Word: guzman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...purchases of food, liquor and clothing in sizes much too large for themselves suggested that they had company in the house. Butts of Winston cigarettes in the trash led the detectives to believe that the guest might be none other than the group's elusive and ruthless founder, Abimael Guzman, who went underground in the late 1970s. When the cops finally stormed the house, they found to their amazement no bodyguards or caches of weapons -- just an overweight and sickly terrorist leader. Almost immediately, the invincible "Presidente Gonzalo," as Guzman has called himself, surrendered without a fight...
Shining Path's gruesome 12-year campaign has led to the deaths of 25,000 Peruvians. Because Guzman dominated the group's ideology as well as its centralized command, analysts expect his arrest to cause a severe setback that will put the force of 5,000 active militants on the defensive. But the guerrillas have vowed to pursue their bloody fight to destroy all of Peru's institutions and install a peasant-worker state. Last week they set off a bomb and killed a policeman to demonstrate their continued resolve. "Once a new central committee is formed," Guzman apparently told...
...government has two weeks to prepare charges of treason against Guzman and his cohorts for trial in a military court next month. A guilty verdict would undoubtedly give a political boost to President Alberto Fujimori, who already has overwhelming popular support in Peru for abolishing a do-nothing Congress and judicial system last April and now for taking an important step toward fulfilling his promise to pacify the country by 1995. With Guzman safely behind bars, progovernment candidates for constitutional congress elections in November are likely to win a majority. (See related stories beginning on page...
...Abimael Guzman was a successful revolutionary because he never flinched: he was willing to destroy Peru and as many innocent Peruvians as necessary to gain power. His Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, movement, perhaps the most radical leftist insurgency still in operation anywhere in the world, sowed terror throughout the country during a 12-year campaign that took 25,000 lives, damaged $22 billion worth of property and left some Peruvians fearing that his "forces of history" might achieve victory. That is, until last week -- when Guzman was captured by government forces in a bloodless raid on a modest house...
Even with Guzman behind bars, the war for control of the country is not over. But Peruvians savored the sudden feeling of relief -- none more so than the autocratic Alberto Fujimori, who has turned his presidency into a virtual dictatorship, partly to quell the revolution. "Our fear was broken from one day to another," was how Isabel Coral, who works with victims of Shining Path violence, greeted the arrest. In their recent year long assault on Lima, the guerrillas had come close to terrorizing the populace into capitulation. Guzman's arrest not only halted that momentum but, more important...