Word: guzman
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LIKE A BIG-GAME HUNTER DISPLAYING HIS PRIZE catch, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori paraded Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman Reynoso before the people. Guzman, wearing prison pinstripes and surrounded by hooded guards, was placed in a cage aboard a gunboat and transferred from his island prison to a maximum-security windowless cell at a navy base on the mainland. Fujimori staged the media event to draw attention to the successes of his war on terrorism and to justify his "government of emergency" declared a year ago. The boasting did not go unanswered. In a violent response, Shining Path guerrillas...
...beyond question, his inflated legend may say more about the dreams of the impoverished people who revere him than about the man himself. He is hailed as a philosopher-warrio r, yet much of his best writing is shamelessly cribbed from Mao. As for being a warrior, while Guzman seems to have no compunction about ordering up the most foul atrocities, no one knows if he has ever killed anyone himself...
...merchant father; acquaintances remember a boy who poured his energies into books. At age 10 he was beaten by police breaking up a strike, and as a university student he came under the influence of a Communist philosopher and a painter who regarded Stalin as insufficiently revolutionary. In 1962 Guzman was given a philosophy post at Huamanga University in Ayacucho, where he used his teaching pulpit to indoctrinate students. He was profoundly influenced by Mao's Cultural Revolution, which he witnessed firsthand. "At some point," says journalist Gustavo Gorriti, "he persuaded himself that he was not only a qualified leader...
Until his capture, Guzman shrewdly manufactured and manipulated propaganda to give the impression that Shining Path was everywhere. Uncertainty about whether he was dead or alive enhanced his mystique. Now that it is known that he is very much alive, authorities want to keep him that way. The last thing they want is a dead -- and martyred -- Guzman...
...PERU: Guzman's Turn to Lose...