The Shining Path call on farmers to defend coca crops

[Os Cangaceiros]

Remnants of Peru's Shining Path guerrillas are calling on coca farmers in the country's south-central coca-producing region to take up arms to defend their crops against government eradicators. The call came in a recording made by the rebels and broadcast on local radio, according to a report in the Lima daily El Comercio (http://elcomercio.pe/actualidad/1582125/noticia-sendero-transmitio-audio-contra-erradicacion-cultivos-coca-vraem).

The radio broadcast in Ayacucho province came last week, just one day after Sendero Luminoso guerrillas handed out pamphlets in nearby Huancavelica calling on coca farmers to confront eradicators "with arms in hand."


The guerrilla remnants, a mere shadow of the fearsome insurgency that cost the country some 75,000 lives in the 1980s, operate in Peru's most productive coca-producing region, a series of ultra-montane river valleys known by its Spanish acronym as the VRAEM (Apurimac, Ene, and Mantaro River Valleys). The current Senderistas have shed the hyper-Maoist ideology of their long-imprisoned leader Comrade Gonazalo (Abimael Guzman) and now operate as well-armed and often uniformed protectors of producers and traffickers in the coca and cocaine trade.

Peru and Colombia are currently the world's largest coca and cocaine producers, with Bolivia in third place.

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has pledged to wipe out the Senderistas in the VRAEM and has vowed that eradication will take place there this year. His government has already begun building military bases in the remote region.

Peruvian soldiers and police are already being targeted by Senderistas in the VRAEM. Dozens have been killed in guerrilla attacks in the past two years alone.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2013/may/31/peru_rebels_call_farmers_defend

[Paul Pott]

How much support do they have nowadays? Could this turn into something big?

[Os Cangaceiros]

My impression from some other threads is that "Shining Path 2.0" is an extremely small but still somewhat virulent insurgent movement, which (as led by a small core group of individuals) has tried to distance itself from the bloodthirsty homicidal rampages that the old Shining Path was fond of. They get sustenance mostly from the coca trade nowadays, as the article mentions.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

My impression from some other threads is that "Shining Path 2.0" is an extremely small but still somewhat virulent insurgent movement, which (as led by a small core group of individuals) has tried to distance itself from the bloodthirsty homicidal rampages that the old Shining Path was fond of. They get sustenance mostly from the coca trade nowadays, as the article mentions.

The new faction is actually pretty cool, they've rejected Guzman's stupidity and made some good advances. It's late but if this topic is still alive I'll provide some more information in the morning.

And I am glad the Shining Path is defending Coca farmers. This sort of farming is the only way that farmers can make a decent living for themselves and the fact that the Peruvian government cares more about serving American interests than the well being of the Peruvian people speaks a fair bit about whose side they are on

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Though I do more or less support this endeavor....it's still really hard for me to get behind an organization that has any connection to the Shining Path, even if its a more or less unrelated group.

I mean, the original Shining Path was brutal....as bad as the various militias in Africa. One of the most horrendous terrorist groups of the 20th century.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Radicals should be suspicious of any group with a history of massacring unarmed villagers, pregnant women, children etc because the hometown of their victims allegedly had some pro-government snitch in it. Only the actions of the SL can prove that they have changed on that front, and not their words insisting that they are different.

[Queen Mab]

Call me cynical, but drug gang in opposing eradication of drug crop shocker.

[blake 3:17]

Support the coca growers, not the Senderistas.

[Agathor]

Though I do more or less support this endeavor....it's still really hard for me to get behind an organization that has any connection to the Shining Path, even if its a more or less unrelated group.

I mean, the original Shining Path was brutal....as bad as the various militias in Africa. One of the most horrendous terrorist groups of the 20th century.

The information I can find isn't very good but it seems that the current commander was a long-standing member of the old Shining Path called 'Comrade José' who personally took part in a large, indiscriminate massacre of peasants in the eigthies, and still uses child soldiers.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

the drug industry should be nationalized and run democratically just like any other industry, no brainer. you'd cut out the crime as well as providing the wealth to the producers which isn't currently the case - go to peru and look at the workers on the coca fields, it is worse than a sweatshop. this in itself is a good call

[Geiseric]

My spanish teacher was nearly killed by shining path. If anything they want to sell the coco plant like the goddamn FARC does. They're a gang and should be recognized to be basically like Khmer rouge. The taliban supports opium production and had since the 80s. How is this any different?

[Os Cangaceiros]

The Taliban was actually opposed to opium production right before Afghanistan was invaded.

Obviously that changed after the invasion because they needed a way to fund the insurgency, but...

[Fourth Internationalist]

This is a very good documentary to watch:
VTpcBD23_HY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTpcBD23_HY&feature=youtube_gdata_player