Peru’s Shining Path on the Web

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Peruvian authorities are worried about remnants of the violent group Shining Path both in the country’s jungles and on the Web, reports the Peruvian daily Correo.

The newspaper cites recent postings on YouTube of a pair of provocative videos proselytizing for the group, with the title ‘Luchar hasta el final,’ or ‘Fight until the finish.’

The Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) terrorized Peru during the 1980s and early 1990s through a campaign of bombings, assassinations, massacres and sabotage.

The Maoist-style movement waned after its leader, Abimael Guzmán, a former university professor known as Presidente Gonzalo, was captured in 1992. Clips of Guzmán, now serving a life term in Lima for terrorism-related charges, are interspersed in the video Web postings.

Peru has advanced well beyond the civil violence of the 1980s and ‘90s. But scattered cadres of Shining Path are believed to have retreated to little-policed subtropical areas, where they are said to protect cocaine traffickers and occasionally clash with authorities.

Posted by Patrick J. McDonnell and Andrés D’Alessandro in Buenos Aires