Word: andean
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Although the assault on Lima was the most daring raid yet by the guerrillas, nearly 3,000 government troops and police have been battling them for months in their rugged Andean stronghold of Ayacucho, 200 miles to the southeast. In the past three years, skirmishes between the insurgents and the army have killed more than 1,000 people. Those numbers are now sure to rise: in a sign of the government's new sense of urgency, 50,000 police have been deployed throughout the country...
...have been unthinkable. A notoriously repressive dictator, Pinochet has regularly silenced his opposition with torture, killings and exile. In the 9½ years since he took power in the bloody coup that overthrew Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens, Pinochet has also maintained control by bringing remarkable prosperity to the Andean nation. But Chile's economic miracle may have run its course. After a booming 7.3% average yearly expansion of the economy from 1977 to 1981, Chile suffered a catastrophic 13% negative growth rate in 1982. As a result, Pinochet's regime is threatened by unrest over unemployment...
...massacre was a direct affront to the liberal government of Peru's President, Fernando Belaúnde Terry. Ever since Belaúnde's election in 1980, the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), a shadowy group of self-styled Maoist guerrillas, has tyrannized the area around the picturesque Andean town of Ayacucho, some 350 miles southeast of Lima. Under the pretext of defying capitalism and central authority, the insurgents have attacked isolated police stations and assassinated villagers suspected of informing against them. In January, Belaúnde sent a 3,500-man task force to Ayacucho to deter...
...members, most of them peasants and students from the mountains. Their eccentric ideology is mingled with a curious form of messianic tribalism. The Senderistas use Inca slingshots, for example, to fling dynamite sticks at targets. The guerrillas' atavistic tactics have evoked a similar response from the Andean villagers. When eight journalists were killed near Ayacucho in January, a government commission concluded that villagers had perpetrated the crime using Senderista methods. The bodies of the newsmen were carefully stripped, washed and turned face down, while their clothes were burned, in accordance with the traditional rites of Andean exorcism. The investigating...
Such hoary superstitions do not seem to interest Belaúnde. The President wrote off the Easter massacre as "an insanity perpetrated by people who are psychologically unhinged." Although he has deployed his troops, Belaunde will need a more detailed and determined policy if he is to save Andean villagers from their ruthless oppressors...