\n Peru's Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement, whose founder Abimael Guzman's body was cremated on Friday, is listed as a terrorist organization by the Lima government.\n<\/p>\n
\n All but dismantled, a few members remain armed and active. This is an overview of the group blamed for tens of thousands of deaths.\n<\/p>\n
\n - What is the Shining Path? -\n<\/p>\n
\n The extremist rebel group was born from a split in the Peruvian Communist Party and rooted in the ideology of Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong.\n<\/p>\n
\n It grew from the discontent of Peru's sidelined indigenous communities, peasant farmers who lost out to agrarian reform, and university graduates unable to find jobs due to deep-seated racial and language discrimination in society.\n<\/p>\n
\n Shining Path is accused of having committed many atrocities during its 1980-2000 war to overthrow the government in Lima.\n<\/p>\n
\n Peru's post-conflict Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) described the group as a \"subversive and terrorist organization\" responsible for numerous crimes against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Who was Guzman? -\n<\/p>\n
\n Born in 1934 into a middle-class family, Guzman visited China many times in the 1960s during the cultural revolution there, abandoning his job as a philosophy professor to launch the Shining Path.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 1979 he took up the armed struggle or \"people's war\" from the countryside towards the city.\n<\/p>\n
\n Guzman was known as \"Puka Inti\" -- meaning red sun in the Quechua language spoken by about 13 percent of Peruvians -- but his preferred moniker was \"Chairman Gonzalo.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n He became a near messianic leader of the Shining Path and his capture in 1992 marked the beginning of the end of a movement that at its height had some 5,000 fighters.\n<\/p>\n
\n - How did it operate? -\n<\/p>\n
\n At first, the guerrillas enjoyed the support of many locals, to whom they redistributed land.\n<\/p>\n
\n But the situation soon degenerated with killings of peasants or community leaders for perceived disloyalty and the forced enrolment of children as soldiers or workers in the coca fields.\n<\/p>\n
\n General Marco Miyashiro, a member of the squadron that captured Guzman in 1992, told AFP: \"They promoted what they called the 'fifth form of battle.' It's a combination of armed propaganda, guerrilla combat, collective assassination and sabotage.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n In 1984, in the southwestern Ayacucho region, the group massacred 117 peasant farmers who refused to support it, one of the Shining Path's bloodiest acts on record.\n<\/p>\n
\n In 2003, the TRC said some 70,000 people were killed in 20 years of fighting between the army and guerrillas from the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement groups.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Shining Path, it found, was responsible for 54 percent of the victims.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Has it been defeated? -\n<\/p>\n
\n Almost all of its leaders have been captured but about 200 remnants, headed by Victor Quispe Palomino, or \"Comrade Jose,\" still operate in Peru's largest coca leaf-producing valley where, the government says, they are allied with drug-traffickers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Coca leaf is used to make cocaine.\n<\/p>\n
\n The group's historic leaders deny that these dissidents fall under their command.\n<\/p>\n
\n Peruvian authorities have identified at least two organizations they suspect of being extensions of the Shining Path: The Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (MOVADEF), a group of families of imprisoned guerrillas, and Conare, a union committee of radical teachers.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Shining Path has shown little remorse for its violent acts.\n<\/p>\n
\n Osman Morote, a former second-in-command, told Caretas magazine from his jail cell in 2017: \"Prison is tough but it will never subdue us, even less so weaken our profound conviction that the future belongs to the proletariat and the people.\"\n<\/p>\n
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Peru's Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement, whose founder Abimael Guzman's body was cremated on Friday, is listed as a terrorist organization by the Lima government. All but dismantled, a few members remain armed and active. This is an overview of the group blamed for tens of thousands of deaths. - What is the Shining Path? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-82485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n