The Shining Path: The History of Peru’s Revolutionary Communist Party and the Ongoing Civil War

On the evening of May 17, 1980, a day before the Peruvian electorate, the most representative in the nation’s history, was due to go to the polls for the first authentic presidential election since 1963, a curious thing happened. In the tiny mountain town of Chuschi, little more than a hamlet nestled in a valley on the western slopes of the Andes, a group of armed youth broke the lock on the town hall and removed all of the ballot boxes, papers and voting lists prepared for the following day. These were carried out into the town square and burned. The group identified itself as Sendero Luminoso, the “Shining Path,” declaring this action to be the commencement of the armed phase of the “People’s War.”

In the avalanche of press coverage for the election, the incident was scantly reported and generally overlooked. It was an exciting and energetic time in Peruvian politics, as the country sought to shake off nearly two decades of military rule and dictatorship, and a minor disturbance such as this in the rural countryside was of little interest. Nor, for that matter, was the theft of dynamite from a handful of local mines, although the handful of isolated bomb blasts that followed did stir a certain amount of curious reporting. Soon, however, the citizens of Lima began to notice the frequency of stray dogs found hanging from traffic lights and lamp posts. Images that have since become iconic in the chronicles of the Shining Path began appearing in local newspapers.

This flush of macabre and ritualistic statements, apart from being confusing and a little unnerving, were also inescapably folkloric and sinister. This in time would become the hallmark of Sendero Luminoso as it emerged thereafter as one of the largest and most violent of Latin American guerrilla movements.