Free Republic

Peru’s new president Pedro Castillo, 51, deserves credit for vowing to focus his government on improving the lives of the country’s poverty-stricken indigenous population. But his first steps in office raise fears that he will scare away investors, generate capital flight and — after a short-lived populist fiesta — create more poverty. Castillo, a leftist former elementary school teacher who had never before held public office, assumed the presidency on July 28 after winning the runoff elections with a razor-thin 0.3 percent of the vote. He controls only 37 seats in the 130-member Congress. Some hoped that Castillo’s minority in...

Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso (American Spanish: [maˈnwel ruˈβen aβimaˈel ɡuzˈman reiˈnoso]; born 3 December 1934), also known by the nom de guerre Chairman Gonzalo (Spanish: Presidente Gonzalo), a former professor of philosophy, is the former leader of the Shining Path during the Maoist insurgency known as the internal conflict in Peru. Shining Path had been active in Peru since the late 1970s and began what it called "the armed struggle" on 17 May 1980. Wanted on charges of terrorism and treason, Guzmán was captured by the Peruvian government in 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment. While the activity of...

Editor’s note: While reports have been gaining lately about both Hezbollah and other Islamic forces being found in Latin America – this is the first (to my knowledge) of actual violence being done. For a report in Spanish of such activity, country by country, read here. Peruvian media outlets accused Hizbullah of being involved in violence and killing a Peruvian citizen during protests staged by locals a few weeks ago, al-Arabiya news website reported Saturday. During demonstrations staged by locals from La Pampa district against government projects, one of the demonstrators was shot and killed. Local media in Peru...

A brutal Maoist guerrilla group that terrorized Peru during the 1980s but pretty much disappeared when top leaders were captured in the 1990s is making a resurgence. In the latest of several recent attacks by the Sendero Luminoso, known in English as the Shining Path, 14 government soldiers were killed in an ambush this month. It was, a Sendero leader said afterward, "the strongest blow" against the government in quite a while. It also was not an isolated incident. "It's like that horror movie, 'Friday the 13th,' " said Bernard Aronson, President George H.W. Bush's assistant secretary of state for...

Aucayacu - Peru's brutal rebel movement, the Shining Path, long thought to be all but extinct, is on the warpath again, boosted by an alliance with drug traffickers. Its Maoist guerrillas almost vanished after the capture of their founder and leader, Abimael Guzman, in 1993, with only a few hundred left sheltering in remote highlands. But those mountains are now the setting for a dramatic growth in cultivating coca to produce cocaine, and veteran fighters are now serving new masters, the drug barons. The Shining Path once forced the whole country to its knees in a war that claimed 70,000...

June 16, 2005: Following in the footsteps of a number other failed insurgent groups, the ultra-radical Peruvian Sendero Luminoso movement has recently begun dabbling in the drug business. Several times recently, Sendero Luminoso forces have attacked Peruvian and international anti-drug personnel.

"What's the president's name?" "I don't know." "Do you know what Peru is?" "No." These were the surprising answers of a native Ashaninka released by the Peruvian police from the remnants of the guerrilla group Shining Path in the country's central jungle. All of those rescued, scores of children as well as adults and elderly, displayed severe symptoms of malnutrition, infections and parasitic infections due to the peripatetic and inhumane treatment during years in the heights of the Vilcabamba mountain range and deep in the rainforest. The police also retrieved hundreds of natives that were hiding from the "Senderistas," having...

Peruvian guerrilla forces regroup in the Andes LIMA, Aug. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- Remnants of the Peruvian rebel group, Shining Path (SL), have regrouped and strengthened themselves in Peru's central jungle region, reports here quoted local peasants as saying on Monday. The guerrillas have resumed their patrolling in the Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Junin states, where they were engaged in terror activities between 1980 and 1995. The reports said the SL members have changed their approach and are now trying to win the confidence of locals who collaborate with them in their insurgency against the government. The Peruvian army's intelligence service...