Word: senderos
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Dates: during 1983-1983
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...blazing hammer and sickle on a hillside outside of the city signaled that the attacks were the work of an increasingly active band of guerrillas who call themselves Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). Last week Belaúnde reluctantly cracked down. For the first time since his democratically elected government took power in 1980 after twelve years of military dictatorship, Belaúnde, 69, declared a 60-day national state of emergency, suspending civil liberties and giving police broad powers to seize suspected guerrillas for up to ten days without charges. Within 24 hours, police had arrested 200 people, although...
...Sendero claims to be fighting for Peru's 15 million rural and largely impoverished Indians and mixed bloods. They bitterly resent the nation's 3 million whites, who have dominated Peru's economy and politics ever since the Spanish conquest in 1533. The threat of ethnic conflict has been partly responsible for a surprising show of unity behind Belaúnde's emergency measures, which even leftist Opposition Leader Senator Enrique Bernales admitted were "justified...
...Belaúnde well knows, the most likely threat to Peru's fledgling democracy is actually from the right. In Lima's coffee houses, talk often turns to fears that the Sendero attacks will strengthen the hand of military hard-liners who would prefer a more authoritarian government. There have even been rumors of a military coup similar to the one that deposed Belaúnde in his first term as democratically elected President...
...fact, no one in the army is eager to challenge Belaúnde's authority. Not only has he taken care to pay his generals well, but no military leaders are credited with his political skills. The Sendero threat has increased just as Peru is struggling with a severe drought in the south, flooding in the north and a crushing economic recession. Says a Peruvian Congressman: "Who else would want to try running things right now? It would be political suicide." With the Senderistas showing every sign of intensifying their attacks, Belaúnde's job may soon...
Founded in the early 1970s, Sendero Luminoso claims as many as 1,000 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...