The Shining Path - Peruvian Communist Party

[KnowledgeThroughLeninism]

They're a Maoist group in Peru, the name was founded by the original founder of the Shining Path in his words that he stated "El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución" ("Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to revolution"

They're are now a guerrilla organization and that is the only reliable information I could find on them. Their leader Comrade Artemio was arrested and faced life long prison terms. On the 7th of October 2012, Shining Path rebels carried out an attack on three helicopters being used by an international gas pipeline consortium, in the central region of Cusco. According to the military Joint Command spokesman, Col. Alejandro Lujan, no one was kidnapped or injured during the attack.

Anymore information on these brave fighters just post below.

[RedSonRising]

They've engaged in drug trafficking and committed several civilian massacres, alienating the working/peasant classes in the process. They aren't a path to anything revolutionary as of now.

[Os Cangaceiros]

There's a stickied post about them in the modern era on this subforum. Apparently they've tried to reform the organization and have renounced some of the worst "excesses" of the Guzman years.

[Ostrinski]

Shining Path is scum, absolute scum. Not worthy of anyone's support.

[ind_com]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=697

[Let's Get Free]

I don't really know too much about the Shining Path in Peru, but what I've heard about them hasn't been too favorable, some even comparing them to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

[DasFapital]

I don't really know too much about the Shining Path in Peru, but what I've heard about them hasn't been too favorable, some even comparing them to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
To be fair, the guy that compared them to the Khmer Rouge was Theodore Dalrymple, an ultra-conservative British asshole. However, I still wouldn't call the Shining Path a beacon of human rights.

[Drosophila]

They had quite a following in the 90s, but now it looks like they've completely separated themselves from their former support base. What ever happened to that Gonzalo character? I know he was put in prison at one point.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I suspect the group is currently still attempting to reconnect with their former base of support; it would be foolhardy to believe this can be accomplished in a short amount of time. To compare them to the Khemer Rouge is simply absurd, while I wasn't aware that Human Rights violations was something revolutionaries concerned themselves with outside of propaganda (perhaps we should now advocate for Western Intervention because the SP has such a terrible record? :rolleyes: ).

At any rate I think by searching youtube you can find a few interesting videos: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=The+Shining+Path

As to the future of the group no one can really say for sure. The new leadership seems enthusiastic to bring a new direction into the group but beyond that the changes and whether or not they are going to affect actual change is hard to say; we can hope that their days of massacres are behind them but in war any new direction can be quickly swept away.

[ind_com]

The group of the Shining Path that is stepping up guerrilla warfare now denounces Gonzalo's excesses.

[R_P_A_S]

They're a Maoist group in Peru, the name was founded by the original founder of the Shining Path in his words that he stated "El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución" ("Marxism-Leninism will open the shining path to revolution"

They're are now a guerrilla organization and that is the only reliable information I could find on them. Their leader Comrade Artemio was arrested and faced life long prison terms. On the 7th of October 2012, Shining Path rebels carried out an attack on three helicopters being used by an international gas pipeline consortium, in the central region of Cusco. According to the military Joint Command spokesman, Col. Alejandro Lujan, no one was kidnapped or injured during the attack.

Anymore information on these brave fighters just post below.

Don't waste your time.. They are not comrades.

[RedSonRising]

There's a stickied post about them in the modern era on this subforum. Apparently they've tried to reform the organization and have renounced some of the worst "excesses" of the Guzman years.

Well, at least that's something. If there's anything worth supporting concerned with the Shining Path, I suppose it's to be found post-reform.

[xvzc]

I think that supposed revolutionaries should have a higher standard and not buy into the slander against the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). Instead, we should analyze its history and learn from both its mistakes and successes.

The political-strategic orientation of the party from 1980-2000, under Gonzalo (Abimael Guzmán) and Feliciano (Óscar Ramírez Durand), was that of gradually smashing the "old state" (bureaucratic-comprador dictatorship in service of imperialism) and establishing a "new state" which would be a joint dictatorship of proletarians and peasants.

The Peruvian People's War managed to liberate huge swathes of the country and had reach the stage of strategic equilibrium -- where it stood on an equal footing to that of state forces -- at the time of Guzman's arrest. This in itself is an important victory, despite their eventual failure. How they managed to do this without any external assistance (aside from moral support from fellow Maoists), despite genocidal massacres against and in a time where capitalism was being declared the "end of history" should be carefully studied since clearly they were doing something right.

The PCP was a participating member in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), which housed, among others, the CPN(Maoist) from Nepal, MCCI from India, TKP/ML from Turkey and the RCP-USA. The final statement which the PCP signed along with other RIM organizations was the millennium statement For a Century of People's Wars! (http://www.bannedthought.net/International/RIM/AWTW/2000-26/millenium_eng26.htm).

What became clear after the arrest of Feliciano in 1999 was that those who usurped the military structure of the organization, such as Jóse (Víctor Quispe Palomino) of the VRAE faction and Artemio (Gabriel Macario) of the Huallaga Valley faction, had a different plan for the party. There were reports shortly after his arrest of Senderistas entering villages and self-criticizing for what they deemed were excesses performed under Guzman's leadership. It became clear later that this move by the José faction signaled the end of their previous political-strategic orientation for seizure of state power.

Jóse's faction today mainly engages in spectacular armed stunts but does so without any clear strategy, and as such resembles a warlord rather than a Maoist. Artemio, on the other hand, fought for "peace accords" so that the People's War could be settled (in favor of the "old state", of course.)

A third faction which has completely abandoned armed struggle in favor of legalist struggle is MOVADEF, which fights for the release of Guzman. All of these factions are in essence rightists.

What the two main factions have in common is protection of drug peddlers and manufacturers which are wholly from the parasitical landlord class. Previously, the PCP was mainly composed of and had fought tooth and nail for poor peasants and had encouraged any small time drug farmers in their liberated territories to farm fruit instead. Neither faction has as its goal a people's war for smashing the old state and establishing proletarian dictatorship.

So, I believe that the situation in Peru looks rather dreadful as it is. Hopefully revolutionary Maoists can reconstitute the party and return to its origins.

http://i.imgur.com/szOVg.png

Here is a photo of women prisoners of war in Canto Grande doing cultural work. Unfortunately and outrageously, all of these women were later massacred by state forces.