The Peruvian government does not seem to know what to say about the recent spate of activity by the guerrillas of Sendero Luminoso (SL). Within days, interior minister Alberto Sanabria has shifted from saying that he and President Alejandro Toledo were 'very worried' by events and 'do not underestimate' them, to reciting again the old official line that 'there is no resurgence ['rebrote'] of Sendero Luminoso.
Partly this was because he felt obliged to contradict the assertion of opposition leader Alan García that there was indeed a rebrote, which was 'reappearing again as the gravest threat to our democracy.'
Pressed to explain himself, Sanabria said that what was being witnessed was 'a new strategy of the seditious groups to make their presence in the country known.'
The events. On 4 July the army reported its first success in its search for the senderistas who staged the brief kidnapping of 71 pipeline workers a month earlier (WR-03-22). In a clash between the Tincabeni and Sonabeni rivers in the province of Satipo, in the central department of Junín, it said it had killed Víctor Quispe (aka 'camarada Martín'), identified as one of the abductors and as a 'political leader' of SL.
In the same general area, an SL unit had earlier abducted the leader of the rondas campesinas (peasant self-defence groups that played an important role in the counterinsurgency campaign during the Fujimori era). The rondas in the area are now asking to be issued new weapons and munitions.
A week earlier, an army patrol was ambushed by senderistas northeast of Ayacucho; a soldier was killed. Another was injured by a landmine.
On 30 June a platoon of senderistas descended upon the village of Antasco, Apurímac, apparently intent on raiding the local police station. Finding that its occupants had fled, the guerrillas gathered the population in the town square and lectured them on how SL was now 'peaceful'.
On 2 July, the regional president of La Libertad, Homero Burgos, was one among the occupants of about 20 cars and buses travelling the road from Tingo María to Huánuco that were halted and robbed by a small unit of SL fighters armed with AK-47s.
The government has extended for another 30 days the state of emergency in Ayacucho, Junín and Apurímac, and the province of La Convención in Cusco, to facilitate military operations. It has refused, 'for security reasons', to confirm reports that it has sent a 300-strong unit of élite commandos to spearhead a sweep through those areas.
The antiterrorist directorate of the police, Dircote, reckons that there are about 330 senderistas moving around the targeted areas. The recent incidents suggest that they operate in small, highly mobile units of 10 to 15.
Adding to confusion. Beyond the semantics, confusion over what is happening is being increased by the pronouncements of people reputed to be experts on the subject of Sendero. Only recently, Colonel Benedicto Juárez of Dircote claimed that SL leader Abimael Guzmán and those senderistas who follow him have been directing political action from the prisons where they are serving sentences for terrorism.
Now, a former judge who presided over the special antiterrorist tribunal, Marcos Ibazeta, has defied conventional wisdom with the assertion that Guzmán is behind the recent increase in senderista activity in the field, 'testing the water' with actions which do not, as in the past, target the population but the military.
The most widely held view is that those senderistas who persist in armed action are a remnant who refused to go along with Guzmán's peace agreement of 1992, whereas those who continue to follow their jailed leader are concentrating on peaceful political work.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 623 words.
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