This dyad belongs to the conflict Peru: Government
Summary of conflict Peru: Government
Sharp divisions between population groups have contributed to the emergence of several left-wing guerrilla groups in 20th century Peru. The conflict over government first occurred in 1965. Intrastate conflict over government resumed in 1981 with the emergence of Sendero Luminoso (SL) and in 1989 with the MRTA. This episode of the conflict was more violent than in the 1960s, accompanied by human rights abuses by all sides and one-sided violence by SL. The conflict terminated due to low activity as of 2000. SL increased activity again and the conflict was active again between 2007 and 2010.
Since the capture of founding leader of SL in 1992 the group has been divided both ideologically and geographically. Comrade Artemio, leader of the fraction that followed the path of the founder announced in 2011 that the armed struggle was over, but that the political struggle would continue. In 2012 Artemio was captured and the other fraction, under the lead of the Quispe Palomino brothers, continued the struggle with increased intensity though the conflict didn’t reach the threshold of being active.
The struggle for land rights and the 1965 guerrilla conflict
The rebel groups fighting the government in Peru have to a large extent framed their struggle as one for Indian rights. At the time of colonisation, the area was dominated by the Inca Empire. Stretching from modern-day Colombia to central Chile, Incas fought a civil war against the Spanish conquest, which was led by Francisco Pizarro and began in 1532. Pizarros forces captured Atahualpa and the Cuzco region fell to his forces in the following year. In 1544, the Viceroyalty of Peru was formally established, with its capital in Lima. Sporadic resistance continued and the Incas were finally defeated in 1572 when Tupac Amarú I, the last Incan emperor, was captured at the fall of Vilcabamba, taken to Cuzco and beheaded. The Spanish defeat of the Incas has greatly influenced the character of modern Peru, where sharp divisions follow ethnic and class lines and long-existing resentment have occasionally escalated into violence.
Much of the opposition in the twentieth century has centred on the issue of land rights. In 1963, 60 per cent of the cultivated land was controlled by 0.1 per cent of the population. Amidst growing demands for a more equal land distribution and for an end to the exploitation of Indian communities, left-wing groups gained strength. At the same time, the major leftist political party, APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana; American Revolutionary Popular Alliance), moved toward the right in an attempt to create coalitions that would enable it to gain political power. Alienated by this shift and inspired by the Cuban revolution, many members split from APRA and formed new, more radical groups. One of these people was Luis de la Puente, who formed MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria; Movement of the Revolutionary Left) in 1962. ELN (Ejército de la Liberación Nacional; National Liberation Army) emerged from a similar split in the PCP (Partido Comunista Peruano; Peruvian Communist Party), also in 1962. The ELN was led by Hector Béjar.
The two guerrilla groups began their armed struggle in 1965. The MIR had established a number of fronts in Cuzco and Junín departments and began their attacks in June, while the ELN launched a front in La Mar Province, Ayacucho department in September. Although the groups were fighting relatively close to each other, they never coordinated their activities. Both groups also suffered from bad planning and low organisational capacity, and by the end of 1965, they had been virtually defeated by the military forces. At this time, Béjar was captured and imprisoned by the security forces, whereas de la Puente had been killed in a clash in October. In June 1966, the Army declared it had eliminated all the guerrilla resistance.
The brief guerrilla struggle took place during the presidency of Fernando Belaúnde Terry, elected in 1963 and re-elected in June 1968. He had launched a programme intended to improve conditions for the Indian population, but his government failed to achieve any significant progress in this regard. In October 1968, Belaúnde was deposed in a bloodless military coup led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado. The military government initiated a land reform process which resulted in some land redistribution in favour of Indian groups, although the impact proved limited. The limited effects of land reforms, together with a deteriorating economy, led to growing disappointment during the 1970s.
Renewed guerrilla war: Sendero Luminoso and MRTA
A second conflict episode began with the launch of Sendero Luminoso’s (Shining Path, SL) armed struggle in the early 1980s and continued until 1999. A second group, MRTA (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru; Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement), was active in 1989 to 1993.
The Maoist insurgent group Sendero Luminoso was formed in the late 1960s by University Professor Abimael Guzmán. Its origins can be traced back to the Huamanga command of the ELN (Ejército de la Liberación Nacional; National Liberation Army), which broke with the main ELN over the decision to start the armed struggle in 1965. Guzmán and his followers chose a longer-term strategy of building up rural support for their goal, which was destroying existing Peruvian institutions and replacing them with a peasant revolutionary regime. Guzmán originally named his movement Partido Comunista del Perú en el Sendero Luminoso de Mariátegui (Communist Party of Peru in the Shining Path of Mariátegui), in reference to the Peruvian Marxist philosopher whose teachings together with Maoism made up SL’s ideological base. SL originated in Ayacucho department in the south-central highlands, a poor and marginalised region which had received little attention in the government’s development programme. During presidential elections in May 1980 – the first since the military coup in 1968 – Sendero Luminoso initiated a strategy of "peoples war" with the burning of ballot boxes in the rural community of Chuschi in Ayacucho department. In the following two years, their strategies evolved from attacking symbols of the state and foreign interests to a broader guerrilla war against police and security forces.
From 1982, the year when the armed conflict between Sendero Luminoso and the government became active, and throughout the rest of the 1980s, the group extended their struggle both in intensity and in geographical scope. While initially focused on Ayacucho department, the violence had by the mid-1980s spread to Lima as well as to rural areas bordering Ecuador in the north and Bolivia in the south. At this time, the security forces had managed to bring most of the original area of SL activity under control, resulting in a somewhat decreased intensity of conflict in 1986 and 1987. However, the guerrillas soon adapted to new forms and areas of struggle and the intensity of violence again increased at the end of the 1980s. The guerrillas also established a presence in the Huallaga Valley in northern Peru, the centre of coca production. This area has seen US involvement in an attempt to stem the flow of cocaine to the USA.
Also at the end of the 1980s, a new dyad appeared in the conflict. The MRTA, formed by the radical university students Nestor Cerpa and Victor Polay in 1983, was a traditional Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movement, which aimed to rid Peru of imperialism and establish a Marxist regime. Its name refers to Tupac Amaru II, an indigenous leader who led an uprising against the Spanish occupation in the 18th century and who has served as an inspiration for guerrilla movements in Peru. In 1986, the group had merged with remaining elements of the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria; Movement of the Revolutionary Left), which had been fighting the government in the 1960s. The merger was followed up with a widespread bombing campaign throughout Lima. The MRTA became active in the conflict in 1989, and was active until mid-1993; thereafter the political organisation of the group became unclear, although the group engaged in violence in the form of bombings in 1994. Activities have been reported sporadically since then, the most infamous being the hostage drama of 1996-1997 when MRTA rebels stormed the Japanese ambassadors residence and took 500 people hostage. All 14 rebels involved, including the leader Nestor Cerpa, as well as three of the hostages, died in the government’s release action. The 126-day long hostage drama ended on 23 April, and with it the MRTA guerrilla movement was more or less wiped out; only some 150-200 rebels still existed deep in the Peruvian jungle. In March 2006, Victor Polay was sentenced to 32 years in prison in a civilian trial.
The leader of Sendero Luminoso, Abimael Guzmán, was captured on 12 September 1992 and after that, violence by the rebel group dropped dramatically. On 10 January 1994 it was reported that Sendero Luminoso had divided into two factions - "the pacifists," supporting the imprisoned leader Abimael Guzmán, and a new group, "the hardliners," led by Oscar Ramírez Durand, also known as Feliciano. While Guzmán had made written appeals for peace in 1993, Ramírez advocated the continuation of armed struggle. The "hardline" Sendero faction has sometimes been referred to as "Sendero Rojo" but most frequently the original name Sendero Luminoso has been used. Ramírez was captured and imprisoned in July 1999, and in 2000 this dyad did not reach 25 battle-related deaths.
A peaceful interlude and steps toward reconciliation
In July 2001, Perus Interim President Valentin Paniagua formally established a truth commission to investigate human rights abuses committed by leftist rebels and government forces over the last two decades. The aim of the commission was to clarify causes and responsibilities for political violence that left 30 000 people dead and at least 4 000 missing since 1980. The final report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was made public on 28 August 2003 at a ceremony in the Palace of the Government. The number of estimated victims between 1980 and 2000 totalled 69 280. The truth commission blamed Sendero Luminoso for more than half of the deaths, while MRTA was deemed responsible for less than 2%. The report described, among other things, the victims of the conflict, the conflict actors, the violence and human rights abuses. It also delivered recommendations of how to reach a compromise for national reconciliation, one of which was that the government pay reparations to survivors.
A few steps towards reconciliation were taken in 2007. President Alan Garcia handed out checks as compensation to hundreds of communities in the highland and jungle regions ravaged by Perus 20-year conflict with the Sendero Luminoso insurgency. The ceremony was held in Ayacucho, the epicentre of guerrilla violence and the site of the worst atrocities in a brutal state-sponsored counterinsurgency campaign. The Peruvian government also publicly apologised for the La Cantuta massacre in 1992, for which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2006 found the Peruvian government responsible. According to the president of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this ceremony was a new beginning in Peruvian history. Moreover, former President Fujimori, standing trial on corruption and human rights abuse charges, apologised for two death squad massacres that took place in the early 1990s.
Resurgence of guerrilla activity by Sendero Luminoso
The Sendero Luminoso (SL) hard-line faction was in 2006 led by two guerrillas known as “José” and “Alipio”, political and military leaders respectively. Since the split in the SL, this faction has mainly been active in the Apurímac-Ene River Valleys (VRAE). A regional leader called “Comrade Artemio”, active in Huallaga Valley, had mainly been loyal to Guzmán and the pacifists; however, after years of neither negotiating with the government nor being crushed by it, in April 2004 the Artemio faction gave the government a two-month deadline to begin talks or the Huallaga group would return to armed struggle in late 2004. No talks took place and the Artemio faction decided to join the hardliners.
The difference between the Huallaga and the VRAE group diminished at that point and the reunification of Sendero Luminoso began. Several meetings were held between the two factions between December 2004 and March 2005. They agreed that 2006 would be the year of the Second Congress of the Shining Path, to reconstitute the party and to initiate the “Flowering of the Revolution”, the fifth phase of the long struggle to take place between 2006 and 2008. The end of 2005 saw an upswing in activity, with ambush attacks leading to the death of 13 policemen. The dyad, however, did not reach the level of being considered active, and in 2006 the number of battle related-deaths declined.
Sendero Luminoso has in recent years benefited from a growing social movement, mainly consisting of coca growers or cocaleros, opposing the governments anti-narcotics strategy. In the area where Sendero Luminoso operates, the main economic activity is growing coca for cocaine production. One such social movement, which appeared in 2005, was the Etnocacerista movement, a loose alliance of small political parties, NGOs and cocaleros. Sendero Luminoso has been strengthened by these social movements frustration with the authorities. Sometimes Sendero Luminoso has also incited protests (and participated in them) against the government, hoping for the government to respond harshly so that the social movements and the frustration will grow stronger. It has also been reported that they seek collaboration with converted peasants in the form of informants of police and army activities. In October 2006 the founder of Sendero Luminoso, Abimael Guzmán, who had been arrested in 1992, was sentenced to life in prison.
Sendero Luminoso became active again in 2007. At this time, the group was estimated to consist of a few hundred guerrillas staging sporadic ambushes on security forces and providing protection to cocaine traffickers. They strengthened their presence in the La Mar Province, Ayacucho, thanks to the vast resources obtained through their support for drug trafficking. In 2009 Sendero Luminoso threatened to expand its revolutionary war to other parts of Peru. The conflict continued to be active in 2010. In December 2011 Artemio, the leader of Sendero Luminoso, announced that the military struggle was over and that they wanted to negotiate an enduring peace with the government. The continued struggle would be for the political goals, but without arms according to Artemio. In 2012 Artemio was captured by the government and the conflict picked up intensity in the VRAE region under the lead of the Quispe Palomino brothers though it did not reach the threshold of being active.
