The Actions of the shining path
From the start, the Shining Path was known for gruesome and ghoulish acts in the rural areas of Peru, as well as the capital Lima. The picture to the left shows the scene that residents in Lima woke up to on the 26 of December in the late 1970s. Dogs hanging from lamp posts with words translated to: "son of a b****". Many understood this act to be a sign of the groups formation. Others understood this act as a message intended for the government and its citizens, saying that a similar thing would happen if the country continued to rely on democracy and capitalism.
"Several dogs met the morning hung from street lights in central Lima. Tied at the neck, almost without struggling in the still air of the Lima dawn, their sad bodies were wrapped in cloth painted with strident colors." This demonstration in Lima was the first of many that the Shining Path orchestrated to protest the Peruvian government.
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The Shining Path, which took over the Ayacucho region, was able to spreads ideas through the local universities, where many poor urban families were sending their kids. These students were being taught by professors and other faculty that were a part of Guzman's ideals. This group appealed to these students because it offered them an organization to be a part of and to fight for. To learn a little more about the region and how Guzman's ideas spread, watch New Day Films video.
When researching the Shining Path, many scholars mentioned a military school that was formed to instruct individuals in military and weapon tactics. There are no articles, pictures, or scholarly sources on the school, which makes it hard to confirm its existence or not. In the 1980's, the Shining Path's first act of protest was burning ballot boxes for the presidential elections. This was an armed attack and was against the municipal polling stations in the area of Ayacucho. This picture above is part of the propaganda that the Shining Path used to encourage people to boycott elections and to instead come together and join the fight against the corrupt democracy that they saw in Peru. |
The picture to the left is the aftermath of a truck bomb that was detonated in the Calle Tarata district of Lima. The Shining Path created this chaos on the 16th of July in 1992, killing 25 people, wounding 155 others, and damaging 183 homes. This was the deadliest attack that the group had perpetrated.
The truck bomb was just one of many that the group orchestrated. The Shining Path was known for its bombs in the capital of Lima, as well as other guerilla warfare tactics. These included the torturing, kidnapping, and execution of innocent civilians. These tactics were also turned towards government officials, police officers, priests, and anyone else accused of collaborating with the government of Peru. Guzman also lead and planned massacres of whole villages in Peru. For example, on April 3rd, 1983 there were a total of 69 villagers killed in the Andean village of Lucanamarca. An article from BBC published what happened on the day of the massacre, with a witness explaining that: "[I found them] with their hands and feet tied, burned and hacked in my house." Actions like these caused many to lose sympathy quickly with the group and its leaders, hurting their chance at gaining many more followers. Some anti-Shining Path patrols even formed, helping some get revenge for the destruction and harm done to their villages, while also helping capture sympathizers.
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