Word: ayacucho
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...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 the rebels...
...most recent attack? Probably because elders from Lucanamarca traveled 90 miles to Ayacucho last month to petition the government for police protection against the Senderistas. Nothing came of the appeal except savage retribution from the very men the villagers feared. Sums up Enrique Zileri Gibson, director of Lima's leading newsmagazine, Caretas: "It is a strategy of terror designed to show the weakness of the army...
...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 commission called attention to a fundamental...