Defence Minister Pedro Cateriano has announced that by the end of this year there will be 21 new antiterrorist bases in areas where guerrillas and drug traffickers are active. This comes in the wake of a recent spate of Sendero Luminoso (SL) actions in which the government forces suffered several casualties.
In the public part of Cateriano’s 17 June testimony before the congressional committee on national defence, he said that the number of new bases to be built this year had been increased from 10 to 11. ‘This batch of bases,’ he said, will be finished this year and will be added to the 10 that are already in an advanced stage of construction.’
He disclosed further details in the close-doors stage of his appearance, which had actually been convened to discuss his ministry’s acquisitions, which have been bogged down in bureaucratic procedures that have delayed the commissioning of badly needed equipment — a situation that has prompted the creation of a new agency to handle purchases for the three armed services.
His public reference to the new bases has been interpreted as a move to divert attention from the series of incidents in the first half of the month in the Apurímac-Ene-Mantaro valleys region (Vraem), in which one soldier was killed, and an officer and another soldier, as well as a police officer, had been injured.
On 5 June a 25-strong unit of SL guerrillas raided a works camp of the Consorcio Quinua-San Francisco, which is building the highway linking Ayacucho city with the Apurímac-Ene valley and made off with communications equipment food and medical supplies, as well as 29 workers. Eleven of these were freed soon afterwards, while the rest were forced to carry the seized items for several hours before being freed. As the guerrillas were withdrawing they ran into an army patrol headed for the Tutumbaru district of La Mar, Ayacucho. In the ensuing exchange of gunfire, a major and a police officer were injured.
On 6 June the deputy governor of Villa Virgen in the La Convención province of Cusco, Carlos Pariona Chungui, was attacked by a group of men who stabbed him to death. A leaflet with the hammer and sickle emblem of the SL was found nearby.
On 11 June in the Sivia district of Huanta, Ayacucho, an army patrol clashed with guerrillas, thought to have been involved in the raid on the highway works camp; one soldier was killed and another was injured.
Going online
In early June reports began to surface of postings by SL in Facebook and other social networks, with seven photos of armed guerrillas, the recently captured ‘Camarada Artemio’ (Florindo Eleuterio Flores Hala) and the body of a man who had been executed, together with text extolling SL’s activities. One photo purportedly shows guerrillas undergoing training — suggesting that the SL unit previously commanded by ‘Artemio’ was still active.
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