UNCLEAR FACTOR: RELATIONS BETWEEN SL FACTIONS
International attention was drawn to the reemergence of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path, SL) by the 9 June kidnapping of 71 members of a pipeline-laying team in the south-central department of Ayacucho --the birthplace of the SL insurgency 23 years earlier. Within Peru, though, the issue had been the subject of heated discussion since the beginning of the previous month, when the US State Department issued a warning to its nationals to beware terrorist acts between 17 May and 24 July.
The warning was not the product of extraordinary prescience or even good intelligence. The US had become sensitised to SL since March 2002, when it set off a bomb in front of the US embassy in Lima, just before the arrival of President George Bush Jr. In the past, SL had made it a practice of staging spectacular actions at this time of year, when it celebrated the anniversary of the beginning of its 'armed struggle' in the Andean locality of Chuschi, in 1980.
The State Department warning was dismissed as an exaggeration by the Peruvian government (and by many local experts on insurgency and related matters). However, the debate was fuelled later in the month, when countrywide protests and riots led the government to declare a state of emergency: the hand of SL was descried in these events, particularly behind the teachers' strike, by officers of the police's antiterrorist directorate, Dircote, and even by prelates of the Catholic church.
After the July mass kidnapping, past and present members of the security services knitted together the activities of the senderista groups still devoted to armed struggle and the prospect of imminent release of many others currently serving prison sentences, who are ostensibly aligned with the 'political solution' advocated by their historic leader, Abimael Guzmán. Interpretations by experts within and without the security apparatus became very contradictory.
In the upper reaches of government, officials began to oscillate between restating their earlier line that there was no such thing as a resurgence (rebrote) of SL and accepting that there was a 'very worrying' new trend.
The March 2002 bombing. Until very recently the official line was that all that remained of SL was a small remnant, linked to the coca economy in the valleys descending eastward from the Andes, who engaged sporadically in acts of violence. The prevailing attitude was that they were more of a nuisance than a threat, and this continued to be the case after the March 2002 bombing.
From the government's point of view, what most mattered regarding that incident was that the police had tracked down and arrested eight of the alleged perpetrators. However, one of the prosecutors handling that case, María del Pilar Peralta, says that the investigation turned up a revealing detail. Most of those arrested belonged to SL's northern regional command, reputedly led by Darnon Flores (aka Norman), who was based somewhere in the department of Ancash, north of Lima. The planning of the attack, though, appeared to have been the handiwork of SL's central regional command, headed by 'Artemio', whose base was somewhere in the coca-growing Upper Huallaga valley.
This not only suggested a higher degree of organisational sophistication than imagined at the time, but also appeared to establish a link between the residual 'armed struggle' faction and those areas north of Lima --the departments of Ancash and La Libertad-- where the senderistas had been considered involved wholly in 'political' work, most notably proselytising in places like the Universidad Nacional del Santa, in Chimbote. The spread of SL influence to these 'non-traditional' areas is considered to have radiated from networks built around the Picsi prison in Chiclayo, in the northwestern department of Lambayeque.
Mistaken identity. In early June, before the mass kidnapping, Marco Miyashiro, head of Dircote, claimed that the striking teachers' union, Sindicato Unitario de Trabajadores de la Educación de Perú (SUTEP) had been infiltrated by 'a faction of Sendero Luminoso [called] Patria Roja.' He also said that Patria Roja had links, possibly even financial, with the Farc guerrillas of Colombia.
This is the repetition of a claim floated a year earlier --as 'uncorroborated information'-- by Juan Velit, head of the Central Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI; state intelligence agency), who also said at the time that Farc guerrillas had entered Peruvian territory 'with uniforms and ID, almost like a regular army.'
It is also based on a mistake: Patria Roja, like SL, was a splinter of a Maoist splinter of Peru's Communist party, which has long been devoted to legal politics (and because of this is reviled by purist senderistas).
Following the mass kidnapping in June, President Alejandro Toledo stated publicly that there was no evidence of links between the Farc and SL.
Beyond the kidnapping. The 9 June kidnapping, which ended with all hostages freed unharmed the following day, was a departure for SL, which unlike other guerrilla groups in the region had not previously engaged in abductions for ransom. The government and the company involved, Techint of Argentina, say that no ransom was paid: police sources and hostages have said the contrary.
In any case, this episode was followed by a string of actions across the departments of Apurímac, Amazonas, Ayacucho, Huánuco and Junín (ambushes, clashes between guerrillas and security forces, multiple holdups of vehicles) that suggested a force greater than the 130-or-so senderistas the government had been estimating.
The authorities deployed a large force of élite troops to reinforce police in the area, to some effect: on 4 July the army killed SL leader Víctor Quispe (aka 'Martín'), suspected of participation in the June mass kidnapping, and the following day police arrested Florentino Cerrón Cardozo, one of the few members of SL's central committee still at large since Guzmán's capture in 1992.
According to Dircote chief Miyashiro, the only remaining member of that central committee still at liberty is 'Artemio', the head of the central regional command who led the Techint kidnapping.
Abimael enigma. This leaves unclear the current relationship between the different factions of SL. Colonel Benedicto Juárez of Dircote maintains that, from prison, Abimael Guzmán is directing operations to 'test the waters': his overt commitment to a 'political solution', he says, is just a sham --in his view the real aim continues to be 'the conquest of power through armed struggle.'
This interpretation is not shared by many in Peru's cohort of experts on SL and guerrillas generally: most tend to consider the split between factions quite real.
In any case, it should be kept in mind that before it first initiated armed action 23 years ago, Sendero spent a decade devoted to preparing the political groundwork.
