29 Facts About Shining Path

When it first launched its "people's war" in 1980, the Shining Path's goal was to overthrow the government through guerrilla warfare and replace it with a New Democracy.

The Shining Path believed that by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducing a cultural revolution, and eventually sparking a world revolution, they could arrive at full communism.

Shining Path has been widely condemned for its brutality, including violence deployed against peasants, trade union organizers, competing Marxist groups, elected officials and the general public.

The Shining Path is regarded as a terrorist organization by Peru, Japan, the United States, the European Union, and Canada, all of whom consequently prohibit funding and other financial support to the group.

In 1999, brothers Victor and Jorge Quispe Palomino split from the Shining Path and established the Militarized Communist Party of Peru, which consists of about 450 individuals who remained in the Valle de los Rios Apurimac, Ene y Mantaro region.

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Shining Path was founded in 1969 by Abimael Guzman, a former university philosophy professor, and a group of 11 others.

Shining Path's teachings created the foundation of its militant Maoist doctrine.

Antonio Diaz Martinez, an agronomist who became a leader of the Shining Path, made several important contributions to the group's ideology.

Shining Path first established a foothold at San Cristobal of Huamanga University, in Ayacucho, where Guzman taught philosophy.

Between 1973 and 1975, Shining Path members gained control of the student councils at the Universities of Huancayo and La Cantuta, and they developed a significant presence at the National University of Engineering in Lima and the National University of San Marcos.

When Peru's military government allowed elections for the first time in twelve years in 1980, the Shining Path was one of the few leftist political groups that declined to take part.

Shining Path's credibility benefited from the government's initially tepid response to the insurgency.

The result was that the peasants in the areas where the Shining Path was active thought the state was either impotent or not interested in their issues.

The Shining Path began to fight against Peru's other major guerrilla group, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, as well as campesino self-defense groups organized by the Peruvian armed forces.

Shining Path followed Mao Zedong's dictum that guerrilla warfare should start in the countryside and gradually choke off the cities.

The Shining Path banned continuous drunkenness, but they did allow the consumption of alcohol.

Shining Path's government issued a law in 1991 that gave the rondas a legal status, and from that time, they were officially called Comites de auto defensa .

Military units engaged in many human rights violations, which caused the Shining Path to appear in the eyes of many as the lesser of two evils.

In one of its last attacks in Lima, on 16 July 1992, Shining Path detonated a powerful bomb on Tarata Street in the Miraflores District, full of civilian adults and children, killing 25 people and injuring an additional 155.

Guzman's role as the leader of the Shining Path was taken over by Oscar Ramirez, who himself was captured by Peruvian authorities in 1999.

On 9 June 2003, a Shining Path group attacked a camp in Ayacucho and took 68 employees of the Argentinian company Techint and three police guards as hostages.

Shining Path was thought to have led an ambush against an army helicopter in 1999 in which five soldiers died.

In January 2004, a man known as Comrade Artemio and identifying himself as one of the Shining Path's leaders, said in a media interview that the group would resume violent operations unless the Peruvian government granted amnesty to other top Shining Path leaders within 60 days.

On 22 December 2005, the Shining Path ambushed a police patrol in the Huanuco region, killing eight.

In November 2009, Defense Minister Rafael Rey announced that Shining Path militants had attacked a military outpost in southern Ayacucho province.

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Shining Path snipers killed three police officers in the Ene Apurimac Valley on 18 March 2017.

Shining Path declared itself to be feminist and many women took up leadership positions.

Shining Path rejected the concept of human rights; a Shining Path document stated:.

The video expresses support for Guzman and the Shining Path, featuring various clips of the organization's activities, as well as showing the band in a cage to mimic Guzman's imprisonment.