Shining Path is an unprecedented terrorist organization. Despite the imprisonment of its leader, Abimael Guzman, the group continues to strike fear in the hearts of the people of Peru. With its careful orchestration of guerrilla warfare, Shining Path became the first revolutionary movement to pose a serious threat to an established democratic government.
Shining Path began as a university movement in provincial highland Ayacucho in the early 1960s. The movement organized there and elsewhere for a number of years before launching its people's war in 1980: "As a domestic strategy [terrorism] invariably invites a punitive government reaction . . . this cost can be offset by the advance preparation of building a secure underground" (Crenshaw 17). Shining Path recognized the wisdom of waiting until the Peruvian government was at its weakest point before striking.
Shining Path began its public campaign of violence when Peru was on the brink of economic collapse. The country's minimum wage had plummeted in value while hyperinflation reached the 7,000 percent level. About half the population was considered critically impoverished. Many Peruvians directly blamed the government for the economic disaster. Shining Path capitalized on this discontent by disseminating anti-government propaganda evidence of political corruption. As a result, many of Peru's urban, middle-class population believed that Shining Path's violent intervention was in reaction to the country's economic woes.
Shining Path at first received much support from the rural population as well. The Peruvian peasants believed that the revolutionary group would promote justice. Shining Path promised to install a peasant-ruled state free of foreign influence. Shining Path was able to expand rapidly because of the perception that democracy was not working: "In regions that were poor, but where Peru's democratic institutions were relatively strong, Sendero [S...