. I think of them, of the victims of terrorism, to whom we still owe so much “, reported the newspaper La República.

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

The guerrilla leader, whose cause of death has not been reported, was serving his sentence at the Callao naval base near Lima, but was due to be transferred to a joint prison in the coming months.

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 Ramírez, known by the pseudonym of comrade “Feliciano”, accused him of being a “coward” and being unable to pull the trigger of a pistol.

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

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 as the “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.