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Abimael Guzmán, Leader of Guerrilla Group That Terrorized Peru, Dies at 86
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia Sep 11, 2021 03:31pm |
| Category | News |
| News Date | Sep 11, 2021 12:25pm |
| Description | Abimael Guzmán, the founder and leader of the Shining Path guerrilla movement, which spread terror across much of Peru in the 1980s and ’90s, died on Saturday in Peru. He was 86.
Mr. Guzmán died in a maximum-security prison in the Callao naval base in Peru, where he was serving a life sentence, prison officials said. They said he died of health complications but did not specify an exact cause.
An estimated 70,000 Peruvians were killed during the decade-long peak of the Shining Path insurgency, at least one-third at the hands of guerrillas. Shining Path advocated a violent reordering of society away from the vices of urban life. Its leaders echoed Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge with warnings that “rivers of blood” would flow after their victory, and that as many as one million Peruvians might be put to death.
Shining Path was almost entirely Mr. Guzmán’s conception, and for a time he seemed poised to seize power in one of Latin America’s most important countries. His avowedly Maoist movement was one of the most violently radical in the hemisphere’s modern history, and his fertile mind and extraordinary powers of persuasion laid the basis for an intense personality cult. |
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