SUMMARY
Partido Comunista del Perú–Sendero Luminoso ("Communist Party of Peru–Shining Path"), mostly known as Sendero Luminoso, was a communist rebel group which has been active in fighting against the government of Peru. The group was founded in the late 1960s by Abimael Guzmán. Its name stems from a quote by the founder of the Peruvian Communist Party, stating that Marxism-Leninism will “open the shining path to revolution”, and the group is also sometimes referred to as the “Communist Party of Peru”. After Guzmán’s capture in 1992 the group fractured into two different wings, with the hard-line movement sometimes being referred to as Sendero Rojo ("Red Path"). Efforts to reunify the two factions began in the mid-2000s.
The group adhered to a strict interpretation of Maoism and aimed to overthrow the Peruvian government so as to replace it with a revolutionary peasant/people’s government. In the first years of its existence the group was engaged mainly in political activism and propaganda, before turning to violence in 1980. An intrastate conflict subsequently began and reached the 25 battle-deaths threshold in 1982. The group reached its peak in the late 1980s, controlling swathes of territory, carrying out attacks in the capital, Lima, and also fighting against MRTA. Since the group went into decline in the 1990s it lost its impetus as a popular movement, relying mainly on the support of coca farmers and income from drug trafficking. In the context of this armed conflict the group also made use of non-state and one-sided violence.
Sendero Luminoso employed an armed wing, officially called the “People’s Guerilla Army”. The number of cadres within the armed wing has fluctuated, with thousands being employed at the movement’s peak but with only a few hundred remaining as the group fell into decline. On top of being involved in attacks on the state’s security forces, the People’s Guerilla Army was also used to enforce Sendero Luminoso’s “popular trials”; in essence extrajudicial executions of alleged criminals. The Sendero Luminoso – and its armed wing – has not maintained any important links to other groups or foreign states, and has not received any substantial secondary support from external sources. Resources for the movement have instead flowed mainly from the aforementioned drug trade.
The founder and leader of Sendero Luminoso, Abimael Guzmán (whose nom de guerre was President Gonzalo), a former university professor of philosophy, was captured in 1992 and incarcerated. His capture led to a loss of impetus for the group, which fell into a period of decline and subsequently split into two factions. Guzmán, being in prison, began to make overtures for peace, whilst the other faction (Sendero Rojo), led by Oscar Ramirez Durand, alia Feliciano, attempted to bring a resurgence to the movement and its armed struggle in the mid-1990s. Ramirez was captured in 1999 and the group’s activities decreased significantly. Other leaders of the hard-line faction have been two men called José and Alipio.
Since the early 2000s, the group's level of activity has declined but remained relatively stable, with incidents involving both state forces and civilians. As of 2024, Sendero Luminoso remains active, with a limited number of events recorded as state-based violence in the UCDP dataset.
Since 1989 Sendero Luminoso has been involved in the intrastate, non-state and one-sided categories of UCDP organized violence.
