Library:The CIA's Shining Path: Political Warfare

The CIA's Shining Path: Political Warfare
Author	Andreo Matías
Translated by	ProleWiki from Spanish
First published	1988 Peru
Type	Book
Source	Spanish

Foreword by ProleWiki

Originally published in 1988, The CIA’s Shining Path (CIA Sendero Luminoso: Guerra Politica) was such an important work to Peruvian politics in its time that it even made its way into the National Library of Peru.

ProleWiki was able to track down a copy of the book in the original Spanish and we are proud to be able to offer, for the first time ever, an English translation of this important work.

Much like the author, we also hope this book sparks debate about the role of the Shining Path in Peruvian politics – continuing even to this day after the death of Abimael Guzman. But the richness of this text is not contained solely in the debates it might spark. Military doctrine, Peruvian politics, South American geopolitics, and of course a complete exposé on the inner workings and methods of the Shining Path: this is where the true value of this book lies. All of these topics are appropriately expanded upon, making The CIA’s Shining Path a vast repository of knowledge for all students of Marxism.

The author also included several documents in the appendice of the original edition, which we also translated. To our knowledge, this is the first time these documents have been made available in English.

ProleWiki has done its best to ensure this book has been properly translated but, we have to admit the author has been less than clear at several points (a combination of his writing style and the reader needing to be familiar with late 20th century Peruvian history). We provide the original edition in Spanish on ProleWiki for anyone who would like to compare our work with the original.

If you have any questions or corrections to bring up, please get in touch with us.

This edition is offered FREE of charge under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license.

PREFACE

The use of the pseudonym Andreo Matías aims to avoid a false association of ideas between the author's name and the title of the book but not to conceal his identity: Washington Huaracha Apaza.

Furthermore, Washington Huaracha Apaza is not a stranger to the country's political life. A confessed socialist, he has a record of consistent involvement in the revolutionary movement since the formation of the National Democratic Front in 1945, in Arequipa, his hometown. He served as the national leader of the Hotel Workers Federation of Peru in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Years of imprisonment during the Odría dictatorship took a toll on his health, leading him to assume, more or less, responsibility in social scientific research. This book is the product from that period of his life. It also translates years of experience: the study of social contradictions in the country and the global development of insurgency around the world. It results from patient collection of documents, in-depth analysis of information sources, and meticulous teamwork.

For Washington Huaracha Apaza, this work should spark debate, lead the struggle down its true path, and engage with ideological and political battles, where the Shining Path and its leaders are obligated to either deny or confirm the validity of the arguments contained within.

INTRODUCTION

To claim that the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path is an offspring of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would seem like hyperbole in anti-communist propaganda or a misconception in the study of Peru's socio-political reality, if not a far-fetched interpretation of the phenomenon in question.

However, the ideological, programmatic and political methodology peculiar to the Shining Path, the existing experience of other insurgent movements generated by foreign intelligence services in other parts of the world, the basic knowledge of the rules and principles of modern irregular warfare, the interests at stake for other states in Latin America and Peru, and, above all, the effort for a fair understanding of Peru's political reality, leave no room for an appropriate inclusion of the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path in the international conglomerate of Marxist movements, let alone recognizing it as an integral part of the political structure of the national revolution. The Shining Path does not even claim a place in the latter; on the contrary, it definitively excludes itself from the national revolutionary ensemble and mass organizations. It proclaims itself a “new party”, resistant to any contamination, with an ideology forging a new society and state.

Its mysterious and concealed forms, as well as the messianic thaumaturgy of the Sole Leadership, only manifest themselves dramatically in a violent, destructive, and calculatedly regulated praxis that shakes Peruvian society to its foundations. Practical and eccentric, but which knows how to insert itself in the permanent situation of structural injustice that Peru is suffering.

This fanatical violence is not the historical violence seen in Tupac Amaru and hundreds of rebel leaders against Spanish colonialism. It is not of the same nature as the violence that confronted opposing interests in the independence war of the last century. Nor is it the violence of a homeland's resistance war against invaders, much less the violence of a modern national liberation war, anti-imperialist and popular opposition to foreign domination. The violence exercised by Shining Path is not, therefore, a genuine expression of the deep internal contradictions of Peruvian society.

We discover, then, that it is an exogenous violence that seeks to insert itself into these contradictions, not to achieve a dialectical solution releasing internal productive and creative forces, but to stimulate destructive social forces to the maximum through the concrete execution of "strategically highly centralized and tactically decentralized plans."

Until now, the insane violence of Shining Path has been characterized particularly by a very specific execution methodology, which it has been applying in Peru since 1980, when irregular combatant teams assumed the mission of "disrupting the productive process" of this "feudal society" and "bureaucratic capitalism."

To ideologically and theoretically support its actions, the Shining Path adopts the name of the Communist Party of Peru, without needing more to move within the realm of factional struggle among Marxist left-wing groups, which, with political shyness, deny it but not combat it.

The sociologists and anthropologists who have analyzed the Shining Path's violence have found native, ancestral, magical-religious, and Andean peculiarities in it. Many social communicators have become Senderologists, reporting on the Shining Path's armed propaganda or providing sophisticated commentary on it, both for Western news agendas and for capitalist countries' foundations that finance million-dollar research on the Shining Path phenomenon.

On the other hand, the state confronts this violence with another kind — namely legal, military and traditional — inscribed in the laws of regular warfare. The state’s forces, tasked with maintaining national sovereignty, territorial integrity, public order, the state's independence and freedom of state and national action, as well as the nation's independence, has had to make a 180-degree turn in mindset and attitude, dangerously shifting from the concepts of external enemy to internal enemy. Induced by old counterinsurgency manuals from the early days of the Cold War, it does what it knows best: war. Today, the Legal Force of the state unexpectedly finds itself fighting elements from the popular sectors, combating "terrorist-communists" in peasant communities, urban marginal settlements, universities, labor unions, and other grassroots social institutions, which are recipients of the structural violence of Peruvian society indirectly linked to the ubiquitous Shining Path, which remains elusive, unidentifiable, and unknown in its true essence and character.

This anomalous and unprecedented phenomenon in the Peruvian revolutionary process compels us to seek more accurate answers as to the Shining Path phenomenon.

What is the Shining Path really?

Is it an instrument of the Revolutionary War of some faction of International Communism, specifically a Maoist Communist Party tasked with expanding the international political space of Communist China?

Is it a violent movement that claims to represent Andean culture?

Is it a new philosophical worldview originating from Peru?

Is it a faction of Marxist membership that has become the armed wing of the Peruvian Revolution?

Is it a political-military apparatus of drug trafficking forces?

Is it a tool of Political Warfare against Third World countries?

Is it a Low-Intensity Operation organized or used by foreign intelligence services to annihilate the social forces of Peruvian nationalism?

Peru, a country that is bleeding, demands definitive and urgent answers regarding the nature of the Shining Path. Their violence, systematically applied over eight years among the peasantry’s social base and economic infrastructure, affects the foundations of national unity, destroys values that are inherent and characteristic of Peruvian national identity, and, worse, compromises almost all efforts for a military solution, which is not feasible in unconventional warfare. As long as Peruvian institutions do not understand what is happening, simply because their structures correspond to the 19th-century concept of the bourgeois world, our thinking remains captive to Manichaen philosophical dualism, and our political tasks are prisoners of the bipolarity of the world, if not of repugnant petty interests.

All of this provides ample motivation for those aware of the danger to assume the historical responsibility of promoting a real understanding of the self-proclaimed Communist Party of Peru the Shining Path. Its years of activity are sufficient to evaluate its ideology, organization, strategy, methods of struggle, and objectives. At this stage of events, it is no longer possible to claim that the Shining Path is an enigma. It has certainly been difficult to locate and observe due to its unique, confusing, and intentionally misleading modus operandi. However, this does not mean that capturing its essence is impossible.

It is worth noting that our interest in the Shining Path dates back to its emergence as a member of the pro-Chinese faction that split from the Peruvian Communist Party and repeatedly dissented from that original pro-Chinese current in Communist circles.

That interest grew when we observed the close confrontation of the Shining Path to the nationalism of the Peruvian Armed Forces government (1968-1980), especially during General Velasco Alvarado's administration. Particularly, we were intrigued by its efforts to sabotage the celebration of the Sesquicentennial of the Battle of Ayacucho in 1974 and the signing of the Ayacucho Act, whose main purpose was to engage Latin American leaders in a regional disarmament policy. At that time, this so-called Communist Party of Peru, "along the shining path of Mariátegui's thought," was already one of the seventy-eight organizations that, outside of traditional parties, appeared as if by magic to oppose the changes promoted by Peruvian nationalist military officers. Just as it now opposes any change or even disregards it.

However, when the Shining Path enters the Peruvian social conflict as an armed apparatus, using individual and collective terrorization and other psychological techniques typical of modern political warfare rather than revolutionary warfare, we must assume the moral obligation to promote and deepen research into the ideology and operations of the Shining Path, to understand what it really is.

It is not easy to trace the Shining Path due to its permanent clandestinity and internal compartmentalization, which make any assessment from the outside difficult. Also, because of the credibility issues surrounding the sources disseminating its ideology, analysis, and reports.

Much has been written and researched using various perspectives on the Shining Path, but with a few exceptions, it can be said that these studies have scratched the surface and often constructed tautologies that only serve, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, to conceal the true purpose of this real and dramatic phenomenon in our time.

Even insiders do not have access to the movement's internal documents. Most of the documents seized by the police are handwritten and come from the middle or lower levels of the militancy; documents which bear the heavy stamp of official secrecy, which makes them problematic for private social research. What the Shining Path disseminates externally is carefully processed propaganda with a planned circulation, designed to impact specific and carefully selected audiences. However, there is a reasonable and significant margin for analysis and interpretation in these documents. Documents referring to Plenums and Conferences supposedly held pronouncements on specific issues, or tactical plans to be executed contribute more to elucidating and understanding the phenomenon. Similarly, the hundreds of events carried out by its irregular combatants whose orientation, nature and purpose cannot be distorted.

Furthermore, it is also essential to mention the more serious works that have been conducted on the Shining Path and that help elucidate and understand its purposes. Among the few, we highlight the following as important.

An unpublished historiographical work on the Shining Path(1) includes rich classified and encoded documentation in an initial attempt at scientific categorization which has allowed for comparisons of writings, source assessment, chronological tracking, and studies of the various components of the Shining Path movement.

Carlos Iván De Gregory's studies (2) published between 1985 and 1987, are a thorough and substantive investigation of the geo-economic environment and socio-political opportunities for the Shining Path's growth. He candidly denounces the “errors and limitations” of the Shining Path's “people's war” and considers the organization as a “pre-classist response” to the “destructive advance of capitalism”, similar to the Guardians of Islam and the Khmer Rouge. Finally, he envisions the slippery slope of the Shining Path's actions dangerously tipping the balance towards the most reactionary elements of the right.

Manuel Jesús Granados Aponte's bachelor's thesis (3) presented at the University of Huamanga, is a critical study of the Shining Path that builds on De Gregory's research, enriching it with forays into the ideological field. It demonstrates the historical dissimilarity between the Peruvian reality analyzed by José Carlos Mariátegui in the 1920s, the Chinese situation studied by Mao Zedong in 1937, and today's Peruvian reality. Granados has subsequently completed his study with another on the typology of the Shining Path's actions and the chimera of the Guiding Thought (4). Granados rightly wonders why those who have used his work have not focused on the central aspect of his thesis: the Shining Path's ideological misunderstanding. Instead, they have seized on the adjectives and partial aspects of his work.

Eloy Villacrés Riquelme's (5) work published in 1985, is a valuable analytical contribution to the strategies of insurgency and counterinsurgency in the Ayacucho region, based on general principles of warfare. Its importance lies in leading us to question and delve into the central issue regarding the nature of the war called for by the Shining Path and the war policy pursued by the Legal Force. The critical input characterizing these works allows us to locate the true contours of the Shining Path.

Without diminishing the value of other studies on the subject, it can be observed that most investigations start with a certain conditioning imposed by the Shining Path's propaganda to look for the causes of the phenomenon from its own perspective. They delve into our internal contradictions, the limits of our own conflict as if it were isolated from the world. They focus on the tactical aspects.

We forget that the important thing is the strategic aspect: the widespread, universal conflict, the new nature of modern irregular warfare, of which the “Senderista war” is a part.

This perspective brings us to study the Shining Path not only from the scope of internal contradictions within Peru, but having in mind the strategic importance of our country in the global confrontation as well as the development, characteristics, and nature of modern irregular warfare, which does not always equate to revolutionary warfare. Our analysis of the Shining Path, therefore, aims to first understand ourselves as the cause or motive of the war; that is, to understand the strategic external factors that condition the war that Shining Path  irregulars call for in the country. By knowing the nature of this war, it is possible to identify the objectives, strategy, and operational tactics of this "unconventional war” developed within the Peruvian, Latin American “low-intensity conflict”.

For the rest, it is an ethical duty to demonstrate the true essence of the irregular warfare that is shaking Peru and the role of the Shining Path, which, under the name of the Communist Party of Peru, fuels genocide and the destruction of our conductive forces.

The Shining Path, claiming to be the only true representative of communism, acts with a military force of irregulars against everyone and everything; its main enemies are the currents of Peruvian nationalist thought and Marxist and non-Marxist socialism. Explanations are superfluous, and so are arguments. The eight confrontations with the Shining Path's irregulars, their propaganda and mechanisms of national and international dissemination, and the Shining Path-like behavior of the Peruvian right leave no doubt about the reactionary nature of the phenomenon.

PART ONE

Chapter 1: Peru, an important enclave, and the Shining Path

In a globally interconnected world like the present, local events cannot be explained by themselves. Even less so without an understanding of the environment, especially regarding international political and economic ties, and the significance they hold in the context of global controversy and the widespread conflict characteristic of this stage in history.

It's worth noting that the doctrines of insurgency and counterinsurgency follow standardized methods and techniques, distinguished from one another only by their purpose and how they serve different ideological views. The greater or lesser strength—whether liberating or imposing—of these modern scientific mechanisms of “unconventional warfare” used to impose wills, defend, preserve, or conquer interests, depends on the conditions of the various social groups where they are applied.

For these reasons, it's impossible to fully understand the Shining Path phenomenon or subversion in Peru without first examining, on a global scale, the potential motivations for which this country falls victim to an insurgent movement of a terrorist character; the reasons and nature of this type of internal warfare. All of this stems from an analysis of the country's importance on the global strategic board.

These are clarifications that must be made. At the very least, to place us on the same strategic level as the Shining Path, which considers the development of its war as part of the global revolution. Whether or not this last statement is true, the Shining Path's interest in Peru is strategic and operates within a system of ideas and interests that are universal, not merely local.

It cannot be ignored that there are currently more than fifty conflict zones in the world—geostrategic enclaves of global politics of the superpowers—and Peru is one of them, distinguished by its strategic location in South America and the South Pacific, as well as its abundant natural resources and military capabilities, the latter partly stemming from its possession of Soviet military technology.

A thousand year old culture

"In Ayacucho, the most ancient evidence of humans in South America has been found. Richard Mac Neis from the Peabody made these discoveries and after prolonged investigations, he managed to establish an antiquity of twenty thousand years before Christ for the presence of the first inhabitants in the Ayacucho region, making it the oldest known site of human habitation in South America to date" (6).

Peruvian culture has a long history that begins in the lithic period and evolved from hunter-gatherer groups to the urban societies of our era. The Wari Empire (500-1000 CE) is the oldest. However, before the Inca or Quechua culture arrived, others flourished, such as the Chimu, Mochica, Pachacamac, Chincha, Nazca, Paracas, Cañaris, Chavin, Chanca, Huanca, Lupaca, Colla, and Tiahuanaco. These were coastal and mountain societies, of which we have scientific references only. In several cases, their current ethnic presence and values serve as the foundation for our current national culture in formation. This all stems from the impact experienced by ancient Peru when the Judeo-Christian culture of the 16th century, in its capitalist-mercantile stage, was forcefully introduced. A culture shaken by universal scientific and technological development.

Understanding the persistence of this cultural confrontation is essential for comprehending the real motives behind any type of insurgency, and in this special case, properly explaining the presence of the movement called the Shining Path.

Centuries of domination and the violent insertion of capitalism have not destroyed the inherent values of pre-Hispanic Peruvian societies. These values transcend the unstoppable demographic growth of their ethnicities, especially the Quechua, which overlays the most diverse range of intermixing. But not only in this aspect but also in the endurance of their customs and beliefs, their old technologies and their aspirations, which now intermingle and enrich themselves with the universal values of the contemporary world.

Peru is undergoing a cultural renaissance, a process of social change that is not convenient for dominant cultures on the international level. Hence the idea that all forms of indigenous intellectual creation, all new valorizations and aspirations, all currents of thought or leadership alien to the prevailing system must be destroyed.

The survival of the root factors of Peruvian culture signifies the possible consolidation of a sovereign and independent nation integrated into the region, as well as a just and solidarity-based society with guaranteed development. As long as it can maintain the free availability of its potential and diverse natural resources, which in the distant past allowed for the emergence of the only civilization south of the equatorial line.

Peru’s potential

For all intended purposes, there is no need for a statistical and quantified inventory of Peru's potential resources and reserves. Rather it is about assessing their strategic importance in industrial development, both in the past, present, and future.

As sources of detailed and scientific information on this matter, Peru has the historical accounts of Spanish chroniclers from the colonial era, the research of Alexander Von Humboldt, and more recent accounts by Antonio Raimondi and Atunes de Mayolo. Additionally, there is the Great geography of Peru by various authors, scientific inventories from the National Office of Natural Resources Assessment (Oficina Nacional de Evaluación de Recursos Naturales) (7) or the Institute of the Peruvian Sea (Instituto del Mar Peruano), valuations by Peruvianist Victor Volsky from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and those conducted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

These are comprehensive or specific studies that confirm the country's importance in the world due to its possession of renewable and non-renewable resources, as well as its geographical location and geophysical configuration that enables the development of infinite energy sources such as solar and nuclear, as well as other cosmic sources like magnetic currents, turbulence, and atomic plasma released in the Magnetic Equator, an energy belt for which only India and Peru have an advantage due to their location on the planet.

Many products native to Peru have substantially served global food and industry. Among others, potatoes, cassava, corn, pineapples, beans, tomatoes, cocoa, peanuts, quinoa, rubber, coca, and quinine. Also, minerals like gold have contributed to European industrial development.

Like these, there are other resources, located and coveted in this part of the world, that will serve the future development of humanity. Organizations such as the well-known Trilateral Commission (8) have already scheduled their use in the era of the 2000s.

The gold reserves of Madre de Dios and the Andean massif will contribute to the near-future development, with their initial intensive exploitation potentially allowing Peru to play a significant role in the establishment of an international monetary system. The richest oil and gas formations in the subcontinent, on the continental shelf and in the Amazon basin, will also contribute. The mineral-rich areas are known as the "Eastern and Western Andean Metallogenic Provinces" with their silver, gold, zinc, lead, copper, tungsten, lithium, vanadium, plutonium, uranium, among other minerals, and a varied range of non-metals. The gigantic phosphate reserves of Bayovar, which together with smaller ones in the Moroccan Sahara and Namibia, are the only ones in the world.

In addition to all this, there are the vast coal basins of Alto Chicama and Gazuza Oyon, those in Santa, Cajamarca, Huanuco, Pasco; the polymetallic nodules of manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, copper, uranium, thorium, titanium, plutonium, and other metals found on the coasts, continental shelves, and seabeds of Peru. According to the geographer Pulgar Vidal, their exploitation in relatively near terms seems possible. There are also immense hydrobiological marine resources with a rich variety of species, hydroelectric energy sources in the western and eastern slopes of the Andes that will enable the exploitation of all these resources. Their significance is highly strategic because without this hydroelectric energy, it would be nearly impossible to achieve optimal levels of resource exploitation.

In addition to this vast reserve of resources and potential, whose general description falls short, the country's position on the western coast of the Pacific Ocean with access to the Atlantic through the Amazon River and a natural projection towards Antarctica should be noted.

Ports such as Callao, Bayovar, Huacho, San Juan, Matarani, Ilo, and Arica (a port where Peru shares sovereignty) have become essential points of use for landlocked or Atlantic countries seeking access to the Pacific market. Despite any claims or attempts to suggest otherwise, Peru, as in pre-Inca, Inca, and colonial times, will continue to be a hub for land and sea communications and, now, in the realm of aerospace and electronics as well.

Geopolitical context

In light of the extensive prospects offered by the Pacific Basin, all of Peru's neighboring countries have their own clear interests that can affect Peruvian interests in the absence of specific national objectives and a defined project regarding the said Oceanic Basin and its potential as a future market.

From this perspective and to appreciate how pressures and interests converge on Peru, it is interesting to briefly review the national interests that the neighboring countries of Peru have in the Pacific.

Ecuador: Its national and geopolitical goal is to become an Amazonian country, for which it integrates into the Amazon Pact, offering Brazil a duty-free zone at the Port of San Lorenzo, seeking to establish access to the Pacific (9). The conflict over the El Cóndor mountain range is immersed in this geopolitical projection. Furthermore, Ecuador extends its meridian arcs towards the Antarctic, starting from the highest point of the Galápagos Islands (10).

Chile: The President of the Chilean Military Junta, General Augusto Pinochet, asserts, "... what one state lacks, another has, the low population of one is compensated by the larger number of neighbors, and to lower costs, we need large masses of consumers, which will be achieved through the integration of the South American superstate. A superstate capable of countering the communist threat" (11). In this regard, Chilean Major General Ramón Cafias Montalva has declared that Chile is destined to be the power of the South Pacific and, from this perspective, even of the Antarctic (12). Conflicts with Argentina over the Beagle Channel and the Drake Passage imply Chile's geopolitical desire to establish its presence in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Antarctic, in a clear alliance with England and the United States since the Falklands War, which may eventually include the People's Republic of China due to its tensions with the Soviet Union. This fundamentally military alliance has resulted in the provision of military bases to Western powers. All of this constitutes the Chilean regime's policy of alliances to achieve its national objective of forming and leading the South Pacific Confederation, based on the Republic of Chile, the Bolivian Massif territory, and Peru up to Guayaquil, mirroring the incisive power, thereby acting as the support or head of the Pacific System and in logical connection with Ecuador (13). In its desire to assert its leadership of a Pacific Community of Nations, the Chilean administration does not cease its efforts to develop an economic-military aggression scheme with the support of large transnational companies such as Kennecott, Exxon, and others.

Bolivia: Since Chile snatched Bolivia's access to the Pacific Ocean 106 years ago, Bolivia has been caught in a cycle of permanent instability, closely linked to its main national goal: access to the Pacific, a right recognized by global consensus and constantly claimed in international organizations such as the UN, OAS, and Non-Aligned Conferences, among others. Chile, in order not to grant Bolivia access through territories that were formerly its own, has always sought a solution through Peruvian territories or territories that were once Peruvian.

Brazil: Since 1919, Brazil has shared with Bolivia the goal of gaining access to the Pacific Ocean, which would be made possible by the construction of the railway line Santos-Corumba-Puerto Suárez-Santa Cruz de la Sierra-Cochabamba-La Paz-Arica, known as the Capricorn Route. As a counterbalance to this project, which is already well underway, Chile has expanded its concepts, promoting the development of the Interregional Business Group of Southwestern South America consisting of private entrepreneurs from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and observers from southern Peru. Through more than a dozen international meetings they have been encouraged to form an economic superstate with access through the ports of Arica, Iquique, and Antofagasta (14). Astute analysts suggest that this could be related to the old Andina Project, the former state that the international Jewish community once sought to establish in South America before settling in Palestine. For Brazil, the projection of the Amazon Pact and the development of its road infrastructure to Peru through Iquitos, Pucallpa, and Puerto Maldonado provide it with a broader opening and immediate possibilities to support its theory of a bi-oceanic country. Brazilian policy also aims to achieve sovereignty in the Antarctic Continent. Based on Portugal's priority in the discovery, Brazil supports the "Defrontation" theory, an adaptation of the "sector principle" proposed in 1907 by Canada for the division of the Arctic (15).

Regarding Antarctica, the Brazilian theory projects the extreme points of each coastal state of the South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans, resulting in different arcs greatly favoring Brazil. This situation was consolidated through negotiations with Poland, where Poland ceded its Artowsky Antarctic base to Brazil as payment for its debt of $1.6 billion to Brazil.

Colombia: Colombia's objectives in the Pacific lie in efforts to create a business scheme to the west, starting from the Andean Pact; its integration into the Permanent Commission of the South Pacific since the 1970s; its participation in events such as the Consultative Meeting of Researchers, which brought together 14 countries, including Japan, the Philippines, and the USSR, in the city of Barranquilla, to address political, economic, and technical-scientific issues of the Pacific; and its active participation in the Scientific Committee of the Regional Study on the El Niño Phenomenon and climatological and oceanographic changes in the southeastern South Pacific, involving specialists from the United States, the USSR, and France, indicating the interest generated by this national goal of Colombia.

As can be observed, Peru is involved in all the national objectives of its neighboring countries and does not have clear objectives of its own, at least in terms of the Pacific Basin - without touching on other topics.

In other words, the process of Latin American integration is taking place amid tensions surrounding Peru, which it must confront and overcome. This is not only in the context of developing domestic markets but primarily in the context of the vast Pacific market, which all the countries in the sub-region are oriented toward.

Arnaldo Rufz, a professor of Economics and Geopolitics at the Technical University of Callao and Bausate Meza School of Journalism states, "If Peru's integration with other countries is to be based on the unforeseen future of the Pacific Basin, three basic aspects must be considered: 1) Longitudinal Peru, based on communications parallel to the coast that converge with the Highland and Northern Historical Peru. 2) Transverse Peru, which integrates the altitudinal zones of the Peruvian ecosystem. 3) Centralized Peru in South America, oriented towards the Pacific as an extension of the Amazon basin combined with the altiplano that opens to the Plata Basin" (16).

Ruiz goes on to explain that addressing these aspects imply the implementation of an economic policy of coordinated expansion towards new markets as a means of overcoming the international crisis. This policy is based on export capacity with comparative advantages, which would position Peru as the gateway and key to communication with the Pacific Basin.

Otherwise, by turning our back on the Pacific and the future we may be aligning ourselves with the U.S. National Security framework for this area in the event of a Third World War. This framework's central thesis is the defense of interior lines of the continent assuming a blockade of exterior lines, both from the Pacific and the Atlantic. This concept, developed in 1947, considers the creation of an inland waterway based on the integration of the Plata, Amazon, and Orinoco basins, along with respective marginal roads, and the establishment of a U.S. protectorate in the Peruvian territory of Arica (17).

For any analysis of the internal situation, one cannot ignore the connections between it and Latin American integration in its true dimension. Relations with neighboring countries, physical integration with South American countries, Peru's presence in Antarctica and the Pacific all form a converging set that determines Peru's attitude toward the Central American problem, relations with the United States, and Peru's position regarding the Non-Aligned Movement, the New International Economic Order, and the Law of the Sea.

It is not coincidental but historical that Peru has waged wars among its pre-Inca cultures, that the Inca society based its development on conquest and it is not by chance that Peru was the convergence center during the war for independence. Peru has been the Latin American country that has suffered the most wars of aggression by its neighbors. It is no accident that Peru has been present in one way or another in the wars of the subcontinental area (18).

On the whole set of pressures caused by the main national objectives of neighboring countries, there exists a global political-strategic situation worldwide within which Peru, like all the countries in the area, plays a role. The significance of this role whether major or minor, is crucial because it is closely related to the generalized conflict of high, medium, or low intensity in which the war of terrorist insurgency affecting the country is a part.

Therefore for the purposes of this research, it is necessary to review some of the points of interest for major world powers in this part of the region, neighboring countries, as well as Peru's own internal situation.

The attitude of the United States of America specifically points to the following:

1. Collection of external debt, imposition of surcharges, and falling prices of basic imports from Latin America, as a predicted framework for its financial institutions for 1987-1988. These events are expected to lead to a confrontation with countries in the subcontinent, according to economists and analysts of the system (19).
2. Urgent adoption of new counterinsurgency strategies to avoid disaster in Latin America, according to the exclusive projections of the Special Military Investigations Team of the Canal Zone. These projections indicate that national armies in Latin America prefer legality to special operations. They believe that legitimacy is more important than military tactics (20).
3. Consequently, U.S. interests, taking into account their Foreign Internal Security, logically guide their diplomacy, aid programs, cooperation, and anti-drug efforts in terms of counterinsurgency policies. This includes the preparation and/or execution of direct or indirect interventions in countries in the area. Historically, the following models of intervention are known:

• Chilean model (1973-1974): Direct destabilization of the established government through conspiracy, sabotage, and armed uprising directed by the Central Intelligence Agency.
• Argentine model (1976-1986): Combined use of factors such as internal subversion promoted by montoneros and Trotskyists between March 24, 1976, and December 10, 1983, and its corollary of dirty war, which was even exported to Central America with the acquiescence of the Department of State. Border conflict with Chile, which kept the possibility of a regular war between the two countries open until a diplomatic solution to the Beagle problem was reached.
• Outbreak of localized warfare in the Falkland Islands in 1982, leading to the defeat of the Argentine military establishment, its gradual and certain technological deactivation, and the ongoing psychological coercion on military personnel.
• Nicaraguan model (1980-1987): Through third parties, applying economic isolation as well as a military encirclement using neighboring countries, promoting and supporting internal subversive actions from border sanctuaries, low-intensity operations with the participation of mercenaries, controlled regular armies, and the U.S. military apparatus itself.
• Grenada model (1981): Direct military intervention, as had occurred previously in the Dominican Republic and other Central American countries.

The presence of the Soviet Union is significant due to:

1. Technological assistance and military cooperation in Cuba, Peru, and Nicaragua. This is unacceptable to the United States, which considers Latin America within its security area. Maps of Soviet military deployment distributed by the U.S. Department of Defense depict Peru as a Soviet military base.
2. The development of commercial activities in the Latin American market, especially with Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia. This trade offsets Peru to facilitate the collection of its external debt.
3. Diplomatic and peaceful cooperation efforts, including a planned visit by M. Gorbachev to several Latin American countries.
4. Support for insurgency in Chile to overthrow Augusto Pinochet's regime.

China is active due to:

1. Its predominant interest in the Pacific Basin, leading to increased trade relations with Panama, Ecuador, and Chile, to a lesser extent with Peru.
2. Activities aimed at expanding its political space in the world. In Peru and Latin America, its interest, not hidden, is to displace the Soviet Union.
3. The ideological inspiration of violent Maoist political movements, although officially and pragmatically, they deny any material support to these movements and even any government affiliation with them.

It is worth noting that the governments of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan also have interests in economic, ideological, and military fields, especially in Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, among other Latin American countries. These are three governments that share the common characteristic of having issues with the United Nations international community.

Regarding Peru's neighboring countries, in the current strategic situation, the following significant events are registered:

In Chile:

1. Diplomatic offensive to conclude, advantageously, the unfulfilled aspects of the 1929 Peruvian-Chilean Complementary Peace and Boundary Protocol to prevent it from being denounced for non-compliance. At the same time, minimize Peru's shared sovereignty rights in Arica.
2. Dissuasion of Bolivia's aspirations to return to the Pacific, following a period of détente that began with the meeting in Montevideo in April 1987 between the Bolivian and Chilean foreign ministers.
3. Strategies for the use of waters from the Titicaca Basin, which are under Peruvian-Bolivian joint control, to initiate the exploitation of lithium, a strategic mineral in northern Chile.
4. Direct references to the danger of the spread of the subversive movement of Peru, as seen in the seminar Subversion and Democracy sponsored by the Chilean government and the University of Santiago in January 1987. There have also been constant accusations in the press and government circles about the danger of Peru as a Soviet beachhead in Latin America.
5. Support from the Anglo-American system for the development of the Chilean arms industry. This system has obtained military concessions in Punta Arenas and Easter Island.
6. Purchase of Chinese military equipment, especially aircraft.
7. Participation in Operation Unitas XVII with the involvement of a U.S. nuclear submarine, despite the South Pacific being an intentionally nuclear-free zone.
8. Facilities provided to the People's Republic of China for exploration in the Antarctic continent.

In Bolivia:

1. The issue of landlocked status as a constant factor of internal instability due to Chile's demand for territorial concessions as a basis for any negotiation formula.
2. The creation of the Ninth Division of the Bolivian Army in January 1987, based in Rurrenabaque, with the mission of monitoring the border with Peru and preventing the spread of the Shining Path insurgency, which operates in the Peruvian department of Puno, to Bolivia.
3. Presence of U.S. troops in Bolivian territory:
   • From April 26 to May 6, 1986, for joint conventional and unconventional warfare operations in the Chapare region, Cochabamba.
   • From July 15 to November 15, the deployment of a U.S. Rapid Intervention Unit in the fight against drug trafficking.
   • From May 11 to May 25, 1987, joint maneuvers of U.S. and Bolivian armies in conventional and unconventional warfare operations in the Rurrenabaque-Apolo-Exiamas-Reyes area, near the Peruvian border in the Department of La Paz.
4. Expulsion of Peruvian settlers in August and September 1987 from the Futuro Valley, a border area with Peru.

In Brazil:

1. Since November 1986, the execution of the Calha Norte Project, which aims to economically and militarily occupy 5,995 kilometers of border areas with Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana within four years. There is a special reinforcement of the border with Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, as announced by the Minister of the Army, General Leonidas Pires Goncalves, in March 1987.
2. Traditional geopolitical pressure to reach the Pacific Ocean coast. A national goal that is being implemented through aggressive trade and communication policies and by exerting its greatest influence on countries in the Amazon Pact.

In Colombia:

1. Continued violation of Peru's airspace due to the development of the narco-trafficking aviation infrastructure, which presents the Peruvian-Colombian border as the most vulnerable to the penetration of unidentified aircraft, which could arrive with supplies and contraband. The existence of clandestine airport infrastructures that, in the event of conflict or conventional warfare circumstances, could be used militarily.
2. Colombia serves as the strategic center for the production and international distribution of cocaine produced in Peru and Bolivia. The arrest of Carlos Lehder Rivas demonstrates the connection between some subversive groups and drug trafficking.
3. The existence and operation of the America Battalion as an expression of an alliance of subversive forces from Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru.
4. Traditional support for Ecuador in its territorial claims against Peru.

In Ecuador:

1. Interest in U.S. military support. During the year of 1986, Ecuadorian media, members of Parliament and personalities criticized the presence of U.S. troops in the country. There is a possibility of establishing the School of the Americas — a training school for Latin American armies — in the Amazon region, as well as granting a U.S. military base in the Galapagos Islands. U.S. troops are building a strategic road in the province of Manabi, between Bahia de Caraquez and Canoas, as part of military agreements between the Armed Forces of Ecuador and the United States.
2. The maintenance of an anti-Peruvian campaign as a means of psychological mobilization of its population for war, based on the disregard for the Protocol of Peace, Friendship, and Boundaries and the encouragement of territorial invasion of the Peruvian Amazon.

The current national situation of Peru, in the context of an international situation characterized by conflicting interests and events at the strategic level, presents the following difficulties:

1. Problematic external debt, restricted markets and rising inflation are phenomena that, among others, create imbalances in Peru's economic development and disrupt the definition of capital accumulation within the national economic model.
2. The lack of effective state control over areas related to activities such as drug trafficking, finance, arms, smuggling, and pharmaceuticals, which currently constitute major sectors of the national economy, surpassing formal industry and agriculture.
3. Crisis in democratic institutions, bureaucratic chaos, inconsistency in the state apparatus, and violations of the constitutional order, among other adverse circumstances affecting the government.
4. The growth of insurgency, especially in the interior of the country. Nullification of the psychological defenses in the population due to insurgent and counterinsurgent terror causing fear, disorientation and collective confusion.

All of the above leads us to believe, without too much effort, that the interests of various countries at the strategic level seriously affect and will continue to influence Peruvian politics. Given its evident projection, it can be predicted that:

1. The United States will try to secure debt repayment by subjecting Peru to International Monetary Fund policies, promote complete economic liberalization in the region, continue plans to standardize and harmonize hemispheric defense, eliminating the presence of competitive Soviet and even European technologies. It will insist on further alignment of national policies in the region with the dictates of the State Department, as expressed in Reagan's speech at the United Nations on September 19, 1987. The U.S. will expand military support to Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador against a hypothetical subversive overflow from Peru. Furthermore, the U.S. will consider the potential use of Chile and Ecuador, as well as Central American countries, in the East-West conflict and the de facto inclusion of the South Pacific in its nuclear defense.

2. The Soviet Union will not give up expanding its political influence in the region, consolidating its trade and cultural relations, conditioning the Peruvian industry to the Soviet market, and taking advantage of debt repayment in products of its interest. It will aim to increase military technological dependence and consolidate its strategic gravitational points within the continental defense system of the United States (Cuba, Nicaragua, Peru) as part of its global strategy in the East-West conflict. This implies the possibility of supporting Peru against possible military interventions in the country.

3. The People's Republic of China will continue its trend of sharing political and trade spaces in the Pacific Basin with the United States. It will also seek to destabilize spaces gained by the Soviets in Latin America, whether in trade, politics, or military. China will consolidate its alliance with Chile to facilitate its entry into the Antarctic.

4. Israel, South Africa and Taiwan will maintain their influence in the political, commercial, and military fields in Latin America and try to increase their impact to expand their space and freedom of action against international pressures.

5. Peru's neighboring countries will continue seeking to satisfy their national interests from their perspectives.

6. Chile, as part of the Anglo-American military system, will continue working towards achieving access to Peruvian and Bolivian territories through political, psychological and economic warfare, supported by diplomatic offensives and the strength of its military apparatus, with the eventual capacity to militarily occupy the Pacific coast and the highland region of Titicaca.

7. Bolivia will not abandon its struggle to gain access to the Pacific, whether through territories that were once Peruvian or through Peruvian territories if provided with the opportunity for a localized conflict. In this regard, it is taking precautions to neutralize potential Peruvian military operations in the Altiplano through the development of its own forces or allies of the United States, allegedly oriented towards the fight against subversion and drug trafficking.

8. Brazil will consolidate occupation of its borders, especially in the north and northwest, within four years. This implies a geopolitical containment of Peru while increasing its pressure to reach the Pacific and gain advantages in the integration of its Amazonian countries.

9. Colombia will maintain its de facto projection over the Peruvian Amazon, taking advantage of the existing infrastructure and communications related to drug trafficking in Peruvian territory.

10. Ecuador will seek to define the dispute over the Peruvian Amazon in its favor, through the occupation of the Cenepa Basin — rich in oil, coal and gold — as a logical complement to its actions following the bilateral denunciation of the Rio Protocol. It may even lean towards provoking a localized war, with the support of the United States, Chile, and Israel.

All of these circumstances create a situation in which Peru is placed in conditions to take advantage of the benefits that the strategic balance between the USSR and the US can offer, rather than being a victim of their pressures.

To do so, it would have to manage its economic crisis by orienting towards social forms of capital accumulation in an economic model that preserves Peru’s sovereignty & independence and guarantees its freedom of action. Peru would need to improve the structural and logistical base of its national defense to deter potential external agressions, gain and consolidate political and economic spaces in the region as well as the solidarity of the international community, especially the Third World. However, the most crucial aspect would be to defeat, in the short term, the internal insurgency that threatens its national goals and stability in the global strategic framework.

In summary, to facilitate a correct interpretation of the current state of affairs in Peru, it is necessary to understand that the current political situation is dominated by the dissuasion-distension actions of the superpowers (the United States and the USSR) which both unmistakably exhibit characteristics of unconventional warfare carried out by irregular elements.

Within this context, Peru is seen as an important piece in the global strategic balance, as previously established, due to its privileged position in the South Pacific, its vast natural resources, its bi-oceanic condition with access to the Atlantic ocean through the Amazon, the handling of Soviet military technology and the emergence of nationalist governments.

On a regional level the Anglo-American military system, as we will see later, is completing its continental defense scheme. In recent years, it has achieved effective military presence in Punta Arenas, the Falkland Islands, Juan Fernandez, Easter Island, San Felix, San Ambrosio and the Galapagos Islands. This suggests that Chile and Ecuador are operating as operational bases of the continental encirclement military system, and even hints at a possible nuclearization of the South Pacific.

The threat of the growth of the Shining Path and its spread to neighboring nations, as well as the rise of drug trafficking, serves as provocation and justification for the presence of rapid intervention troops from the United States in the subcontinent and for joint operations in Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile; both conventional and unconventional warfare aimed at potential enemies originating from Peru.

On the border, Peru has problems with Chile related to the execution of the 1929 Treaty of Lima and others related to maritime boundaries, a topic we will not touch upon for now. There are sporadic Ecuadorian claims that prevent the final delineation of the border. Furthermore, the joint management of the waters of Lake Titicaca with Bolivia, geostrategic pressure from Brazil, the loss of control of airspace against Colombia, coupled with Chile and Ecuador's arms race, form the basic elements of a latent threat of military aggression.

On the other hand, there are serious difficulties in building an anti-imperialist, popular democratic economic and social model, which is the mortal enemy of the Shining Path insurgency.

All of the above allows us to state that the growth of insurgency and developments in the current political-strategic context operate as a favorable factor for the purposes of the Anglo-American system. It hinders the establishment of a social model by the national majorities; may lead to strategic errors in the conception of political, economic and military measures; engages the Armed Forces in a war with the population by psychologically altering the conception of the theater of operations and the identity of the enemy; erodes national potential and weakens the psychological defenses of the population. It would also facilitate possible external interference in the form of low-intensity operations. This, in summary, means that:

• The global interests of the great powers and military systems converge on Peru to decide its medium-term course. The national interests and objectives of neighboring countries converge and coincide in violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of this country.
• In addition to this, there is currently a serious obstacle to the consolidation of the Peruvian nation-state as a result of unconventional warfare — namely insurgency, terrorism and subversion.

Despite these adverse circumstances, Peru enjoys the privilege of being a point of strategic balance within the global context. This balance, more precisely, would be sought to be broken by the major interests at stake. The rational exploitation of this balance would allow Peru to consolidate its interests as a Nation-State, despite the disadvantages of time and space, and break free from external subjugation.

By the way, it is worth recalling how other countries, in different times and historical circumstances, have used the advantages of strategic balance. The examples of Yugoslavia, Israel, South Africa, Syria, Taiwan, not to mention various medium-level European or Eastern powers, which have known how to manage circumstances and maintain their freedom of action.

Chapter 2: unconventional warfare

Understanding the objectives of the Shining Path means finding an explanation for the nature of their war and correlations in the strategic framework of the current global situation.

We believe that to study any insurgent movement correctly, it is not enough to refer to its origins and social foundations. It is essential to also do so from the perspective of war itself. A country's survival is determined by its ability to achieve its national objectives through political integration or the path of war; it is the alternative. War and politics ultimately mean confrontation and the imposition of wills. This leads us to establish some brief premises necessary for a better understanding of unconventional and irregular warfare in Peru.

On war and politics

According to Carl von Clausewitz, war is "an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will," and "nothing but a duel on a larger scale." He further argues that "violence arms itself with the inventions of Art and Science in order to contend against violence." (21)

War is not only characterized by the use of physical force but by a confrontation of wills.Therefore, it seeks to undermine the opponent psychologically. To that end, it encompasses non-conventional fields compared to strictly military fields when it uses psychological techniques that aim for control of the opponent’s symbols of power to ensure victory. It also employs diplomatic persuasion before, during and after armed conflict as well as the mobilization of intellectual forces for final victory.

Politics, as the dynamic science of governance and relations between states, does not stop or cease with the act of war, given that "war is to be regarded not as an independent thing, but as a political instrument" (22). Politics also pursues psychological goals, such as the image of Popular Representation, and uses techniques of social communication and instruments of sociology and psychology to gain adherents, strengthen party will and discourage opponents.

There is a consensus in recognizing the genesis of contemporary unconventional warfare theory — both revolutionary or political — in the contributions of Clausewitz and Vladimir Lenin. For Maurice Megret, the "contemporary success of Clausewitz largely stems from the upheaval in political perspectives following the victory of the Bolshevik revolution, and because, more or less consciously, we interpret Clausewitz through the dialectical modification that Lenin subjected him to"(23).

Clausewitz’s classic treatise On War presents a fundamental and transcendent formula: "War is the continuation of politics by other means," says he. Clausewitz demonstrates that "war is never an isolated act" and that none of the contenders is an abstract person to the other.

Nearly a century after Clausewitz's thought was formulated, "Lenin combined the lines of force of his revolutionary action based on the interaction of four words formed into an equation: War, Politics, Will, Propaganda. But he made a radical inversion of Clausewitz's doctrine that Soviet doctrine allows us to express as follows: 'Politics is the continuation of war by other means'"(24).

This inversion is the key to approaching permanent war and gives rise to Lenin's revolutionary warfare, which, by its nature, is non-conventional and primarily develops in the psycho-social field.

Some relevant background

Maurice Megret, when referring to psychological warfare — perhaps the primary form of unconventional warfare –- establishes three historical stages in the development of the use of violence:

1. Psychological deception - initially presents itself as a form of violence in warfare, serving to unsettle the enemy and create terror to weaken their will to fight.
2. This type of operation evolves into a multiplier of violence, extending the conflict beyond traditional battlefronts and becoming widespread within nations.
3. Finally, these operations serve to systematize violence by extending their application to the emotions and psychological structure, both individual and collective, of humanity. This dimension of warfare becomes an effective scientific tool at the service of states in their political and socio-economic struggles, an ultimate offensive weapon applicable in all times and circumstances.

It's important to note that unconventional or irregular warfare is as ancient as war itself. Some historical figures are worth recalling in this context (25):

Sun Tzu: A Chinese military writer from 500 years before Christ, who authored a masterpiece titled The Art of War. This classic explores conflict through five key factors: moral influence, timing, terrain, leadership and doctrine. Sun Tzu emphasized that true warfare is waged in the minds of people, and winning those minds equates to winning the war. He also advocated for offensive strategies that focused on capturing states intact rather than destroying them.

Alexander the Great: Known for unifying the Greek world and placing his son at the helm of the empire. His success was not only due to his military prowess but also to his father Philip of Macedon's strategic principles, which included:

• Maintaining and cultivating "peaceful" friendships in adversary countries to promote the idea that times of adventurism have passed and nations should focus on peaceful activities.
• Reinforcing and expediting these indirect actions through secret agents, the spread of rumors, and the cultivation of a war of nerves.
• Burying the adversary's opinion under a mountain of both true and false information, ultimately leading to disintegration, collapse, and dissolution.

Muhammad: In the 7th century CE, Muhammad appeared as a Prophet preaching Islam with only two options: conversion, or extermination. This phenomenon demonstrated two basic rules of psychological defense:

• The first rule is that a people lacking a strong national ideology or deeply rooted faith can be completely converted to another ideology or creed simply by presenting them with the option of extermination.
• The second rule is that, to convince or convert a people deeply entrenched in their own faith or national ideology, cunning is often more effective than violence.

Eight centuries of Arab domination in Spain left a profound mark of a cultural shift in language, sciences and customs, but they could not erase an identity based on Christianity.

The Incas: They have been mentioned as masters in the use of non-military techniques in the service of war and the state. To win and capture the minds of the American population, Colonel Torres Llosa says they made intensive and skillful use of myth, aligning rulers and state objectives with religion and the will of the gods. They knew how to use the technique of rumors and spies along with diplomatic negotiations, subtly combining means of persuasion and force. Their institutions, such as the mitimaes (the relocation of entire communities to different territories), were always aimed at ensuring the perfect conversion and loyalty of their subjects, combining genuine concern for social justice and the collective well-being of the empire's population(26).

In his General History of America, Luis Albedo Sánchez points out that the Incas used a dual language: one in Quechua to preserve the history of the state and the emperors, whether good or bad, and another vulgar Quechua that only allowed remembrance of the victors and positive aspects of the Inca Empire.

It is also worth noting the cohesive and communal nature of the language, which did not use the individual pronoun "I" but only employed "we" (ñocanchiss). Another aspect of the use of psychological factors in Tahuantinsuyo society was the creation and application of their motto: Ama sua - ama llulla - ama quella (Do not steal - do not lie - do not be lazy). The repetition of these principles as a moral code for a people creates a system of reflexes to achieve superior individual and collective behavior.

Systematization of violence

In contemporary times, we can fairly accurately trace the evolution of unconventional warfare through the development of psychological operations, which emerged as support for military operations. Later, they replaced violence during the Cold War, became an offensive weapon in revolutionary warfare and its counterpart, counter-revolutionary warfare, or were employed in political warfare. These forms find significant expression in the psychological bombardment conducted by modern media targeting the "unarmed man," contributing to the generalization and systematization of violence.

From ancient times until the emergence and development of the modern State, psychological warfare evolved alongside scientific advances. In the present century, it has benefited from humanity's enormous progress in science and technology. Major historical events have also marked the historical evolution of psychological warfare:

1. From 1914 to 1918, during World War I, psychological warfare remained relatively rudimentary. It was characterized by propaganda, the scientific theory of which was still in its infancy. Additionally, the war of positions and trenches created a separation between the front lines and the rear. The Germans attempted a pan-German movement, aiming to incite a holy war against British influence in the Middle East.
2. In 1919, with the success of the Bolshevik Revolution, revolutionary warfare became institutionalized. Russia marked the beginning of a technical level of irregular and unconventional warfare by applying agitation, propaganda, and the methods of reflexological psychology by Petrovic Pavlov to ideological combat.
3. Between 1936 and 1945, the Nazi propaganda developed significantly, with Dr. Joseph Goebbels' techniques garnering both admiration and fear. The work of Dr. Blau, Chief of the Army's Psychological Laboratory Service, combined psychology and psychoanalysis, laying the groundwork for this type of psychological warfare. The observations and theses recorded in his work Propaganda als Waffe (Propaganda as a weapon) in 1935 merged psychology and psychoanalysis in their methods.
4. From 1939 to 1945, during World War II, psychological warfare was marked by the use of vast resources and the unification of allied organizations for psychological offensives in Europe. The strategic branch aimed for unconditional surrender following military victories, while the tactical branch sought specific objectives for the immediate benefit of the Allied war machine.
5. From approximately 1945 to 1970, tensions rose, stemming from the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, which divided global supremacy into two major strategic fields: the  Free World and the Communist World. This period gave birth to the Cold War, characterized by the perfection of the empire of terror and the threat of total war.
6. From 1970 onward, the conflict turned global and the Cold War was succeeded by the threat of Nuclear Resolution, the War of the Rays, and the use of a worldwide apparatus of deterrence-distension. This period is characterized by the management of points of conflict, with more than half a dozen of them in Latin America alone, many of which originated from the execution of low-intensity operations or the subversive dynamics of major powers.

The end of World War II also marked the beginning of intensified research in psychosocial sciences. The goal was to maintain the psychological superiority achieved through strategic aerial bombardments over Europe and Japan with the use of strategic psychological bombardments. England carried out the transformation of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, led by scientific and academic personalities. Kurt Lewis and Brigadier John Rawlings Rees refined their method of political control based on precipitating the majority of populations into psychosis.

The United States quickly followed suit through its universities, specialized centers, foundations and strategic intelligence agencies. These entities were responsible for the initial research on mass population control and the totalization of psychological warfare and unconventional warfare that we witness, experience and suffer today. They did this through the application of political warfare and agitprop in the context of global deterrence-distension, aggression, and the elimination of nationalist or decolonization movements in Third World countries, or the reversal of the terms of revolutionary warfare through low-intensity operations. These operations range from planting subversion (fabricating insurgency) to armed intervention (imposed or consented to), preceded by population conditioning.

Doctrines

Discussing the doctrine of the systematization of violence involves addressing two aspects:

1. The general strategic concepts regarding unconventional warfare.
2. Manuals on unconventional warfare, which are treatises outlining the norms, techniques, and procedures to be used in unconventional warfare, specifically in the operational aspects of military actions.

It is important to differentiate between these two levels because the first reflects a conception of the purpose, goals, policies, and strategies to achieve a doctrine. In contrast, the second level — the manuals — outline tactical objectives and techniques to achieve objectives, essentially serving as an operational program.

One common mistake in regular confrontation is attempting to initiate insurgency or counterinsurgency based solely on a manual without having a comprehensive strategic concept. When the expected failure occurs, it is often wrongly attributed to the manual not being suitable for the situation. However, the majority of techniques and procedures outlined in the manuals are not exclusive to any particular ideology. What is exclusive is the doctrinal strategic conception to which the procedures in the manuals serve. Clumsy application of manual procedures or using them in a manner inconsistent with the nation's goals only yields favorable results for the adversary.

Therefore, it is essential to understand the conceptual framework of the systematization of violence.

Agitprop

In centrally planned economies under the Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialist ideology, all aspects of life, both in times of peace and war, are seen as a psychological struggle. Marxist dialectics are considered the expression of the very movement of history, and therefore, the ideology permeates the structures of the party and the State entirely.

National psychological mobilization is based on the belief that everything is education within and that everything is oriented towards the liberation of peoples abroad. Institutions are organized to cover this broad perspective, and at the highest level, the Central Committee of the party includes the Department of Propaganda and Agitation Administration, which centralizes the task of mobilizing public opinion in favor of the party's defined goals.

This involves a planned use of media as a conduit between the party and the masses, forming the basis for mobilization in political, economic, and military fields.

Mobilization for psychological offense and defense relies on the development of social consciousness and class consciousness determined by social existence. Social consciousness comprises not only ideology, i.e., the worldview in line with the desired system, but also psychology. Ideology uses science; it doesn't create it. In this case, it complements it with psychology.

For Soviet academics Boris Pershene and M. Lukomskaya, the two aspects of social consciousness, the psyche, and ideas, each have their own structure and specific characteristics. But what sets the ideas in motion or, conversely, hinders their development are socio-psychic phenomena that occur on one socio-economic basis or another (27).

Within this framework, subaltern psychological techniques are subordinate to higher conditions of revolutionary warfare proper. Their methodology revolves around two fundamental concerns: directing operations through specialized secret organizations and never separating actions from the overall strategy or tactics. In other words, there is no concept of psychological warfare in the doctrinal sense; it is not conceived in the Western manner.

Political warfare

Political warfare is based on the principle that psychological warfare is intimately linked to the conduct of general politics. The British, often credited with this thesis, did not have to invent psychological warfare per se; they had always practiced it. Their doctrine states that political warfare is "a meticulous and patient dosing of all political, economic, social, and psychological factors that can enter as components into the assessment and conduct of experimental politics." (28) When used, it is indifferent to the ideological speculations of others.

The historical drive of peoples to free themselves from colonialism, especially since 1945, and the urgency of confronting revolutionary warfare led the British to perfect their techniques for dealing with these new aspects of the Cold War. The Tavistock Institute in London's prestigious psychological laboratories initiated the study of Generalized Conflict. This combined the study of reflexology, psychoanalysis, and introduced behaviorism as an instrument for population control and techniques for reversing the terms of revolutionary warfare.

Political warfare possesses the following characteristics:

• Regarding space, it is not restricted to any specific location.
• Concerning time, it can begin and end at any moment.
• In terms of human resources, its combatants are not limited by age, gender, or physical limitations.
• In combat, its actions and manifestations are mostly intangible, achieving success without bloodshed.

Political warfare encompasses:

1. Ideological warfare: The confrontation of philosophies and doctrines to weaken the enemy's will and moral strength.
2. Psychological warfare: The mobilization of psychological forces to destroy the enemy, employing psychological and social communication techniques to bend their will, modify their behavior favorably, and control public opinion. It constitutes the operational aspect of ideological warfare and, alongside economics and politics, is part of national strategy.
3. Strategic warfare: A high-level intelligence activity that plans for the enemy to make mistakes and destroy their own economic, political, and military forces.
4. Intelligence warfare: It applies offensive intelligence to uncover the enemy's secrets while providing them with false information. It also involves heightened counterintelligence and security measures.
5. Organizational warfare: The aim is to organize the population in a combat-ready manner to prevent enemy infiltration and destroy adversary institutions and organizations. This task falls to the core or party.
6. Mass warfare: It mobilizes and utilizes the masses to defeat the enemy. "Masses are the basis of politics; where there are no masses, there is no politics, and without masses, there is no front of war." This form of warfare serves as the foundation for organizational warfare.(29)

Psychological operations

American psychological operations (PSYOPs) encompass both offensive and defensive psychological warfare. The American author Harold D. Lassawell noted that psychological operations was a new term for a very old idea. In World War II, American terminology incorporated this concept to define three areas of psychological mobilization:

1. Boosting the morale of their armed forces.
2. Shaping information for public consumption.
3. Undermining the enemy's morale and beliefs.

Only the last technique corresponded to the term psychological warfare; the first two fell under the category of psychological action.

This dual conception of American doctrine reflected the conduct of psychological warfare according to the same norms governing the defense and exaltation of national morale, the American way of life. Successes in psychological warfare during World War II and the Korean War were, to a significant extent, due to the magnitude of resources used. Despite this, Americans encountered numerous difficulties and contradictions due to the dualism of their psychological warfare services, which culminated in the moral breakdown known as the Vietnam trauma.

The need to reevaluate the theory of conflict and the actions required to maintain their country's influence and global supremacy prompted American specialists to revise their techniques and principles of psychological warfare. This led them to approach the British equation: psychological warfare = political warfare.

Current PSYOPs are employed to create a favorable image, gain supporters, and undermine adversaries. They have transitioned from being defensive to becoming a potent offensive weapon.

The policy of PSYOPs depends on the President and involves the Department of State, all defense organizations and their Unified Commands and Theater Commands, the Agency for International Development (USAID), and the International Communications Association (ICA). Even diplomatic missions have the U.S. Ambassador as the head of PSYOPs in the host country.

The specific purpose of PSYOPs is to create favorable attitudes among foreign groups towards the national objectives of the United States. To achieve this, they influence the host country's policies, decisions, governing abilities, leadership skills, willingness to fight, obedience, and support.

PSYOPs serve to garner support for Internal Foreign Defense by the United States, Conventional Warfare, Limited Warfare, and General Warfare.(30)

Low-intensity operations

Following the debacle in Vietnam, the United States Army accelerated its research to define a counterinsurgency doctrine that would respond to the terms of generalized conflict and the objectives of the Total Army, a new vision of its force and air-land tactics. The mission of the Total Army is to deter the realization of any attack against the national interests of the United States and, if deterrence fails, to engage the enemy in any environment.

The American review of its doctrine establishes that the nation is capable of addressing high and medium-intensity conflicts and must prepare for low-intensity conflicts. This is because the United States is involved in a series of low-intensity conflicts around the world.

Therefore, the broad mission of the Total Army includes all levels of conflict encompassing the escalation of violence.(31)

A situation of peace and free cultural, political, and economic competition can, at any given moment, transform into a configuration of low-intensity conflict. This is characterized by three progressions, each with specific tasks to fulfill:

1. Political-economic conflict, involving the formation of unions, alliances, subtle propaganda, economic and political sanctions, and military assistance.
2. National and localized conflict, encompassing hostile propaganda, captures, incidents, border reprisals, terrorism, counterterrorism, assassinations, sabotage, kidnappings, rescues, training assistance, advisory roles, and military assistance.
3. Limited-open conflict, characterized by rebellion, revolution, guerrilla and counter-guerrilla operations; foreign advisers participating in combat; territorial occupation; resource seizure; increased military support, and limited combat operation assistance, including the involvement of external forces in combat.

Low-intensity conflict is followed in the escalation by medium-intensity conflict, which includes warfare expressed in regular force engagements, attacks on political and economic infrastructure, declarations of war, invasion, military force expansion across the spectrum of conventional capabilities, and mobilization.

High-intensity conflicts are characterized by total war involving complete mobilization, warfare across all theaters, declared intent to conquer, tactical nuclear warfare, and strategic nuclear warfare, and marks the highest level of escalation.

According to American doctrine, "any change, whether positive or negative, creates social, economic, and political conditions that can be exploited by those seeking influence and political power or social reforms. Often, this leads to a conflict that may threaten U.S. interests … the increasing Soviet influence in the Third World poses a direct challenge to U.S. interests … therefore, low-intensity conflict must be considered from a regional perspective as well as from the unique perspective of each country.” (32)

However, the path of American doctrine, where military effort must be coordinated with ambassadors and U.S. regional teams, as well as with intelligence activities, psychological operations, and civil affairs, has already been explored by the British. Since 1945, the British have been involved in many operations of this nature, confronting limited wars in Korea, Suez, Kuwait, Indonesia, and the Falklands. Most of the time, Her Majesty's armed forces have carried out counterinsurgency operations in places like Kenya, Anguilla, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Malaysia among many others. These experiences allowed Brigadier Frank Kitson, a veteran of Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus, to write a book on Low-Intensity Operations published in 1975.

Primarily intended for instructors, his book discusses the issue of morality in preparing to suppress subversion with exemplary British cynicism: "Many consider subversion primarily as a form of redress used by oppressed people around the world against oppressors and therefore think that there is something immoral in preparing to suppress it. Undoubtedly, subversion is sometimes used this way, and in these cases, those who support the government find themselves defending an evil cause. On the other hand, subversion can also be used by bad men to promote their own interests, in which case those who fight it are on the right side. More often, as in other forms of conflict, there is something good and something bad on both sides, and there are well-intentioned as well as ill-intentioned people on both sides. Therefore, fighting subversion can be a good thing in some cases, just as promoting it can be right in other cases, and a country's army must be capable of performing either of these two functions when necessary, just as it must be able to operate in other forms of warfare." (33)

Protracted war

Referred to by the Americans as Asian insurgency, protracted war encompasses the revolutionary movements in China and Southeast Asia. It has a historical framework dating back to 1920 and the struggle against British, Japanese, French and American colonialism. This was a war of peasant societies pitted against industrialized powers with national allies in those regions. Mao Zedong's military doctrine reached its highest conceptual level in 1939, following his experiences in fighting against the Chinese nationalists and Japanese armies. For Mao, protracted war consists of three phases:

1. Guerrilla warfare, which precedes and accompanies the following phases and is permanent from beginning to end. Its aim is to subject the enemy to attrition and annihilation.
2. The second phase is mobile warfare, which includes battles of regular forces designed to eliminate the enemy.
3. The third phase is positional warfare, which Mao conceived as engaging the adversary in a war of attrition. Truong Chin's (Trường Chinh) doctrinal conception, published between 1946 and 1947, incorporates Mao's three stages but in a different form:

• First, an initial containment phase characterized by low-level combat.
• Second, a balance phase when mobile combat appears in both confronting forces.
• Third, an insurgent counteroffensive with regular combat units, including the general uprising.

In 1950, after the defeat of the French, the famous Vo Nguyen Giap's doctrinal works emerged, which consider:

• Guerrilla warfare in a permanent form throughout the protracted war.
• Mobile warfare involving confrontations with and between regular forces.
• Camp Enchained Warfare (position), based on the experience of Dien Bien Phu.
• General insurrection as the final culmination.

The doctrinal approaches of Mao, Truong, and Giap have the following common ideological purpose and fundamental characterization:

1. The war is waged against invading armies with significant technological resources and their internal allies.
2. Sustain protracted warfare through close coordination between regular troops, local forces and guerrillas.
3. Expand control over resources progressively.
4. Keep the enemy dispersed. Large forces scattered and forced to defend against attacks from regular and irregular forces create depth on the battlefield.(34)

This doctrine combines unconventional and conventional warfare as well as low and medium-intensity conflicts against well-defined enemies. It is the doctrine for wars of independence and liberation.

The theater of war

In irregular or unconventional warfare, the theater of war is not confined to a specific territory. Its position in space is relative. In such cases, the theater of war can be any place on the planet.

As a result, theaters of operations are regional at the very least and do not encompass just one country, even if one of them is most affected by an irregular insurgency and counterinsurgency warfare.

For Caspar Weinberger, ex-Secretary of Defense of the United States, "the world is at war today. It is not a global war, although it happens all over the globe. It is not a war between fully mobilized armies, although it is no less destructive for that. It is not a war that follows the laws of war and is indeed the objective of this peculiar variety of aggression, the law itself, as an instrument of civilization. It benefits from the pernicious fallacies of those who wish to present these wars as the efforts of the sovereign people to pursue their own destinies and, as such, something that concerns us." (35)

Weinberger's recognition serves as the justifying premise for highlighting the interventionist role of the American military forces: "The role or the objective of our military forces is not primarily to preserve the blessed doctrine, nor the honorable traditions, nor the budgets. Their role is to preserve freedom ... some basic decisions must be made, and not years later when entire populations are polarized and the countryside is in flames ... If involvement is guaranteed, we must be prepared to act alone. We have sometimes had an unfortunate tendency to believe that every management in favor of freedom needs to be multilateral." (36)

Peru is located in a region considered a security area for the United States of America and an area of low and medium-intensity conflicts, for which the great power has its own strategic military concepts.

The military strategic concepts of the United States have evolved from the last century to the present, according to Lieutenant-Colonel John Child.(37)

Between 1898 and 1933, the United States had the concept of the American Lake, which was based on the importance of the Caribbean Sea in the relations between the United States and Latin America.

The period from 1933 to 1939 is marked by the Lieutenant-Colonel as a period of abandonment of the aforementioned strategy and a void in strategic approaches regarding Latin America.

From 1939 to 1942, the concept was the establishment of a defensive perimeter against all external aggression, which included the area within a line running from Alaska through the Pacific Ocean down to the Galapagos Islands and from there crossing to Natal in Brazil and moving back north to Newfoundland, covering half of the Western Northern Hemisphere. Hence, it was called the Hemisphere Defense.

This concept, due to its limitations, lost its relevance in 1942 when Sumner Welles and President Roosevelt proposed the collective responsibility of American countries for Hemispheric Defense in the context of World War II. Despite the opposition of the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, who preferred bilateral agreements, Roosevelt imposed a multinational military agenda, the Inter-American Defense Board, to address external aggressions to the continent.

In 1947, Hemispheric Defense was expressed in the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance of Rio de Janeiro. The validity of this treaty has deteriorated due to the lack of agreement on the different natures of the extracontinental threats that need to be defended against. Thus, in the face of England's aggression against Argentina in the Falklands War, the Treaty did not work, despite being invoked. As a result, the United States has preferred special bilateral relations with certain countries in Latin America.

Another concept that appears in the Cold War years is that of secondary space. In 1950, for the U.S. Department of Defense, there existed the buffer zone (Alaska and Canada), the industrial zone (southern Canada and the U.S.), and the materials supply zone (Latin America).

The emergence of the nationalist government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, the victory of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba in 1956, as well as efforts to extend the Cuban Revolution, changed the US military-strategic conception of Latin America. In the 1960s, the concept of "antifoco" developed as a counter-strategy to the Foco theory, which first appeared in 1961 in Che Guevara's book Guerrilla Warfare.

In that decade, U.S. military policy was supplemented by major civic action programs, embodied in Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. His administration promoted the strategic concept of antifoco, and considered foco guerrilla to be present in Uruguay, Bolivia, Southern Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico at the time.

The 1960s and 1970s witnessed the growth of insurgent movements across Latin America. There was an emergence of peasant movements in Peru and Brazil, urban guerrillas in Uruguay and Argentina, and rural guerrillas in Peru and Colombia. Additionally, there was a resurgence of Latin American nationalism with the military government of Velasco Alvarado in Peru (1968-1975), the socialist regime of Allende in Chile, Rodriguez Lara in Ecuador, General Torres in Bolivia, and the resurrection of Peronism in Argentina.

Panamanian nationalism under Torrijos intersected with the Nicaraguan revolution and guerrillas in El Salvador and Guatemala. Combined with U.S. presence, it created a hot zone within the East-West conflict, which disrupted American interests in the old American Lake.

This situation, along with other internal conflicts between Latin American countries and the United States, led Washington to redefine its military strategy in Latin America as Low-Intensity Conflict. The Joint Chiefs of Staff expressed it as follows: "Low-Intensity Conflict is a limited political-military struggle to achieve political, social, economic, or psychological objectives. It is often protracted and ranges from diplomatic, economic, and psycho-social pressures to terrorism and insurgency. Low-Intensity Conflict is generally limited in scope and often characterized by constraints on the weapons, tactics, and levels of violence."

"Since understanding the broad scope of this type of conflict was more important than an exact definition, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command began developing an operational concept for U.S. Army involvement in Low-Intensity Conflict in January 1984," according to U.S. Army Colonel Peter A. Bond (38).

We can see Anglo-American military encirclement of Latin America: NATO task forces that left from Portsmouth, with a stop at Ascension Island base, have permanently settled in the Falkland Islands. The utilization of the air-naval bases in Punta Arenas, Easter Island, San Ambrosio, and San Roque in Chile, as well as the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, completes the encirclement through the Southern Command in Panama. This Command is directly linked to counterinsurgency strategies.

It's interesting to note that according to former head of the Southern Command, U.S. General Paul Gorman, the Southern Command is involved in Low-Intensity Conflict. According to his opinion, these situations are when "perpetrators of violence resort to coercive crime, sabotage, subversion, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, in which the United States limits its military response to the direct action of Special Operations Forces, or advising and supporting a threatened ally." He thus proposes to emphasize the use of military civic action and psychological warfare as instruments of the Low-Intensity Conflict strategy (39).

Commenting on these concepts, the Panamanian writer Raúl Leis says: "Under this imperialist globalist perspective, the U.S. perceives Latin America as a region subordinate to its sphere of power, where any 'suspicious' change constitutes a threat to its interests. Therefore, the region is involved in the Counterinsurgency and Flexible Response strategy. The latter is designed to respond to any conflict and develops between large military escalations: counterinsurgency, supporting, training, and coordinating the action of native armies, combined with 'cover action' (covert intelligence and physical elimination); direct intervention; and the use of nuclear warfare" (40).

There is no doubt that cover action must be carried out by their secret agencies, intelligence apparatuses, which should also justify the intervention of their military forces and apply the teachings of Kitson to "make subversion." "Being able to prepare the insurgency wherever they need it to justify their presence, which is increasingly diminished by their misguided imperial policy."

Psychological warfare has replaced diplomacy. Terror and strategies for generating internal conflicts are permanent situations, considered normal in Latin American societies, especially those in Central America, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. The goal is to destroy the native armies by pitting them against their own populations, eroding nationalism and leadership that threaten the empire's interests, and blaming communism for this unconventional warfare.

The theater of war can be any country or any region, and nothing is forbidden for this type of cover operations. Some years ago, the U.S. magazine Newsweek published a schematic plan by the CIA (41) to overthrow a government; refining at that time that it was being applied against Muammar Gaddafi. The plan consisted of the following guidelines:

• Disinformation campaign to create trouble for a government.
• Terrorist escalation by discontented national elements.
• The bombing of bridges.
• Small-scale guerrilla operations.
• Creation of a parallel or counter-government.
• Promotion of opponents to the president or leader within their own political force.
• Physical elimination (ultimate removal) of the national leader.

Newsweek outlined this plan for Libya. But today we can assert that the model fits perfectly for countries like Peru and that, indeed, the previous counterinsurgency guidelines are being executed, almost mathematically, in Peru. Or is it that the script of the 'revolution' of the Shining Path was written and published by the CIA on page eighteen of the magazine Newsweek in its August 3, 1981 edition?

Whether the Shining Path is insurgent or counterinsurgent is a matter of debate. When its strategy is thoroughly reviewed, it will be seen as more closely resembling the one proposed by the CIA than that of communist subversion through revolutionary war.

Atypical revolutions

The concept of Low-Intensity Conflict, as we have seen, encompasses revolutionary war and counter-revolutionary war, insurgency, and counterinsurgency. Low-Intensity Conflict, or Low-Intensity Operations, is nothing more than the rationalized use of violence at the lowest point of conflict. This includes the use of military and paramilitary forces, political and economic pressure, psychological operations, guerrilla warfare, counter-guerrilla operations, and counter-terrorism actions, which encompass both anti-terrorism (defensive measures) and counter-terrorism (offensive measures, including acts of terrorism). This is what the British doctrine refers to as the reversal of the terms of Revolutionary War, a concept that, according to Brigadier Frank Kitson, the British armed forces have applied numerous times in third-world countries. France and the United States have also used similar strategies in Indochina, Indonesia, Chad, Lebanon, the Philippines, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Grenada, and other places and nations. In many of these cases, such operations have taken on characteristics of insurgency, pushing subversive forces to precipitate their actions and thus escalating the conflict to its maximum for better military management, to the detriment of the country where it occurs—the "host country" or "the theater of operations," in imperial language.

It has not been uncommon to find that movements like the Mau Mau in Kenya were first promoted and then taken prisoner by the British. Investigations into the murder of Aldo Moro in Italy found the involvement of Israeli and British secret agents within the Red Brigades. It is also known that the creation of Black September was attributed to the British Intelligence Service, which had endorsed it to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The use of scientific techniques to manipulate individuals and human groups, leading them to fanatical extremes and alignment, is also well-documented.

In the development of nations, nothing happens by chance; everything in social events occurs as a process with causes and effects, thus having a rational explanation. This means that if we consider that we are currently experiencing a period of the application of the doctrine and strategy of Low-Intensity Operations, we can explain the existence of atypical revolutions that, while appearing to be Marxist, do not align with the doctrine of revolutionary warfare.

To understand what an atypical revolution is, let's look at the tragic Pol Pot experience in what he called the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea.

Without further ado, let's provide a brief description of the events that bled Cambodia in a horrifying genocide over four years, from 1975 to 1979.

Cambodia (or Kampuchea) is a strategically located country in the center of Indochina, situated between Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, with access to the South China Sea, Malaysia, and the large islands of Indonesia. Its population, mainly composed of the Khmer ethnic group since the 9th century, has a distinct culture and nationality. However, due to its prominent position in Southeast Asia since the 16th century, it became a victim of Spanish, Portuguese, French, British, Chinese, and American colonialism, as evidenced by its dramatic history.

Colonialism created a political landscape characterized by decades of relentless and unequal liberation warfare. After the American defeat in Vietnam, this struggle transformed into a power game in which China sought to control strategic Southeast Asia and neutralize Soviet rather than American and European influence.

This geostrategic situation and the regional political framework allow us to better understand the pointless "Maoist revolution" carried out by Pol Pot, a Cambodian educated in Paris, at the cost of two million Khmer lives at the hands of other Khmer individuals, in addition to the extermination of other ethnic groups, such as the Thai, whose population was reduced from 20,000 to 8,000 in a single day on May 25, 1975, in Koh Kong.

Upon recognizing Cambodia's independence in 1953, France left a puppet government led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, whose apparent neutrality was not in line with U.S. interests. In 1970, a CIA-engineered coup brought Lon Nol to power, and the Nixon administration began bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail, causing serious destruction in Cambodia. It is estimated that this offensive against the Cambodian resistance, carried out by General Westmoreland with American and South Vietnamese troops, known as the Secret War, resulted in over three million deaths.

"Under the leadership of Norodom Sihanouk, a symbol of the nation," says Roberto Remo, the Kampuchean National Unity Front (KNUF) was created, bringing together three major sectors: progressive nationalists, intellectuals abroad, and militants of the resistance inside Cambodia. The latter group came from the ranks of the old Khmer Communist Party and the Pacheachon (nationalist) Party. Additionally, since the 1960s, political-military organizations had been receiving students trained in France, not in large numbers but with significant ideological influence (42).

During this period, the Khmer Issarak army strengthened, but Western intelligence services managed to promote the Khmer Rouge within their ranks, which was widely publicized at the time by the French press. The Khmer Rouge played a prominent role in resisting the South Vietnamese invasion and fighting against Lon Nol. In five years of conflict, neither side took prisoners; everyone was exterminated. Lon Nol's fighters were encouraged to be violent and barbaric, even consuming the liver and hearts of dead enemies.

On April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh fell, and Lon Nol fled to Hawaii. Sihanouk returned from China to assume the leadership of the Cambodian state, appointing Khieu Samphan as Minister of Defense. Khieu Samphan quickly became the strongman leader. Disagreements between the government and the KNUF became evident and public. The third congress of the KNUF in December 1975 abolished the monarchy and enacted a constitution that abolished private ownership of all property in the country, except for personal use. In March 1976, Sihanouk, who had been designated Head of State by the Assembly, resigned in favor of Khieu Samphan. The Revolutionary Government of National Unity and the FUNK ceased to exist with the constitution coming into effect. The population only knew that the "organization," ANGKA, governed the country. It wasn't until 1977 that it became known that ANGKA was the Khmer Communist Party, with Pol Pot as the Secretary General and Prime Minister of the government, and Ieng Sary as Vice Premier.

Let's read Remo's commentary in Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo: "There is no doubt that Pol Pot-Ieng Sary's foreign policy aligned with Beijing's. However, internally, their peculiar conception does not seem to have responded to orthodox Maoism, the Gang of Four, or Deng Xiaoping's current modernizing orientation. The leaders of Democratic Kampuchea never showed much enthusiasm for deepening the ideological basis of their revolution. However, they liked to present it as a model, the most radical, unique, original, and at the same time an example for the Third World. 'Our experience,' proclaimed Radio Phnom Penh, 'is an experiment that will serve all of Southeast Asia, all agricultural countries, spreading its light throughout the world'" (43).

Pol Pot's strategy ultimately resulted in the destruction of Cambodia's productive forces. Genocide and the elimination of science and technology complemented the devastation caused by General Westmoreland's strategic bombings. Moreover, American diplomacy subsequently encouraged Chinese intervention in Cambodia and against Vietnam, but Vietnam preempted the maneuver.

Pol Pot's government did not seek to end the war by defeating the Saigonese and Americans, who were being defeated by North Vietnam. Instead, it aimed to destroy the unification of Vietnam due to narrow nationalistic motivations. Therefore, it launched a war that reached its offensive climax in September 1977. By the end of that month, he was received by Beijing authorities as a hero.

The fight against Pol Pot's genocidal regime was taken up by the National Salvation Front, and by late 1978, Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia. In January 1979, they captured its capital Phnom Penh, and on January 8 of that year, they contributed to the proclamation of the People's Republic of Kampuchea.

In the United Nations, Prince Norodom Sihanouk denounced the invasion of Democratic Kampuchea by Vietnam. On February 17, 1979, China supported Pol Pot, opening a war front in the north of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and demanding sanctions against this country for its invasion of Cambodia. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, Sihanouk, and the forces of Son Sann took refuge behind the Thai border to continue their fight against the People's Republic of Kampuchea. They would be supplied as war refugees by the United States, France, and England, directly and through humanitarian assistance and solidarity organizations.

On November 14, 1979, the United Nations General Assembly, led by a strong majority, including the United States, declared that Pol Pot's government remained legitimate and adopted Resolution 34/22 demanding the withdrawal of foreign troops.

Was the Cambodian experiment ultimately an attempt to apply a Marxist-Maoist ideology? We have already seen the limitations of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary's ideological approach. Nevertheless, consciously or unconsciously, sociologists and political scientists from Western opinion-forming agendas made efforts to find a Khmer ideology. They argued and published things like these: "that in Pol Pot's thinking, European university theory merged with the ideological trends of rural society, producing the future enlightened vanguard (1). Khmer thought stems from 'French liberal Marxism and triumphant Maoism.'" (44).

But the Angkar program was very concrete and clear:

• An exacerbated, xenophobic nationalism that aimed to destroy everything foreign, including means of production and medicines.
• A return to illuminated earth trenches; the entire population, regardless of age and gender, was forced into agricultural labor.
• A collectivist economy that abolished private property and currency. Only the Angkar could dispose of the fruits of labor.
• Total prohibition of education to ensure that no one would be more educated than others.
• Physical elimination of vast sectors of the population. Only a million Kampucheans were deemed necessary to rebuild the country.

For the governments that supported Pol Pot at the UN, the crimes against humanity committed in Democratic Kampuchea were disregarded, and no value was given to the Act of Genocide Accusation made known by the People's Revolutionary Tribunal of Phnom Penh in August 1979.

Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were accused of the following crimes:

• Systematic and brutal execution of the population, which was divided into three categories: old, new, and collaborators of the Lon Nol administration.
• Forced evacuation of the population from cities to the countryside and displacement of rural populations, with the prior surrender of all their possessions to Angkar.
• Repression and coercion in the popular communes, where the population was forced into physically exhausting labor to cultivate land, build dikes, and open roads, all using only their hands and rudimentary tools.
• Violent destruction and alteration of social relations. Elimination of family ties, separation of children from parents, prohibition of romantic relationships among young people, and marriage celebrated by Angkar. Rejection of feeling pity for the wounded and dead or having feelings of solidarity among relatives and friends.
• Elimination of pre-revolutionary religions and national culture. Elimination of intellectuals. A directive issued by the Central Committee of the Party on September 5, 1977, stated: "It is necessary to redouble revolutionary vigilance against people who have served in the old apparatus of power: technicians, professors, doctors, engineers. Our party should not employ them. If we pursue technology and employ it, the enemy will infiltrate our power structure through it."
• Massacre of children and the corruption of adolescents to turn them into torturers. They forced children under the age of 15 to enroll in the army or in their mobile shock groups.
• Complete disintegration of the national economy, leading the population to famine. Technicians were killed, and workers were sent to the countryside. Unhusked rice was exported in exchange for weapons. Much of the land remained uncultivated.
• Methods of torture and massacre to terrorize the population, such as breaking skulls with hoes, picks, sticks, and iron bars; using knives and parlan leaf stems to cut throats or open people's bellies; sequentially dismembering and causing deaths through various atrocities.(45)

These are the facts relevant to the purposes of this work. Now, let's summarize the evidence to deduce the true nature of the model.

1. Historically, the United States, France, China, and England considered their interests in Southeast Asia threatened by Vietnam and Soviet presence.
2. All levels of conflict have occurred in Southeast Asia, except for atomic warfare.
3. Since 1960, in Cambodia (Kampuchea), revolutionary political parties and the Khmer Issarak army have been infiltrated by agents trained in France. Secretly, Angkar was formed as a result of divisions within the Communist Party of Kampuchea.
4. In 1970, the CIA, in a scandalous intervention, led to the replacement of Norodon Sihanuk with Lon Nol. Sihanuk traveled to China for asylum.
5. Between 1970 and 1973, Lon Nol facilitated the secret war against Kampuchea. American strategic bombings and the fall of Saigon eliminated nearly three million potentially subversive inhabitants who were allies of Vietnam.
6. In 1975, following Vietnam's triumph and American defeat, the CIA facilitated the replacement of Lon Nol and used and guided the policies of Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan, an elite educated in Paris, exclusive and closed due to matrimonial and other kinship ties (Pot and Sary are brothers-in-law).
7. Once in power, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary, under the direction of Angkar, accelerated the destruction of Cambodia. They implemented British techniques for population control through terror, involving massacres, public beheadings, and physical labor to exhaustion. Children were turned into killers, erasing feelings of mercy, and the Khmer Rouge launched a violent offensive against Vietnam.
8. Vietnamese forces repelled the aggression, and in January 1979, along with the National Salvation Front, they defeated Pol Pot and established the People's Republic of Cambodia. China responded with military aggression in support of Pol Pot.
9. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, along with Ieng Sary and Son Sann, who opposed the new Republic, took refuge along the Thai border to receive assistance from the United States and the UN.

This Maoist revolution led by Pol Pot and Ieng Sary exhibits some typical characteristics of certain movements that claim to be communist. Under the leadership of highly educated intellectuals, they were capable of applying destruction and death with unprecedented refinement and savagery.

It is not necessary to conduct an in-depth analysis to realize that this model doesn't exactly align with any specific ideological movement or serve as a revolutionary political alternative. These atypical revolutions fundamentally involve large-scale irregular warfare operations of low intensity. They are applied against countries deemed potentially subversive involved in liberation wars or susceptible to being considered adversaries in the global confrontation with the enemy camp.

These operations are the result of intelligence mechanisms carefully constructed to exploit political, social, ethnic, cultural, ideological, and mythical factors within any human group, guiding them towards self-destruction. Their ultimate goal is the mass annihilation of the population, the destruction of means and forces of production, the erosion of community morals, collective frustration, the obliteration of scientific and technological progress, and the instigation of conflicts between natural and other atrocities. These once-fevered and deranged imaginations have become concrete realities in various parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

PART TWO

Chapter 1: development of the Shining Path ideology

In the grand context of Peru's geostrategic situation and the influences of unconventional warfare doctrines, what is the ideology of the Shining Path as the foundation for its proposal to modify the cultural structures of Peruvian society?

The question is difficult to answer because this is another of the mysteries or atypical situations of the Shining Path: its definition or ideological stance regarding Peruvian society. What research reveals, both in its doctrinal documents and in the publications of its exegetes or Senderologists, is a series of interpolated excerpts whose origins are highly divergent, primarily Marxist, aiming to form a body of motivating ideas. Here, it essentially involves techniques of mobilization known in psychological warfare as "semantic differentiation." Every people, country, or human group has certain forms of communication, thoughts, keywords that can trigger individual or collective actions, depending on how they are used, manipulated, and directed, related to the underlying choice that lies deep within the human instinct: Life or Death, Eros or Thanatos.

Before delving into this substantive aspect of the Shining Path phenomenon, let's first agree on what culture and ideology are, in terms related to the Shining Path's supposed revolutionary mission and the trajectory of its founder.

The creation of a new society means the formation of a new human being, which requires a transformation of cultural structures—a universal aspiration, especially in dominated and underdeveloped societies like those in the Third World, which have not been able to reach the minimum levels of satisfaction of basic human needs.

This leads us to a tentative definition of culture. To do so, we'll follow the thoughts of Dr. Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Rivas, former lecturer at the Center for Advanced Military Studies of Peru and former lecturer in Philosophy at the University of San Agustín, regarded by the Lima magazine Caretas as a mentor to Abimael Guzmán Reinoso, who dedicated his philosophy thesis to him. Rodríguez states in his course on Introduction to Scientific Research Methodology that culture is a product of human intelligence, a rational creation. It is not something other than what is known as science, philosophy, and technology. But most importantly, human intelligence is guided by values, which are emotional instances, aspirations, and needs expressed in an ethical, juridical, and religious order.

However, Rodríguez continues to say that culture is not only an intellectual creation of science, philosophy, and technology or an ethical, juridical, and religious estimation, but all of this is internalized in human beings, giving rise to behaviors. Culture is behavioral, which is why culture is not neutral.

A society generates a system of beliefs and worldviews known as ideology at a given moment. Ideology is the conception we have at a given moment of humanity and society, provided it serves as the basis for political practice since what is essential in a society is pragmatic realization.

So, what is the conception of humanity and Peruvian society that the Shining Path relies on to support its political practice?

It is probably a most false conception because it has nothing to do with the transformation of cultural structures with scientific, philosophical, and technological creation, or with the recreation of an ethical, judicial, and religious estimation in Peru. The Shining Path’s praxis does not seem to have any doctrinal connection with the creation of a cultural model. Its highest conception of the world is destruction, and its highest estimation is pathological delight in polarization, annihilation, and death. This can be explained from the perspective of soul purification and immortality, in line with Guzmán Reinoso's Kantian philosophical education but not from the standpoint of modern idealism, let alone Marxism. It has nothing to do with the teachings of Professor Rodríguez Rivas.

Brief history of the Shining Path Thought

If we have chosen to provide an extensive preamble before specifically addressing the Shining Path, it is because we cannot ignore the generic circumstances that explain the phenomenon of irregular warfare. In the evolution of Shining Path Thought, we must also consider certain particular circumstances that, at a given moment, allowed or facilitated its emergence.

We should not fall into the trap set by certain Senderologists who have, instead, invented a history of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path to promote its growth, thus diverting the course of thought regarding social change in Peru. For a while now, this thought seems to be expressed in nationalist currents of liberation and independence.

We must confess that we began this research by studying the thought of the Shining Path, delving into its documents to understand the structure of this Guiding Thought and the theoretical and doctrinal foundations of the “correct application of Marxism to the Peruvian reality." The result was disappointing, as it confirmed the absence of doctrinal and theoretical principles capable of linking Senderista political practice with a Marxist conception of Peruvian society and its ideological proposal for change. Simply put, the latter does not exist.

This discovery led to a revision of the methodology, which had led to a specific reading of Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist literature to find concurrence with the Shining Path. Driven by these dynamics, we had focused too much on the problem, as if it could only be explained from the perspective of that current.

The first question had to refer, then, to the historical circumstances that allowed the emergence of the Shining Path idea as an extreme and ultra-radicalization of Marxism, based on the propagandistic use of some classical doctrinal positions.

Evolution of significant events in Peruvian society

The 1960s were significant, but even more so was the decade 1965-1975, the period in which the beginning years of the Shining Path are located. This is the era of fragmentation in the main Marxist current in Peru and the structural changes of the Peruvian Revolution carried out by the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.

Marxist political options in Peru had defined positions. Until 1962, Trotskyist tendencies grappled with the dilemma between insurrection or guerrilla foco in the countryside. The demands for land by small landowners in the valleys of La Convención and Lares, in the department of Cusco, marked the highest point of peasant mobilization that led them towards guerrilla warfare. However, these possibilities were not harnessed by the leadership of that political fringe, which later dispersed into the paths of electoralism and adventurism.

1965 marks the end of the Castroist guerrilla experience in Peru and, above all, the failure of inserting urban groups into the Quechua peasantry of the Andes. The transposition of Cuban guerrilla tactics to the Andean conditions did not achieve the subversive mobilization of the peasantry, let alone its development as an alternative to power. This chapter closes, for Latin America, with Che Guevara's death in Bolivia. A transcendent episode of sacrifice that, among other perspectives, opens a new stage of revolutionary struggle in the region.

The Sino-Soviet disagreements that emerged in 1961 culminated in 1963 with a complete rupture between the two parties. This event had an immediate impact on the international communist movement and affected the unity of the Peruvian Communist Party, which split between “Muscovites” and “Beijingists.” It is a period of debate between Khrushchevian Marxism and Maoism, an aspect directly related to the topic at hand.

The revolutionary nationalist option emerged between 1968 and 1975, represented by the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, which undertook a program of structural changes and implemented them boldly, within various limitations. Some of these changes were included in the program of the APRA, the Peruvian social democracy (as it is considered to fit approximately within a conventional topology of political groups); a program that was outlined in 1931.

Other changes went even further than the immediate aspirations of the national Marxist left, especially regarding international relations and the transfer of Soviet military technology. These changes deeply affected the status of Western imperialist technological domination and the system of private property, especially in rural areas.

The Agrarian Reform achieved a radical and profound modification in land ownership and water use at the national level, awakening mass aspirations among the peasantry. Historically, immense productive forces were liberated, but they lacked – and still lack – land, technology, seeds, capital resources, business management, and adequate marketing channels. This generated new and major contradictions that definitely will not find a solution within the traditional mechanisms of the system, whose beneficiaries and defenders resist admitting this truth and seek survival in social spheres where they no longer belong.

To avoid digressing further, we will not refer to other important changes, such as the officialization of pluralism in the ownership of means of production through private, co-managed, social or self-managed enterprises, as well as state-owned ones. However, it is worth noting that the changes promoted by the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces were oriented toward a social project called "Full Participation," based on a humanistic philosophical conception. Some individuals who had been involved in the guerrilla movements of the 1962-1965 period pragmatically or convincingly adhered to this project.

To summarize, it is essential to establish some concepts before asking a question that is still looking for an answer.

• Between 1964 and 1966, the communist movement in Peru went through a period of rapid fragmentation, especially due to various external influences. For instance, it is well known that the CIA distributed a pirated edition of Mao's Little Red Book in Latin American universities. The goal was to accelerate the formation of "Beijingist" parties by stimulating the division of those previously formed around Moscow's guidelines.
• The nationalist currents within the armed forces promoted significant structural changes proposed and expected since the 1930s.
• The historical period of peasant struggles, rebellions, and uprisings against local authorities and landowners (gamonal) was overcome with the distribution of land, opening a new, albeit contradictory, stage for the development of productive forces in the countryside and relations between rural and urban areas.

Question: who might be interested in the fragmentation of the communist movement, to destroy or paralyze the currents of revolutionary nationalism (whether civil or military) and to halt and even liquidate the emerging Native peasant class?

For the strategists of modern irregular warfare, political warfare – as conceived by minds like Frank Kitson's – these are precisely elements or factors against which to unleash a counterinsurgency escalation. It becomes imperative to “make the insurgency" to achieve the elimination of communists, nationalists, and Peruvian Natives, who, together or separately, pose a threat to the interests of the establishment. It is precisely for this reason, let us add, that counterinsurgency and its doctrines cannot have the same meaning or application for the center of global power and for a nationalist government in the Third World. This is a strategic flaw, an error, that Argentina has already fallen victim to.

The exacerbation of the mentioned revolutionary phenomena during this period determined the mobilization of foreign intelligence services, which were very active in formulating their counterinsurgency hypotheses and making the necessary decisions for the execution of their unconventional warfare actions in Peru. We must remember the antifoco military deployment or the theories of low-intensity conflicts.

Division of Peruvian communism and the birth of the Shining Path

In 1963, the Cuban Missile Crisis justified Mao's final condemnation of Khrushchev's regime and his thesis of peaceful coexistence. The Chinese Revolution, on the other hand, had demonstrated that the peasantry was the main driving force of social revolution in underdeveloped countries. This consideration was not entirely foreign to Soviet communism, as Lenin had been forced to rely on the peasantry, paradoxically "conservative by nature of class," according to Marxists, to secure the fate of the Russian Revolution. He attracted them to the Bolshevik regime through the signing of peace with the German Empire and land redistribution. In this way, he defeated the counterrevolutionary forces in the civil war (1917-1921).

The Sino-Soviet crisis in Peru, especially through an exacerbated debate on the characterization of the insurrectional process, whether it should be based on a war developed from the countryside, schematically reflected a transfer of the Chinese experience to Peruvian reality. Faced with this situation, the official Communist Party of Peru (PCP) postponed a definition between factions that was supposed to occur at the convening of the IV National Conference. The situation persisted until January 1964 when the pro-Chinese faction, led by Saturnino Paredes, José Sotomayor, and Jorge Hurtado, among others, decided to break with the official sector by convening their own Fourth Conference for mid-1964. As a result of the conflict, mutual expulsions occurred, and the committees and militants in Lima and the interior of the country were reorganized.

It can now be pointed out that this Fourth Conference was the earliest starting point of the ideological development of the Shining Path because it marked the beginning of a dogmatic thought process among Peruvian Marxists. That is, a total disregard for reality, experience, and scientific foundations for analyzing social phenomena. It simply required consulting the extensive literature from the national event to see that it was not exactly an ideological debate about the relations of production, the structure and role of Peruvian social classes, or the correlation of forces among them, their importance in the current situation, and their representation in the state apparatus.

After the first division of the Communist Party of Peru, Saturnino Paredes and José Sotomayor, along with their followers, began a debate on the character of Belaunde's government. To determine the correct line, they first had to establish whether this government was bourgeois or oligarchic. This discussion continued until it became institutionalized in Peruvian Maoism.

At the Fifth National Conference of the Communist Party of Peru Bandera Roja (Red Flag), Saturnino Paredes gained absolute control of the party apparatus. In March 1966, José Sotomayor Pérez and his followers were expelled and anathematized as "revisionists." Sotomayor, who later realigned with Moscow, has argued that Paredes' faction and his group were "a crude transplant of the Chinese experiences arising from their Second Revolutionary Civil War" (46).

In this new division – the second to be precise – Abimael Guzmán and the Regional Committee of Ayacucho parted ways with Saturnino Paredes' thesis.

A period of party consolidation followed, dedicated to gaining control of the bases. This task was carried out thoroughly by the Ayacucho Regional Committee. However, in January 1968, a new internal crisis emerged, marking the third party division. Saturnino Paredes, then leading Red Flag, had to confront the "Ching Kang" group, a name taken by young Maoists from the Chinese region where they underwent training and preparation before being reintegrated into Peru.

The Ching Kang group effectively separated from Paredes and assumed control, taking on the name of the National Organizing Commission.

In October 1968, the government of Belaunde Terry, deemed bourgeois and pro-imperialist, was overthrown in a military coup, and the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces came to power.

Within Red Flag, the confusing and disorienting debate intensified: now, to apply the correct line, it was needed to determine whether the Velasco Alvarado government was fascist representing the agro-exporting bourgeoisie or reformist representing the industrial-financial bourgeoisie. In this conflict, the Ayacucho Committee aligned with the first characterization and began active opposition to the policies of the Revolutionary Military Government.

In March 1969, the National Organizing Commission controlled by the Ching Kang group convened the Sixth National Conference and expelled Saturnino Paredes, Abimael Guzmán Reinoso, and other members of the party's military apparatus. They officially established themselves as the Communist Party of Peru Patria Roja (Red Homeland) to distinguish themselves from Red Flag.

Paredes, in turn, continued the expulsion process by removing the Ching Kang group, a move seemingly supported and faithful to the Ayacucho Regional Committee led by "Álvaro" (Abimael Guzmán Reinoso).

The splintered Communist Party of Peru Red Flag adopted the line of action to transfer militants to the countryside to initiate armed struggle against the "military dictatorship" to seize power, in accordance with agreements dating back to the Fifth Conference:

To prepare the material forces that carry out these objectives because without having our own armed force, born from the masses and closely linked to them in defense of their interests, it is impossible to fulfill the proposed task. It is for this reason that the Fifth National Conference of the Party agrees that the organization and development of its own armed force is the main task of the party, according to the immediate perspective that armed struggle is the principal form of struggle, and considering that it will essentially be a peasant revolution that will go from the countryside to the cities, where the peasantry will be its main force and the working class its leading force through its party. (47)

This decision, despite the criticism directed at the same Fifth Conference regarding the military conception of the Revolutionary Left Movement, represents a departure from the Marxist idea of revolution primarily based on political work and the development of the party rather than the military apparatus. Developing the party or developing the military apparatus are tendencies that, when isolated or unilaterally emphasized, lead to a distortion of the goals, according to Marxism-Leninism.

In this document, we find another of the interpolated and literal propositions that already reflect the schematic conception of this thought:

"... we can say that the driving forces of the revolution are, first of all, the working class with its role of leadership through its party; then the peasantry, the main force that must operate closely allied to the first. Then the impoverished and radicalized petty bourgeoisie is also a driving force of the revolution. As for the national bourgeoisie, due to its dual nature, it is a force that can potentially participate in the revolution under certain conditions, but due to its ties to imperialism and latifundia, it can betray the revolution" (48).

We mention these basic concepts because they are schematically repeated throughout Shining Path literature, as they were substantive in the Sixth Conference, ironically called the "Basis of Party Unity," and they served as the basis for the fourth party segregation, this time directly prompted by Abimael Guzmán as the representative of the Ayacucho Regional Committee, in contrast to the Red Flag Central Committee led by Saturnino Paredes.

On January 15, 1970, Guzmán Reinoso, in a letter to Saturnino Paredes, questioned his leadership of the party and urged him to "make a major turn" by going to the countryside to reconstitute the party:

"... we are on the brink of a major turn in the party, and this is evident from the fact that this is the foundation of this new stage in the development of party organization"... in "Bandera Roja," the general direction for this new stage of struggle should already be set, guided by the basis of party unity, taking Mariátegui as the cornerstone and focusing the debate on the fundamental issue, the peasant problem" (49).

Coincidentally, "R. Anderas" (Saturnino Paredes), on the same date, addressed the Ayacucho Regional Committee, postponing the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee for three months, extending the deadline for a resolution to Abimael Guzmán's demands. Five days after that letter to Paredes, Guzmán sent a new letter to the Central Committee, calling on its General Secretary to "take a decision regarding the proposal made by the Ayacuchanos in the previous letter."

In February 1970, the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee of Red Flag took place, attended by its main base: the Ayacucho Regional Committee and its principal leader, Abimael Guzmán. The event also saw the participation of the Regional Committees of Arequipa, Lima, and La Libertad, the Committee of Chimbote, the Peasant Confederation led by José Llamoja, and the Revolutionary Student Front with its bases in Lima, Ayacucho, Huancayo, Ica, and Arequipa.

For this occasion, Guzmán had meticulously prepared arguments and evidence that would confirm the rightist, petty-bourgeois, and deviated conduct of Saturnino Paredes. It was not difficult for him to dismantle Paredes with a wealth of details, flyers, and statements that Paredes had used against Guzman. Guzman achieved more than he had intended, effectively shattering the entire organization of the Communist Party of Peru - Red Flag. Tendencies polarized into support and condemnation, but confusion also led to abstentions and resignations.

This marked the fourth significant political split within the Communist Party, in addition to the dozens of groups and small parties that had formed and disappeared along the way.

Upon returning to Ayacucho, Abimael Guzmán, also known as "Álvaro," established a new party known as the Communist Party of Peru - For the Shining Path of Mariátegui. This supplementary denomination, taken from the slogan of FER-Ayacucho, would later serve to distinguish it completely from the communist movement. For this reason, today, Shining Path members despise the name they chose.

Abimael Guzmán initiated the work of what he would call the pre-constitutional period of the Party, using preaching as the main weapon to disseminate his ideas and foundations. These would later be formalized in July 1973 during the Third Plenum of the Shining Path in a document on Reconstitution, a name also adopted by the mentioned assembly.

The Shining Path begins to characterize its history, starting from 1970, into specific stages that are literally accepted by its exegesis or Senderologists without significant critical reconsideration.

For the Shining Path, the years 1970 to 1977 correspond to the period of reconstitution of the party; 1977 to 1980 involve the transfer of cadres to the countryside in secrecy, and starting from 1980 marks the beginning of armed struggle.

The ideological framework of the Shining Path

Let's allow Abimael Guzmán himself to summarize the ideological character of the Communist Party of Peru - For the Shining Path of Mariátegui based on some excerpts from his theoretical work:

The Communist Party of Peru (PCP) is based on the doctrine of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. This means that Marxism has evolved and has three stages. The Marx stage, Marxism, belongs to the era of pre-monopoly capitalism, the last century, and corresponds, in the political aspect, to the preparation for the revolution. Therefore, the first stage of Marxism is Marxism of the pre-monopoly capitalist era and preparation for the revolution. Later, at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present century, capitalism enters a new phase, which is its final phase, 'the imperialist phase.' It is Lenin who will point out the laws of the development of imperialism and find its contradictions. In this era of imperialism, the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat intensify to the fullest. Thus, Lenin, by discovering the internal laws of imperialism, also indicates the need to organize the revolution, not only as preparation but with the aim of carrying it out. Stalin defines the second stage of Marxism as 'Leninism.' So, Leninism is characterized as 'Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution.' Up to this point, we have 'Marxism-Leninism.' After World War II, China is in the midst of a revolution, and Mao Zedong, by applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of semi-feudal and semi-colonial China, discovers new laws of the revolution. In an era in which imperialism worldwide enters a period of extreme contradictions... In this period, the revolution has shifted from advanced countries to underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Mao Zedong discovers new laws of the revolution, summarized in the laws of people's war, from the countryside to the city, in a long process under the leadership of the proletarian party, a revolution that is peasant and called the 'National Democratic Revolution,' as a preliminary stage of a later 'Socialist Revolution.' This period is established within Marxism as a development in the third stage and style, which was also called the 'Mao Zedong Thought' in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Thus, we have 'Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought,' and that is the doctrine adopted by the Communist Party of Peru.

Moreover, this party, according to its own documents, has taken up and developed the ideas of Mariátegui by applying them to our reality. When Mariátegui founded the Socialist Party in the country, he was establishing a proletarian party, in other words, a Communist Party. To do so, Mariátegui had to outline a general political line, which contains five problems: 1. The character of society; 2. The character of the revolution; 3. The instrument of the revolution; 4. The tasks of the revolution; and 5. A mass line.

Based on the character of that society, the character of the revolution necessarily derives from it. This comes from the analysis of our reality, which is semi-feudal and semi-colonial. Therefore, if a country is capitalist, the revolution must be socialist. In contrast, if a country is semi-feudal and semi-colonial, the revolution must be National Democratic or, as Mariátegui called it, 'Bourgeois Democratic.' Consequently, if the revolution in our homeland must be National Democratic, it implies that the Peruvian revolution must have two stages: the first National Democratic and the second Socialist, as a continuation of the first stage of the revolution. This character of the revolution, indicating the two stages, is a logical and inevitable consequence of the character of society. This is Mariátegui's conclusion... So, the strategy of the revolution at this moment corresponds to the first stage, which is National Democratic. Therefore, the essence of this first stage of the revolution is Bourgeois Democratic. According to Mao Zedong, this type of revolution means a peasant revolution, an agrarian revolution under the leadership of the Communist Party. This kind of revolution implies a long and protracted people's war, which Mao himself in China called 'the path of encircling the cities from the countryside.' In other words, through armed struggle, liberate rural areas, establish support bases, and gradually encircle the cities, starting with small villages and towns, then medium-sized cities, and finally the large ones, until ultimately taking central power at the national level... The strategy has to be a consequence of the reconstitution itself (the Party) in both political and organizational aspects… (50)

This is the synthesis of the Shining Path’s ideology, an elaboration that culminated in the Sixth Conference. This framework is the guiding principle, the basis of party unity, a perspective that can be found in one form or another throughout Shining Path literature.

The glaring inaccuracies in this ideological foundation of the Shining Path are easy to establish if you follow the thread of its formal logic. You will find a chain of fallacious syllogisms that appear to be Marxist truths but, when using certain well-known concepts, form an argumentative set of mere sophisms. It is not about ignorance or lack of knowledge but rather a subtle creation, a framework of apparently true premises capable of misleading those who accept them as scientific truths simply because they do not align with the thinking of the mentors and creators of Marxism or with the reality of Peru. This distorted characterization of the social and political conditions of the country by the sophists of the Shining Path and certain Senderologists was completed with the theory of a supposed fourth stage of Marxism: the "Guiding Thought" of Comrade – or President – Gonzalo (the pseudonym Abimael Guzmán adopted when officially going underground with his party). Just as Marx, Lenin, and Mao discovered the laws of revolution in their times and countries, “Gonzalo” “discovers” these laws for the reality of Peru at the present moment. Laws that have not been elucidated and are unknown, not even appearing in Shining Path literature. The Guiding Thought, as we will see later, is a psychological mechanism for motivation and not the product of an analysis translated into the formulation of laws or hypotheses about the reality of Peru. There is none of that.

Structure of the Shining Path

We have argued that the Shining Path phenomenon is a foreign insertion into the Peruvian social fabric. Therefore, if we want to make an accurate assessment of its origins and reasons for existence, we should not be guided by ideological sophisms and the history that Shining Path itself constructs and develops using its own resources, as well as through the media and propagandists interested in promoting violence in Peru.

The reality demonstrates that the birth of Shining Path is not a product of the evolution of social contradictions manifested in an ideology, and political praxis, led by the leadership of a class or a group of classes linked by their interests and correlations. In other words, the ideology of Shining Path is not of the peasantry, the proletariat, the petite bourgeoisie, or the combination of these classes whose representation it claims to assume. It also falsely claims the intellectual representation of Marxism and appropriates the identity of the Communist Party of Peru. Shining Path attempts to embed itself in the history of Peruvian communism when it arbitrarily establishes a chronological framework divided into three periods that, according to Guzmán, precede the armed struggle.

• The Struggle for the Formation of the Party, which spans from 1918 to 1928, culminating in the realization of Mariátegui's ideas.
• The Struggle for the Restoration of the Basis of Party Unity, between 1929 and 1969, a year considered a milestone because, according to Guzmán's idea in the Sixth Conference, the Party unity is restored only then.
• The Struggle for Reconstitution between 1970 and 1980, a ten-year period covering the preparation stage of the party for armed struggle that Shining Path officially began on April 17, 1980. (51)

The Shining Path truly began its history between 1965 and 1975. It emerged significantly with the decline of guerrillas in Peru and the emergence of anti-imperialist military nationalism (under Velasco Alvarado), the implementation of social reforms affecting the system, and the failure of the Alliance for Progress, a set of counterinsurgency policies and civic and developmental actions proposed for Latin America by the U.S. Kennedy administration.

In essence, the Shining Path is a provocation of counterinsurgency, an advanced and skillful theory and practice in the destruction of productive forces and effective revolutionary ideologies in any of their expressions, whether socialist or otherwise. Above all, the goal of the Shining Path, after seventeen years of violent activity, does not seem to be anything other than maintaining and dangerously deepening instability in Peru.

Doesn't the Shining Path, supposedly to combat imperialism, relentlessly attack regimes that are quite different from each other, such as those of Velasco, Belaunde, and García? Let's remember; it said about the Government of the Armed Forces: "The CPP has pointed out the basic character of the three basic laws of the fascist regime (agrarian, industrial, educational) as models of development of bureaucratic capitalism. It has also pointed out the relationship between development and Andean integration (Andean Pact) as part of the integration of the Latin American Common Market and the consolidation of the 'backyard' of American imperialism." (52)

About Belaunde's Government: "The current government aims to further develop the oppressive semi-feudal structure... The current government, whose main leader and primary responsible person is Belaunde, is eagerly and obediently striving to further develop bureaucratic capitalism in the country (monopolistic big capital subservient to the landlords and subject to imperialism)..."(53)

In August 1986, referring to the analysis of injustice situations made by President García in his July Message, the PCP said: "...simply put, these are similar problems and issues that de facto governments or those derived from elections have been dealing with for decades, attempting nothing more than developing Peruvian society, developing bureaucratic capitalism in the country, (monopoly big capital enfeoffed to the landlords and subjected to imperialism)...within the maintenance and defense of the  landlord-bureaucratic dictatorship, which is the Peruvian State."(54)

This political behavior is not precisely that of a party that analyzes and establishes variables that exist in a situation or a country, contradictions, relationships, and differences, among others. It is more of a propagandistic attitude of an instrument, a force equipped and armed for social demolition.

The constituent elements of the Shining Path’s structure

Before attempting to identify these elements, let us make a preliminary clarification. The enumeration and analysis of these elements may seem like a forced scheme that cannot exist. If we present it schematically, it is for didactic reasons. The research has led us to discover all these constituent elements, whether voluntarily or involuntarily existing in the Shining Path’s structure. Is it possible that it was set this way? Is it credible that a mysterious hand has so much power to manipulate groups and social situations?

Let's not forget that in irregular or unconventional warfare, there are states that plan and lead the actions. There are also powerful international intelligence services with the most advanced science, from the best universities and research centers, such as the Tavistock Institute in London, the University of Georgetown in the United States (owned by the North American Air Force), the Rand Corporation – which has conducted extensive studies on the Peruvian reality – and foundations like Adlai Stevenson, Ford, and others interested in researching the difficulties that the system may face and the dangers that could threaten the interests of transnational corporations.

On the other hand, let us remember the principles of low-intensity operations: "To combat subversion can be a good thing in some cases, just as promoting it may be right in others" (Frank Kitson).

Likewise, we must consider the concept of political warfare: "A meticulous and patient testing of all political, economic, social, and psychological factors capable of entering as components in the evaluation and conduct of an experimental policy" (M. Megret). Could the Shining Path be an experimental policy? What are the components of the Shining Path?

Studying the human environment of the Shining Path

One of the questions we need to answer is why the Shining Path chose the Andean region for its operations. Shining Path experts, supported by the anthropological and social studies of Peruvian scientists, have reached common conclusions: they talk of "the most depressed region," "extreme poverty," "regions abandoned by the state," "cultures different from the coastal ones." More serious works have delved into the socio-economic contradictions between the communal cultures of the highlands and the impact of capitalist Western culture, which produces imbalances and disturbances that have been expressed in long-standing peasant conflicts.

We are not discussing this or any other reality, but rather are examining the perspective and purpose of certain research. We believe that we have conducted extensive research for a precise social diagnosis framed in a specific time and place. These are like inert X-rays of reality, many of which are questionable in nature and orientation. Nevertheless, they are useful as basic research for further development purposes or modifications aimed at integrating various social strata of the Andean population into Western culture.

However, the best studies of the Andean human environment that we know of were conducted for counterinsurgency purposes by foreign agendas, especially American ones. In other words, research on the anthropological and social makeup, nature, and historical projection of Andean social groups from an insurgent perspective that could affect the establishment. For this purpose, social scientists from foreign agendas have lived for years in the Andean regions, conducting research on anthropological and social makeup.

In the decade of 1965 to 1975, Peru posed a serious problem for foreign intelligence agencies responsible for counterinsurgency forecasts. Peru was characterized as a highly dangerous and subversive terrain, especially when the option of changing the Peruvian military leadership, which seriously affected relations with dominant countries (and particularly the United States) was realized.

As an example of everything that happened in this regard, let's take the Seminar on Peru, which lasted from July 1969 to May 1970, the month in which the Final Wings Conference was held in Wingspread, Wisconsin, the city where the Johnson Foundation is located. More than 75 important political leaders, high-level company executives, scholars, leaders, workers, clergymen, journalists, and representatives from various sectors of both countries attended this conference. Twenty of them were from Peru, including an official delegation. The U.S. government sent high-ranking officials directly involved in managing relations with Peru. (55)

For Daniel Sharp, the promoter and leader of the seminar, what happened in Peru was a responsibility. As a founding member of the Peace Corps, he signed the first agreements with the governments of Peru and Bolivia, led the first teams of agents to those countries, and directed their operations in the Andean region. With a bachelor's degree in International Relations from Berkeley and a doctorate in International Relations and Jurisprudence from Harvard, he was the most suitable person to lead this research seminar, which addressed the following topics:

• The context of U.S. politics in Peru.
• U.S. relations with the Peruvian military.
• The awakening of Peruvian nationalism.
• The issue of the 200-mile maritime boundary.
• International financial organizations.
• The rural sector.
• Indigenous people.
• Private investment.
• Foreign private sector in Peru. Study of business and governmental prospects.
• The labor movement.
• Private educational development.
• Missions in Peru funded by North American churches.

The time when the seminar took place was characterized as the most critical period in the history of Peruvian-American relations. It saw the nationalization of oil and American companies, the expulsion of the American military mission, the mobilization of indigenous people through land reform, and the Peruvian government asserting its sovereignty over its territorial sea by legislating on the 200-mile maritime boundary.

The intelligence services sought clear answers to four questions from the perspective of insurgency and counterinsurgency: "What has been the policy of the United States?; What were its results?; What are the various policy alternatives offered to the United States?; and What are the likely consequences of each?" (56)

The event was sponsored by the ADELA group, the Adlai Stevenson Institute; The Cerro Corporation, N.Y; Chicago Council on Foreign Relations; The First National Bank of Chicago; Grace & Co.; IBEC; IBM; ITT; Johnson Foundation; Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co; Sears Roebuck & Co.; Sunbeam Corporation.

In the previous conferences, committees and small seminars that were held, prominent Peruvians, along with entrepreneurs and government officials from the United States, participated in the advisory process. Notable participants included Ambassador Fernando Berckemeyer and former Peruvian President Fernando Belaunde. Among the attendees were Samuel Drassinover Katz, Carlos Alzamora, Marco Fernández Baca, Daniel Schydlowsky, Richard Weeb, Patricio Ricketts, and Admiral Luis Edgardo Llosa (known for his significant historical role in defending the sovereignty of the 200-mile limit) among other personalities.

The results of this seminar were published in a book titled U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN PERU. The Spanish edition was published by Editorial Sudamericana in Buenos Aires in 1972 under the name Estados Unidos y la Revolución Peruana, and received extensive circulation in Peru. We have provided extensive references to this source as it serves as a valuable testimonial resource for the study of insurgency and counterinsurgency in the Peruvian context. All topics were addressed from the perspective of the Cold War, with the ultimate goal of determining the policies that the United States should adopt towards Peru.

The topic concerning The “Indians," as developed by William P. Mangin, an anthropologist, sociologist and mathematician from Syracuse University in New York, holds particular interest in understanding the human environment in which the Shining Path operates—the Andean indigenous Quechua peasant population.

Mangin states: "...for better or for worse, the United States has maintained relations with Peru for a century, and though not always consciously, they have adopted attitudes towards the Indians that shape a policy. Commercial and developmental loans, joint decisions regarding road programs, the construction of schools and food distribution, the Peace Corps, AID technicians, as well as religious missionaries, all represent different aspects of an attitude towards the Indians...for better or for worse, the existence of this general policy is a concrete fact. It should not be surprising that this policy towards the Indians has been consistent. It has generally aligned with the policy of the Peruvian government (which aimed to integrate the Indians into the National Culture), as evident in most cases. However, in certain cases, both governments have seen the Indians as a potential rebellious or revolutionary force; and then, a defensive policy was adopted, for example, joint counterinsurgency programs AID-PERU (including the construction of some penetration roads in the jungle)." (57)

Neither at that time in May 1970, nor now, is it possible to ignore or deny American involvement in Peru's rural issues. This involvement was denounced in the seminar by Julio Cotler, but its reason and inevitability are tacitly supported by Mangin himself when he says: "...consciously or unconsciously, almost all decisions made in Peru by public and private organizations and companies from the United States imply a policy towards the Indians since they represent a very large sector of the population." (58)

Mangin's study, discussed in the seminar, classifies the highland society of Peru into seven groups:

• Group 1. It is a small upper-class group that resides in the main cities of the valleys or on their large estates, in the capital, or abroad…
• Group 2. It is a small group of relatively wealthy individuals who form a regional upper class and maintain some contact with Group 1 in the provinces but very little in Lima.
• Group 3. This group partially overlaps with Group 2 in some cases but constitutes a separate group from many points of view. Most of its members are technicians representing various Peruvian official agencies that have regional personnel…
• Group 4. Like the first three groups, Group 4 has both rural and urban elements, but the latter are predominant. Its existence has been noted by many observers, although they have not assigned it autonomous characteristics. It can be said that this group is made up of workers who, along with the first three groups, also includes all members of the white-collar category working for regular salaries, such as bank employees, government administrative staff, taxi drivers, teachers, primary school sub-officers of the police and the military, and other groups.
• Group 5. I will call it the mestizo group. The word mestizo is not widely used in Peru, except by writers and social scientists. I use it here to refer to people who live in estates and small towns... they are descendants of the first Spanish colonists... and in most cases, it would be impossible to distinguish them from the Indians... but the physical characteristics of members of Groups 5, 6, and 7 largely overlap…
• Group 6. In Peru, members of this group are generally referred to as "cholos"... They are individuals in the process of transitioning from indigenous to modern national Peruvian... In terms of clothing, they are bicultural... Cholos generally come from indigenous communities. In recent years... their highland origin and even their indigenous status have become a source of increasingly pronounced pride... it's possible that as this group gains political power, it may achieve some intergenerational stability, especially if it aligns with a growing Quechua nationalism.
• Group 7. This group consists of the Indians, defined as such by themselves and others. There were many different classes of Indians, and it is still possible to distinguish varieties in dress... The number of landless Indians in the South is high... Due to the need to strategically acculturate and protect their land from the pressure exerted by landowners... Indian communities have had to assimilate notions of rights and politics... Indians are and have been engaged in two economies. They have a local economy based on kinship, mutual obligation, and the festival system. They are also closely linked to the national economy. They are natural traders. Most Indian women are aware of national price fluctuations for eggs and small animals, while most men trade in livestock... Indians being at the lowest rung of the valley hierarchy suffer from discrimination at all levels. They are treated unfairly in courts, as well as in the armed forces, education, and national activities; they are practically slaves in the region, and whites and mestizos can kill them, and sometimes they do, without being punished... (59).

This interesting classification of the highland social groups in Peru is a scientific delineation of the psychosocial profiles of different indigenous strata, idiosyncrasies, interests, aspirations, contradictions, and ethnic overlaps that have allowed a series of miscegenation while remaining a distinct and growing culture that overwhelms the traditional coastal Peruvian culture. Mangin predicts, "I would venture to predict that indigenism has died, and in its place, a new type of Indian nativism is emerging. In this new trend, the need to confront the modern world as Indians, land reform, industrialization, urbanization, bilingualism, education, and politics will be highlighted. Whites and mestizos may play a role in organizing and leading, as is the case with Peruvian and Guatemalan guerrillas, but the main leadership core will consist of Indians and cholos."

Different national parties and foreign interests, including Russia, China, Cuba, and the United States, support or oppose various Indian factions, but none of these groups has deeply penetrated Indian culture. "Much more serious," says Mangin, "is the increasing involvement of anthropologists and other social scientists in official and university programs developed under the auspices of 'public security' and 'counterinsurgency'... if a few social scientists become so involved in the Andean countries of Latin America, this presence threatens and may prevent effective work by Americans" (60).

Ultimately, Mangin was proposing a more subtle and scientific approach to address the potential danger posed by the development of Quechua culture. His primary concern was that this differentiated culture might, at some point, assert its rights and endanger the interests of major powers, especially the United States. Therefore, Mangin proposed three solutions (61), based on hypotheses about the projection of Quechua culture. These proposals are formulated in terms of the Cold War and the policy that the United States must adopt, either as assistance to the Peruvian government or as intervention to control, neutralize, or destroy Quechua aspirations. In these terms, for American hawks, only the genocide thesis is relevant. However, Mangin also talks about a policy of American indifference to the Peruvian Indian problem, saying: "In any case, we can't do much for the Indians of the Andean region... As my own position is that of a conservative anarchist, I believe that confusing and unclear solutions originating in local areas are generally better than confusing and unclear solutions imposed from outside."

How about American abstention! Instead of direct intervention or confusing and unclear military cooperation and support, it would be better to create a similar internal situation of cultural destruction that is confusing and unclear. There is no better definition of the subversive phenomenon known as the Shining Path than as a provocation leading to the genocide of the Peruvian Natives.

It should not be forgotten that the Wingspread debate took place in 1970, and its conclusions were disseminated in 1972, at the beginning of the period of reconstitution of the Shining Path. Concrete and irrefutable reality is showing us that the way the Shining Path conducts its polarization operations with respect to rural social sectors corresponds to the conception of the highland, indigenous social structure similar to that outlined by Mangin. In other words, the Shining Path's experimental politics, with destructive goals, find in Mangin's studies and those of other social scientists the necessary knowledge for the manipulation of the Quechua social base. In other words, it has chosen the appropriate social sector for the insurgency-counterinsurgency game that promotes political warfare.

Whether coincidental or not, Mangin also mentions and reminds us of other experiences such as Project Camelot (Horowitz, 1965), the work University of Michigan anthropologists conducted with CIA agents in Vietnam to provide equipment and training to the police (Scigliano and Fox, 1965). It is worth asking, for example, whether the Vicos Project and the construction of the Marginal Jungle Highway achieved their goals from the perspective of insurgency-counterinsurgency. Or did they only serve to create that "confusing situation" that now devastates the Peruvian Andes?

Ideological contributions to Shining Path Thought

We have already seen how Guzmán Reinoso presents Shining Path Thought as a set of Marxist ideas strung together schematically but without dialectical meaning, transposed and grouped into a body that, through systematic repetition of propaganda, has become "scientific truth."

One does not require an in-depth study to discover that Senderista thought is nothing more than a skillful mixture of ideas and concepts taken from the Peruvian and universal Marxist experience and literature.

Furthermore, it is possible to identify influences of Trotskyism in its pro-Chinese version from the years 1964-65 in the ideology of the Shining Path, as we will see next.

It's important to note that the process of reconstitution of the party, referred to as the “shining path to establish a peasant-based party”, is not a new concept within the Shining Path movement. Earlier, elements from various leftist currents in Peru had practiced it. In the years mentioned above, the Trotskyist movement went through a series of divisions or splinter groups. A faction led by police agents Felix Zevallos Quezada, Alfredo Chavez Ch., and Roman Flores Morell, among others, formed a group called Reagrupamiento Revolucionario (Revolutionary Regrouping) for the reconstitution of the party based on the following principles outlined in their Insurrectional Thesis (62):

1. That the Revolution originates in the countryside, moving from the periphery to the center, i.e., the urban areas.
2. Emphasis on the guerrilla method as one of the factors of polarization during that time and at a certain level of development of the struggles.
3. Decisive role of urban forces: “organized proletariat, bureaucratic employees, students, and oppressed layers of the petite bourgeoisie..." (Page 4) "...The Agrarian Revolution is the pivot around which the axis of the Peruvian Revolution revolves. We must ensure urban support for the peasant movement" (Page 5) "...the decision for the majority of the vanguard comes down to two concrete forms, two methodologies: promoting an isolated guerrilla focus and dispersing everywhere, or accepting the line of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Revolutionary Worker’s Party, RWP) and RR, which propose the development of work in all rural areas during mobilization, solving technical problems of Militias, Defense Committees, and giving birth to the first formations of the Liberation Army, or guerrilla focus, taking advantage of the already radicalized zone..." (Page 40). "Mao Zedong was in favor of a plan similar to what we, the RR and RWP, propose today in Peru; that is, the systematic preparation of a plan of work that, in its maturity, will coordinate urban and rural actions on all levels: social, political, and military" (Page 44).

It is clear from the social situation in rural Peru that the conclusion arises that these masses of six million indigenous peasants, cornered and oppressed, have no future other than revolution, much like the situation in China during Chiang Kai Shek's time.

This situation led to a debate within the young Communist Party of China in 1926. The General Secretary, Chen Duxiu, did not believe in the possibility of utilizing rural forces, while Zhang Guotao, on the left, advocated for unwavering workerism, similar to the Trotskyists in Peru associated with Voz Obrera (Worker’s Voice). However, in 1927, Mao Zedong estimated that if the party were to take the leadership of the peasant masses, it would not take twenty-five years, as happened in China, but in a short period, several hundred million peasants would rise up in various Chinese provinces with such violence, like a tempest, that no force could control them. "That is what we propose for Peru, the integration of RR and RWP, and merging with the peasantry" (Page 48).

Regarding the difficulties that opportunism would create, this should not lead us to despair or make us believe that we should abandon revolutionary theory and the characterization of each stage and concrete situation. Let's be clear: armed actions, war, are nothing more than politics pursued by other means. This implies that all actions of weapons in the social sphere are political operations [Page 51].

When it comes to organizing these militias and defense committees, it often happens that in almost all provinces, there are districts with a significant population belonging to communities that extend around the district. It's important to remember that there are mestizos engaged in business and trade with the indigenous population, and they are vacillating and reactionary, so they should not be trusted.

It's a common practice that the impoverished strata retreat to the suburbs and completely occupy the surrounding areas of these district capitals. This is where our work begins. In general, in places with communities and sharecropping, these villages are divided into neighborhoods, similar to cities. In some areas, it is advisable to establish units by blocks, based on the volume of inhabitants and the degree of concentration of houses in each block. An average of 50 to 100 men and women can be organized per neighborhood. The neighborhood or block militia will give rise to house-to-house militias in towns and districts as long as we eliminate the tiny reactionary elements that exist in these towns and villages.

We cannot have a uniform image of the Andean villages and hamlets. We will adapt to the environment, and not force the villages and towns into any preconceived scheme. However, the development of these rural militias urgently requires a solution to the issue of armament. Generally, these militias will be used to defend against white gangs and the police (landlords and armed landowners). We must ensure that these Decurias and Centurias militias are armed and trained with weapons that are readily available to the peasants: shotguns, slingshots, canes, dynamite in small 'caches,' machetes... With these weapons and proper training to use them and coordinate them when the time comes, they can deal with any police squad and white gangs. Ideally, we would have crates of brand-new machine guns and shiny rifles, but those are not available, and the enemy has them: we must take them away from him.

From these militias, the Defense Committees (Immediate Military Leadership) will be formed. However, these will be the organs that provide the foundation for the future revolutionary national liberation army [Pages 53 and 54].

Peru is a mining country, so it's not difficult to obtain dynamite. Thousands of dynamite cartridges pass through the hands of mine workers every day. Mine workers must deliver as much dynamite, fuses, and detonators as possible to the peasants [Page 55].

I would also like to conclude by affirming that the gunslinger, the daring adventurer, the early guerrilla, and their exploits cannot replace methodical work, the creation and development of a political leadership and a political party. Nor can they replace the direction and development of a peasant and working-class student vanguard through the creation of associations. It also cannot replace the central task of today: the advanced fusion of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard with the peasantry" [Page 60].

...Do not despair; the social and economic bases that generate the Peruvian Revolution are there. Marxists maintain that in semi-colonial and dependent countries, the development of productive forces is merely vegetative, and precapitalist and feudal forms fundamentally reject any planning for consumption... [Page 61].

...factors that nourish and strengthen social rebellion in Peru and Latin America: malnutrition. These are facts that leave no room for doubt and come from Dr. Abraham Horowitz, Director of the World Health Organization... Horowitz, the same figure from the Camelot Project.

"Another characteristic of these last three revolutionary stages is that the fundamental driving force is the peasant masses, while the urban leadership is composed of workers and intellectuals. The path to socialism in the Revolution arises as a result of the connection between the urban Marxist leadership and the peasant masses in the course of armed struggle" (Page 95).

This refers to the Cuban, Chinese, and Argentine revolutions. Interestingly, the language and semantics of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Regrouping are the same as those used by the Shining Path.

The identity in guerrilla conception is indisputable, as well as in terms of "polarization" accelerated by irrational violence. The Shining Path says: "This is the concrete question of the revolutionary situation currently unfolding here, and it has arisen from two issues: 1) The class struggle in polarization, and 2) The armed struggle that unfolds as guerrilla warfare born from the midst of the country's class struggle. In May 1980, armed struggle began with two fundamental slogans: armed struggle and a government of workers and peasants. Since then, our action has developed as guerrilla warfare, and today, according to the Central Committee's decision in January 1981, we are in the development of guerrilla warfare" (63).

Likewise, there is no difference between the Trotskyist current of 1965 and contemporary Senderismo regarding taking Mao Zedong Thought as a guiding principle and viewing the reality of China in 1927 as if it were similar to Peru in the 1980s. Nor is there a difference in terms of forming the bases of support for the Shining Path.

"The emergence and development of guerrilla zones, the importance of which lies in the fact that they are the arenas in which, through the growing strength and armed tide of guerrilla warfare, we will build our future support bases, the advanced and reestablished bastions by the military thought of Chairman Mao Zedong, bases that are the essence of the path to encircle the cities from the countryside, the very essence of People's War" (64).

But in all this literature, common to Trotskyists and the Shining Path, there is something very important that must be highlighted and taken into account because it pertains to the military thinking that guides the actions of the latter.

The document of the Revolutionary Regrouping, on page 51, proposes to follow as a major principle a classic rule by Carl von Clausewitz: "War is the continuation of politics by other means”.

In turn, Abimael Guzmán, in the Report of the First Plenary Session in December 1982, presents a document titled The Party's Military Thought and Armed Struggle: 1979-1982, and its section on "Some Issues" discusses: "We conceive of revolutionary war as a unity waged in both the countryside and the city... Taking into account concrete conditions and the political situation. We cannot wage a revolutionary war without considering this because war is the continuation of politics by other means" (65).

Are Trotskyists and Shining Path members in agreement on the fundamental principle of war, according to Clausewitz: Leninists, Maoists? This is starting to be doubtful.

This political conception of war by the great Prussian author, as outlined in his treatise On War, is what has governed and continues to govern bourgeois military thought. It is a basic rule of all military schools in the Western world, that is, of conventional capitalist warfare, not revolutionary war.

Lenin — who read, admired, and used Clausewitz's military teachings — reversed its fundamental principle. We have already seen at the beginning of this book how Lenin discovered that to make war permanent and revolutionary, it must have a different nature than that proposed by Clausewitz. In other words, for Leninists, Marxists, strategists, and militants of revolutionary war, politics is the continuation of war by other means, contrary to what Abimael Guzmán and the Trotskyists propose. Revolutionary war is the antithesis of conventional bourgeois warfare. And the principle that "war is politics carried out by other means" is also a basic rule of counterinsurgency warfare. The difference between one type of war and the other is their nature and the politics of war, which is distinct from political warfare.

If the basic conception of the nature of war that guides the Shining Path is different from the revolutionary one, it may very well be the opposite, reactionary. It is undoubtedly using all the Marxist trappings to conceal its true essence as a major low-intensity operation prepared by the intelligence services of the system to destroy the Peruvian nation.

Lenin points out how Marxists have considered Clausewitz's principle as fundamental for analyzing the nature of war, given its certainty: "It is enough to consider that the present war is the continuation of the politics of 'great powers' and of the fundamental classes within these 'great powers'..." (66).

The principle is valid, especially for determining the nature of capitalist war, and it was used by Marx and Engels. Ultimately, it reveals that it is capitalist politics that prevails in the end and development of war. The development, analysis, and use of Clausewitz's principle by Lenin lead him to surpass its conception when he says: "Every war is inextricably linked to the political regime from which it emerges. The same politics that a power, a particular class within that power, pursued over a long period before the war, is continued by that same class in a fatal and inevitable manner during the war, with only the form of action varying" (67).

It is the class politics that conditions the nature of war. Implicitly, Lenin clarifies and gives the true dimension to Clausewitz's rule, which serves to prioritize politics as the continuation of war in the Leninist conception of Revolutionary War.

In this day and age, we cannot simply repeat Clausewitz's principle about the nature and politics of capitalist war. While its axiom remains valid, it has been surpassed in the conception of revolutionary war, the class war. It has been enriched by reversing the ear and politics factors: politics is the determinant of war and defines its nature.

"Can war be explained without relating it to the prior politics of this or that state, of this or that system of states, of these or those classes?" Lenin asserts and continues by stating: "This is the cardinal question that is always forgotten... if you have not demonstrated the “connection of this war with the prior politics, you have understood nothing of this war" (68). We ask: What is the prior politics to the war of the Shining Path? What is the politics of the State, the system of States, the class or classes that translate into the "revolutionary war" of the Shining Path?

The destruction of Peru's productive forces, the Quechua peasant class, the isolation of the working class, the political destruction of the Peruvian nation-state are not the politics of a national liberation war, of exploited classes, or of mass insurrection. On the contrary, they are the politics of terrorist warfare; the politics of imperialist warfare.

Something else that cannot go unnoticed is the conception of the chosen peasant social base to promote the "revolution." From the description of how operations are conducted in the countryside to form support bases and manage contradictions, we can establish the identity of Shining Path Thought with the social theories that William P. Mangin presented at Wingspread, Wisconsin, USA, between 1969 and 1970. Similarly, it aligns with the scientific authors of the CIA, such as Dr. Abraham Korowitz, to underpin their insurrectional theses.

Similarly, they share the characterization of Peruvian society as feudal and semi-colonial and the bourgeois democratic course of the national revolution, carried out by a conglomerate of four social classes, including the national bourgeoisie, the petty bourgeoisie, and the peasantry, all under working-class leadership. The identical framework can be found in two tiny dissident groups, one from Trotskyism and the other from Moscow-style communism, both of which also emerged from the social mobilization of the 1960s but fought against it as "revisionists" or Focoists, positioning themselves as a more extreme and radical alternative, claiming to possess the sole truth of the revolutionary path.

In summary, in the structure of Shining Path Thought, we find that:

1. It originates from an intellectual minority, professionalized and technified, philosophically influenced by Kant and foreign ideas, frustrated by its lack of growth as national bourgeois intelligence, and without prospects.
2. It seeks to develop within the Quechua peasant social base with a distinct culture, significant demographic growth, and a massive displacement as an unskilled labor force, which, due to the lack of employment opportunities, ends up creating its own labor market within the framework of a chaotic urbanization process.
3. It exploits the internal class contradictions of the Andean peasant population, thanks to the knowledge acquired from counterinsurgency studies conducted by anthropologists and sociologists from foreign intelligence services, especially American, British, French, and Israeli.
4. Its most immediate precursor doctrine is pro-Chinese Trotskyism, which was encouraged in the 1960s by national and foreign police agents and intelligence services.
5. It adopts the theses of Revolutionary Violence verbatim from Marxism-Leninism.
6. It draws from the thought of José Carlos Mariátegui the characterization of Peruvian society in the 1920s, the indigenous-land issue, and Mariátegui's sympathies for George Sorel and his theories on violence.
7. From Mao Zedong, it borrows the key theses of peasant armed struggle, the theory of protracted warfare, and the construction of Support Bases to "encircle the city."

This collection of elements, mechanically taken from the national reality of Peru and universal Marxist thought, forms the ideological structure of the experimental "Senderista" politics, which, as we will see, is implemented through an irregular, insurgent, unconventional military apparatus that conducts a war with the following forms of combat:

• Two-Line Struggle
• Sabotage
• Guerrilla warfare
• Annihilation
• Psychological warfare

Marxism-Leninism and Maoism in Shining Path thought

For the Shining Path, this ideology which they call the "guiding thought," is the only true and valid interpretation of Marxism that exists in the world. It is a Marxism different from all others, as a philosophy, a method of research, or a political orientation governing societies with communist regimes. It is "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought."

For the system's Senderologists, sociologists, and anthropologists funded by American foundations or social research centers in Paris, London, or Tel Aviv, it's all the same; each interprets it in their own way as a militant form of communism. However, they don't see it as dangerous or ghostly for the right. In Peru, in the final months of 1987, the forces of the Shining Path led by Abimael Guzmán in the Andean highlands mobilized simultaneously with hundreds of young people from the urban upper classes, incited by the financial oligarchy and led by the "Parisian" writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a member of the global capitalist Pen Club. They aimed to undermine the current Peruvian democratic system, which was in the hands of a weakened and rhetorically anti-imperialist social democracy, fearful of both Vargas Llosa's "Senderismo" and Abimael Guzmán's movement.

Other Peruvian social scientists with greater seriousness have tried to view the development of Shining Path Thought as an extreme and distorted form of Marxist thought. In some cases, they have looked for explanations in Andean messianism, within the magical-religious culture of shamans and witches in historically less developed and geographically more isolated communities or in the ancestral communal customs that have been preserved in the Quechua-Aymara civilizations of South America. However, there is nothing of this sort, at least not consciously. Such interpretations are more likely to incite hatred and contempt in Shining Path writings.

Finally, some argue that the invocation of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideas by the Shining Path is, in any case, an adherence to a Marxist ideology, albeit extreme, distorted and irrational, but still within the framework of Marxist-Leninism.

In this case, it would be necessary to prove that the Shining Path is not truly Marxist and merely uses Marxism.

It is in this field that the debate about the validity of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist ideas in Shining Path thought should likely be concentrated. It should also investigate the possible objective of the Shining Path in discrediting Marxism as an ideology, a political theory, a method of social research or political praxis. Using Marxist ideas as the main guiding principles of a military irregular apparatus dedicated to the destruction of a potentially subversive society, such as the Quechua, the Peruvian, or the Latin American society; to annihilating nationalist states; and to the "Salvadorization" of large territorial areas in the Latin American continent to guarantee the recycling of the capitalist system in the region.

If that were the case, it would need to be demonstrated that the Shining Path is not Marxist and that it merely exploits Marxism. In this case, the Shining Path cannot and should not be approached as a communist position or one that is ideologically Marxist, Leninist, Maoist, or Mariáteguist. It should be seen as a conspiracy of thought, whose political praxis is terrorism. The goal is to discover the elements that make up the systematization of violence in Peru, which is causing its social disintegration and destruction as a nation. For this, honesty in scientific research must prevail, along with rationality in reasoning in order to find the true identity of the enemy.

Regarding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism

The Shining Path states, "We assume the position of the international proletariat, its status as the last class in history, with its own distinct and antagonistic class interests compared to other classes and with a goal that only the proletariat, leading the world's peoples, can achieve: communism, the unique and irreplaceable new society, without exploiters or exploited, oppressors or oppressed, classes, state, parties, democracy, weapons, wars... According to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism applied to the specific conditions of Peruvian society, revolutionary violence, or violent revolution, the only way to seize power and transform the world, takes the form of a people's war, specifically, a peasant war led by the Communist Party of Peru on behalf of the proletariat..."(69) All of the Shining Path’s documents are filled with these generalities. They do not present a coherent exposition of Marxist thought. In the case of a political movement that also calls itself a party, merely adopting or adhering to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is not enough. While such an attitude may be acceptable at an individual level, personally adopting or adhering to any doctrine, it is not the same when it comes to a party organization. A party presupposes the need for a theoretical elaboration of the social reality that is the subject of its political praxis.

In the case of the Shining Path, there is no Marxist theory, and as it has been said, "...the lack of theory negates the right to exist for the revolutionary tendency and inevitably condemns it to political bankruptcy." (70) The absence of a theory by the Shining Path regarding the national reality of Peru or Latin America contributes to explaining why its conduct differs from what it claims to be as the representative of the proletariat as the ruling class and, ultimately, reduces itself to violent terrorism, a practice condemned and rejected by Leninism: "To exhort terrorism, to encourage individuals and groups who do not know each other to organize attacks against ministers at times when the revolutionaries lack the forces and means necessary to lead the masses who are already rising, not only interrupts work among the masses but also directly disorganizes it." (71) Lenin, who did not in the least deny "violence and terrorism," insisted that they should "foresee and ensure the direct participation of the masses." In other words, he proposed a class violence conception and did not reconcile with the type of terrorism practiced by the Shining Path. "The revolutionary socialists do not naively realize that their inclination toward terrorism is closely linked to the fact that from the very beginning, and still today, they are outside the workers' movement, without even trying to become the party of a revolutionary class that is waging its class struggle." (72)

There isn't much to discuss about Marxism with the Shining Path. From their documents, the Conclusions of the Fifth National Conference (where Peruvian society was characterized as "semi-feudal and semi-colonial, dependent on imperialism") are what could explain the inclusion of the thoughts of José Carlos Mariátegui and Mao Zedong. Similarly, their ideas about Peruvian society and Maoist Protracted People's War, transposed into Shining Path literature, have already been seriously analyzed by Manuel Jesús Granados Aponte in his thesis La Conducta Política: un caso particular, sobre Sendero Luminoso (Political Behavior: A Particular Case on the Shining Path).

It's a shame that Granados hasn't been able to widely disseminate his thesis written and defended in 1981. However, it is also condemnable that the Senderologists have used it partially, only disseminating adjectival aspects due to their interest in promoting the Shining Path in their news reports and comments. In every circumstance, they have tried to diminish the importance of Granados Aponte's work. Over time, from 1981 to the present, his work has become more valuable, not only for its logical and theoretical validity but also because it contributes to the discovery and unraveling of the ideological disguise of the Shining Path and, furthermore, of the supposed Senderologists and exegeses on the payroll of foreign intelligence entities. These individuals are nothing more than those who hide the true characteristics of the organization of violent irregulars that emerged in Peru in the shadow of reactionary currents opposed to any change or transformation of outdated social structures.

Characterization of Peruvian society

The characterization of Peruvian society as semi-feudal and semi-colonial is what defines the general line of action of the Shining Path. It is considered to integrate the thoughts of Mariátegui and Mao Zedong. Both made this characterization a long time ago, with the latter naturally referring to China and emphasizing the fundamental role of the peasantry as the most important mobilizable popular force in such a society.

But let's allow Granados to counter the Shining Path’s thesis: "...characterizing a society is a central and basic point for any political organization, especially if it claims to lead the popular masses. Taking the characterization of Peruvian society as semi-feudal and semi-colonial made by the Shining Path, we notice that the central points for such characterization are: a) The predominance of the agrarian sector in the Peruvian economy... b) The persistence of serfdom, which Mariátegui pointed out as something fundamental in the subsistence of feudalism... c) The "modern" economy (industry and commerce) has a smaller weight than the rural economy...

"We have noticed," Granados continues, "that 'the Shining Path' maintains the semi-feudal category based mainly on Mao Tse Tung's studies and his analysis of the reality in China in the 1930s. They relate it to Mariátegui's ideas about the economic reality of the 1920s. Based on this, they argue that the Peruvian reality has not changed qualitatively (through a revolution, as they put it), and therefore, the quantitative changes that have occurred until the 1970s are not decisive. This denies a fundamental thesis of Mao...Mao tells us that in every quantitative change, there is a small part of qualitative change...In the 50 years since Mao's and Mariátegui's analyses, undoubtedly new forms of relationships within the Peruvian economy have emerged, requiring a new and accurate characterization of Peruvian society" (73).

To further refute the Shining Path's characterization, Granados quotes Mariátegui when he states: "Feudalism or semi-feudalism survives in the structure of our agrarian economy...The same would not happen if industry, commerce, and the city were stronger than agriculture." In order to demonstrate that from the 1920s and 1930s to the present day, there have been qualitative changes in Peruvian society, he uses the analyses of Carlos Tapia published in his pamphlet La Economía Peruana ¿sigue siendo semifeudal? (Is the Peruvian Economy Still Semi-Feudal?) (Ayacucho, 1979), in which the following variables are established:

1. Urban-rural population ratio: The urban population has grown more rapidly than the rural population over the last 30 years. By 1972, 60% of the total population resided in urban areas.
2. Agricultural population and its real importance in the total population of the country: "Regardless of the source of statistical information, the agricultural labor force currently represents no more than 2/5 of the total labor force in the country. It approximately represents half of what it represented in Mariátegui's time."
3. Agricultural production and its real importance in the country's production: Based on GDP; in the last 25 years from 1950 to the present, the importance of GDP as the volume of agricultural production has decreased by approximately half. This is in contrast to a considerable increase in GDP in the industrial sector, especially manufacturing.
4. The nature of Agrarian Reform: By the end of 1977, approximately 11,590 landowners with a total of 7,400,000 hectares had been expropriated out of a total of 15,000 landowners in the country in 1972. Undoubtedly, this did not benefit the landowning sector of Peruvian society. The new forms of associative ownership that have emerged in the countryside prioritize wage labor over pre-capitalist relations of production. Latifundia have been transformed into "associative enterprises." Based on the analysis of the categories used, Carlos Tapia concludes that the country's economy is no longer primarily agricultural and that, therefore, the semi-feudal character it maintained during a certain historical period has evolved into new forms where capitalist predominance defines the overall character of the Peruvian economy. This new situation is more notable when considering that by 1987, the benchmark figures had evolved significantly.

"Getting an accurate characterization of Peruvian society is a fundamental issue because it will determine the character of the revolution. Being wrong in the characterization also means being wrong in the rest of the political theses" (74).

But does the Shining Path also err in the characterization of the Protracted People's War taken from Maoism? Is it possible that the strategists and analysts of the Shining Path, the formulators of their theories, can be so mistaken in their conceptions?

The leadership of the Shining Path does not allow for errors in conception and principles that would presuppose a lack of historical knowledge and ignorance, which would be inconceivable at that level. We would then be faced with an intentional distortion of reality's data or its interpretation and a theoretical-political jumble created to justify the Shining Path's violence as if it were revolutionary.

However, Guzmán Reinoso and the Shining Path transplanted not only the semi-feudal reality of China in the 1930s to Peru but also Mao's scheme of Revolutionary Warfare, albeit in a partial and confusing form. Mao's three stages of war — guerrilla warfare, mobile warfare, and positional warfare — are transposed as a general strategy of defensive warfare, strategic equilibrium warfare, and offensive strategic warfare. What is strange and significant from the perspective of counterinsurgency warfare is that these assessments are used to measure the stages of revolutionary warfare.

The military thought of the Shining Path states that "the military line consists of the laws that govern people's war for the conquest of power and its defense. It consists of three elements: 1) People's War, which in our case is specified as a unitary people's war, with the countryside as the principal theater and the city as complementary; 2) Construction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, which in our case is specified as the People's Guerrilla Army, with the particularity of incorporating the militia to advance towards arming the masses, and: 3) Tactical Strategy, which is manifested through campaigns of encirclement and annihilation and counter-campaigns of encirclement and annihilation, which in our case are specified by applying political and military plans that have specific political and military strategies embodied in campaigns with specific content" (75).

While this military approach appears to be operationally concrete, it does not inherently align with a political strategy for taking power according to Maoist principles. The Shining Path attempts to give political meaning to its concrete military approach with the following explanation:

President Mao established the path of encircling the cities from the countryside, with the heart of it being the Bases of Support. This took into account that powerful imperialists and their reactionary Chinese allies were entrenched in the main cities. If the revolution refused to capitulate and wanted to persevere in the fight, it had to turn the backward rural areas into great military, political, economic, and cultural bastions of the revolution, from where to fight against the fierce enemy attacking rural areas by using the cities and gradually lead the revolution to complete victory through a prolonged war. Based on this Maoist thesis, President Gonzalo has established the pursuit of a unitary people's war, where the countryside is the principal theater of armed actions because we have an immense majority of peasant masses, and that's where the Bases of Support must be established. As President Mao said, 'The prolonged revolutionary struggle maintained in such revolutionary bases is fundamentally a guerrilla war of peasants led by the Communist Party of China. Therefore, it is wrong to ignore the need to use rural areas as revolutionary bases of support, neglect the arduous work with peasants, and disregard guerrilla warfare.' Additionally, President Gonzalo specifies that actions should also be carried out in the cities as complementary, as demonstrated by international experience, including ours. The lessons learned from what happened to the guerrilla in the Philippines, which retreated to the countryside and left the cities alone, especially the capital, causing the isolation of the guerrillas... Also, considering the peculiarities of cities in Latin America, where the percentage of the proletariat and poor masses is high, the masses are ready to develop complementary actions to those in the countryside. However, in cities, the new Power is not built, which would be a Base of Support, but rather a Front manifested in the People's Defense Revolutionary Movement with Centers of Resistance that wage people's war and prepare for the future insurrection that will occur when the rural forces assault the cities in combination with the uprising from within (76).

In this lengthy passage from the Shining Path, it can be observed how they manipulate Mao's thesis of "encircling the cities." The final contribution of Guzmán's thinking may appear to be the impassioned discourse of an enlightened strategist who can strategically and mechanically utilize urban mass organizations for warfare and an apocalyptic national uprising. However, it is not so, and Guzmán's thought, as explained in this manner, seems to be a calculated intention to involve urban popular grassroots organizations in terrorist actions of dirty warfare. This would first expose them to government repression and then lead to their destruction. Marxists, by doctrine, know that this is not the insurrectional methodology of Leninism, let alone a Maoist orientation. Let's read what Mao Zedong says on this matter:

The central task and the highest form of any revolution is the seizure of power through armed struggle, in other words, solving the problem through war. This revolutionary Marxist-Leninist principle has universal validity, both in China and in other countries.

However, adhering to the same principle, the party of the proletariat applies it differently according to different conditions. In capitalist countries, when they are not fascist and not at war, the conditions are as follows: internally, there is no feudal system, but rather bourgeois democracy; externally, these countries do not suffer from national oppression, but they themselves oppress other nations. Due to these characteristics, the area of the proletarian party in capitalist countries consists of educating workers, accumulating strength through a long period of legal struggle, and preparing for the final overthrow of capitalism. There, the issue is to sustain a long legal struggle, use Parliament as a platform, resort to political and economic strikes, organize unions, and educate the workers. The forms of organization are legal, and the forms of struggle are non-violent (non-military). Regarding the issue of war, the Communist Parties in capitalist countries oppose imperialist wars... The war they intend to wage is nothing other than the civil war for which they are preparing. But as long as the bourgeoisie is not truly rendered powerless, as long as the majority of the proletariat is not determined to take up armed uprising and civil war, and as long as the peasant masses are not willing to voluntarily assist the proletariat, such an uprising and war should not be carried out. Furthermore, when the time comes to initiate such actions, the first step will be to occupy the cities and then advance into the countryside, not the other way around. All of this is how the Communist Parties have acted in capitalist countries, and the October Revolution in Russia has confirmed its correctness.

In China, the situation is different. The peculiarity of China is that it is not an independent and democratic country but semi-colonial and semi-feudal, where there is no democracy but rather feudal oppression, and in its external relations, it does not enjoy national independence but suffers from imperialist oppression. Therefore, we do not have a parliament to use, nor a legal right to organize workers for strikes. Here, the fundamental task of the Communist Party is not to go through a long period of legal struggle before embarking on an uprising and war, or to first take control of the cities and then occupy the countryside, but the opposite... In China, the main form of struggle is war, and the primary form of organization is the army. All other forms, such as popular mass organizations and struggles, are also important and absolutely indispensable and should by no means be neglected, but their objective is to serve the war (77).

The inconsistency of Shining Path Thought

Neither Marxism-Leninism nor Maoism form a revolutionary theory that the Shining Path can legitimately claim as its own, not even from the thinking of Mariátegui. In Marxist-Leninist thought, the concept of class violence allows for various levels of confrontation between the main social classes (bourgeoisie-proletariat) or a class alliance to oppose imperialist domination. Depending on the balance of power at a given historical moment, revolutionary violence can take different forms, up to armed insurgency, led by a class and involving the direct participation of the population.

However, terrorism and sabotage are not part of this class violence in Marxism-Leninism. If they have occurred in the history of revolutionary movements, they have been secondary and usually aimed against foreign invaders. Systematic destruction of means of production is also not conceivable within Marxist thought.

The violence that the Shining Path claims to derive from Marxism-Leninism is primarily directed towards the Peruvian peasantry, a historically subjugated class. This class is experiencing rapid changes and is rich in new social contradictions. According to classifications by sociologists and anthropologists from the CIA and other foreign intelligence services, the peasantry is a social base that the Shining Path considers useful for their so-called revolutionary violence. They aim to destroy the social and economic relations of the peasant class, applying selective terrorism and assassinating local leaders and authorities.

Unlike other groups like Jewish Zionists or Shia fanatics, the Shining Path doesn't focus its terrorism on big cities. The reason for this is never provided by its adherents. Their talk of belonging to a global revolution is more of a motivating phrase for naive militants. It is a calculated theoretical deception by those who are not interested in destroying imperialism but rather aim to undermine indigenous communities and the Peruvian military, as well as any government whose policies don't align with their plans for domination in the Andean countries.

The characterization of Peruvian society is neither accurate nor is the application of Maoism to Peruvian reality precise. This is a crude distortion of Mao's ideas, which becomes evident through a straightforward reading of his writings and a proper understanding of the Chinese revolutionary experience. It also doesn't require much debate to prove that the Peruvian society analyzed by Mariátegui in the late 1920s is not the same as Peru in 1988. Although still underdeveloped and economically and technologically dependent, Peru is no longer semi-feudal due to ongoing changes in rural economic relationships and land reform.

What the Shining Path presents as Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology, or Gonzalo Thought, is not a scientific social, economic, and political theory. It's a complicated patchwork of Marxist texts designed to make readers believe they are embracing Marxism and to convince its opponents that they are preventing the triumph of Marxism and defeating "communist terrorists." This political ubiquity is achieved by Gonzalo Thought isolating itself as a "new universal conception" of social science theory, thereby rejecting all left, right, and center political tendencies.

Manuel Jesús Granados Aponte was the first to uncover the flawed thinking within the Shining Path. In his thesis, Political Behavior: A Specific Case, he discussed the group's dogmatic nature. Granados identifies several key points:

1. The Shining Path produces articles and pamphlets that are long-winded and devoid of substantive content relevant to the Peruvian context. These articles reflect minimal research efforts on the part of the Shining Path to genuinely interpret Peruvian circumstances. Any research that does exist is predominantly focused on the area of Huamanga within the academic sector.
2. Furthermore, it portrays itself in all its documents and leaflets as the holders of the "Correct Line," a stance that fosters a sense of self-importance. They consider themselves superior and, as a result, use virulent language intended to intimidate other political groups, particularly those on the left, but also against indigenous peoples.
3. They repetitively use so-called revolutionary concepts and terms. Though orderly presented, these terms reveal their inability to develop these ideas further. The language they employ remains largely disconnected from the material conditions and the lived experience of the Peruvian populace.
4. They link the ideological frameworks of Mao Zedong and José Carlos Mariátegui; while both may apply Marxism-Leninism to their respective countries, the Shining Path makes this connection through a chaotic and parallel arrangement of writings. They ignore the need to consider the context and specific circumstances of the original texts.(78)

Granados bravely and honestly states what few or none in Peru do: that the Shining Path lacks a Marxist-Leninist theory.

Granados' research on the political behavior of the Shining Path is limited and doesn't fully explain its causes. However, he suggests some when he observes its effects: "Spreading their political agenda only brings disaster to the people; these are the results of paranoia. It has reached a demented state" (79). These grim statements about the Shining Path's political actions don't fit into an analysis focused on revolutionary theory and behavior.

Instead, they make sense when considering paranoid and disastrous social behaviors rooted in ideological deviations. These are scientifically programmed to result in negative and self-destructive behaviors. All of this is achievable in the Psychological Warfare of Low-Intensity Operations conducted against potentially subversive countries by intelligence services involved in counterinsurgent Political Warfare doctrine. This includes American, British, French, Israeli, Taiwanese, South African intelligence services, and others who are their dependents, operating in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Chapter 2: the Shining Path as an apparatus of irregular warfare

In September 1987, two political organizations of the Peruvian Marxist left decided to unite: the Democratic Popular Union (DPU, Unión Democrático Popular) led by Cecilia Oviedo and "People on the Move" (Pueblo en Marcha) led by Walter Palacios Vinces. Both organizations are not affiliated with the "United Left" (Izquerdia Unida), a Marxist electoral front. They are likely the most ideologically radical and have come closest to grassroots popular organizations.

For some time, they have proposed and promoted the centralization of these into a National Popular Assembly. After stubborn resistance, other leftist groups had to support this effort in hopes of controlling and politically benefiting from it.

From the joint congress of the PDU and People on the Move, a single organization emerged, the "Popular Democratic Union" (Unión Democrática Popular). It is the only leftist group in Peru that has distanced itself from the Shining Path, clarifying its dual nature.

The rest of the Peruvian left rejects the Shining Path, as its violence disrupts the social democratic atmosphere they enjoy. However, they prefer to criticize the military fighting the Shining Path with vague slogans like "no to dirty war" and "no to the militarization of the country," without explaining their meaning or relevance to the reactionary war carried out by the Shining Path in the Peruvian Andes, which has resulted in over 10,000 Indigenous and mestizo deaths from 1980 to October 1987.

The DPU, in its official unification congress statement, acknowledges the peasant mobilization achieved by the Shining Path but disagrees with its military structure. Their analysis of the Shining Path led them to distinguish between a political mechanism for peasant mobilization and a military apparatus of destruction. The DPU's skepticism also confirms the lack of coherence in the Shining Path between its claimed political objectives and its militant actions against the Peruvian nation.

This statement is significant because it exposes the essentially military nature of the Shining Path organization. It's worth noting that the Shining Path doesn't deny this; on the contrary, it proudly emphasized its military nature. Only its supposed scholars and other supporters argue that it is a Maoist communist political party with ideology and party organization. Some even propose dialogue to understand its combat operations. Such views may be well-intentioned but ultimately seem to be the result of uncritical acceptance of Shining Path propaganda.

The fact that the Shining Path doesn't have a revolutionary theory and uses communist texts to make incorrect descriptions of Peru's national reality doesn't mean it's not a political phenomenon. It is, but in the sense that it is a group applying an irregular warfare model. It represents a Peruvian variant of modern counterinsurgency theories and is a military organization with goals, strategies, and tactics aimed more at achieving short-term objectives rather than long-term ones.

The guerrilla model

To better understand the nature of the Shining Path, we've had to consider the broader context of global confrontation, within which Peru's interests, as well as those of Andean and Latin American countries, are at play. It's also useful to delve into the operational models stemming from existing confrontation doctrines.

An explanatory approach to the Shining Path phenomenon can benefit from Richard Dyson's The Guerrilla Game, as discussed in Issue 4 of The Yale Literary Magazine. Dyson, focused on studying the models of insurgency and counterinsurgency, states: "As much as we'd like to, Americans can no longer ignore the unpleasant fact that large parts of the globe have been absorbed by the Soviet empire in recent years. What's even more unsettling is the evidence that this process is gaining momentum, that significant territorial gains by the Soviets are yet to come, and that if this process isn't halted, the remaining islands and peninsulas of Western civilization will ultimately become indefensible."

He continues: "This process of imperial expansion has unfolded with methodical regularity, a dark, repetitive set of Soviet moves and American responses that has all the characteristics of psychological games described by Eric Berne in 'Games People Play.' Upon closer examination, we can begin to see it for what it is: a game with a predetermined outcome, engineered by the Soviets and replayed over and over. It's the Guerrilla Game. Our civilization's survival depends on our ability to recognize and stop it."

Dyson emphasizes that nations, like individuals, tend to act according to repetitive patterns. Some of these behavioral models are what we call "national character"—like Italians who vote their government out every few months, or the Japanese who strive to dominate global markets. There are also other models of growth and achievement, like the Roman Empire before and during Julius Caesar's reign, or others of decline and self-destruction, slow like the late Roman Empire or fast like Hitler's Germany.

"Again, much like individuals—and here the analogy is particularly sharp—nations can voluntarily break a repetitive behavioral model only if they can perceive that model and accept the idea that it can be changed, and is not part of an unchangeable order. Often, this leap in perception is accompanied by a significant traumatic event.

One of the strengths of democracies with freedom of thought is their ability to self-examine, to perceive problems that could become overwhelming, and to arrive at solutions through debate. But this flexibility has a downside: the potential to generate internal conflict when trying to pinpoint the real problem or the best solution. If not constructively resolved, such conflict can lead to repetitive, self-destructive behavior—similar to neurosis in an individual.

These national conflicts rarely align with Marxist class theory; more often, they appear to be conflicts of values reflecting differences between people from rural or urban areas, individualists or collectivists, and so on. Moreover, these persistent internal conflicts tend to avoid democratic resolution through normal democratic means, the most basic and important of which is voting. Instead, they give rise to endless 'yes, but' and 'no, but' dialogues, much like those that occur among individuals.

Nations or individuals suffering from unresolved conflicts are vulnerable to manipulation, and this is where the idea of the game comes in. Not all psychological games involve conscious manipulation, but the most malicious and damaging ones do: the manipulator spots the weakness, sets up the game to exploit it, controls the game, benefits from the rules, and reaps the desired payoff or 'retribution.' The manipulator is not outside the game but is as much a part of it as the unsuspecting victim. One of Berne's most fascinating insights is that the victim, at least in repetitively played games, also receives retribution. In their case, however, the retribution tends to be 'unconscious' and doesn’t appear, on the surface, to be a reward. It is, of course, why the victim keeps coming back for more of the same.

We currently find ourselves deeply engrossed in such a game... (80)

Dyson illustrates how the application of the game in the conflicts of Korea and Vietnam had different outcomes. Both were peninsular territories, geographically unified but politically divided in halves, with populations of the same race, creed, and customs. In both instances, there were tactical errors made by the powers involved: resorting to open invasion, where the enemies were their own compatriots—North against South and vice versa. In the first case, the presumed victim state was South Korea; in the second, it was North Vietnam. South Korea was able to strengthen its cohesion and survive as a nation separate from North Korea; Vietnam managed to strengthen its national cohesion and survive as a unified nation. The advantages of these situations fell to the powers manipulating the conflict. The Korean conflict became a regular war, while Vietnam's Guerrilla War escalated to become a large-scale war. But let's let Dyson show us the Rules of the Guerrilla Game:

As in every game, and especially in psychological games, the players and their roles are carefully assigned. The first two players are the main antagonists.

The Manipulator... has invented the game, controls the timing of major events, and receives substantial payoff. The Unwitting... cooperates with the Manipulator's rules, even in the timing, and receives only a 'neurotic' payoff. The Victim State is the prize of the game, the Manipulator’s retribution. The Logistic State. One or more. These are the Manipulator’s satellites located nearby and preferably adjacent to the Victim State.

The Revolutionary Front. These forces nominally come from the Victim State. They are complemented by fighters and personnel from the Logistic State, but a sufficient number come from the Victim State to maintain the illusion of being a 'national front.' Additionally, there are minor players. Perhaps the most notable of these is usually adjacent to the Victim State; the antagonists agree that it will be a bonus payoff when the Manipulator acquires the Victim State. Laos and Cambodia played this role in the Vietnam Game; Honduras might assume it in the current El Salvador Game. Other minor players include the Chorus. They usually speak in unison and thereby reinforce the game's rules by chastising the Unwitting if he fails to strictly observe them.

The main players never refer to the game as a 'war,' despite the fact that it has all the characteristics of a war, including actual combat with military and civilian casualties. Preferably, the term 'war' is avoided by all parties. But where it does appear, players are ready to explain that the 'war' is limited to the Victim State and is actually a 'civil war.'

In truth, the most important rule of all—which makes the game work for everyone—is that all action, all suffering, and destruction take place on the turf of the Victim State. Whenever the Unwitting and the Victim State try to carry out any activity that interferes in the Logistic States, they are immediately condemned as aggressors by the Chorus.

The Manipulator opens the game by moving, either directly or through satellites, weapons, supplies, and personnel to the Logistic State and from there to the Revolutionary Front. The Front uses these resources to carry out escalating terrorism and guerrilla warfare against the Victim State and its military and police forces. The Manipulator’s global propaganda machine describes the 'front' as 'freedom fighters' rebelling against an oppressive tyranny. The Victim State's efforts to save itself are condemned as violations of 'human rights'; the Front is hailed as heroic and humanitarian; and the Unwitting is warned not to intervene.

Here the Game takes one of two forms: The Short Game or the Long Game. "If the Unwitting does not help the Victim State, in most cases the Game is Short... If the Unwitting decides to try to help the Victim State, the Game is Long... "During the growth period, the Guerrilla forces within the Victim State lead to the breakdown of civil order, and consequently an increase in violence on both sides. This gives rise to the argument that the Victim State is unworthy of help and lays the foundation for an eventual withdrawal." (81)

For Dyson, the Guerrilla Game is a mechanism of political warfare developed by the USSR, based on experiences from the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and currently being applied in Central America.

Given this dominant mechanism, which operates with various variants around the globe, the analyst studies the modification of the model and the possibility of its variation. They aim to come up with new rules that would allow the United States to reverse the Game in any area of Latin America where its security, interests, and influence are at stake.

In this context, it's possible that the United States is applying this model in Peru. Various factors like the rising Quechua-origin population, lack of social services, rapid urbanization, limited industrial development, interests of major powers in Peru's national resources and their projection into the Pacific Ocean basin, Soviet military assistance to the country, ambitions of neighboring countries, growth of drug trafficking, extreme violence from the Shining Path, and the emergence of a well-equipped TARM guerrilla when Shining Path exhausts its projections, all contribute to this hypothesis.

As a serious working hypothesis, it's worth identifying the players of the Game:

• Manipulating State: United States
• Unwitting State: Soviet Union (Cuba-Nicaragua)
• Victim State: Peru
• Logistic State: Great Britain, China, Israel, Chile, Ecuador
• Revolutionary Front: Shining Path plus TARM plus Drug Trafficking Groups
• Additional Prize State: Bolivia, Colombia
• Chorus States: OAS countries

The development of the Model is clearly a Long Game, and would be as follows:

1. The Manipulating State (U.S.) moves arms, ammunition, personnel, and provides military assistance to the Logistics State (Ecuador, Chile, China, Great Britain, Israel).
2. The Manipulating State, using the Revolutionary Front (SP + TARM + Drug Trafficking) and terror, aims to change the behavior and national character of the Victim State to claim it as a prize.
3. The Unwitting State (USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua) supports the Victim State (Peru).
4. The Unwitting State (USSR) supplies military equipment and training to the armed forces of the Victim State (Peru).
5. The Unwitting State (USSR) offers to engage its own forces on a limited scale.
6. This situation of intervention by the Unwitting State (USSR, Cuba, Nicaragua) in the Victim State (Peru) is denounced by the Manipulating State (U.S.), warning against an "endless war."
7. The Revolutionary Front (SP, TARM, Drug Trafficking) attacks the Victim State internally with guerrilla warfare and terrorism, to change the national character of the Victim State (Peru).
8. The Logistics State (Great Britain, Israel, China, Chile, Ecuador) warns of Soviet danger in the Victim State (Peru), denouncing the presence of military bases, advisers, political and economic interference, and the promotion of armed subversion in the country.
9. The Additional Prize State (Bolivia, Colombia) will either be a prize for the Manipulating State (U.S.) or the Logistics State (Chile) and will also denounce the Victim State (Peru) as a subversive danger on the continent.
10. The Revolutionary Front (SP, TARM, Drug Trafficking) will cause, instigate, and carry out the killing of thousands to millions of inhabitants in the Victim State (Peru).
11. The Unwitting State (USSR, Cuba) enters the escalation with casualties on its side.
12. The Manipulator State (U.S.) through campaigns, forces the withdrawal of advisors from the Unwitting State (USSR) and also cuts off technical and military assistance to the Victim State (Peru).
13. The Manipulator State (U.S.) may intervene in the Victim State (Peru) to pacify the region.
14. The Revolutionary Front (SP, TARM, Drug Trafficking) will eventually sign a peace agreement with the Unwitting State (Peru), or it will disappear, like the Khmer Rouge or the Montoneros.
15. The Chorus State (OAS) will approve all peace-making measures on the Victim State (Peru) and condemn any extracontinental interference from the Unwitting State (USSR).
16. The Manipulator State (U.S.) will capture the Victim State (Peru), converting it into a satellite and a potential Logistics State for a new Game.
17. Everyone will feel gratified, rewarded, and compensated at the end of the violent game in the Victim State: military equipment will have been destroyed, there will be several million fewer indigenous people and unemployed, and the national character will have new traumatic values originating from the historic violence experienced by the Victim State.

This outlook could have other variants if it relates to other Guerrilla Games in the region or if combined with other geopolitical variables and power dynamics of major nations.

Is this imagination? Fiction? Invention? None of that. We must conclude that there are many real facts that don't allow us to dismiss the existence of these political warfare mechanisms. If one carefully and scientifically compares the game variables with actual events and developments in Peru, it becomes clear they fit the moves of the game. This can't be considered mere coincidence but rather veiled mechanisms of insurgency and counterinsurgency operating at higher strategic levels. Intelligence here serves to subtly manipulate perceptions and impose will, making the enemy destroy itself in the bloodiest way possible while believing they are being saved.

Is Peru not in flames? Aren't Peruvians killing each other? Isn't Peru caught in a whirlwind of campaigns and counter-campaigns? The Shining Path terrorists wreak havoc and kill; paramilitary forces compete with them; the military employs counter-revolutionary Warfare with their 1945 Manuals; Shining Path propagandists complete their propaganda maneuvers for the first Congress of the Shining Path; in the TARM they disguise themselves as Cubans or Nicaraguans in drug trafficking zones to wage guerrilla warfare; the radicalized right announces the fall of the government in mass chants imported from Pinochet's Chile. Also, there has been someone who managed to get the entire official Peruvian community to "hold a minute of silence for peace" on a predetermined day and time to soothe the conscience of a lost ruling class amid irregular warfare.

Organization

Like the Angka of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, it's said that the organization of the Shining Path is invisible but felt; it acts and has grown. However, this is not entirely true; their actions have outlined their shape, providing enough evidence for an increasingly complete understanding of the Shining Path’s organization.

In a paper, James Anderson, an advisor at Control & Risk and a member of the Institute for Terrorism Studies in London, notes: "The growth of the Shining Path becomes more problematic when considering some of its main features: its unique ideology, extreme secrecy, lack of external support or sympathy, sectarianism and xenophobia, extreme cruelty, and its attraction and magnetism as a response to the age-old problem of the peasantry."(82)

Although not necessarily intended by Anderson, in one way or another, the "main features" he attributes to the Shining Path correspond doctrinally to each of the six wars or types of war that comprise Political Warfare:

1. Ideological War - "Unique Ideology"
2. Strategic War - "Extreme Secrecy"
3. Organizational War - "Lack of External Support or Sympathy"
4. Psychological War - "Sectarianism and Xenophobia"
5. Intelligence War - "Extreme Cruelty"
6. Mass War - "Magnetism as a Response"

Each of the features is part of the texture of the Shining Path and results from its actions in different areas of unconventional warfare. These features are also manifestations of the internal contradictions within its structure and its interaction with the concrete reality. They form the discernible profile of the organization, allowing Anderson to conclude that the Shining Path is "an essentially Peruvian, more precisely Andean, phenomenon." Its "ideological purity, not to mention its bloodthirsty nature, has placed it at the farthest and most isolated end of the political left. It is almost certain to remain there, completely on the margins of everything else... if it threatens and continues to threaten the existence of the Peruvian State. What it does seriously threaten is the continuation of a genuinely democratic government in Peru... it should be said that if it succeeds in destroying the democratic regime, the Shining Path will only be part of the causes of that destruction." (83)

The Shining Path is merely the "tip of the iceberg," a variable phenomenon between the stability of the State and the destabilization of the government. For Peruvians, it seems to be more. It's an organization fueling an escalating destruction of their especially Andean, Quechua nationality. Regardless of this last point, we have cited Anderson because he views the Shining Path from an objective angle, different from that of the Senderologists in Peru.

The Shining Path organization stands out as a machine designed to plan and execute irregular warfare operations, and nothing more. All its ideology, strategy, and organic structure are geared toward that. So, it's important to make some clarifications concerning what others understand as the organization of the Shining Path.

Firstly, one cannot simply accept as universally true the Shining Path's supposed organizational aspirations: A nascent new democratic republic with its support bases, an ongoing class front, and a people's guerrilla army fighting.

Secondly, one can't strictly adhere to the research and conclusions of Senderologists and eulogists of the Shining Path, as doing so could lead to misunderstandings. Many of these social researchers, both from Peru and other countries, have become a sort of mimetic amplifier for the group, acting as imaginative propagandists. Their work has consequently helped shape the Shining Path mythos.

These researchers have outlined a social base, consisting of popular committees and support bases that run along the Peruvian highlands, from the Ecuadorian border in the north to the Bolivian border in the south. They also claim that the Shining Path is completing a significant organizational phase with its First National Congress set for early 1988. This Congress is expected to address five major aspects: 1) The International Line; 2) The Democratic Revolution; 3) Military Thought; 4) Line of Construction of the Three Instruments; and 5) Mass Line. (84)

Such views, aimed at promoting the organization both organically and politically for export, should not mislead us. The central leadership does not admit congresses or plenaries; thus, the opinions of the Shining Path apologists should not be taken as authoritative, especially knowing they form part of the group's psychological dimension aimed at confusing the enemy.

The Shining Path is focusing its organizational efforts on popular committees, encountering many limitations due to the simultaneous levels within a single committee, which comprises "The organizing committee of the popular committee, the reorganizing committee, the parallel popular committee, the clandestine popular committee, and the open popular committee." Their primary effort is in creating not the party, but the "People's Guerrilla Army with its three parts: Main Force, Local Force, Base Force." (85) These elements, motivated by the myth of "Gonzalo Thought," provide the Shining Path with the operational capacity for irregular combat.

James Anderson, in the section of his work dealing with Structure and Personnel, objectively notes that the Shining Path operates through a closed cell structure. A Shining Path cell usually has between 5 and 9 members and typically does not operate in its native region.

Each cell is unaware of the orders given to other cells, and even the identities of other members within their own cell. Only one member of the cell has vertical communication with the leadership. Each cell has a leader (responsable político), two explosives experts, a physical training instructor, and a political ideologue. Within this cell structure, Shining Path personnel are divided into five distinct roles:

1. Pre-militants
2. Militants
3. Military Personnel
4. Organizers
5. Leaders

The activities of pre-militants, militants, and military personnel, operating separately in their respective cells, are coordinated by leaders of sub-zones or sectors. For example, Lima is divided into five sub-zones: north, south, east, west, and central. These are overseen by zonal directors who in turn report to a regional committee. All planning and communications between zones are handled by a Coordination Committee. This committee and the Regional Committees are controlled by the Political Bureau, which sets the group's norms.

Like all guerrilla groups, the cells have a dual command structure: military and political. The military is subordinate to the political at all times, except during the execution of an armed action. Operational members are given their weapons and explosives shortly before an action starts, and these are returned afterward at predetermined locations.

It's impossible to determine the exact number of Shining Path members. They blend into society and are recruited from various groups: peasants, workers, miners, students, street vendors, domestic workers, and industrial laborers.

The extreme youth of many Shining Path militants, some as young as 14 or 15 in rural areas, represents a significant and concerning future potential. (86)

Application of political warfare

The goal of political operations is to gain public support and destroy the enemy in all social dimensions. The Shining Path generally follows some rules in applying this, such as allocating 30% of effort to military matters and 70% to political issues. On a tactical level, the effort against the enemy should also be 30%, with 70% focused on the rear guard.

Political warfare is carried out in a unified manner across six divisions: ideology, strategy, organization, intelligence, psychology, and mass mobilization. According to military operations, there's both a strategic and a tactical use of political warfare in each of these areas.

The proper application of political warfare aims to mobilize large masses with a few irregular forces and a single direction, strengthened by strong ideological ties. There's no democratic centralism or traditional party functions.

These general and specific conditions of the application of political warfare can be clearly located and identified in the Shining Path.

Ideological warfare

In this type of warfare, the aim is to solidify a central ideological system that serves as the "spiritual armament" capable of confronting and destroying the ideologies of the adversary. Shining Path has developed a system based on the Guiding Thought, reached through the mechanisms of the Two-Line Struggle.

Among the forms of struggle that the Shining Path employs, the Two-Line Struggle is the most important, as it is a mechanism for internal ideological control and self-control. It's the internal struggle within the group to maintain unity and cohesion based on the unquestionable acceptance of the ideological framework.

In July 1971, the Shining Path published a pamphlet titled Bases for the History of the Party, in which point 3 states the History of the PCP: Two-Line Struggle, Struggle for Constitution, Struggle for Establishing the Base of Party Unity, Struggle for Pre-Constitution.

These phases or stages designated for the organization of Shining Path's irregular warfare apparatus are marked by the main mechanism of execution, the Two-Line Struggle. Everything that Shining Path leaders do at all organizational levels will be governed by this principle. "The experience of armed struggle shows that the struggle between two lines has its points of antagonism, which intensify when trying to take stock, thereby concluding and laying the groundwork for another plan; in this sense, it is understandable that the struggle sharpens... The Two-Line Struggle is nothing but class struggle within the Party; it is like war, but without weapons; it is waged with ideas..." (87). "Agreeably, the Two-Line Struggle is necessary to maintain the unity of the party and develop armed struggle. In general, the main danger is revisionism, although the party continues to simply develop against right-wing criteria, opinions, attitudes, and positions" (88).

The Two-Line Struggle is expressed against both rightism and left-wing deviations (revisionism). In Shining Path cell meetings, even the most unintentional slip-up by any participant is interpreted as a right or left deviation and requires immediate correction according to the Guiding Thought. Participants go to the extent of criticism, mutual criticism, and censure for these presumed deviations. The mechanism seeks self-incrimination first, followed by total submission to Shining Path principles. New members not only purify themselves by denouncing supposed mistakes but also naively believe that this activity is part of the class struggle "within the party."

The fight against rightism is promoted and carried out in peasant, proletarian, and petty-bourgeois social strata, among different subdivisions of the exploited classes. Here, violent confrontation is encouraged between the poorest and the relatively rich. The struggle is not between social classes defined by their relation to the means of production and power, but between sub-groups of the most impoverished strata.

Moreover, the internal Two-Line Struggle within the Shining Path apparatus is not directed against expressions of bourgeois or capitalist thoughts, which would be unacceptable, but mainly against all forms of Marxist expression and presence. They condemn the entire international communist movement, attacking it as Soviet, Chinese, or Albanian revisionism.

The Shining Path claims to create ideological contradictions within Marxist currents themselves. They say the Soviets "were the first to start their sinister attack against Marxism-Leninism… they have fought all the developments made by Chairman Mao on Marxism-Leninism...they have turned against revolutionary violence, abandoned class struggle and proposed peaceful revolution." They hold that "Chinese revisionism has a long history," arguing that after Chairman Mao's death, although they have scientifically established Mao Zedong Thought, they haven't actually developed it but rather revised it, ultimately denying Mao, Marx, and Lenin. They state that there has been an ideological reorganization in China based on revisionism.

They also condemn Enver Hoxha of Albania for falsely analyzing Chairman Mao's thought, claiming it to be "an amalgamation of ideologies, starting from anarchism, Trotskyism, revisionism, Titoism, etc."

The Shining Path adds, "All these are open forms of revisionism against Maoism. But also, those who, while defending Chairman Mao, assume covert revisionist forms that lead them to go against Maoism; in these people, there are different criteria, divergent ways, questioning of the classics behind the idea that every man can be wrong... we must defend the purity of dialectical development, through its three stages, involving three leaps: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" (89).

As one can see, the all-encompassing Shining Path sees itself as capable of waging a sectarian and destructive opposition against all Marxist currents from another supposed extreme and pure Marxist position, referred to as "Gonzalo Thought" or "Guiding Thought," complementing Marx-Lenin-Mao. This "Guiding Thought," considered the pinnacle of Marxist ideology, leaves no room for debate. Guzmán says "dialogue is poison." According to the principle of the Two-Line Struggle, their guiding thought "has no friends, only enemies and adherents."

The Two-Line Struggle, as a psychological mechanism for self-incrimination, leads to a form of dogmatic thinking where initiates end up believing that their falsehoods and sophistries are indisputable truths. Thus, Shining Path members acquire a combination of ideological stability, fanatical belief and conviction with the ability to react on impulse rather than reason, to defend their principles and to wage ideological war against other doctrines. This gives them the advantage of essentially being a "Trojan Horse" within the socialist and nationalist currents in Peru.

The Two-Line Struggle allows the Shining Path to maintain the "purity" of their internal ideology and, more than anything, to preserve their single line of leadership. Among other things, it enabled Guzmán to eliminate "David" in 1980 for opposing the start of the armed struggle; to later restore control of the Metropolitan Committee of Lima by accusing "Pedro" of being a member of the TARM and of right-wing opportunist deviations; and to establish himself as the only true and consistent interpreter of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism at the Fourth National Conference of the Shining Path in July 1986. There, the resolution on the twelfth issue, How We Can Develop People's War, clarified that the Guiding Thought was not the fourth stage: "...we cannot confuse Maoism with Guiding Thought; first, we talk about universal truth and then about its applications. Maoism is the third stage, and we will not give an inch on this point, deviations into the swamp of opportunism."

“Regarding the Guiding Thought, there's an attempt to separate it from "President Gonzalo." The thought can't be detached from a person until they have died; separating the two is a mistake and implies a change in direction. In terms of our specific situation, it is a development confined to our country, with a focus on guiding the revolution in Peru as a whole. There is no document stating that the Guiding Thought is the fourth stage because it's not a reality. What people should know is that there is Marx, Lenin, and Mao.”(90)

However, by September 1987, Guzmán's egocentrism had progressed in his intent to establish himself as the fourth stage of the global revolution.

"Continuing the development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, 'President Gonzalo' upholds, defends, and applies our undefeated and unwithering ideology, making Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, 'Gonzalo Thought,' the basis of unity for the Party. This drives the Peruvian revolution and contributes to the global revolution. 'Gonzalo Thought' is the main thing we need to face, as it guarantees success, leading us to democratic revolution, socialist revolution, and cultural revolutions all the way to communism."(91)

The Shining Path's ideological exclusivity is a fundamental pattern of behavior: "We have entered a tough ideological battle, in terms of having sanctioned 'Guiding Thought,' which is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism applied to our reality. We will have a lot of struggle to establish this, a fight for ideological hegemony."(92)

The struggle for the hegemony of "Guiding Thought" has two opposing viewpoints:

1. Shining Path leaders see this "thought" as "a correct application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the Peruvian reality."
2. Guzmán, along with his followers and admirers, have long been campaigning to establish that "Guzmán's Thought" is the "Fourth Stage," thereby aiming to amplify the Gonzalo myth.

The ideological system of the Shining Path consists of:

1. A set of propaganda outlines tied to a central ideological principle: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. These include concepts such as "correct application," "contribution to the world revolution," "discoveries of the laws of dialectics in our reality," "discovery of bureaucratic capitalism," and "guarantee of success in democratic, socialist, and cultural revolution," as well as "unfading ideology."
2. A psychological mechanism of "group dynamics" and blame-generation that acts on the innate aspects of the initiates' personalities. This involves tendencies, instincts, impulses, habits, will, and reflexes. In this way, the unconscious parts of the personality are sensitized, achieving unconscious obedience and mechanical, forceful behaviors that have become classic among Shining Path militants.

In summary, this is the ideological warfare apparatus of the Shining Path that produces cadres that are "prepared for action," with "respect for their own hierarchies," "high morale and austere life," "self-destructive feelings," "rigid behavior," and "disregard for life." (93) In other words, irregular soldiers confident in their "truth" and capable of destroying others' ideas. They hold a fanatical ideology riddled with simplistic motivations and a lack of scientific political theory.

The Marxist-like publications and statements of the Shining Path have no connection with national reality and only serve to mask the true essence of their reactionary ideology. This ideology is prefabricated with formulas from modern neo-behavioral psychology and is presumably set up by CIA provocateurs skilled in creating insurgencies in third-world countries like Peru.

Strategic warfare

In employing this kind of war, the Shining Path aims for a sound strategic policy and a military strategy that gives them the advantage in offense and consolidation. The goal is to make the enemy (the Peruvian state) falter in its strategies and plans, rendering it perpetually incapable of defense. The enemy is thus led into a disorganized and scattered deployment of its resources, confined to a flawed defensive strategy.

In simple terms, it's about using the best judgment, common sense, or tact to win irregular warfare and to "bend the enemy's mind."

One of the achievements of the Shining Path's strategic warfare, specifically by its scientific manipulators, is in having constructed "Gonzalo Thought" or "Guiding Thought" as if it were a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist system of ideas, which it is not. This serves two counter-insurgent purposes:

1. To push Marxist currents towards violent action, and
2. To pit the State against both Marxist and non-Marxist socialist currents, as well as against military and Quechua nationalism that have emerged in Peru over the past twenty years, altering social structures with the participation of social democratic and Christian democratic tendencies.

However, this strategic accomplishment has become one of the Shining Path's most severe internal limitations and contradictions. Firstly, "Gonzalo Thought" has never existed as a theory; it is more like a form of thaumaturgy that can unite Shining Path followers in a trance-like state leading to their deaths, thereby becoming a real myth.

In an analysis published by the Peruvian magazine Socialism and Participation, Jesús Granados uncovers the sequence of key concepts in Guiding Thought, their relations, and significance within the Shining Path's semantics. These concepts then form a conditioning mechanism similar to that found in American religious sects:

"Mao = A single spark can start a prairie fire"

"A Shining Path Member = I am ready to cross the river of blood"

"Statement by the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path = The leadership is with you in the supreme moment of total surrender to the purifying fire of Armed Struggle"

"Slogan of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path  = Die to invent the subjective myth."

"Fire - Invincible Fire - River of Blood - Death - Purifying Myth - Purifying Fire."(94)

The Shining Path operates on a fanatical strategic concept, with an ideological system that essentially encourages triumph through death for its own defense. This conceptual base clearly shows the Kantian influence on Guzmán Reinoso and helps to explain the collective suicide-murder event of July 1986 in Lima's prisons where more than 300 Shining Path members orchestrated their deaths to "Seal the Great Leap" in their own jargon, meaning to complete the plan of "Conquering Bases" and initiate the plan of "Consolidating Bases." The Shining Path managed to create a myth, the "Day of Heroism," and led the Peruvian government and its armed forces into a tragic repressive strategic error. These forces became victims, both immediately and in the long term, of the consequences of this action.

However, the psychological mechanism is wearing thin. The Shining Path increasingly finds itself isolated in the far-left spectrum of violence, revealing its true nature of reactionary terrorism useful to the most reactionary right-wing in Peru and the world. On the other hand, progressive, Marxist, and Christian social groups have distanced or are distancing themselves from the Shining Path, making it nearly impossible to suggest any current affiliation with the group.

Only ultra-conservative minorities and CIA agents in serving their own interests and looking for exoneration, can continue to assert that the terrorism carried out by the Shining Path is communist revolutionary warfare.

In a second stage, it should be considered that the forces unleashed by the Shining Path's actions in recent years have created a new situation demanding improvements in the subtle and subjective manipulation mechanisms devised by CIA behaviorist and neo-behaviorist psychologists. In this regard, experts on the Shining Path, violence analysts, and proponents of "Guiding Thought" have circulated a document called "Discussion Bases" for a First National Congress of the Shining Path. The aim is clear: to formalize the chatter and Marxist talk of recent years so that "Gonzalo Thought" continues to meet the same objectives.

Another cornerstone of the Shining Path's strategic warfare is the use of secrecy and silence. These elements provide maximum security for their organization and operations; they effectively promote dogmatism and the group's theoretical infallibility, blocking any form of discussion, verification, or confrontation. Outsiders will always be the ones discussing the Shining Path, thus helping to maintain its myth and Unified Leadership as major mobilizing factors akin to religious inspiration.

The other part of this type of warfare, designed to mislead "the enemy," involves encouraging those who fight the Shining Path to use the same elements of secrecy, silence, and this time, "official" clandestinity. The advice at the highest levels will always be to maintain utmost secrecy and give every action a military character and classification. The mistake occurs when one tries to combat the group in the same manner but without taking the initiative. Losing the initiative under these circumstances only allows the Shining Path to make public what it wants through its armed propaganda, while preventing the population from breaking its silence and secrecy to end its clandestine operations.

The real and fictitious objectives of the Shining Path are crucial in this strategic war. Experts must handle this aspect carefully, especially due to the global nature of the operation. We're dealing with a large-scale, Low-Intensity Operation aimed at counterinsurgency. One mistake and the objectives can flip on its head, serving the insurgency instead. British, American, and French experiences show many failures, except for British successes in Malaysia, Kenya, and the French in Chad and the Red Sea. So far, Political Warfare and its Low-Intensity Operations have shown great efficiency in destroying social structures but have always been political failures; in the case of the CIA, they've been loud and scandalous failures. However, even for its own benefit, the American Administration can't correct this policy due to the inherent decline of the system.

To what extent is the Shining Path's supposed grand objective of building the People's Republic of New Democracy true, as propagated by its supporters and experts?

There's a stratagem at play, which is to make the "enemy" (the Peruvian state) fight against fictitious objectives while the Shining Path achieves real objectives. According to them, the People's Republic of New Democracy, the New State (an exact copy of the original Maoist model in all its documents), will be reached through the "Construction of The Three Instruments of the Revolution" (also an exact copy of Maoism): "The Party, which is the main form of organization, the army, and the Front, which is the third instrument. All these three instruments are for taking power." (95)

Shining Path documents point out that Chairman Mao considered the Chinese Communist Party, the Red Army and the new State "as independent," while "Chairman Gonzalo," developing this "tremendous contribution," discovers "concentric development" and its laws: centering on the Party, surrounding it with the People's Guerrilla Army, and on the periphery the People's Republic of New Democracy.

This approach actually distances itself from the Maoist "democratic centralism" and Mao's strategic coordination of revolutionary warfare. Guzmán Reinoso's concept of concentric development is a strategic subtlety that is closely related to two aspects: defining the strategic and intermediate objectives of the Shining Path and conducting operations.

The Peruvian state is led to believe that the Shining Path's true strategic objective is the construction of the People's Republic of New Democracy, while its Front and Support Bases would be the intermediate objectives that must be destroyed to prevent the advent of communism. No further reasoning is needed.

The real aim of the Shining Path is the systematic destruction of Peruvian society through violence and genocide. This is done by provoking actions from the "People's Guerrilla Army," the "Support Bases," and the "Popular Fronts." Their methods involve irregular terrorist operations carried out by these groups, which infiltrate or develop in both urban and rural social foundations in Peru.

"The time has come, comrades, the time has come. It's time for a great break. We will sever everything that ties us to the old, rotten order to completely destroy it. For if we have any interest in this decaying world, we won't be able to destroy it."

"Men, individually speaking, may be weak, but the revolution is all-powerful, and the armed revolution even more so. It relies on the masses, the strength of the earth, and is guided by the Party, the light of the universe."(96)

In the Shining Path's unique strategy, the most crucial aspect is how they conceal the management of their operations. There exists an Irregular High Command with a physical Operations Center, hidden either domestically or abroad. What matters is that their actions are executed here and now.

This concealment occurs under the euphemisms of "concentric construction," "Unified Leadership," and "Communist Party of Peru," which also ensure unconditional proselytism and prior acceptance of the myth and mystery. For this reason, the Unified Leadership of the Shining Path is central and accepted: "The only approved form of leadership for tackling work is to submit to a single will. In the end, the issue is one of having a single leader." (97)

The Shining Path reaffirms: "We are based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, 'Thought of Gonzalo,' primarily 'Thought of Gonzalo.' This is the ideology of the proletariat, the highest expression of humanity, the only true, scientific, and invincible one... We have the general political line of the revolution, which means the laws that govern the class struggle for the seizure of power; established by Chairman Gonzalo... The military line is the core of the general political line... And we maintain ideological, political, and organizational independence, relying on our own efforts and the masses. The Shining Path is the “new type of party generated by the Leader of the Peruvian revolution, Chairman Gonzalo, the greatest living Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, who leads the party.”(98)

All of this strategy, in this case, leads to the acceptance of a political-doctrinal proposition that doesn't really have any valid theoretical foundation. Nevertheless, it must be considered true within a process of convincing based more on faith.

The reality is that the tactical operations are conducted by a group of Shining Path irregulars, mostly neurotic, compulsive believers, and followers of the "greatest living Marxist-Leninist-Maoist." They pretend to be a single political party.

Another real aspect is the existence of the Shining Path Operative Command, concealed behind a mythical personality: Gonzalo.

For this purpose, a very detailed biography of the supposed leader of the Shining Path, Abimael Guzmán Reinoso, has been fabricated, from his birth in southern Peru, in the port of Mollendo, Arequipa, on December 3, 1934, to the complete change of his personality to embody "President Gonzalo." His life, portrayed as a succession of outstanding qualities and remarkable achievements, leads inexorably to the acceptance of the myth. Even a critical scholar of Shining Path, like Manuel Jesús Granados, comes to accept Guzmán's transfiguration ("he will no longer be the same"), probably because he misunderstands the perspective—Guzmán is not the maker; he is the product of Shining Path's irregular warfare. Guzmán remains a real and concrete man.

Although this is not about constructing Guzmán Reinoso's biography, it's worth knowing that he received a Falangist, fascist educational formation at the most exclusive and classist school in Arequipa, run by the Christian Brothers of Saint John the Baptist de La Salle. There, to maintain his dignity, he had to confront Brother José, a small Galician with an overbite, who was remembered with repulsion among the La Salle promotions of those times. Guzmán's extremely neurotic personality always manifested itself in excessive neatness, narcissism, and intellectual self-sufficiency—a last faculty that has often been confused with extraordinary lucidity. Consistent with his Lasallian education, Guzmán embraced Kantian philosophy. His investigations into Marxism initially served to perfect Kantian thought, modernize it, or surpass it in terms of the "conception of space," and later, as a "truth" to translate or convert his Kantian ideal into a movement capable of serving as a means and form to attain eternity through purifying death.

It should be noted that there is nothing significant or remarkable in Guzmán's biography, except that he abstains from tobacco entirely and is enthusiastic about sexual promiscuity, which is hidden, with the young vestals who serve him with loyalty and passion. Many of them were interrogated by the Peruvian police, and not a few were taken into judicial proceedings.

There is no abrupt change in the personality of the Shining Path leader. On the contrary, there is a very human realization consistent with his personal aspirations. It is logical for him to abandon his enthusiastic support for Belaúnde and his membership in Acción Popular (Popular Action), as well as the job he performed so effectively at the Offices of Popular Cooperation in the town of Chocita, 60 kilometers east of the Peruvian capital. These are trivial details that the myth does not need. However, within the same populist line, his destiny was more nihilistic. Anyone who seriously investigates the factors that contributed to the peculiar formation of Guzmán Reinoso can understand how he reaches his current paranoid and messianic personality, which, diluted in the prefabricated myth, serves to conceal the Shining Path's leadership. Guzmán Reinoso doesn't become, nor does he make "President Gonzalo" in the class struggle. He has definitely never set foot in a labor union, has never led a local or national labor strike, has never participated in open debates of the University Federations, and was not a partisan political leader. His past is not part of the national political scene, nor was he a combative theorist and public dissident of the Peruvian Communist Party. Guzmán's political personality is subtly veiled in the later stages of the factional struggle of Peruvian communism, rooted in Ayacucho. He appears more as a methodical instructor of pre-university students and secondary school students at the Colegio de Aplicación Huaman Poma de Ayala. The class struggle never led Guzmán into exile or long imprisonments. In this field, his political life includes brief judicial and police detentions, on June 26 1970, October 23 1981, and February 19 1982. On these last two occasions, he was – strangely – interrogated and released by the police when it was supposed that he was the subject of relentless persecution and his life was in danger for having unleashed the armed struggle in 1980.

Organizational warfare

In the use of this type of warfare, the Shining Path makes every possible effort to consolidate its tangible and intangible organizations in all fields: economic, political, social, military, in such a way that it achieves maximum efficiency and coordination, and prevents the "enemy" from infiltrating its ranks.

From another perspective, it exerts every effort to infiltrate and sabotage the Peruvian state (the "enemy") in all fields, in order to place its organizations in an imminent situation of chaos and collapse.

A fundamental principle of this type of warfare is the destruction of enemy organizations in coordination with military warfare.

We have already seen how the "military line is the center and the political line is the general." This principle reflects the irregular military character of the centralized Shining Path organization under the Unified Leadership, which is covered by the euphemisms of "democratic centralism" and "the Party as the center."

The Shining Path is an intangible organization: the organic follows the political, and taking into account that the line alone is not enough, simultaneously, organic structures must be established, considering the organic structure, the organic system, and party work. The organic structure of the Party is based on democratic centralism, primarily on centralism; two armed party networks are established, the territorial network that covers a jurisdiction, and the mobile network whose structure is mobile. The organic system is the distribution of forces in relation to the main and secondary points where the revolution operates. Party work involves the relationship between secret work, which is primary, and open work; the importance of the five requirements: democratic centralism, clandestinity, discipline, surveillance, and secrecy, particularly democratic centralism (99).

The military axis is composed of the so-called People's Guerrilla Army, which is supposed to incorporate popular militias, organizing them into three forces: the main force, local forces, and grassroots forces. However, the agreement reached at the second plenary of the Shining Path on December 3, 1979, to form the Company of the First Division of the Red Army, remained a mere declaration but no less important. The organization of the Shining Path consists of irregular platoons that can become occasional guerrillas in rural areas and sabotage or annihilation squads in urban areas.

The fact that the intangible organization proposed theoretically by the Shining Path is not a reality does not diminish the power, operational capacity, and presence of the Shining Path military apparatus, which continues to operate in Peru with great efficiency and offensive advantage.

The tangible organization of the Shining Path is made up of what they call the generated bodies, whose organization was agreed upon in July 1973, at the third plenary of the Shining Path. These bodies include the Movement of Workers and Classist Workers; Movement of Poor Peasants; Movement of Democratic Lawyers; Classist Neighborhood Movement; Revolutionary Student Front; Secondary Revolutionary Student Front; Popular Women's Movement; Single Union of Peruvian Education Workers; Popular Relief; Internationalist Support Committees abroad; Internationalist Revolutionary Movement (MRI), based in London.

Interestingly, it has been outside of Peru and in countries such as the United States, England, France, Spain, and Sweden, that public activity of the Shining Path has been most strongly felt. In these countries, there are base committees of the Shining Path that operate openly and publicly, acting as resonating elements.

Within Peru, the Shining Path operates isolated from the masses, especially in urban areas. For this reason, their successes have been limited to certain progress in the educational, student, judicial, and welfare sectors, all of which display characteristics of opportunism and petit-bourgeois frustration.

In the rural areas where the military axis of the Shining Path holds sway, especially in the mountainous regions subject to political-military states of emergency, the compulsory organization of Popular Committees, the construction of Support Bases following the destruction of small towns and Andean or edge-of-the-jungle communities, and the irregular platoons have succeeded in influencing populations such as those in Ayacucho and Huanta. They have managed to establish a general base of support for Shining Path's activities. This allows the Shining Path to maintain the initiative in irregular warfare in these areas and resume its plans for forming Support Bases, especially in areas with limited communication routes that are disconnected from state entities.

The logistical organization of the Shining Path is of a non-tangible nature and is linked to the drug trade. Reasons that support this hypothesis:

1. If the facts strongly confirm that the Shining Path is a product of Western intelligence systems to deactivate nationalist, civilian, and military currents in the country, the CIA plays a predominant role in this action. Consequently, the DEA, the other intelligence agency for drug trafficking, which in Peru, as in Colombia and Bolivia, has an army of agents, cannot be disconnected from such activities.
2. The map of subversion in Peru shows the "People's Guerrilla Army" operating in the Ayacuchan province of La Mar and southward in the coca-growing valleys of Cusco, with a projection towards Bolivia, particularly centered around the processing of cocaine in Cachipucará, Puno. The extension of the Shining Path's actions to Tingo Maria, Huanuco, and the entire Upper Huallaga, as well as the appearance of TARM guerrillas in San Martin, along with the advance of the Shining Path along the Ucayali River towards the north, leaves no doubt about the coincidence of the movements of the Shining Path and, more recently, the TARM, with the drug trafficking map and its projection on international routes.
3. Here is a summary of the actions carried out by the Shining Path's irregular forces during the specified months and years:(100)

Year	January	May	June	July	August	December
1982	75	142	33	151	150	157
1983	138	236	246	320	201	177
1984	206	185	154	387	173	156
1985	76	315	320	283	270	329
1986	175	265	339	290	201	210
1987	190	245	206	214	230

The constant pattern in this scenario is that the actions of the Shining Path's irregular forces start low at the beginning of the year but then significantly increase  from May to August, maintaining some stability before decreasing again. This implies a symptomatic coincidence with the periods of coca harvesting and drying along with the periods of "subversive reactivation."

1. In 1986, Peruvian media graphically displayed an understanding between drug traffickers and Shining Path irregulars, with an apparent dispute emerging between the Shining Path and the TARM for control of the coca-growing zone in Huallaga at the end of the year. By then, the Shining Path had openly acknowledged advocating for the rights of coca-planting peasants and had practically occupied the towns along the jungle's marginal road from Tingo Maria to Tocache.

On the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes, more than 200,000 peasants are engaged in coca cultivation, whose export value in just 1986 was estimated at over 4 billion dollars. It is well-known and verified that the Shining Path collected fees from coca growers and drug traffickers. The latter have access to a network of nearly a hundred airports that have not been destroyed, fleets of modern boats for navigation on the Amazon rivers of Peru and Colombia, especially. The air network facilitates comfortable and permanent movements to the British islands in the Caribbean, the United States, and England, which are central to the international organization of the Shining Path, the International Revolutionary Movement.

This is the organization of the Shining Path, with a significantly unconventional infrastructure that acts destructively against official institutions and social and production organizations in Peru.

As is the case everywhere, the social structure of the Peruvian state is composed of tangible, stable, and conventional organizations and institutions. Its structure is easily penetrable and, therefore, vulnerable to the destructive actions of the irregulars of the Shining Path, who employ forms of warfare different from those used by the state for its development and survival.

Shining Path irregulars use guerrilla warfare, sabotage, annihilation, and armed propaganda. According to one of their documents, the Shining Path admits to having acted against the Peruvian social organization between June 1984 and the same month in 1986 in the following way: "...45.9% of all actions carried out in the country are guerrilla actions carried out by detachments operating in cities or platoons and companies in the countryside; while sabotage accounts for only 11.2% and selective annihilation barely reaches 8.2%, while armed propaganda and agitation account for 34.1% (101).

For this period, based on a cross-referencing of reliable sources, our research estimates approximately 5,965 irregular warfare actions of all types, including white terrorism and urban bombings.

Using this figure as a reference, which is a close approximation to reality, we can establish the following: first, not all actions can be attributed to the Shining Path. However, the variation would not be substantial. If we assume that 45.9% of the actions were attributed to the guerrillas, this means there would have been 2,737.99 guerrilla incidents in the two years under consideration, 668 sabotage events, 489.1 assassinations, and 2,034 activities related to armed propaganda and agitation.

The data published by the Shining Path in Peru and abroad is indeed propaganda and highly exaggerated. None of the government institutions that monitor the incidents of irregular warfare in the Andean region have recorded 2,737 guerrilla confrontations in two years. Similarly, the rest of the figures provided by the Shining Path are manipulated and cannot serve as a basis for any serious social research.

The only certainty lies in the forms of attack it employs to destroy the strategic organizations of Peruvian society:

1. Between 1980 and October 1987, Shining Path irregulars targeted 131 agricultural and livestock production units in Ayacucho, Apurímac, Cajamarca, Cusco, Huanuco, Huancavelica, Ica, Junín, La Libertad, Lambayeque, Cerro de Pasco and San Martín, with a higher incidence in Ayacucho and Puno. The exact extent of the damages is unknown, but it is estimated to be substantial and that these attacks had a significant impact on agricultural and food production, directly affecting the rural workforce.
2. Between 1985 and October 1987, Shining Path irregulars targeted 21 industrial companies, mainly in Lima and the Huallaga region (Palma del Espino). Many of these companies had financial ties to banks involved in money laundering related to cocaine trafficking. In other cases, companies with significant debts to the state or labor issues were also targeted, some of which were linked to the Japanese capital.
3. Institutions like Electro Perú and Electro Lima faced the most substantial offensive by irregulars. From 1980 to October 1987, there were reports of 726 high-tension towers being toppled, with the costs of repair exceeding 19 million dollars. The costs also included disruptions in the industry and interruptions of public services, particularly those dependent on Peru's central hydroelectric system. To date, no institution has accurately quantified these costs.

These actions committed by the Shining Path had targeted not the financial oligarchy or major power groups linked to imperialism or drug trafficking, but rather social enterprises, agricultural communities, and specific industrial entities, causing significant economical and social disruption.

These attacks are significant because they actively hinder the development of alternative energy sources to petroleum, leading to the continued and increased dependence on transnational oil companies and the depletion of domestic energy sources. Additionally, they constitute a substantial sabotage, given the disruptions to the hydroelectric system. These disruptions not only affect energy generation but also jeopardize the entire productive apparatus in the central region of the country.

2. Between 1985 and October 1987, there were 56 attacks on communication bridges and 40 on railway lines.

These attacks aimed to isolate the productive areas controlled by Shining Path irregulars. While major routes connecting Lima to the interior of the country were vulnerable, including three highways, a railway line, two main power lines, and a water supply system, the Shining Path's military objectives were primarily directed at breaking entities like Centromín which operates over a dozen large production units scattered across various departments, relying heavily on the railway for mineral export and supply of inputs and equipment. State-owned enterprises like Enafer (railways), Electro Perú (energy) and ENTEL (communications) faced calls for privatization.

3. Between 1980 and October 1987, the state administration suffered greatly with the assassinations of 164 officials, including technicians and politicians. These acts of violence soon weakened the state structure, especially in highly conflicted areas, and disrupted development programs in places like Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurímac, which traditionally had limited connections to the central government.

High levels of corruption also festered within the state apparatus, leading to wastefulness, abuse, and illicit enrichment in regional bodies that further complicated the situation. These factors eased the Shining Path's efforts to annihilate its opponents, as they tapped into the population's pent-up desires for justice. This manipulation of public sentiment also promoted a shift in values, with the Shining Path presenting itself as the champion of justice against a corrupt state.

This psychological mechanism managed to sensitize the population, particularly in the emergency-declared mountainous regions, making them passively sympathetic to the Shining Path's cause. This situation has become a significant challenge for the Peruvian state, as the deterioration of administrative structures is compounded by the bankruptcy and loss of credibility of social control organizations.

Up until twenty years ago, within the social structure of the highlands, symbols of power were recognized not in the gamonalismo (feudal landlords) but rather in the representatives of the señor gobierno (government), which included the police, priests and teachers. When they weren't colluding with the local bosses (caciques), these figures represented a level of control and mediation between the peasants and the landlords. However, the situation has changed significantly today. Peasants have not only gained property rights, effectively ending the gamonalismo system, but communal peasant leaders have emerged as well, often with military support.

The black-robed priests with a domineering demeanor have disappeared, only to be replaced by religious congregations and prelates committed to the poor, competing for leadership among the peasants. In the name of these demands, some individuals have aligned themselves with the Shining Path, promoting the destruction of both cooperatives and cooperative enterprises because they viewed them as enemies of social property. Teachers, on the other hand, highly attuned to the changes and continuous frustrations on their path to social advancement, have become recipients and disseminators of a culture alien to the Andean world, particularly towards a coastal culture. They have become disconnected from the chaotic official education system and find themselves at the center of the conflict, often as victims of the Shining Path's irregulars or the state's counterinsurgency forces.

In this context, the social control organization, which was originally meant to support authority, had not only confused its role by trying to become an authority itself and dispense justice but also allowed its position to be used for personal enrichment, opportunism, and local social ladder climbing. Thus, it transformed from a law enforcement entity into a highly destabilizing factor in the structural tension.

The Shining Path is well aware of this problem and has directed its most ferocious annihilation campaign against the police organization. Between 1980 and October 1987, they carried out more than 600 attacks on police posts of varying intensity and nature. During the same period, credible and serious sources estimate approximately 481 deaths resulting from these attacks and individual incidents.

What have the Shining Path irregulars achieved by systematically targeting this organization responsible for maintaining public order? Firstly, they forced the police to retreat. In the same period, from 1980 to 1987, Peruvian police forces had closed or reduced operations in 191 units across the country, particularly impacting the departments of Cusco, Ayacucho, Huánuco, Huancavelica, and Apurímac. This means that there has been a territorial concession to the Shining Path in key strategic Andean areas. Secondly, they aimed to hinder the reorganization of Peruvian police forces with rapid, top-heavy growth and the acquisition of sophisticated military-style equipment. Perhaps this oversight ignores that such measures have little to do with the social control of the population—prevention, investigation, surveillance—to maintain public order and support the administration of justice. It also does not necessarily guarantee the sympathy of the local populations. Thirdly, the police forces, due to their vulnerability, have become a constant source of arms for the Shining Path and the TARM. Official reports suggest that by 1987, these groups had seized around 240 weapons of various types, ranging from revolvers, shotguns, and submachine guns to light automatic rifles and grenades.

The core of the Shining Path's offensive activity lies in its intangible organization, specifically its squads of irregulars with highly centralized leadership that operate in a decentralized manner, executing specific tactical plans. The other significant organization is external, not the internal tangible organizations, which are limited and of little importance in the national movement of popular masses in Peru.

Some analysts, particularly officials, like to point out that the Shining Path's actions do not shake or endanger the structure of the state, somewhat as a consolation. From a military confrontation perspective, Shining Path irregulars have not seriously threatened the Peruvian armed forces, and state institutions continue to function. However, this view is overly simplistic. The military organization of the state remains intact in terms of firepower and offensive capability, maintaining strategic superiority in the sub-region. But it is precisely this potential and power that the Shining Path aims to destroy, through the wear and tear of its logistical infrastructure and by waging a mass war to shift its defense and attack mechanisms from external to internal fronts.

In this context, it is not reassuring that official institutions continue to function; it's about how they function. One must consider how a ministry operates in Peru, or how the customs organization and the agricultural product marketing system function. Most importantly, one must evaluate whether these entities function effectively within the interior of the republic, especially in the Andean region.

Psychological warfare

This war, doctrinally, is the operative warfare of ideological warfare. To overcome or change an ideology, one must modify behaviors and values. For the Shining Path, the escalation of psychological warfare is well-defined: convince, persuade, dissuade, and destroy. In the use of psychological warfare, the Shining Path irregulars have all the advantages; they fight alone, exploiting the psychological weaknesses of the Peruvian state - non-compliance with obligations and promises and the suffering of the people.

The psychological front for the Shining Path is one and the same, composed of the national and world public opinion, especially the latter. Its paradoxical objective is anti-communist and counter-insurgent.

On the first level, it aims to divide the communist movement between the "true Marxist-Leninist-Maoist communists" and the revisionists from Moscow, Beijing, or any other tendency. On the second level, it targets the "opportunistic left," nationalists, and militarism. A fundamental psychological objective in Peru is the militarization of the Party to counteract the militarization of the government, which signifies the development of mass warfare.

The struggle against imperialism and capitalism is rhetoric, falsely mobilizing because the goal is to associate capitalism with the military and the democratic state, in order to polarize the social groups and classes in Peru. Moreover, the media used by the Shining Path for its psychological warfare are those of the capitalist system; it doesn't even have its own media. In this sense, the grassroots organization, the so-called psychological instrument, the media system is the largest ever deployed in Peru by any subversive organization.

The Shining Path enjoys the leniency or support of prestigious global humanitarian organizations such as Amnesty International, American Wash, and European and North American organizations of the International Fellowships of Reconciliation (IFOR), among others, those that defend human rights but generally in accordance with British financing interests. Some of these organizations were created by intelligence services in 1914, like IFOR, or are directly or indirectly subsidized, as is the case with the Service for Peace and Justice (SERPAJ).

SERPAJ is a branch of IFOR in Vienna, created under the direction of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, with specific purposes for psychological warfare in Latin America. This organization conducted campaigns in Argentina against armament, militarism and war, in favor of peace in the Beagle issue. It supported the Chilean solution and was a mediator in the Falklands War, yet played a significant role in promoting defeatism during the war, prosecuting military leaders, mobilizing the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo for the condemnation of military leadership and the disappearance of the armed forces.

All these campaigns were conducted under the guise of the fight against the Dirty War, for the respect of human rights, against torture and disappearances. In essence, they took advantage of the strategic errors of the Argentine military's counterinsurgency policy, which closely followed American counterinsurgency texts and even exported their experiences to Central America.

SERPAJ, in Peru, plays a significant role as a cover for psychological warfare actions. It is responsible for the campaign of the Committee of Disappeared Families and Prisoners of War of Ayacucho, whose objective is to promote legal actions against the "authors" of torture, disappearances, and executions, recognizing them as crimes against humanity. SERPAJ conducts demonstrations and mobilizations, including chaining in squares and the placement of crosses and wreaths at the doors of the joint command of the armed forces. They also travel to Europe to seek support from the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which is a Council of Europe institution.

In July 1985, between the 4th and 15th, SERPAJ organized a meeting with European bishops in Peru under the presidency of Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, who was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to establish a People's Tribunal in Ayacucho. The maneuver failed as the Peruvian Episcopal Commission did not participate in the meeting. However, this setback did not prevent the  organization from continuing its campaign at the national and international levels.

SERPAJ is directed by a figure from European intelligence named Hans Reiner. He oversees the organization's bases in Pacasmayo, Puno, Huancayo, Lima, and Huacho. They have "non-violence" organizations throughout the Sierra of Lima, Huancavelica, the Desaguadero area in Puno, and Native communities in Amazonas. Their psychological objectives align with those that guided British intelligence services for the defeat of the conservative Argentine military, a history that continues to have an impact on the Rio de la Plata region.

There are other covert psychological operations apparatuses, especially in the field of press and broadcasting, which require deeper investigation, as there is abundant evidence of their activities.

International television systems have placed the Shining Path in the public spotlight. Their violence and brutality align with the Western media's trend, thereby making it a constant news item. Any information, generally prefabricated since it doesn't actually exist, is received, disseminated, and paid for by television networks worldwide. It's a system that serves "President” Gonzalo, even though he claims he will destroy and eliminate such a system.

A tracking of news information about the Shining Path from Peru abroad in 1987 yielded the following estimated result:

Agency	Period covered	Number of reports
AFP (France)	January 6 - September 24	81 cables
ANSA (Italy)	January 2 - September 24	31 cables
DPA (West Germany)	January 7 - September 24	26 cables
EFE (Spain)	January 2 - September 24	71 cables
IPS (Italy)	January 6 - September 15	37 cables
REUTERS (Great-Britain)	January 6 - September 24	35 cables

In approximately 270 days of the year 1987, 281 news articles about the Shining Path were repeatedly published in Peru, enough for any social communicator to consider it a sustained news campaign of interest. This quantitative aspect indicates the level of news saturation for the foreign public. However, the content analysis of the information will confirm to any social researcher the astonishing results in promoting the Shining Path's violence and discrediting the Peruvian government, especially its armed forces. This is simply the manipulation of capitalist media in service of the "Shining Path subversion" in Peru.

In this section, it is worth noting that the news agendas of socialist countries either do not report on the topic or only do so sparingly. However, Cuba's Prensa Latina agency, for the period from January 2 to August 29, 1987, issued 143 reports on the Shining Path, setting a quantitative record and contributing to the global public opinion saturation. It is fair to point out that Prensa Latina's information differs in significant aspects. While capitalist agencies provide between five hundred to a thousand words per report, Prensa Latina does so with 100 to 150 words. The contents are objective and do not argue for or against the Shining Path. This informational neutrality benefits the Shining Path. They don't even defend Fidel Castro from the epithets that the Shining Path bestows upon him.

Tactically, the Shining Path does not neglect the support of psychological operations for its specific actions. Their plans consider the "respective" and "appropriate" psychological action, taking into account circumstances, timing, and targets (102). In short, they apply all the techniques of modern Western psychological warfare and the doctrine of PSYOPS and political warfare. It's important to remember that in revolutionary warfare, there is no application of psychological operations or psychological warfare; the doctrinal concept is different. Dialectical materialism, as a comprehensive and exclusive philosophy, doesn't require psychological operations; it is internalized in humans through education, agitation, and propaganda, as overarching strategic lines of action.

In its final phase, the Shining Path uses armed propaganda to gain resonance, employing annihilation, blackmail, kidnapping, bombings, rumors and obscurantism to achieve population control. Another aspect is the fragmented preparation of the Shining Path militant as an alienated irregular soldier. This aspect is well-known, as it represents the visible part of the Shining Path. The effects of their psychological strategy and tactics are what concern us, and scientific studies should dive deeper into these, as we are facing a neo-behaviorist school of population control that is leading the Peruvian population towards self-destruction through the application of these operational techniques of psychological warfare, typical of the CIA, which also proposes them for the preparation of counterinsurgency forces.

Finally, another application of this type of warfare lies in weakening the enemy's psychological defenses so that they cannot react, or when they do, it's too late, leading to self-incrimination and acceptance of defeat and failure.

For the Shining Path, as well as for the dominant great powers that have shown their staunch opposition to the development of culture in Third World countries in UNESCO, and to the need for a New International Information Order, as well as for information merchants in Peru, it is not in their interest for the country, for example, to have a Social Communication or Information Policy, which is a right of every nation anywhere in the world. Simply because if it were so, at the strategic level, the irregular Senderistas and any other kind would not have at their disposal the theater of psychological operations (the minds of the Peruvian population and world public opinion).

At the tactical level, the Peruvian nation cannot respond to the psychological warfare of the Shining Path, not only due to a lack of technical resources and the absence of policies but also because of the chaos prevailing in private media, the use of frequencies and licenses, the lack of generosity and patriotism where each owner believes their individual opinion and interests represent the entire country. Moreover, the government lacks public information outlets that are not obsequious and fawning.

The only valid front resisting the Shining Path in this field is a set of information systems or communications in grassroots, neighborhood, institutional, religious, union, and professional social organizations, where there is an independent effort to provide educational and controversial information that contributes to the formation of their own values and reflects their aspirations.

As a form of alternative information, which, despite its widespread proliferation, has nothing to do with the information from major media outlets, it is the only serious shield against the destabilizing influence of the Shining Path's psychological warfare. In this psychological warfare, the Shining Path maintains a strategic and tactical advantage, using the vast resources of the capitalist system rather than the socialist one. Among these resources are opinion leaders who act as the Shining Path's ideologists or propagandists, many of them with education from American universities or undergoing training stints, such as the director of "El Diario," the unofficial, if not official, newspaper of the Shining Path in Peru.

These propagandists of the Shining Path skillfully lead their strategic psychological warfare efforts, primarily by preparing both nationally and internationally for the grand maneuvers included in the Shining Path's plans. For instance, the "genocide in the prisons" was carried out as part of a meticulously phased psychological campaign in preparation, execution, and consolidation.

In the preparation phase, prisoners affiliated with the Shining Path were encouraged to provoke, turning the prisons into "luminous combat trenches" through propaganda and psychologically preparing the Shining Path's cadres for the holocaust. This period was more or less lengthy, and during its development, distinctions were made between common prisoners and Marxist leftist prisoners who were not affiliated with the Shining Path. These distinctions were marked by confrontations, vendettas, and even murders. Externally, a campaign of inducing death was mounted: "No to the transfer to Canto Grande" (a high-security prison); "No to genocide," "Defend the Prisoners of War," "They want to assassinate them from behind," "Prisoners of war will resist in their luminous combat trenches until death."

The deaths of Shining Path members in the prisons marked the culmination of this maneuver. The violent military intervention was preceded by the assassinations of senior officers, the exacerbations of law enforcement and internal provocations, allowing everyone to believe that all of the Shining Path’s plans were being developed within the prisons. All these issues were effectively stirred up by the opinions of influencers in the capitalist media until the strategic mistake was made: to believe that the elimination of Shining Path-affiliated prisoners would end the Shining Path, and that it was possible to satisfy the Armed Forces' frustration in the face of terrorism through revenge.

The psychological consolidation of the plan still continues, and the issue of the deaths of Shining Path members in June 1986 will always be a cause for news and agitation. The negative effects are suffered by the Armed Forces and the social-democratic government of García Pérez. The Shining Path capitalizes on "heroism" and solidifies the myth and the idea of death for the "Guiding Thought," and "crossing rivers of blood to become immortal."

Another strategic psychological plan of the Shining Path is related to the establishment of the "People's Republic of New Democracy." In May 1986, "Guzmán" stated: "We are using the term New State, and this has a strategic content... Therefore, we affirm the following: The three levels have been defined: People's Committee, Support Bases, and People's Republic of New Democracy. The First Level (People's Committee) exists; the second level is a matter of delineation of Zonal and Regional Committees, which need to make adjustments according to the development of the war. The leadership of the set of bases that a Zonal or Regional Committee may have is under its direction. The Third Level continues to develop and advance toward the formation of the People's Republic of New Democracy, which would be the set of Committees and Bases, for which the three functions remain valid: leadership, construction, planning" (103).

Before continuing, note the writing style in the Shining Path text attributed to Guzmán Reinoso. It is the same as in many documents of the Shining Path: the language is Spanish, but the grammatical construction and syntax are English.

Returning to the topic, these strategic guidelines, formulated in the pre-fabricated documents of Senderismo, appear as a directive to achieve the grand objective of creating a parallel or counter-government. Let's recall the plan of the CIA revealed by "Newsweek" magazine in its August 3, 1981 edition.

In September 1987, the psychological operators of the Shining Path produced a "Discussion Document" that aimed to give structure to their ideas, resulting in a pseudo-Marxist mishmash. By the end of 1987, the Qué Hacer magazine of the Friedrich Elberth Foundation would be responsible for publicizing it, and El Diario, the unofficial organ of the Shining Path, would spread it widely in apparent debate with "¿Qué Hace?" and the newspaper La República, which provided its opinions on the topic. By January 1988, the debate was publicly underway.

Regarding the "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Gonzalo Thought" framework, it was naturally discussed by the Shining Path's followers and some political leaders and public figures who clearly had never read Marx, Lenin, or Mao. However, for the campaign, knowledge was not the goal; it was about gathering opinions to generate more opinions about what was said, ultimately transforming the shoddiness into a form of science through information manipulation and the media.

Simultaneously, the idea of a National Congress of the Shining Path was promoted, claiming that it had already taken place and would produce a constituent document for the New State to oppose the Old State. It would propose the Bourgeois Democratic Revolution within the framework and philosophy of the Shining Path, precisely to thwart the structural changes that Marxism recognizes as part of the development of capital under that name. But the main goal was to establish a parallel government, alongside the existing one in Peru, with the aim of bringing about structural changes in Peruvian society. Whether it would be installed in Ayacucho or in exile would depend on circumstances.

The Shining Path's maneuver took advantage of the psychological opportunity provided by the social situation in Peru in 1988. Right-wing groups and the middle class were being sensitized in a campaign summarized by the slogan, "No one can save this country." In Peru, defeatism was fueled by major transnational corporations in the food, finance, and drug trade industries.

The prospect of submission to the International Monetary Fund was accompanied by large campaigns of scarcity and price increases to make the people suffer. In the face of this capitalist maneuver, the Shining Path’s plan for the People's Republic of New Democracy is not an alternative, as some might believe, for the methodology of destroying means of production, murder and terrorism serves the same purpose as economic sabotage, corruption, drug trafficking, shortages, medicine scarcity and the deterioration of social services.

Here we have described the operation of two of the Shining Path’s psychological campaigns, one already executed and another ongoing to date, solely for educational purposes, to demonstrate the underlying use of psychological warfare techniques, the mechanisms for undermining morale (one cannot believe in Peru; it is portrayed as a failed and collapsed country), and the utilization of significant resources (adept planners, mass media, opinion influencers). The victim is the Peruvian nation.

Intelligence warfare

According to the doctrine of political warfare, intelligence warfare begins by executing the operational actions of strategic warfare. This type of warfare is highly subtle and occurs at both the defensive and offensive levels. It involves one's own defense and security as well as the breach of the enemy's security and secrecy.

For the Shining Path, the basic rule present in both strategic and tactical intelligence warfare is clandestinity and military vigilance and discipline (a political element and the combination of two military ones), representing a rather advanced concept of production and initiation of intelligence. According to their documents, the Shining Path’s intelligence network "involves dealing with special elements and requires great discretion and secrecy." As expected, these elements are at a particular level of secrecy within the organization and compartmentalized discipline. Naturally, secrecy and discretion can only be achieved through the highly administrative concentration of the agent network.

The documents of the Shining Path do not explicitly mention this field of their activity. However, they are insistent in recommending secrecy and inducing their membership to investigate the environment and social relationships. Before and after their actions, they are trained in the collection and processing of basic information. Every Shining Path irregular is, above all, an informant.

As far as we can know to date, the Shining Path’s secrecy has not been compromised. Probably because any efforts to discover it have been misguided by attempting to uncover it from within penetrated or captured base cells. There, they are only informants. In contrast, it is public knowledge that the true agents, both foreign and national, who have been captured and identified, manage to preserve secrecy by evading their responsibilities before the Peruvian justice system.

However, there are some elements that can allow for an evaluation of the intelligence apparatus of the Shining Path.

At the strategic level, the Shining Path has had a research and study apparatus closely linked to the CIA's counterinsurgency policies. The study of the human environment in the Peruvian highlands was provided by various organizations which includes the Wingspread Conference in Wisconsin, organized by Daniel Sharp of the Peace Corps and involving a multitude of businessmen and social scientists. The studies and experiments conducted by USAID (United States Agency for International Development) were also influential. Through patiently conducted works, like the one by Eric Cohen, who was a professor at the University of Jerusalem and conducted the work Potential for Internal War and Leadership Forms in Ayacucho 1969-1979, these contributed to the Shining Path's understanding of its operational theater, both in terms of the environment and the human context. In summary, the Shining Path obtains its knowledge of its operational theater, both in terms of the environment and the human context, from institutions or individuals linked, in one way or another, to American or Western counterinsurgency efforts.

The Shining Path has never published any studies or works on class relations in Peru, except for the works of Díaz Martínez and Kawata, which are more of an anthropological nature, specialized and theoretical. We reiterate that the compilations and interpolations of citations from Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Mariátegui that make up "Gonzalo Thought" do not constitute studies or research on the character of Peruvian society. In this sense, all the intelligence available to the Shining Path is foreign.

The publication of the document Developing People's War in Service to the World Revolution is another indicator of the nature of the Shining Path intelligence apparatus. This is not so much because it was printed in modern workshops with formatting, grammatical correction, and graphical cleanliness, but because of its content.

This document represents a significance in the intelligence appreciation of the Shining Path. It is noteworthy first because it is free from their pseudo-Marxist verbosity, and second because it evaluates their irregular warfare in a maximized manner. It provides a political and statistical evaluation of their actions, celebrates their potential, and also evaluates the potential and vulnerabilities of the government of the Aprista Party from their perspective. It also tracks the electoral process in Peru and the government's economic administration.

In conclusion, the logical projections of this work indicate advantages for the Shining Path and its irregular warfare and disadvantages for the Peruvian government.

The methodology employed in this study or appreciation is definitively not Marxist; it does not follow the analytical method of dialectical materialism. Both Marxist and non-Marxist scholars and any student of Research Methodology can scrutinize the Shining Path document titled Developing People's War in Service to the World Revolution and establish the methodology used in its preparation.

This short book exhibits the typical characteristics of a work processed by a foreign intelligence station and not in the highlands of Ayacucho or the marginal areas of Lima, where they lack the computer infrastructure required for storing and processing information.

Another notable aspect of the Shining Path's intelligence apparatus that emerges publicly is its international organization. Western intelligence services, particularly those of NATO, which are always involved in low-intensity operations, have facilitated a support organization for the Shining Path. This support ranges from providing residence visas for asylum seekers in Europe to any Peruvian who requests them, especially in Sweden, to gather dissatisfied individuals with their country. This process extends to the formation of Support and Solidarity Committees. It's worth highlighting that no socialist country grants asylum to Peruvians claiming persecution due to their ideas, and they certainly don't allow the operation of support organizations for irregular combatants of the Shining Path in Peru.

In the United States, support committees for the Shining Path's cause have proliferated the most. There are over 30 active committees, some linked to North American "subversive" currents, such as the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru in Berkeley, with its address at 2483 Hearst Ave. PQ 94709 CA. Others have a religious or ecclesial character, like the TASK Force On Latin America and the Caribbean at P.O. Box 2324, Santa Cruz, California 95063.

France also has a significant number of support committees, seemingly directed by the Peruvian scientist Maximiliano Durand Araujo. It is suggested that he may be the real Number One member of the Shining Path and the probable "President Gonzalo" in exile of the People's Republic of New Democracy. Among these groups, the Centre Interculturel Franco-Peruvien (Intercultural Franco-Peruvian center), directed by Jean Marie Mondet Isnard, operates as well.

In Spain, cities like Madrid and Barcelona host more than a dozen of these support committees for the Shining Path. The same holds true in Germany and Switzerland. Sweden is a unique case due to the extensive activities of two groups belonging to the Shining Path that operate as social sports entities, serving as a kind of hub for international relations of the Shining Path. Without strong evidence, it is claimed that Malmo is the city where Shining Path leaders take their vacations, and individuals like Guzmán, Mezzich, and Morote have been seen there on several occasions.

In England, about eight entities operate in support of the Shining Path, but the most significant one is the international communist movement of the Shining Path, known as the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM).

The International in London (RIM) was initiated by the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States in 1980 and consolidated in London with the support of eighteen "communist parties," including the Shining Path, all of which were dissidents from the Moscow and Chinese currents. They were Maoists, and interestingly, they belonged to countries within NATO or countries that were former British colonies. Behind this organization, providing financial support from 1983 onward, was D. Chaujan: the "President of the State of JALISTAN" (Punjab, India) which is  a republic invented by one of the 27 Sikh parties in India, the "Anand Marg" (The Path of Perpetual Happiness), an international terrorist organization that has the largest network of social and religious organizations in the world, estimated to have around 4 million followers in 96 countries worldwide.

Another aspect related to the breach of the Shining Path's secrecy is the detention of foreigners by Peruvian authorities. Peru's intelligence services (there are several in the country, not just one for Peru and abroad like the Shining Path) have always been eager to prove the Shining Path's communist connections by detaining Cuban, Nicaraguan, or any agents from socialist countries. Up to the present, there have been three significant detentions of foreigners linked to the Shining Path known to the public. Recently, on December 14, 1987, Cynthia Sotwell MacNamara, a 39-year-old American citizen, was arrested in Ayacucho, implicated in the murder of a lawyer and a nurse, with evidence of belonging to a Shining Path assassination team. The case was tried in court and led to the intervention of the U.S. Embassy. Another previous case involved Renata Hehr, a 36-year-old citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, who was arrested in Arequipa on May 21, 1983. She was tried and sentenced for terrorism, crimes against property, and public health as a member of a Shining Path cell that detonated explosives in the southern city's commercial buildings "Gibson," "Monterrey," "Braillard," and "Caras."

One of the most notorious cases is that of Father Jean Marie Mondet Isnard, a member of the Congregation of the Regular Canons of the Immaculate Conception. He was arrested in Lima on July 22, 1983, by order of Judge Una Rodríguez from the 78th Court of Instruction, after being accused of terrorism. Mondet was part of a Shining Path cell that included Haydee Cáceres Hidalgo (also known as Emma Valiente), Manuel Herrera Aspauza, and Marian Kierelson, among others, who were all involved in the judicial process. Cáceres, who was Mondet's secretary at the time, had previously been Guzmán Reinoso's secretary and was acquitted in October 1985 due to a lack of evidence, although she was the key figure in the case. When Mondet was arrested, the French Embassy intervened through diplomats Joan Marc Simen and Jacques Márquez, securing Mondet's conditional release. They then arranged for his departure to France on Air France on the same day of his release, August 15, 1983, in violation of the terms of his conditional release set by the judge. Later, these same officials facilitated the clandestine exit of Herrera and Kierelson to France via Bolivia, where they currently enjoy asylum. Mondet, Herrera, Kierelson, and other Shining Path members established the Centre Interculturel Franco-Peruvien in Paris, located at Boite Postale B.P. N2 371 - 75526 Paris - CEDEX 11. They published a Shining Path information bulletin and collected funds through account number 67672Q at Credit Lyonnais, Agence J410-75011 Paris, in the name of Jean Marie Mondet Isnard. Mondet returned to Peru on October 17, 1985, via Aeroflot, with the support of humanitarian institutions and Peruvian parliamentarians, and he continued his public activities in Peru without facing legal consequences.

All these examples of the exposure of the Shining Path's activities allow us to observe the functioning of the intelligence apparatus that provides security and cover for the Shining Path, enabling it to maintain a good operational capacity. If a biography needs to be fabricated and disseminated, it is done. If operational military intelligence is required to target a critical objective (such as a dam or electrical system), it is provided. If it is necessary to eliminate an official, the apparatus provides details of their life, habits, vulnerabilities, and daily activities, all of which is information that took a long time to acquire. If a congress or press organization needs to be organized, or if financial documents need to be created, or if Shining Path analysts and opinion shapers are required, the intelligence apparatus will see to it. Having supporters at all levels, whether due to interest, sympathy, resentment or blackmail, the apparatus achieves it. This intelligence system, which operates in Peru and abroad, is efficient because it is highly centralized and compartmentalized, with a network that covers all national and international activities. It is led by a brilliant mind in the international intelligence community. This is beyond doubt. Who else can manage such a network? Is it the dedicated, unstable Professor Guzmán from Huamanpoma de Alaya University? Or the disciplined and paranoid instructor of young students at Huamanpoma de Alaya? Or perhaps President Gonzalo himself? The latter is more likely because behind the myth of Gonzalo, in no Shining Path document is it stated that he is Abimael Guzmán. Abimael Guzmán is the apparatus itself. The leader must be a more remarkable mind than the politicized and confused one of Professor Guzmán.

The apparatus is the central driver and executor of the war. The regular Shining Path combatants are squads of fighters who act according to the script of irregular warfare.

This system that conducts intelligence warfare, and has the capacity to generate and provide intelligence as well as carry out operations in support of its strategic goals also has the ability to provide inaccurate or biased intelligence to organizations tasked with combating the Shining Path. Who can claim otherwise? This is a fundamental and doctrinal principle of all intelligence systems in the world: providing false information to the enemy.

Mass warfare

The war of masses, within the doctrine of political warfare, is conceived as the operational part of organizational warfare, and it is based on the mobilization of the masses, which are considered the foundation of political power.

When it comes to warfare, the contenders strive to gain the sympathy and support of the masses for their own organizations. In the war of masses, the goal is to control the psychology of the masses and to sow division and discord among the population of the opposing side.

The Shining Path, in this type of warfare, promotes the mobilization of masses, especially among the peasantry, by using psychological techniques of intimidation, exasperation, and lascivious paranoia. They aim to organize them into popular committees, support bases, zonal and regional groups in order to serve as the foundation for the People's Republic of New Democracy. To achieve this, they polarize the struggle among different groups and strata within the poorest classes of Peru, applying the principle of division and discord.

To conduct this type of warfare at a strategic level, the Shining Path offers the masses a New State and presents a program. "A party must define its program... we must carry out the democratic revolution; therefore, we propose both a minimum and a maximum program."

"Minimum Program":

A) New Politics: The politics of New Democracy is to overthrow foreign oppression and the domination of landlords and feudalists. It involves destroying the old landlord and bureaucratic state and establishing a joint dictatorship.

B) New Economy: All foreign monopoly companies or those that are excessively large will be confiscated. The new economy entails three aspects: the confiscation of land from landlords, the confiscation of bureaucratic capital, and protecting the interests of the middle bourgeoisie. Due to the nature of the democratic revolution, the middle capital should consist of three sectors: state, private, and cooperative. The State should not be owned by a few.

C) New Culture: National, scientific, and mass culture. It is national because it is anti-imperialist, scientific because it is based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or guiding thought, and it is a mass party.

"Maximum Program":

Three inequalities will disappear with communism: City and Countryside; Worker and Peasant; Manual and Intellectual Labor. We have always considered ideology and politics as members of a single historical class, and this idea is essential. The party must have a General Political Line, and "President Gonzalo" has defined that a party cannot advance without a political line. The revolution cannot be carried out without the guiding thought of the "President Gonzalo," which encompasses five points: International Line, Democratic Revolution, Military Line, Construction Line, and Mass Line. (104)

This simulation of a political plan turns out to be rather simplistic, and, when considered in "Discussion Documents," it provokes a deceptive controversy among Senderistas, Senderologists, and politically naive individuals in Peru, as we have already noted. It is a calculated step in the Shining Path's mass warfare strategy to gain influence in a way that its very brutal violence does not provide.

In the use of this warfare, the Shining Path's contradictions become insurmountable. It is impossible to conceive the compatibility of the principles of its program, even setting aside its terrifying simplicity, with the techniques of psychological population control through terror, nor is this program being applied or motivating the irregular fighters of the Shining Path.

In population control, the Shining Path also faces significant challenges. So far, the organizations it has generated have not progressed or developed. The masses choose different political options, despite many circumstances, both natural and intentional, leading them to violent solutions. Grassroots social organizations do not reach the level of insanity, which is the main form of control and imposition by the Shining Path.

The most crucial aspect of the Shining Path’s application of this warfare is the use of social polarization techniques to destroy "the Old Power," the state, and the Peruvian nation. Their centralized work in the central southern highlands of Peru has provided them an undisputed presence, especially through forced recruitment of young individuals, extermination of the elderly, and subjugation of adults. The vendettas against those questioned by the community, as mentioned before, have sensitized a significant portion of the population. However, this has not occurred in Puno, for example, where peasants, with a greater tradition of rebellion and access to property, have thwarted the irregular Senderista incursions. Another field of mass mobilization favorable to them, through coercion, is that of coca-growing peasants. In the city, they have achieved some success within the ranks of teachers and students, but these groups are not significant compared to other competitive political currents.

However, the slogans for the mass warfare, such as "going deep into the masses" and "educating them in people's war," are nothing more than rhetoric. In this field, what stands out in the Shining Path is the destruction of state organizations and production by sabotage and annihilation squads.

This destruction and polarization are not accepted by the Peruvian masses, which have their own dynamics. This is the point that should mark the failure of this conspiratorial movement. If it has had any success in Peru, it is due to the efficiency of its irregular warfare apparatus and the logistical support of two major international systems: one for psychological warfare and another for intelligence.

The Shining Path knows that the strength of Peruvian society against its designs lies within the masses. That's why, in their campaign of polarization, they induce a strategic mistake to make the masses confront the armed forces and the government. The nature of the Senderista apparatus seeks to generalize genocide.

Genocide

An article by Gretchen Small, published in August 1984, comments on research conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) led by Kissinger and Georgetown University for the United States Army.

Under the guise of combating Soviet subversion, the study recommends that the United States has been the instrument for a policy of genocide, enforcing the austerity conditions of the International Monetary Fund and forcing the Third World to accept a reduction in its population. The study, titled Strategic Requirements for the Army to the Year 2000, was published in June... Assuming that the world does not change and that underdeveloped countries will always remain so, 'Requirements' predicts that both superpowers 'will seek to ensure access to select portions of territory that are vital to their global strategic purposes.' While on one hand, it dismisses the possibility of a Soviet attack in Western Europe, despite abundant indications to the contrary, on the other hand, it promotes a state of military alert in the United States towards Ibero-American countries... It foresees the transformation of the United States Army into a British-style colonial expeditionary instrument, to carry out what British experts in psychological warfare and CSIS refer to as low-intensity operations. The core of this new army would be the Rapid Deployment Force...In a friendly country that the United States wishes to protect (from the designs of the USSR), various levels of action can be taken, using psychological operations to induce governments or populations to take direct action; military or paramilitary aid; special unconventional force training operations; deployment of surrogate or allied forces of the United States; deployment of U.S. troops; or any combination of the above. (105)

It is not our diagnosis that Peru is already suffering from this action; it is the announcement by someone as anti-communist as the Lyndon LaRouche organization. It is now necessary to fully uncover the identity of the Shining Path. All the evidence, testimonials, and documentary evidence point to it being a "substitute" creation for "communist" subversion, created by the psychological warfare of a large Low-Intensity operation against Peru and Latin America. That is why the subversive techniques of the Shining Path do not belong to revolutionary warfare but to British political warfare. (106) The veil will be gradually lifted before the masses of Latin America and Peru. Only they will ultimately be able to account for painful and criminal experiments like the Shining Path.

But, fundamentally, the secret has already been revealed: The Shining Path is equal to the CIA.

References

(1) In Peru, many private institutions and specialized individuals, such as social researchers or journalists, have extensive computerized archives on the Shining Path. A good example includes the archives of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Center for Christian Projection, as well as publications in English edited in the Peruvian capital, among others.

(2) CARLOS IVAN DEGREGORI "SHINING PATH": I. THE DEEP AND DEADLY ENCOUNTERS II. ARMED STRUGGLE AND AUTHORITARIAN UTOPIA Institute of Peruvian Studies - November 1986 New Society No. 890

(3) MANUEL JESUS GRANADOS APONTE "POLITICAL BEHAVIOR: A PARTICULAR CASE": Bachelor's Thesis in Social Sciences San Cristóbal de Huamanga University Anthropology Academic Program Ayacucho, 1981

(4) MANUEL JESUS GRANADOS APONTE "PCP SHINING PATH: APPROACHES TO ITS IDEOLOGY" "Socialism and Participation" Magazine No. 37, Pages 15 to 37 March 1987

(5) ELOY VILLACREZ RIQUELME "OUR CIVIL WAR AYACUCHO 80..." Gramos 100 Publishers, Lima, Peru October 1985

(6) GONZALES CARRE - GALVEZ PEREZ "WARI: THE FIRST ANDEAN EMPIRE" Grafica Pérez, Ayacucho, Peru, June 1981.

(7) "THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF PERU" Published and printed by the National Office of Natural Resources Evaluation (NONRE), Lima, Peru, December 1985.

(8) "The Trilateral Commission brings together a significant portion of the political, economic, financial, and ideological centers of the capitalist world. It has, in fact, been argued that the Trilateral Commission is the executive committee of transnational financial capital. It defines itself as an organization oriented towards the formulation of policies...viable for joint action by North America - the United States and Canada, Western Europe, and Japan. Comprising just over 200 private entrepreneurs, chaired by a 32-member executive committee, it has met annually since 1973 when David Rockefeller founded it at a Bilderberg conference, along with 300 important figures from the financial, industrial, and academic world of the West." "INFORMACION COMERCIAL ESPAÑOLA (ICE) No. 155, Pages 131-133, Spain, November 1979.

(9) BERNARDO QUAGLIO DEBELLIS "URUGUAY IN THE SOUTHERN CONE" Ed. Tierra Nueva, Page 101, Buenos Aires, 1976.

(10) GENERAL MERIA MATTOS "BRAZIL: GEOPOLITICS AND DESTINY" Ed. José Olympio, 2nd Edition, Page 68, Brazil 1979.

(11) AUGUSTO PINOCHET "GEOPOLITICS" Memorial del Ejército, Pages 340, 341 Santiago de Chile, 1958.

(12) "POLITICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF AMERICA AND CHILE" "ERCILLA" Magazine No. 1024, Santiago de Chile, February 1955.

(13) GENERAL RAMON CASAS M. "GEOGRAPHICAL STRUCTURE OF AMERICA OR PACIFIC CONFEDERATION" GEOGRAPHIC REVIEW OF CHILE, 1958, Page 18.

(14) ROGELIO GARCIA LUPO "They Fear Another Balkanization of South America" "El Nacional de Caracas" Newspaper No. 14,179, Page A-2 Caracas, February 20, 1983.

(15) GENERAL MEIRA MATTOS Op. Cit. Pages 41 to 68.

(16) ARNALDO RUIZ A. PERUVIAN ANALYSIS. "South American Integration." Page 37 Lima, March 1986.

(17) BERNARDO QUAGLIOTTI DEBELLIS Op. Cit. Pages 63 and 64.

(18) In the present century, Peru has participated in one way or another in the conventional wars of the region: 1932 with Colombia; 1941 with Ecuador; 1981 again with Ecuador; 1982 Falklands War; Peruvians fought alongside Sandino and in the Nicaraguan Revolution. In the previous century, in 1836 with Chile and in 1879 again with Chile; in the Caribbean, it participated in the Cuban War of Independence, where Leoncio Prado is the founder of the Cuban Navy and fought against the Spanish fleet in the Philippines. It cannot be said that Peru did not participate in the War of Bolivia and Paraguay in 1932 because Commander Julio C. Guerrero, a former aide to Marshal Cáceres, was at one point the Commander-in-Chief of the Bolivian Forces; in the Football War between Honduras and El Salvador, it did not have a belligerent role, but a pacifying one, through former Peruvian President José Luis Bustamante, who acted as an official mediator.

(19) United Press International (UPI) Cable New York, March 6, 1987.

(20) Prensa Latina (PL) Cable Washington, March 8, 1987.

(21) CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, ON WAR, Volume I, pages 27, 28, Ed. OIEE, 1977.

(22) CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ Op. Cit. Volume IV, page 171.

(23) MAURICE MEGRET, PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE, Ed. Paidos, page 27, Buenos Aires, December 1959.

(24) MAURICE MEGRET Op. Cit. page 30.

(25) OSCAR TORRES LLOSA "PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS" Basic Course, Mimeographed, 1980 Lima, Peru.

(26) OSCAR TORRES LLOSA "ELEMENTS OF INSTRUCTION ON PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS" Manual, Page 30, Lima, Peru, February 1979.

(27) BORIS PORSHNEV "THE LENINIST SCIENCE OF REVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY" Novosti Press Agenda, Page 12, Moscow 1970.

(28) MAURICE MEGRET Op. Cit. Page 53.

(29) GENERAL E.G. WANG CHENG "THEORY AND PRACTICE OF POLITICAL WARFARE" Pages 145 to 192. School of Political Warfare, Nien Chih Hall, Taipei.

In this text, General Cheng of Nationalist China dedicates an entire chapter to explain the application and use of the six types of war that make up political warfare, detailing the actions to be taken in each of them. According to this doctrine, "The combat of political war relies on comparing intelligence rather than comparing strengths. And just like in military war, political war has its battles. In the combat of military war, there are reconnaissance, approaches, attacks, and assaults. But in the combat of political war, there is propaganda, organization, research, and service. Political combat emphasizes techniques and mental acuteness."

(30) MANUAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS School of the Americas, USA. February 1986.

(31) DONALD R. MORELLI and MICHAEL M. FERGUSON "LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT: AN OPERATIONAL PERSPECTIVE" Military Review, March-April 1985.

(32) DONALD R. MORELLI and MICHAEL M. FERGUSON Op. Cit. Page 17.

(33) FRANK KITSON "LOW INTENSITY OPERATIONS" Subversion, Insurgency, and Peacekeeping Redwood Burn Limited Ed. Faber Father, London, 1975.

(34) ROD PASCHALL "THE DOCTRINE OF LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT: WHO NEEDS IT?" Military Review, Pages 57 to 73, March-April 1986.

(35) CONFERENCE ON LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICTS FORT MCNAIR, WASHINGTON D.C., TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1986, by CASPAR W. WEINBERGER. U.S. Secretary of Defense. CUADERNOS DEL CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS ESTRATEGICOS DE URUGUAY, Montevideo, May 1986.

(36) CASPAR W. WEINBERGER's Conference Op. Cit. pages 46 and 48.

(37) JOHN CHILD "THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA, STRATEGIC-MILITARY CONCEPTS" Air University Review Reproduced by ESTRATEGIA Magazine, Pages 72 to 91, Buenos Aires, 1985.

(38) PETER A. BOND "IN SEARCH OF CBI (COUNTERINSURGENCY)" Military Review, Page 52, November 1986.

(39) RAUL LEIS "SOUTHERN COMMAND HOSTILE POWER" "Nuevo Sociedad" Magazine No. 81, Page 78, January-February 1986, Venezuela.

(40) RAUL LEIS Op. Cit. page 85.

(41) NEWSWEEK Magazine August 3, 1981 Edition, Page 18, UNITED STATES.

(42) ROBERTO REMO "KAMPUCHEA, SECOND LIBERATION" Cuadernos del Tercer Mundo No. 27, Page 26, February 1979, MONTEVIDEO.

(43) ROBERTO REMO Op. Cit., Page 40.

(44) "QUE HACER" Magazine, No. 22, Page 72. "The Ideology of the Khmer Rouge," May 1983, PERU.

(45) POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES No. 427, Pages 7 to 10. "Genocide Act committed by Pol Pot-Ieng Sary," November 6, 1981, FRANCE.

(46) JOSE SOTOMAYOR PEREZ "LENINISM OR MAOISM?", Page. Printed. Editorial Universo Lima, 1979 PERU

(47) CONCLUSIONS AND RESOLUTIONS OF THE V NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE PCP. Ed. Bandera Roja Page 10, Lima PERU

(48) CONCLUSIONS AND RESOLUTIONS OF THE V NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE PCP. Op.Cit. Page 8

(49) LETTERS FROM ABIMAEL GUZMAN REINOSO TO THE SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF BANDERA ROJA (See Appendix 1)

(50) Extracts from an unpublished document corresponding to instructions given by Abimael Guzmán in February 1981. Social research on this point established that Guzmán's police biography includes arrests on June 26, 1970, to be placed under the jurisdiction of the II Judicial Zone of Police; on October 23, 1981, jointly with the Departmental Committee of Arequipa, and on February 19, 1982, having been released on the 23rd of the same month and year. It is assumed that Guzmán lived in clandestinity from the end of 1977 or the beginning of 1978, according to Sendero Luminoso versions. (See Appendix 2)

(51) "THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARXIST IDEAS IN PERU" Pedagogical Editorial "ASCENCIOS": February 1979 Lima. PERU

(52) Op. Cit., Page 28

(53) "DEVELOP GUERRILLA WARFARE Pages 15 and 16 International Edition March 1982

(54) "DEVELOP PEOPLE'S WAR SERVING THE WORLD REVOLUTION" Page 82 Editorial Bandera Roja August 1986 PERU

(55) DANIEL A. SHARP "THE UNITED STATES AND THE PERUVIAN REVOLUTION" "U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN PERU" (English title) Editorial Sudamericana 1972, Buenos Aires ARGENTINA

(56) DANIEL A. SHARP Op. Cit., Page 17

(57) Op. Cit., Page.

(58) Op. Cit., Pages 330 and 331

(59) Op. Cit., Pages 338 to 349

(60) Op. Cit., Page 357

(61) Op. Cit., Pages 358 to 367 (See Appendix 3)

(62) KAYPACHA Magazine (This Land) FELIX ZEVALLOS QUESADA "INSURRECTIONAL THESIS" Edi. Chaupimayo April 1984 UMA-PERU

(63) "DEVELOP GUERRILLA WARFARE" Pages 24 and 26 Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru. March 1982, Mimeographed Edi. LIMA PERU

(64) Op.Cit.- Pages 5 and 6

(65) REPORT OF THE FIRST PLENARY SESSION OF THE SECOND NATIONAL CONFERENCE "MILITARY THOUGHT OF THE PARTY" Mimeographed Transcript Edition Pages 30 and 31 LIMA PERU

(66) V. LENIN "SOCIALISM AND WAR" . Selected Works, in 12 Volumes Edi. Progress, 1976 MOSCOW

(67) V. LENIN "WAR AND REVOLUTION" Selected Works, in 12 Volumes Edi. Progress 1976 MOSCOW

(68) V. LENIN Op. Cit., Page 446

(69) DEVELOP PEOPLE'S WAR SERVING THE WORLD REVOLUTION Page 20 Central Committee of the PC. of the P. Edi. "Bandera Roja" August 1986 PERU

(70) V.I. LENIN "REVOLUTIONARY ADVENTURISM" SELECTED WORKS Volume III Page 192 Edi. Progress- 1975 MOSCOW

(71) V.I. LENIN Op. Cit. Pages 196,197

(72) V.I. LENIN Op. Cit. Page 193

(73) MANUEL JESUS GRANADOS APONTE "POLITICAL CONDUCT: A PARTICULAR CASE" Pages 63 to 66 Edi. Universidad San Cristóbal de Huamanga Academic Program in Anthropology Ayacucho-1981 PERU

(74) MANUEL JESUS GRANADOS APONTE Op. Cit. Pages 67 to 74

(75) MILITARY LINE BASIS OF DISCUSSION, Central Committee of the PC. September 1987 Transcript of "El Diario" Editions from January 3 to 8, 1988 LIMA – PERU

(76) MILITARY LINE Op. Cit. Pages 77 and 78

(77) MAO Zedong PROBLEMS OF WAR AND STRATEGY (November 6, 1938) Selected Works, Volume II, Pages 225, 226, and 227 1976 BEIJING

(78) MANUEL JESUS GRANADOS APONTE Op. Cit. Pages 170 and 171

(79) MANUEL JESUS GRANADOS APONTE Op. Cit, Pages 170 and 174

(80) RICHARD DYSON "THE GUERRILLA GAME" Current News No. 1162 June 13, 1984 Special Edition U.S. Air Force Department (Reproduced from "The Yale Literary Magazine" No. 4, 1984)

(81) RICHARD DYSON Op. Cit.

(82) JAMES ANDERSON (Control & Risk Advisor) 'SHINING PATH: NEW REVOLUTIONARY MODEL" Institute For The Study of Conflict London-1987 ENGLAND

(83) JAMES ANDERSON. Op. Cit.

(84) BASIS OF DISCUSSION Central Committee of the PCP Transcript "El Diario" Editions from January 3 to 8, 1988. LIMA - PERU

(85) NEW GRAND PLAN TO DEVELOP SUPPORT BASES IV National Conference of the PCP Pages 34 and 37 December 1986 Ed; Mimeograph LIMA-PERU

(86) JAMES ANDERSON Op. Cit.

(87) NATIONAL INTERMEDIATE MEETING OF LEADERS AND CADRES Mimeographed copy of handwritten document May 1986 LIMA-PERU

(88) IDEOLOGICAL-POLITICAL REPORT OF THE CENTRAL LEADERSHIP Mimeographed Document September-October 1986. LIMA-PERU

(89) MAXIMIZE THE START OF THE GREAT LEAP Report to the II Expanded Plenum of the PCP Mimeographed Copy February 1985 LIMA-PERU

(90) NEW GRAND PLAN: DEVELOP SUPPORT BASES IV National Conference of the PCP Mimeograph Edition July 1986 LIMA-PERU

(91) BASIS OF DISCUSSION Central Committee of the PCP Transcript of "El Diario" Editions from January 3 to 8, 1988. LIMA-PERU

(92) II NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE PCP Mimeographed Printing July 12, 1982 LIMA-PERU

(93) PSYCHOLOGICAL PROFILE OF THE SENDERISTA URBAN MILITANT Conducted by behaviorist psychologists of the Armed Forces (See Appendix 4)

(94) MANUEL JESUS GRANADOS "The PCP SHINING PATH: AN APPROACH TO ITS IDEOLOGY" "SOCIALISM AND PARTICIPATION" Magazine No. 37, Pages 30 and 31 May 1987 LIMA-PERU

(95) BASIS OF DISCUSSION "Central Committee of the PCP," Transcript of "El Diario" Editions from January 3 to 8, 1988 LIMA-PERU

(96) "CLOSURE OF THE FIRST MILITARY SCHOOL: BEGINNING OF ARMED STRUGGLE" Speech by Abimael Guzmán Reinoso Mimeographed Copy April 1980 LIMA-PERU

(97) II NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE PCP Directional Thesis" Op. Cit.

(98) BASIS OF DISCUSSION PCP Transcript of "El Diario" Editions from January 3 to 8, 1988. LIMA-PERU

(99) BASIS OF DISCUSSION PCP Op. Cit.

(100) "ACTION FRAMEWORK OF SENDERISTA IRREGULARS" For the preparation of this framework and the estimation of other statistical figures in this book, information from public and private sources, reliable and trustworthy, has been cross-referenced in such a way that it can withstand verification of its accuracy and correctness. The different sources that have been used as references - because they are not all the same - may show slight variations, but not adulterations or falsifications.

(101) "DEVELOP GUERRILLA WARFARE WHILE SERVING THE WORLD REVOLUTION." Op. Cit. Page 31

(102) Revolutionary War, based on the philosophy of Dialectical Materialism, has a totalizing conception of the world; therefore, it does not conceive or accept psychological warfare as a method of combat. Psychological warfare is a technique of Political Warfare, Psychological Operations or Low-Intensity Operations, it is a conception of Western warfare strategy. (See Appendix 5)

(103) "NATIONAL INTERMEDIATE MEETING OF LEADERS AND CADRES" Op. Cit.

(104) "THE PARTY PROBLEM IN THE NEW GRAND PLAN" The Program Meeting of the CC of the PCP October 1986 Typed Copy LIMA-PERU

(105) GRETCHEN SMALL AND CSIS PROPOSE GENOCIDE" "DECORRELATION AND Resumen Ejecutivo Vol. I. NS28 of August 1, 1984 New York - UNITED STATES

(106) The "FUNDAMENTAL DOCUMENTS OF THE FIRST NATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU "SHINING PATH," published in "El Diario," edition NB 322, Year VII of February 7, 1988, confirm the substitutive nature of "Shining Path": The enemy for the Shining Path is not imperialism but Marxism ("revisionism" Soviet, Chinese, and Albanian); the Aprista government and President García (representatives of bureaucratic capitalism); and the Armed Forces (which must be primarily destroyed). These "Fundamental Documents" prove the suitability of the sources used to write this book. The documents listed in this bibliography with numbers 65, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 97, and 104 have been used to "construct" what "El Diario" publishes as the result of a supposed Congress.

APPENDICE

Letters exchanged between Abimael Guzmán Reinoso (Álvaro) and Saturnina Paredes Macedo (R. Arderás): I - II - III

I

January 15, 1970

Comrade Secretary General:

Two months have passed since your reintegration into party work, one month since the date when the Permanent Committee should have met again, and we have not received any new news from you to date. Therefore, we find it necessary to send you this letter.

It has been nearly two months since our last meeting. During this time, while some comrades strive to remain faithful to the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and the agreements of the 6th Conference of our Communist Party, others are working diligently to abandon them, exacerbate contradictions, and engage in a liquidationist practice that only serves the class enemy.

A series of recent documents, leaflets, etc., accurately reflect this situation. While some analyze and apply principles, others freely propagate liquidationism, even going so far as to reveal the names and locations of comrades and the Party. We are sending you a comprehensive collection that supports our claims, and we have no doubt that it will help you form a clear and defined understanding of what is happening.

Mariátegui emphasizes the theory and practice of our activity, stating that the fundamental problem of our Party, our Revolution, and our Homeland is the peasant problem. Our great Party has traveled a long, tortuous, and difficult path to reaffirm this direction. The fact that we are on the threshold of a major shift within the Party regarding this issue is evident from the fact that it forms the foundation of this new stage in the development of the party organization.

For example, here we have clearly defined the boundaries with those who seek to exploit the hopes of the peasants: we have exposed (and will continue to do so) two supposed "departmental" peasant leaders, including one who, deceiving the people, pretended to be the "base" of a popular organization with a tradition of struggle and prestige among the people.

However, considering that the definition of the current situation is still under study, we have not yet expanded the scope of our action. We are still treating even those who already see us as enemies with discrimination. But it is evident that this situation cannot be maintained for much longer, except at the risk of being seen as weaknesses by our desires and the forces of unity.

On the 8th of this month, we received a document from the Peasant Commission with a surprising and unusual delay, not even indicating the day but only the month of its approval (November). In this regard, we understand that the distribution of documents is still subject to centralization norms. The Peasant Commission knows perfectly well who the link to AGIPRO (Agitation and Propaganda) is. On the other hand, even if it had not been distributed to the Central Committee through that channel, we understand that they should have consulted with you. And they should not have done so, because otherwise the document would have been received here along with a note from you. Unless you are aware of it, everything changes.

On the other hand, if in the previous document of the Peasant Commission the Permanent Committee was not recognized because it "demanded" that the Secretary of Organization directly convene the Central Committee, thus arrogating powers that are not within its competence, with the current document, it exacerbates rather than corrects the previous error. Now it even disregards the Political Bureau, as well as the Permanent Committee. So, to whom is it "addressed" for the immediate convocation of the Central Committee? Is it addressed to the Permanent Committee, perhaps? Maybe to the Political Bureau? We believe that you should seriously consider the gravity of this situation.

Regarding the content of the document, it is clear that the Peasant Commission has advanced further in exacerbating the current contradictions. We reserve the right to provide the appropriate critique of this document as well as others and activities and even positions that are clearly divergent.

We believe that "Bandera Roja" should already provide the general guidance on this new stage of struggle, on this Great Controversy regarding the preconstitution of the Party, guided by the foundation of party unity, taking Mariátegui as the cornerstone, and focusing the debate on the fundamental problem, the peasant issue.

Therefore, we hope to receive news from you as soon as possible, even by return mail, to finally know where we stand.

Yours sincerely,

Secretary of Organization

(Abimael Guzmán Reynoso)

Secretary of AGIPRO

II

February 15, 1970

I hereby inform you that during the meeting of the Political Bureau at the end of last January, attended by the majority of its members and the Responsible for Youth, the following agreements were reached:

Firstly, considering that the comrades responsible for Organization and Agitation and Propaganda have effectively abandoned their areas of work in practice, engaging instead in an intense internal struggle at the regional level, and that they have unjustifiably refused to attend the meeting of the Political Bureau, insisting instead that the Permanent Committee should function first, where they have a majority that they use to hinder the radicalization of the Party, DECLARE that, apart from the Central Committee, the only body of the National Leadership at this moment is the Political Bureau, led by the Secretary General who was directly elected by the Central Committee in accordance with the powers granted at the VI National Conference.

Secondly, temporarily assign the responsibilities of the Organization and Agitation and Propaganda fronts to the Secretary General, thereby removing the comrades in charge of them, who will continue to be members of the Political Bureau.

Thirdly, convene the II Plenary Session of the Central Committee elected at the VI National Conference within a period of three months, on a date and at a location that will be duly indicated. The following agenda must be discussed and decided upon:

1. Report on the political situation
2. Report on the Party's situation and co-reports (Internal Struggle)
3. Election of the Political Bureau and the Permanent Committee

Fourthly, all items on the agenda must be addressed with the fundamental criterion of revolutionary practice to fully implement the Party's proletarian line. The manner and form of conducting the internal struggle must be subjected to this criterion.

Fifthly, consider the Party's connection with the popular masses, primarily workers and peasants, as a matter of life or death for the Party. Party members must take the lead in their struggles and, through their example, promote fresh blood from the proletariat to enrich the Party's ranks, as well as the best and most combative sons of the peasantry. Simultaneously, combat all forms of sectarianism and opportunism, both from the right and the "left," while adhering to the norms of open and secret work, in accordance with the principle of preserving and developing one's own forces in the process of struggle. Those who consciously adopt an attitude that leads to the isolation of the Party or the weakening of its ranks must be relentlessly fought against.

Sixthly, start from the slogan of forging the unity of the Party through revolutionary practice, guided by proletarian politics rooted in Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought, Mariátegui's legacy, and the principles of the V National Conference.

Fraternally, R. Anderas

(Saturnino Paredes Macedo)

Secretary General

III

January 20, 1970

Comrade Secretary General:

On the 13th of this month, at 7:30 p.m., we received a letter from you dated the current month.

On the 15th, we wrote you a letter accompanied by an extensive collection of documents (40 in number, totaling 118 letter-sized pages, single-spaced). In that letter, among other points, we expressed our surprise at the delay with which you had sent us the document from the Peasant Commission.

We cannot help but express our surprise and bewilderment at your letter, to which we respond herewith.

The revolution demands from us, as an essential requirement to be able to participate in it, extreme frankness and complete honesty. Without this requirement, we not only act against ourselves, sealing our political fate once and for all, but, more importantly, against our Homeland, our Revolution, and our Party.

As a corollary of the VI Conference of our Communist Party, we have entered a great process of unification based on party unity. An expression of this process is the Great Controversy, whose prelude we are currently experiencing.

We want unity, seek unity, and fight for unity. But it is a law of Marxism that "before uniting and in order to unite, it is necessary to clearly and decisively delineate the positions." We openly and honestly declare that we adhere to this principled stance.

In November, you urgently summoned us to a meeting of the Permanent Committee. Despite our best efforts to get there in time, we had to wait for nearly a week to be able to convene. Until now, the fundamental reason for this delay has not been explained to us.

Once assembled, we were surprised to learn that the session of the Permanent Committee had become a mere formality, as its only purpose was to convene the meeting of the Political Bureau. Clearly misguided about what you should do after your reintegration into party work, and even less informed about what was really happening, you took a step that evidently contributed nothing to unity.

Thanks to the initial information you received at the meeting, the conclusion was reached that a hasty meeting of the Political Bureau, let alone the Central Committee, such as the one that the Peasant Commission had "demanded" weeks ago, threatening even to hold it if it was not convened and setting deadlines for its realization, would contribute nothing to the interests of our Homeland, our Revolution, and our Party.

It was also agreed that you should thoroughly inform yourself about what was really happening, for which you should take all the time you deemed necessary. Then, once you had a clear, unambiguous, and defined opinion on the situation, the position of each member of the Permanent Committee should be determined.

It is obvious that several meetings would be needed for this purpose. Thus, we left it at that and also decided that you would convene the next meeting of the Permanent Committee for mid-December.

We stated in the Permanent Committee that a communist can participate in any discussion, but first, they must know clearly what kind of meeting it is: a meeting among comrades, or a meeting between us and the enemy. If it is the former, we go with a desire for unity and with the objective of strengthening this unity through self-criticism and criticism. If it is the latter, we go knowing that the positions are clearly defined, and our only concern is to avoid getting involved in a potential compromise that, contrary to the principles, would favor our Homeland, our Revolution, and our Party in the long run.

It was necessary to state this because, as we informed you, some comrades had gone so far as to say that we were on both sides, that the contradictions were antagonistic (with the enemy), and they called for the overthrow of the "distorters of the VI Conference." In these circumstances, is a meeting of the Political Bureau or the Central Committee appropriate, considering that these meetings, being party meetings, are necessarily meetings among comrades who participate with a subjective desire for unity? This is why a series of meetings of the Permanent Committee was and continues to be necessary to define and clarify these and other points.

What has happened in these last two months? As we mentioned in our previous letter, "a series of documents, flyers, etc., published recently, faithfully reflect this situation. While some analyze and apply principles, in others, liquidationism is rampant, even going so far as to mention names and locations of comrades and the Party." A new gem of this liquidationism, dated the 19th, is attached to this letter as evidence of what we reiterate.

It is impossible not to take a position on these events. Even more impossible is taking a third position, a centrist or expectant position. It is entirely impossible for the Permanent Committee not to define its position as soon as possible. Therefore, we reaffirm that, before any other meeting, whether the Political Bureau or the Central Committee, a meeting of the Permanent Committee is necessary to finally understand where each of us stands.

We await news from you. Furthermore, considering the time that has passed and the events that have occurred, we expected that you would at least outline your position on this reality. On the contrary, we received a brief note in which we couldn't even decipher which meeting you are convening us to and for what objectives.

It is not possible to continue like this. We have already told you that "this situation cannot persist for much longer, lest our desires and efforts for unity be seen as a sign of weakness." For months, it has been opportunely claimed that there is a "leadership crisis in the Party." What identity does this have with the jester who throws a stone and hides his hand, with the thief who shouts, "thief"? Before your reintegration into party work, the Permanent Committee's declaration on the June meeting was distributed to the Central Committee, outlining the principles we must keep in mind in this stage and the tasks we must fulfill. The resolutions of the VI Conference have also been disseminated. "Bandera Roja" No. 42 has been published. It is evident that this material is not being considered. On the contrary, it has even been boldly declared that "the resolutions have contraband, they have not been reviewed by the Secretary General," and that "Bandera Roja No. 41 has contraband; it has not been reviewed by the Secretary General." You returned to party work in November, and at that time, "Bandera Roja" No. 42 was also circulated. However, even in January, it is still said that there is a "leadership crisis." What is the stance regarding "Bandera Roja" No. 42? Does it have contraband? Is it being supported? Is it intended to be wrapped up in a conspiracy of silence?

If the "leadership crisis" refers to the absence of meetings of the Party's top organs, revolutionary frankness and honesty demand that we clarify why there are no such meetings. Who thwarted the meeting of the Political Bureau in June? Who, with their liquidationist attitude, made it impossible for any meeting of the Permanent Committee or the Political Bureau to take place before your return? Who is responsible for attempting to turn the November meeting of the Permanent Committee into a mere formality? Why have no new meetings of the Permanent Committee been held until now?

How true and relevant is Lenin's statement now, "(the liquidators) try to obscure the truth with noisy shouts and scandals. Sometimes, novices can be bewildered by methods of this nature, but the workers, in spite of everything, will find their own way and will soon reject the insults."

In November, we told you that an important meeting would be held here in Ayacucho soon, and it would be very beneficial for you to participate. The expectation of the Political Bureau meeting on one hand and your silence afterward did not make it possible to inform you in a timely manner. This important meeting will take place precisely on the days you have invited us. This is the second reason why we cannot travel.

Finally, reiterating that meetings of the Permanent Committee should resume before any other meetings, whether of the Political Bureau or the Central Committee, we propose that, if it is our mutual desire, the first of the new meetings should take place at the end of this month or the beginning of the next. In this meeting, there would be a fruitful exchange of opinions regarding "the general orientation of this new stage of struggle, on this Great Debate about the reconstitution of the Party, guided by the basis of party unity, with Mariátegui as our cornerstone, and focusing the debate on the fundamental issue, the peasant problem," as we expressed in our previous letter.

We await your response.

Secretary of Organization

(Abimael Guzmán Reynoso)

Secretary of Agipro

Statements By Abimael Guzman Reynoso To A Police Official In Lima In February 1982, Regarding The Communist Party Of Peru:

QUESTION: What is the true name of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path?

ANSWER: The Communist Party of Peru "Shining Path", which people commonly refer to, does not actually use that name. The party's own documents indicate that its true name is the Communist Party of Peru, simply abbreviated as CPP. The term "Shining Path" has its origins from the 1960s when the newspaper Red Flag was published. At the end, it used the slogan "Por el Luminoso Sendero de Mariátegui" (For the Shining Path of Mariátegui). In the early 1960s, university students affiliated with the party, as part of the RSF (Revolutionary Students’ Front, Frente de Estudiantes Revolucionarios), used "For the Shining Path of Mariátegui" as an identification slogan to distinguish themselves from other RSF groups on campus. Later, this term became more widespread, and it became common to refer to anyone associated with the political position of the Communist Party of Peru as "Shining Path." This means that the Party itself did not adopt this name; rather, it was used by various groups and people who opposed the Party.

QUESTION: What is the ideological character of the Communist Party of Peru "for the Shining Path of Mariátegui"?

ANSWER: This is specified in the party's own documents. The Communist Party of Peru is based on the decision of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, meaning that Marxism has developed in three stages. Marx’s stage, Marxism, corresponds to the era of pre-monopoly capitalism, the last century, and in terms of politics, it corresponds to the preparation for revolution. So, the first stage of Marxism is "Marxism of the era of pre-monopoly capitalism and the preparation for revolution." Later, at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, capitalism enters a new phase, which is its final stage, the "imperialist phase." Lenin is the one who would point out the laws of the development of imperialism and find its contradictions. In this era of imperialism, the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are exacerbated to the fullest extent. Lenin, while discovering the internal laws of imperialism, also points out the need to organize the revolution, not just in preparation but with a view to its execution. Stalin defines the second stage of Marxism as "Leninism." Therefore, Leninism is typified as "Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution." So far, we have "Marxism-Leninism."

After World War II, China is in the midst of a revolution, and Mao Zedong, by applying Marxism-Leninism to the concrete conditions of a semi-feudal and semi-colonial China, will discover that imperialism on a global level enters a period of extreme contradictions. The two world wars are symptoms of these extreme inter-imperialist contradictions. In this period, the revolution has shifted from advanced countries to backward countries, to agrarian countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Mao Zedong will discover new laws of revolution, which are synthesized in the laws of people's war, from the countryside to the city, in a long process under the leadership of the party of the proletariat. This is a peasant revolution called the "Democratic National Revolution" as a preliminary stage of a subsequent "Socialist Revolution." This period is established within Marxism as a development in the third stage, and it is what was called "Mao Zedong Thought" during the Chinese proletarian cultural revolution. So, we now have "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought," and this is the doctrine adopted by the Communist Party of Peru. Furthermore, this party, according to its own documents, has taken up and developed the ideas of Mariátegui, applying them to our reality. When Mariátegui founded the Socialist Party in the country, he was essentially founding a proletarian party, which means it became a Communist Party. To do this, Mariátegui had to outline a general political line that includes five key issues: 1. The character of society, 2. The character of the revolution, 3. The instrument of the revolution, 4. The tasks of the revolution, and 5. A mass line.

According to the character of that society, the character of the revolution necessarily follows. This comes from the analysis Mariátegui made of our reality, which is semi-feudal and semi-colonial. Therefore, if a country is capitalist, the revolution must be socialist. However, if a country is semi-feudal and semi-colonial, the revolution must be a National Democratic or Bourgeois Democratic one, as Mariátegui called it. Thus, if the Peruvian revolution must be National Democratic, this implies that the Peruvian revolution has to have two stages: the first, National Democratic, and the second, Socialist, as a continuation of the first stage of the revolution. This character of the revolution, indicating the two stages, is the logical and inevitable consequence of the character of society, and this is Mariátegui's conclusion.

QUESTION: What are the motives, reasons, and when did the Communist Party of Peru "for the Shining Path of Mariátegui" emerge in the country?

ANSWER: This is directly related to the historical process of the Party. Everyone knows that the Communist Party was a single entity in our country, and as a consequence of the Sino-Soviet split in 1963, it had to reflect in all Communist Parties worldwide. The Peruvian Communist Party couldn't remain unaffected by this, so in our country, the Communist Party also experienced a split. On one side, there were those oriented towards what the public knows as "Muscovites," and on the other side, the "Pekingese." Concerning the "Muscovites," they still called themselves the Peruvian Communist Party, publishing the newspaper Unidad (Unity). On the other hand, another group also known as the Peruvian Communist Party emerged, and they began publishing the newspaper Red Flag (Bandera Roja). In 1963, during the last months, the Fourth Conference of the Communist Party took place. During this event, under the leadership of Jorge Sotomayor Suárez, they decided to expel all those who belonged to the other faction, including Jorge del Piado and others. At this conference, the Party adopted the thought of Mao Zedong for application in our reality, but they hadn't yet clarified the strategy for the Peruvian revolution. The progress consisted of adopting Mao's thought.

Later, between the Fourth and Fifth Conferences, Jorge Sotomayor Pérez left the Party. I don't know the reasons, but it must have been intense due to very serious contradictions regarding the main problem, which is the people's war, the strategy of the revolution. Then, Saturnino Paredes Macedo assumes leadership as Secretary General. When the Fifth Conference takes place, I believe it was in 1965, the Party's progress is mainly expressed in the establishment of what was called a "basis of party unity"; this basis was "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought" at the global level and "Mariátegui's thought" at the national level; that is, the unity of all members of that organization had to be based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and Mariátegui's thought. Another important aspect of that Conference is that they identify organizing the "people's war" as the Party's main task. However, there was a pending issue, which was the fact that the Party itself was the result of a long process since the death of Mariátegui, a process in which the Party participated in several electoral processes and its own organic structure was adapted according to electoral requirements, and the criterion of the leaders regarding the Party's system and structure has been that "the partisan system and structure do not correspond to the needs of a party that must organize and lead the people's war" unless it were a party with an electoral system and structure. Therefore, the need for "reconstitution" is raised, which constitutes the essence of the contradictions that were to develop thereafter.

Later, between the Fifth and Sixth Conferences, a new internal contradiction emerged, leading to another split. It's worth noting that this period coincided with the Revolutionary Left Movement’s guerrilla actions in 1965, which had a significant influence on the minds of those who were in our Party. After the Fifth Conference, a position that the Party labeled as militaristic, foco-oriented, and influenced by Cuba started to emerge. This position emerged among militant groups associated with a Committee in one region that published a newspaper called Red Homeland (Patria Roja). People who adhered to this position from the Red Homeland newspaper started to be labeled by the Party as a danger. However, I should mention that the actions taken by the Party leadership in response to this were, in my opinion, erroneous. There was no ideological struggle or clarification; instead, purely organizational measures were taken. Consequently, before the Sixth Conference, everyone from Patria Roja had already been expelled from the Party without any Party event, meeting, or discussion. This was a highly abnormal situation within a Communist Party. This event had repercussions on the Party. Patria Roja took around 80% of the militants, and the Party was left significantly weakened. There was a schism, and Patria Roja emerged, while the Party still called itself the Peruvian Communist Party and continued publishing Bandera Roja. Additionally, Patria Roja also called itself the Communist Party of Peru, with the acronym “PC del P”. The issue of Party "reconstitution" became prominent again between the Fifth and Sixth Conferences. However, there weren't significant problems at that time. Some members expressed a willingness to carry out the reconstitution, while others intended to promote it. After the Sixth Conference, two groups started to differentiate themselves in practice. Saturnino Paredes started publishing Bandera Roja with personal and group criteria, no longer representing the Party. On the other hand, another Bandera Roja increasingly emphasized the Party's agreed-upon base of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and Mariátegui's thought, adding to it the task of organizing the people's war, as mandated by the V Conference. In 1972 or 1973, it became noticeable at the university level that the Revolutionary Student Fronts "For the Shining Path of Mariátegui" were openly engaging in a struggle against what was called "liquidationism," labeling the Mariátegui group. The faction publishing Bandera Roja opposed Mariátegui, and they referred to themselves as the Communist Party of Peru. However, they did not adopt any special acronym or slogan to distinguish themselves. This difference was only noticeable at the university or Front level, which is why this Party began to be called or identified as RSF - "By the Shining Path of Mariátegui" as a consequence of the split from Saturnino Paredes' group.

QUESTION: What is the current strategy being developed by the Communist Party of Peru "for the Shining Path of Mariátegui"?

ANSWER: The strategy is derived from the general political line established by Mariátegui. The strategy of the revolution is a logical consequence of the very nature of the revolution. If the revolution has two stages, the first being Democratic National and the second Socialist, then the strategy of the revolution at this moment corresponds to the first stage, which is essentially Democratic Bourgeois. In Mao Zedong's terms, this means a peasant revolution, an agrarian revolution under the leadership of the Communist Party. This type of revolution entails a long and protracted people's war. It follows the path that Mao called "surrounding the cities from the countryside," which involves liberating rural areas through armed struggle, establishing support bases, and gradually encircling cities, starting with small villages and towns, then moving to medium-sized cities, and finally the large cities until the ultimate capture of central power at the national level. Logically, the strategy adopted by the Communist Party must be a result of its own process of reconstitution.

Fundamentally, the reconstitution of the Party should be understood as organic, but from a Marxist perspective, the organic aspect always follows the ideological and political aspects. This means that the reconstitution of the Party should have been an organic reconstitution. If the Communist Party of Peru claims that it is already implementing its revolutionary strategy, it implies that the Party has been reconstituted in ideological, political, and organic terms. Concerning the strategy, this indicates that it has been reconstituted from a political standpoint, implying the consistent application of the laws of people's war outlined by Mao Zedong to the specific conditions of our country.

QUESTION: What are the necessary conditions required for applying the revolution in the country?

ANSWER: In any revolution, Marxists identify two types of requirements or conditions. Firstly, there are the objective conditions or material conditions of the revolution, which Lenin referred to as the "revolutionary situation." These are manifested through the misery of the masses, poverty, hunger, oppression, discontent, protests, and struggles, among other factors. From a Marxist perspective, there cannot be a revolution without a "revolutionary situation." Secondly, from a Marxist standpoint, even when there are objective conditions for a revolution, it cannot be realized without the presence of subjective conditions.

Subjective conditions in a country like ours are outlined by Mao as the "three magic weapons of revolution," which are the Party, the United Front, and Armed Struggle. Without these subjective conditions, even if there are objective conditions, the revolution is unlikely to occur. Therefore, the Party's role is to build and consolidate these subjective conditions, the "three magic weapons of revolution," which, when acting on the objective conditions, enable the development of revolutionary action. These subjective conditions, according to Marxist dialectics, have decisive importance in the revolution to such an extent that they can even generate the following: if the objective conditions for the revolution do not exist, the subjective conditions can, through various actions, create the necessary objective conditions to develop the revolutionary process.

QUESTION: Based on your experiences, do the objective conditions of the revolution exist in the country?

ANSWER: Regarding this, we must consider the analytical approach. Lenin's analysis, applied to a capitalist country like the USSR, and Mao's analysis applied to a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country like China, offer different perspectives. Lenin argued that a "revolutionary situation" does not always exist in a capitalist country, but arises at a specific moment and may have a short or extended existence but is not permanent. Armed insurrection must, therefore, occur when a "revolutionary situation" emerges. In contrast, Mao argued that in China, there is always a "revolutionary situation" due to its semi-feudal and semi-colonial nature. Applying this doctrine to our country, following Mariátegui's general policy, our society is also semi-feudal and semi-colonial. Therefore, in our homeland, there is a "revolutionary situation," meaning there are objective conditions for a revolution. Among these conditions, we have constant protests and movements by peasants demanding land reform, protests against the actions of cooperatives, and ongoing claims for individual land ownership. In the urban working class, there are frequent strikes, protests over rising living costs, demands for wage increases, and more. Even the petite bourgeoisie, teachers, health workers, and various workers protest against economic policies. These conditions indicate that the masses are discontented, suffering from poverty and hunger, which are signs of the presence of objective conditions.

QUESTION: You mentioned the three objective conditions of the revolution: the Party, the United Front, and Armed Struggle. Do these three conditions exist in the Communist Party of Peru "for the Shining Path of Mariátegui" in the country?

ANSWER: From the Party's perspective, the three subjective conditions do exist. Firstly, the Party itself exists, and it remains the same. This Party is the principal condition because it constitutes the guiding force of the entire process. The issue lies in determining if the other two subjective conditions, the United Front (UF) and Armed Struggle (AS), exist. The Party has a clear concept of what it conceives as the United Front. The first form of concrete existence of the UF is the worker-peasant alliance, so we must first inquire if this worker-peasant alliance exists. If it does, then the UF exists. The Party has a fairly clear concept of the UF in this case. The worker-peasant alliance means the Proletarian Party, which is the Communist Party itself, embedded within the peasant masses. In certain peasant areas, primarily among the poor peasantry, the Party guides, organizes, and directs their struggle. Therefore, when peasants are directly guided by the Party, it signifies the Party's connection to the peasantry. Since the Party represents the working class and is embodied within the peasant masses, this constitutes the concrete worker-peasant alliance, and thus, the UF exists. According to the Party's conception, this worker-peasant alliance does not end there; it must develop as the backbone of the revolutionary UF. The strategic UF, according to the Party, encompasses four revolutionary classes: the proletariat, the peasantry, the petite bourgeoisie (loyal allies of the revolution), and the national or middle bourgeoisie, considered allies during crucial moments of the revolution. Therefore, the strategic UF unites these four classes: the proletariat, peasantry, petite bourgeoisie, and the national or middle bourgeoisie. The proletariat in our country consists of wage workers in industries and mines, as per Marxist definition, with a particular emphasis on mine workers. Within the peasantry, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist perspective recognizes three categories: the rich peasantry, the middle peasantry, and the poor peasantry. In terms of percentages, the rich peasantry accounts for approximately 5% to 10%, the middle peasantry about 20% to 30%, while the majority is the poor peasantry. In the early stages, the rich peasantry does not participate in the revolution due to their economic status, and the middle peasantry does so hesitantly. Therefore, the Party focuses primarily on the poor peasantry, who make up the majority and are more inclined toward revolutionary ideology and action. The petite bourgeoisie includes intellectuals, liberal professionals, students, teachers, small-scale merchants, and small-scale artisans—people who economically meet their fundamental needs but also experience oppression from both big capital and the feudal backwardness of the country. Consequently, they are highly inclined to join the revolutionary process. However, they can also easily serve the classes opposing the revolution if they find an easy way to accommodate. The national or middle bourgeoisie comprises medium-sized industrialists, owners of medium-sized mines, and medium-sized merchants—considered as an exploiting class since they exploit wage labor. Nonetheless, they are also disadvantaged by big capital, both foreign and domestic, which limits their growth. Therefore, in specific revolutionary moments, they may align with the big bourgeoisie but can also serve the revolution when their interests depend on their dependency on imperialism.

Regarding armed struggle, the third subjective condition of the revolution, I have only general ideas, but they result from analyzing the texts of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought and global experience. The Party believes that this third subjective condition also exists from the moment there are determined individuals with the will to engage in armed actions, even when they do not possess weapons. As Lenin stated, "armed struggle without weapons exists from the moment determined individuals are willing to execute it." Therefore, the Party's concern is not only about the existence of determined individuals but also about developing these individuals and their actions to the point where armed struggle can be waged effectively. I understand that if the Party has set the task of developing armed struggle, it's because there are individuals determined and willing to sacrifice their lives for armed struggle. So, for the Party, the third "magic weapon" of the revolution, armed struggle, also exists. At this moment, I cannot confirm if the Party already possesses the necessary weapons to carry out authentic armed actions, as conceived in armed struggle, but I believe that the Party, according to its own strategy, must have necessarily carried out a series of actions that would enable the development of people's war with weapons. To achieve this, preliminary actions must have been executed.

QUESTION: How do you explain that despite the strategy of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path, which focuses on armed struggle from rural to urban areas, there have been terrorist or disruptive actions in cities, including attacks on essential public services, public places, and private properties nationwide since July 1980?

ANSWER: I have a clear opinion on this matter. In China, the first peasant uprising truly led by Mao Zedong occurred in the Chin Kang mountains, which historically served as the base of support for the Chinese revolution. It's essential to consider the following: before the uprising in the Chin Kang mountains, sabotage actions took place in nearby mining areas and cities. These actions were linked to a strategic plan of the revolution, including acts of sabotage or what is currently termed terrorism. Logically, these actions were intended to divert the military forces of the Chinese state, making it easier to organize, prepare, and develop the peasant uprising led by the Chinese Communist Party. Considering this global experience, it's not challenging to analyze what is happening in our homeland. Moreover, it's worth noting that the entire region in China where the Chin Kang mountain uprising took place, including the mining areas and various nearby cities where sabotage acts occurred, collectively covered a territorial expanse similar to that of Peru. Therefore, although individual actions may seem isolated in different cities in Peru, such as in the North, South, Lima, Ayacucho, Huancayo, and more, when viewed as a whole, it is akin to what occurred in China. Thus, even though there are actions in cities, mining areas, and sabotage acts like the destruction of radio antennas in certain locations, primarily state institutions, I believe and am confident that these are supportive actions aiding the preparation and gestation of a genuine revolutionary movement—the peasant uprising.

QUESTION: Do you believe that there is gestation or emergence in the countryside for the purposes of armed struggle?

ANSWER: I believe one thing regarding this issue. The poor peasantry genuinely suffers from poverty, which is a subjective reality. The misery endured by the poor peasantry throughout the centuries, spanning four centuries, as the Republic failed to resolve the land issue, makes the poor peasantry highly receptive to revolutionary ideology and actions. Our nation's history and the current century consistently show peasant uprisings, rebellions, such as the armed struggle of 1960 and the well-known peasant invasions. These movements mobilized thousands, even hundreds of thousands of peasants. At this very moment, various regions in the country experience discontent, protests, and, as in 1979, significant peasant movements in the Central Sierra, where even the Sinchis and other military forces had to engage in combat. Therefore, I genuinely believe that the peasantry, especially the poor peasantry, in our homeland, is the sector most inclined towards the preparation and organization of the revolution, as well as the eventual peasant uprising. Even if the poor peasantry lacks systematic, conscious indoctrination, they are still favorable conditions, potentially spontaneous.

QUESTION: For the gestation of people's war, which strategically begins in the countryside but is also manifest traditionally in cities through certain actions carried out by the Party, are there mechanisms or structures within the Party for the dissemination or execution of these actions?

ANSWER: Regarding actions like sabotage or terrorism, I am not aware of whether the Party has specialized entities for this purpose. However, I do not believe that this type of action can be carried out by gathering individuals, discussing it on the streets, or hiring people for a task. These actions must necessarily result from well-organized and well-directed work by the Party itself. It is unlikely that many of these groups carrying out sabotage actions have individuals who, in an adventurous and idealistic manner, are not Party members or sympathizers but participate simply out of a desire to engage in revolutionary actions. Nevertheless, I believe such cases are minimal and exceptional, and there are few of them, which cannot be considered the main factor. The primary factor, in my opinion, is that the Party must have entities that systematically and organizationally plan the execution of these actions.

QUESTION: It has been established that there is a LCWM (Laborers and Class Workers Movement; Movimiento de Obreros y Trabajadores Clasistas) linked to the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path; do you consider this link to be real and if the LCWM is an operative organism of the Party?

ANSWER: I believe that the LCWM is primarily a liaison organization. Since the Party operates clandestinely and cannot openly present itself to the masses or its members as representatives of the Communist Party, it uses what Lenin and Mao Zedong called "transmission belts." In our country, the Communist Party of Peru (CPP) refers to these as "Generated Organizations," but the concept is essentially the same—transmission belts or Generated Organizations. The LCWM is one such Generated Organization. In various trade unions, both in mining and industry, there are workers who may or may not be union leaders but are aligned with the CPP’s program. If Party members become aware of these workers, they are considered individuals who serve the Party, even if they are not Party members themselves. This collective of workers, who may not know each other or hold meetings, constitutes what the Party calls the LCWM on a national level. So, any worker or sympathizer who wants to serve the Party or promote the people's war presents themselves on behalf of the LCWM, which serves as a transmission belt or an organization that is not the Party but supports the Party.

As transmission belts, if a group of members who consider themselves part of the LCWM understands that these sabotage actions are part of the Party's plan to establish the people's war, then even though they may not be aware of it, some present may be Party members. They generate a proposal or an idea for carrying out a sabotage action, which they may believe is entirely isolated, but from the Party's perspective, it is part of the plan. They coordinate, plan the action, seek the necessary materials, and execute it. Consequently, it may appear that the LCWM has carried out the sabotage action, but it is under the direct guidance of the Party.

QUESTION: Are there other Generated Organizations or transmission belts of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path in the country?

ANSWER: Yes, that depends on what is conceived of as various sectors within the popular masses. Following Mao Zedong's thinking applied to our homeland, the Party conceives of five sectors within the popular masses: a) the worker sector, b) the peasant sector, c) the women's sector, d) the youth sector, and e) the intellectual sector. To have a transmission belt for each of these sectors, there is a corresponding organization. Thus, in addition to the LCWM for the worker sector, there is the Movement of Poor Peasants (Movimiento de Campesinos Pobres) for the peasant sector, the Popular Women's Movement (Movimiento Femenino Popular) for the women's sector, the Youth Movement (Movimiento Juvenil) for the youth sector, and an organization called CTIM, the Mariátegui Intellectual Work Center (Centro de Trabajo Intelectual Mariátegui), for the intellectual sector. Therefore, whether or not these organizations or entities are active, they exist because when the Party wants to reach the women's masses, taking into account the specific issues facing women, they receive news or analysis from the Women's Movement, which functions as transmission belts.

QUESTION: What are the forms or means of dissemination of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path?

ANSWER: Based on my knowledge up to the end of 1979, there were three forms of written propaganda: firstly, the Party's official organ, Red Flag; secondly, the publication of pamphlets claiming to be from the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party, but these pamphlets focus on specific issues. For example, before the Constituent Assembly elections, a pamphlet titled Against Constitutional Illusions was published, discouraging people from voting. Similarly, before the campaign that resulted in the election of the current government, another document from the CC titled Initiate Armed Struggle or Let's Start Armed Struggle was circulated. The third form of written propaganda involves using flyers and similar materials under the names of some of the Generated Organizations.

QUESTION: How are these means of dissemination subsidized, and how do the Party members move through different regions of the country with specific tasks or slogans?

ANSWER: Regarding this issue, there are multiple aspects to consider. For instance, when I was engaged in dissemination and propaganda activities and had to give talks in distant places from where I lived, the same organizations or institutions that hosted me covered my expenses. These could be clubs, cultural associations, or even communities in some districts. In such cases, I did not incur any personal expenses. In other cases, I have observed the following: for the creation of propaganda materials to be released in the name of the LCWM, in a certain place addressing a specific issue of a union, some members of that organization, which identifies with the LCWM, would collect voluntary contributions from friends and sympathizers. This was another way to fund specific expenses.

However, I believe that one form of funding that never ceases to exist is the financial contributions made by Party members themselves. In all communist parties around the world, there is usually a requirement for monthly dues, although the specific amount may vary. In China, it is based on a percentage of what the members earn. From a strict Marxist perspective, the primary source of economic support for the Party is the dues paid by its members. However, it may not be possible for a party to sustain itself solely with these modest contributions, given the substantial expenses involved. In this regard, Chairman Mao Zedong once said, "The main economic source for the expenses required by a party to conduct a revolution is the masses themselves." Therefore, the Communist Party of China proposed other ideas. If the masses are very poor, and the peasantry is struggling for higher wages, how can you ask them for economic support? Mao Zedong used to respond that the masses are the gods of the revolution and, although they are poor, they are the primary economic source for true revolutionary peoples. Historically, global experiences teach us that, for example, the Communist Party of China received significant assistance from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (USSR) during Stalin's time, including not only weapons and advice but also economic assistance. Therefore, it should be considered that the Communist Party of Peru may need to receive support from sources beyond the dues of its members or direct help from the masses.

Now, regarding whether this could be financial assistance from other countries, it cannot be precisely from the Communist Party of China for a very clear reason. The Communist Party of Peru is against the Communist Party of China because the CPP has characterized and publicized with documents that the government established in China after the death of Mao Zedong is a reactionary, bourgeois, revisionist, counter-revolutionary government that is restoring capitalism. Therefore, they are considered enemies, and I do not believe that the current Communist Party of China would offer or be willing to assist the CPP.

QUESTION: Do the top leaders of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path and other militants, particularly those in middle management, have extensive ideological training and formation? Is this the result of instruction received abroad or from foreigners coming to our country?

ANSWER: Regarding this, during my extensive political activities as a propagandist, I naturally received information on various aspects of the revolutionary life. I know that during Stalin's time in the USSR, people from many communist parties around the world went there and received ideological, political, and even military training. In Mao Zedong's era, especially during the lengthy process of the Cultural Revolution in China, I also know that people from many communist parties around the world visited China and received ideological, political, and even military training. Some Peruvians have been to China, had special meetings with Mao Zedong himself, and he advised them to serve their own people when they returned to their country. In an illustrated Chinese magazine from around the late 1960s that came to our country after Mao Zedong's death, there is a picture of a group of relatively young individuals from various Latin American countries. The person standing directly in front of Mao Zedong in the photograph is Saturnino Paredes Macedo. However, I do not have concrete evidence; it's a matter of conjecture, and I cannot confirm whether individuals from the CPP have traveled abroad for such purposes. Nonetheless, I do know that many of those involved in the 1965 guerrillas received training in Cuba. So, it wouldn't be far-fetched to speculate that members of the CPP might have traveled abroad and received ideological, political, and possibly military training. I cannot say whether people from other countries have come to Peru to provide this kind of training, as I am not a witness to such activities, and I do not know if it is happening now.

QUESTION: Do you speculate that members of the Central Committee have no connection with the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Peru?

ANSWER: I dare say that they have no connection because, as I mentioned earlier, the CPP considers the Communist Party of China as its enemy.

QUESTION: Has the Communist Party of Peru, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (CPP-MLM), emerged, and can you indicate when it emerged and the reasons?

ANSWER: That party must be the one that publishes Red Homeland (Patria Roja), publicly known as Patria Roja, which is the dissident group that emerged after the Fifth Conference of the CPP. This group was oriented towards militaristic, focoist, and Cubanist concepts and had practically dragged the majority of the party with it when it left. The party, known today as MLM (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), did not originally emerge with these specific initials. In its early days, it was simply called the Communist Party of Peru, and they were referred to as "Patria Roja." I believe that after the elections for the Constituent Assembly, this group split into two parts. One of them published a publication called Puka Llacta, and I think the group behind this publication is the one that calls itself the Communist Party of Peru MLM (Puka Llacta).

QUESTION: According to the political character of the CPP-MLM (Puka Llacta), do they have any connection or identification with the CPP-Shining Path from the perspective of armed struggle?

ANSWER: To the best of my knowledge, there were no organic connections between the CPP-MLM (Puka Llacta) and CPP-Shining Path. However, I believe that politically, they share a common goal, which is the people's war, and both are against electoral processes. They do have differences, such as CPP-Shining Path advocating not voting while "Puka Llacta" advocated casting blank votes. Nevertheless, when it comes to concrete actions within the Party's main task, which is armed struggle, their commonality outweighs their differences. So, it did not surprise me to read news reports indicating that both Shining Path and Red Homeland (referring to "Puka Llacta") might be involved in acts of sabotage or terrorism.

QUESTION: What is your opinion on left-wing political parties that have representation in the current National Congress, and do some of them located in the far-left tend to access power through armed struggle in this camouflaged manner?

ANSWER: Regarding this, I consider what Lenin pointed out: "In electoral processes, those who participate in elections always try to demonstrate that there are two camps, the left and the right." But Lenin said, "This is false; in reality, there are three camps: the right, the true left, and a third camp that presents itself as left but is the opportunist camp." So, from the perspective of these concepts, members of the so-called left who have participated in elections and are in Congress are not the true left; rather, they belong to what Lenin called the third camp, the opportunist camp, according to Leninist concepts.

Excerpts From The Topic "The Indians," Developed By William P. S. Mangin At The Wingspread Conference, Wisconsin, Usa, In 1970

(The Peruvian Revolution and the United States by David Sharp, Pages 358 to 367, South American Edition, Buenos Aires).

QUECHUA IDENTITY AND THE COLD WAR

The indigenous people, mostly speakers of Quechua, make up approximately half of the Peruvian population. Half of this group either does not speak Spanish or only knows it to a limited extent, and their way of life, according to their own definition and that of others, is typical of indigenous people. It is likely that the Quechua-speaking population today has the same number of individuals as it did at the height of the Inca Empire, and its members are increasingly aware of their indigenous identity.

Thanks to modern methods of transportation and communication, especially affordable bus travel and transistor radios, many now know the coastal region, Lima, and other mountain valleys. Many men have seen the country and conversed with other indigenous people during their military service. The Army uses propaganda groups to recruit indigenous people, but during their time in the military, they learn Spanish and a trade, discovering the existence of other indigenous people.

The many peasant unions, either formed or infiltrated by Maoists, Communists, the GIO, the CIA, Cubans, etc., have also raised the political consciousness of indigenous people and developed general awareness of their numbers and identity. Still, many indigenous people express shame and discomfort about their own condition, and many do not want their children to learn Quechua in schools.

However, based on my own experience, these feelings have diminished in the last twenty years, and now there are many more indigenous people who do not feel ashamed of their language and their particular condition.

For several years in Peru, I suggested to various officials at the US Embassy, especially members of AID, USIS, and the Peace Corps, the need to develop special programs in Quechua and to work directly with indigenous people. In 1958-59, the response was a smile or indifference. An AID official (then called Point 4) mentioned that some Peruvian colleagues from the Ministry of Education had explained to him that Quechua only had 400 words and that it was a dialect, not a language. He saw no reason to waste time on such an ineffective tool. In 1962-64, there was more interest, but still with reluctance. Peruvians did not like the idea that the Peace Corps was instructing a group in Quechua instead of Spanish. A Fulbright program official (Peruvian) stated, "Quechua, Indianism, and communism go hand in hand."

The majority of American officials in general have shown little interest in indigenous people, except as rural Peruvians, and this policy has been satisfactory because it was also that of the Peruvian government.

Some members of the Embassy staff who established relationships with the APRA party were interested in the somewhat romantic concept of "Indoamerican" promoted by Haya de la Torre. However, the Apristas have been considerably more active on the coast and in working with Spanish-speaking individuals, many of whom are racially indigenous but culturally cholos or mestizos.

The trend of previous governments, the current one, and practically all political parties, including the APRA, has been to integrate the "Indian" into the national culture as a "Western" man (or better, but no one mentions women) of modern Peru. The idea is that the time of Túpac Amaru has passed, and talking about separatism is a divisive attitude. I agree that it is divisive, but I believe there are ample reasons to anticipate a powerful separatist movement, and it will matter little whether we like it or not, or whether we speak about it or remain silent.

Nationalism and separatist movements are still strong in France (Bretons), Spain (Catalans and Basques), Belgium (Walloons and Flemings), Great Britain (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), Yugoslavia, Russia, and other regions of Europe. Nigeria, Burundi, Kenya, Congo, Ghana, and other African states are torn apart by nationalist and separatist movements. The same phenomenon is observed in Indochina (Vietnamese, Montagnards, Khmers, and other mountain peoples), and Malaysia, China, and Myanmar have minorities that wish to be autonomous. Canada has a significant separatist movement, and so on. In my opinion, it would be short-sighted to believe that one of the most important nations (tribes, peoples, or whatever term is used) with the greatest cultural uniformity, referring to the Quechuas, will not demand recognition of their rights.

Peruvian colonial and republican governments, both civilian and military, have attempted to abolish the indigenous people through decrees (for example, the current government has claimed that all are peasants). But for better or worse, the indigenous people do not take these attempts seriously. The various attempts made over the last 400 years to assimilate, integrate, or control them, including sending them to the jungle to expose them to malaria, have not succeeded. The Quechuas (and Aymaras) are resilient, and their numbers have continued to grow, despite their contributions to the formation of mestizo and cholo groups with the intelligence and energy of a large number of their own members.

I wish to briefly outline some impossible facts and the potential responses from the United States. I understand that assuming a U.S. response separate from the Peruvian attitude implies a certain arrogance, and for that reason, I will attempt to place the U.S. attitude within the context of Peruvian positions.

1. The first possibility is the least likely. Let's assume that, thanks to the emergence of highly capable political leaders, a Quechua-Aymara state is formed or attempted to be formed in the Andes of Bolivia and Ecuador. As I mentioned, this is a highly improbable phenomenon. The opposition of Western governments in all three countries to the actions of internal separatists is firm, so combined resistance would be immense. It is likely that the United States would provide military assistance to contain such movements, ultimately intertwining with the political dynamics of the Cold War. I won't dwell on this possibility, except to point out that I don't consider it entirely impossible in the distant future.
2. The second possibility, and I must clarify that I find it as improbable as the first, is the complete integration of Quechua and Aymara Indians into Peruvian national culture as Spanish-speaking peasants. Many Peruvian political leaders, both white and mestizo, as well as many Americans, rely on this possibility. Most of U.S. policy has been based on the assumption that integration was taking place, that it was desirable, and deserved support. If this possibility were to occur—and it should not be ruled out—there would be no major need to modify the policy followed thus far.
3. The most probable series of events will unfold within the general framework outlined in this work. Centuries of gradual and abrupt change have determined a complex social structure, with partially overlapping groups of different social and economic positions and aspirations. Indigenous people live in isolated communities, but it is more common for them to be members of communities where they coexist with individuals from non-indigenous groups. As with most national groups, some wish to assimilate into the general society, others want to become Peruvians while maintaining their indigenous identity, some want separation, and the majority probably doesn't think much about it. Depending on the political circumstances, some individuals will identify as indigenous in one context and as non-indigenous in another. The first two possibilities are often seen as ideal forms. The Peruvian and American governments will have to respond to real situations that will never be well-defined examples of Quechua nationalism or separatism, but rather complex phenomena influenced by many causes, with Quechua identity being just one facet. However, if my assumption that the importance of Quechua identity as a political phenomenon increases is valid, it will be necessary for the governments involved to adopt a defined attitude towards the existence of indigenous people as a differentiated culture, or at the very least, become aware that this people exists. This is because in the various controversies that will arise, the concerns of indigenous people will be a factor that will not go unnoticed by others. In reality, as many observers have pointed out, Peruvian mestizos and whites have used local protests by indigenous people against abuses as a political lever in disputes they have had with other mestizos and whites for generations. When the idea of Quechua independence enters the international political scene, it will become a factor in the Cold War. As the United States has already collaborated in an operation against two guerrilla groups, a policy begins to take shape. In the 1965 operation against guerrilla groups, aircraft, bombs, and napalm produced in the United States, as well as troops trained by Americans, were used, and there have been accusations that American special forces in Peru were also involved. Many Peruvian Indians, some involved in the movement and most unrelated to the issue, were killed, and the effects of this episode on the entire area are still difficult to estimate. In 1960, after the Civil Guard wounded ten Indians and killed four on the Huapra estate near Vicos, many believed that the United States was siding with the Indians. However, this position was more apparent than real. In a casual visit to Vicos, Edward Kennedy learned about the incident from the accounts of several locals, as well as from the accounts of Americans strongly supportive of the Indians. He then pressured President Prado to initiate negotiations that would lead to the expropriation of the Hacienda Vicos in favor of the resident Indians. During the uprisings of peasant unions in the Convención area in 1962 and 1963, the United States barely had any involvement with both sides, and the situation became even more complicated due to the presence of the American company Anderson Clayton. There were conflicts with Indian communities in the Central Andes, where the interests of the Cerro de Pasco Corporation were at stake, and to a lesser extent in Pararín and the Colca Valley, where Grace and Co. had interests. There were many other incidents involving American participation and many more without it, for example, the incident near Anta in June of this year (1969), when the police fired on Indians who were apparently protesting a real or imagined consequence of the new official agrarian reform, which they believed would deprive them of land. I mention this Anta incident (Ayacucho) to introduce the idea that Indian communities have economic interests distinct from those that characterize Indians who own small farms and/or work on other people's land. Thus, a policy towards "Indians" applied in a situation involving nationalism or Indian identity could provoke contradictory reactions in cases related to agrarian reform, land redistribution, small loans, cooperatives, etc. It cannot be asserted that there is an automatic Indian response to agrarian reform or any other issue. In view of the current situation, characterized by many incidents involving indigenous participation, albeit with different characteristics and sometimes conflicting interests, and the increasingly pronounced self-awareness of the indigenous people themselves, one can speak of the emergence of a series of situations in which official Peruvian and American attitudes may coincide or diverge.

Psychological Profile Of Urban Militants Of The Shining Path

GENERAL ANALYSIS

Permanent Conditions

• 50% mestizo, 25% indigenous, 25% white, mulatto, and Black. 90% with secondary and higher education. More from provinces than from the capital.
• Exclusive manifestations of Peruvian nationality through ethnic motivations, (pride) of the Quechua-Aymara culture, mainly symbolized in the strong personality of the highland women of the group.
• Center of revolutionary political attraction for youth due to the failure or lack of other valid alternatives to the current aspirations of the youth population.
• Exploitation of basic needs and deficiencies of the population in general.
• Organizational "Natural Selection" scheme based on Agitation and Propaganda conducted by initiates and reeducated individuals.
• Practice of responsible, conscious, and extreme discipline.
• Strictly hierarchical and compartmentalized organizational structure vertically and laterally.
• Need for, recognition of, and acceptance of maximum authority.
• Controlled social integration. Self-control and inter-control of behaviors. Disregard for the pleasure (Eros) of living, glorious acceptance of death (Thanatos).
• Externalization of primary impulses of obedience and dedication, reinforced by tanic passions that show processes of psychotization directed by intellectualized states of fanaticization.
• Ideological-military indoctrination of "Mao-Gonzalo Thought" and "Seven Military Writings" of Mao Zedong.
• Cult of party solidarity.

Semi-Permanent Conditions

• Modifications in the organization due to geographical displacements or adaptation to various functions.
• Complementary training and self-determined training.
• Maximum security, differentiated by organization levels and hierarchy.
• Motivating rituals prior to immediate action.
• Break with recognized socialization institutions: Family, Church, educational centers, etc.
• Periodic potentiation of group aggressiveness as a result of numerous plans and practices for reserve action.
• Feelings of frustration stemming from major national problems.
• Exogenous actions aimed at strengthening the morale of prisoners.
• Practice of mind control discipline.
• Confidence and trust in the organization.
• Development of behaviors, education, and conduct in the face of adverse contingencies.
• Training of activists through mobilization centers of the social status of expectant or paralyzed youth groups that do not see a future, let alone fulfillment.
• Maximum utilization of endemic social circumstances: Legal Resources, impunity of minors, institutional differences between security forces, police repression, uncontrolled increase in social needs, schizophrenic state of Peruvian society (everyone against everyone).

ATTITUDE ANALYSIS

Positive Attitudes:

• Life with ideological motivations.

• Political-military capacity (strategists and tacticians).
• Advocacy for ethnic and cultural values of our past civilizations.
• Education and preparation for action. Willpower.
• Respect for hierarchy and one's own authority.
• High morale and austere life.
• Developed security awareness.
• Sense of opportunity.
• Organized solidarity.
• Ability for planning and executing actions.

Negative Attitudes:

• Lack of national motivations and values.
• Self-destructive feelings due to political passion.
• Overvaluation of one's own convictions.
• Rigid, schematic, and ambivalent behaviors.
• Permanent state of frustration.
• Violation of beliefs or interests to influence or create independence.
• Irrevocable decisions.
• Disregard for life.

PROFILE

• Insurgent and clandestine political-military organization with great mobility.
• Builds cohesion based on cultural differentiation from the current Peruvian society, which it challenges; and global transformation proposals without specifying precise national objectives.
• Elite, rigid, and closed organization.
• Effective participation of women in the tactical direction of actions, support, and maintenance of the organization.
• Element of psychological maneuver against the State, Government, Politics, and National Defense Plans of uncertain origin and covert dependence.
• Real knowledge of the strategic position they occupy in the national subversive process.
• Logistical self-sufficiency.
• Great intellectual development.
• Severe rejection of other tendencies: Yankee imperialism, Soviet social imperialism, pro-imperialist bourgeoisie, and nationalist Armed Forces.
• Serious, hierarchical, and two-way social communication system, with intermediate couriers.
• Imposing practice of self-criticism as a catalyst for shame and failure, as well as a regulator of behavior within the group.
• Replaces ideological debate and confrontation with armed action and messianic thinking.
• Bases its struggle on concrete facts (tactics) and directs it towards forms of generalized struggle against the prevailing system (strategy).
• Maintains prestige, strengthens willpower, and perfects its organization due to the counterproductive effects of conventional repression carried out without the necessary reinforcement of concurrent socio-economic actions.

EFFECTIVENESS ANALYSIS

• A tiny group in relation to the total urban population of Lima.
• Develops its potential based on mobility and surprise.
• Sustains its cohesion through ideological internationalization, high morale, and willingness to fight.
• Translates its organization into minimal operational units (communal) at the local, regional, and national levels.
• Highly centralized command, resembling a General Staff.
• Extends influence and power through persuasion and cohesion.
• Intensely dissolves social function due to the insecurity and social schizophrenia generated by its actions.
• Feels the ability to condition the political life of the community, destabilize the Government, and wear down the Armed Forces.
• Increases its international prestige promoted by international news agencies, under the guise of Human Rights and the socio-economic weakening factors of the Central Government.

SPECIFIC ANALYSIS

Susceptibility

• Own logistical resources.
• Organization subordinated to urban armed struggle.
• Relative isolation from formal Marxist left and metropolitan working class.
• Ideological schematism.
• Verticalism and hierarchical rigidity.
• Complicated internal social communication system.
• Personality disrupted by political passion and ambivalence of values.
• Oversaturation of self-destructive feelings that reverse the effects of insecurity and schizophrenia.
• Eventual detentions disrupt the leadership cadre.
• Sensitivity to concurrent socio-economic actions and policies aimed at improving the national situation.
• Open centers for recruitment and proselytism.

Plans Of The Shining Path Specifying Psychological Warfare

a) Evaluation of Actions in the General Plan in 1984 (Transcription of Handwritten Copy).

b) Reproduction of Specific Plan (Holograph) for Psychological Campaign for April, May, and June 1987.

a) EVALUATION OF ACTIONS IN THE GENERAL PLAN IN 1984.

THE FOUR FORMS OF STRUGGLE

I. GUERRILLA ACTION

Crops and Collective Planting:

Advances

Airabamba, Tancayllo, Aizarco, and collective plantings protected by the Popular Guerrilla Army and led by the People's Committee.

Limitation

Assault:

Advances:

Assault on police posts in Luricocha, Quinua, Tambo, Totos, Vilcashuamán. Disarmament.

Limitation:

No raid on Ñaña, Ricardo Palma.

Ambushes:

Advances

Leap in the 1st Campaign of Defend, Develop, and Construct Sivia, Minascucho. Ambush of military vehicles. Surprise attacks.

Limitation:

Need to develop further, no counter-ambush tactics applied; target patrols; forces are surprised: Omasi, Manallascac, Tuco.

Occupation of Towns:

Advances

Quantitative and qualitative leaps from the beginning (Pujas) to conquering Bases; from small to medium.

Limitation:

Vinchos (CR-Central) allowed reactionaries to regroup and capture them for not camouflaging and not conducting proper reconnaissance, failed to annihilate them.

Confrontation:

Advances

Reverence for the Armed Forces is beginning to diminish, and they respond with great determination. Andahuaylas, Aranhuay, Milucha, Sacsamarca, Huacasancos. Against combined forces or mesnadas.

Limitation:

They are caught off guard and do not plan their response.

Scorched Earth and Counter-Establishment, Critical Point Strikes, and Overruns: Advances

They are beginning to handle guerrilla warfare with extensive mobility, campaigns of encirclement and annihilation, and counter-campaigns of encirclement and annihilation. Umaru.

Limitation:

Hit and run; bypass the main point of the Base-manifestation of the errant Lucanas. Develop more extensive guerrilla warfare with high mobility. Resolve displacements silently and by platoons.

Campaigns of Encirclement and Annihilation and Counter-Campaigns of Encirclement and Annihilation:

Escape:

Advances

Escape policy CRAS Ayacucho.

Limitation:

Problems with basic principles of high-level war misunderstanding.

Disturbances, Street Fighting Tactics:

Advances

In the capital of the country, simultaneously at 13 points and a wide area with successive blows. Progress in uniting armed struggle with the people's struggle. Centers of resistance.

Limitation:

Develop them around the proletariat's struggles.

II. SABOTAGE

Sabotage:

Advances

Heavy blows to the country's economy, bureaucratic capitalism, and imperialism and social-imperialism. Applied in series. San Martín de Forres, Southern, Oil pipelines, light and microwave towers, Hogar S.A., Bayer, cotton bales, sugarcane fields. A three-part plan.

Limitation:

Not hitting Social-imperialism, need for more significant sabotage. More roadblocks.

III. SELECTIVE TERRORISM

Execution and Popular Trials:

Advances

Execution of authorities and informants.

Limitation:

Not executing higher-level authorities.

IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

Agitation:

Advances

Armed propaganda focused on peasants as the primary target. 200,000 copies of "Let's Develop Guerrilla Warfare," 100,000 posters, graphic flyers, 150,000 for the first, and 100,000 for the second.

Psychological Warfare:

Limitation:

Don't target the proletariat in the city.

Mobilization:

Advances

From mobilizing hundreds of people to mobilizing 50,000 peasants only in the main CR during the "Batir." It's primarily armed.

Limitation:

Proletariat and the urban poor.

THE FIVE STEPS

1. ACTIONS

Advances:

We have entered the main form of civil war, campaigns and counter-campaigns of encirclement and annihilation. Management of campaigns. The five steps.

Failures:

Plan failure, Ñaña, Tambo 2, Chumbes, failure of recognition, investigation; fixing terrain. Information failure. They don't see two hills. Lircay, Ricardo Palma.

2. DETACHMENTS

Advances:

Popular Guerrilla Army, three forces: night march, regular march, and forced march.

Failures:

Problems in force management, problems in concentration and dispersion. Company: leadership doesn't function; amorphous without squads. Daytime road mobility. They are caught off guard: Tuco, Manallasca, etc. Surveillance failures, coordination failure.

3. PLANNING

Advances:

Night withdrawal, with shelter, staggered. One point, two sides, main point, containment, irruption. Three groups: attack, support, security. Means: Acquisition and distribution. Striking where the weakest point is. Never between two flanks.

Problems:

Improvisation; anticipating success, failure, casualties. Starting point, fallback point, concentration point. Drills, command voice. Start signal; signals, liaisons, task control. Thoroughness.

4. EXECUTION

Advances:

Objective achieved. Key assaults, irruption if missing, they surrender with fires.

Problems:

Objective attainment: Ricardo Palma; Vilcashuamán, CRAS Ayacucho (weapons). Bellicosity, audacity, quick decision. Most crucial moment.

5. EVALUATION

Advance:

Zonal assessments

Problems:

Neglect, no positive and negative lessons drawn for squads, detachments, etc.