Of Pisco and Peru: ‘THE GUS’S PERUVIAN GUIDEBOOK’ PROUDLY PRESENTS: CHAPTER ONE: SENDERO LUMINOSO (THE SHINING PATH)

The origins of a cabrón

Once up on the times, there was a fat-joweled cabrón with a fleshy billiard ball-shaped head filled with psychotic thoughts. His name was Abimael Guzmán and he taught at the University of Huamanga in the 1960s. Any hows, after he gets tenure, he starts to calling himself “Comrade Gonzalo” and makes Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path). I know it sounds like the name of a Christian rock band, but they play ways more like Death Metal. Come See!

Our stinker’s career begins: time to make the jumping beef

The history of Peru is a long succession of ‘Oh mierda’ moments. One of her biggliest dumps happens in 1532, when Francisco Pizarro rolls into town with his conquistadors homies, captures the Inca emperor and puts they whole empire on blast. Then things really take a crap for the worst. The natives get to enjoy the perks of slavery, by enrolling in Pizarro’s worlds highest crossfit gym, digging for the gold and silver in the Andean mines. No union. No bennies. Just potatoes and coca leaves with a piece of coal to chew on as they toil away. And if they get the sniffles and wanna take the day off and maybe chill out with they llama, well, there’s the whip and a miserable death waiting for them in all that thin air. Things continue to suck after the Mestizos take over from the Spanish conquistadors, and Peru ain’t lookin’ so hot. So, when Abimael “Gonzo” Guzmán starts talking about some good ol’ fashioned communism, people gets the fever and armed revolts start break dancing out around the country. The Peruvian police ain’t big fans of commies, so Gonzo decides to skip town and heads to the Far East for his ‘Excellent Chinese Adventure’. It’s a groovy time, and he eats Dim Sum while edumacating himself on the guerrilla tactics Big Mao used against the Nationalist Chinese in the 1940s.

“Serious Revolutionary Workers United, LLC.”

In 1967 Guzmán returns to his beloved Peru and prepares for “serious revolutionary work”. By serious he means to destroy Peru’s government and start a peasant dictatorship. Aye, is nice to have career goals.

Let the revolutionary games begin!

So, you say, why don’t the army come in and bitch smack The Shining Path’s dick down in the dirt? Good questions. In those flucked up times Peru’s military has to deal with a smorgasbord of commie parties, labor strikes, as well as some badasses named MRTA (Movimiento Revolucionario de Tupac Amaru), so they is a little preoccupated. To tops it off, Peru’s government and police is corrupt to they core and the places where the Shining Path is having their rave party keggers is brutal to infiltrate: Mountainous, high jungle passes with dirt roads in varying stages of decrapitacion. On a happier note, that isolated jungle makes for great drug smuggling, so The Path starts wheeling and drug dealing with the Colombian cartels. The Path sets the price of raw cocaine, charging a landing fee to each Colombian plane. In exchange, the Colombians get theyselves a steadied stream of product. It’s a win-win. Who says commies can’t do capitalism? About this time, Sendero and Guzmán have told any potential allies they don’t need no help and to fluck right off. Even Albania. But, then again, who really needs Albania, anyhows? The Shining Path sees itself as an unstoppable juggernaut, sorta like the Macarena back in the ‘90s.

The deadly revolt: a shining path through a river of blood

“There is nothing more orderly than a cemetery.” — Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent — Eduardo Galeano

After pissing off all the other Communist Parties, Tupac Amaru’s people, the Chinese Commie Party, and Albania, The Path decides to kick off their deadly revolt by hanging dead dogs from lampposts in every city in Peru in order to put PETA on their shit list as well. After that, it’s game on. With the discipline of a psychotic ant colony, Shining Path followers start adding to their explosives stockpile.

The Quota:

In May of 1981, Guzman goes totally emo, bringin’ up “the blood quota” and talkin’ about how all the Shining Path’s Members should get used to dying in the most suckiest ways possible, because “crossing the river of blood” is the only way to achieve the revolutionary cause. Nice pep talk. Theodore Dalrymple, a doctor in Peru in those times, has a different take on the whole slaughterhouse ”Quota” thingee: “the worst brutality I ever saw was that committed by Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in Peru, in the days when it seemed possible that it might come to power. If it had, I think its massacres would have dwarfed those of the Khmer Rouge. As a doctor, I am accustomed to unpleasant sights, but nothing prepared me for what I saw in Ayacucho, where Sendero first developed under the sway of a professor of philosophy, Abimael Guzmán.”

Aye! When you is making Pol Pot look good, you got issues. By 1990, massacres, executions, and, ahem, forced disappearances turn Peru into a wasted land, with about 30,000 dead and more than 60,000 families fleeing their homes for the “misery belts” in cities like Huamanga, Ica, and Lima.

The arrest:

The police’s big break comes in September 1992. A special-ed forces unit cases a ballet studio in the upper-class neighborhood of Surco, in Lima. But it turns out these special-ed forces dudes don’t just dig Swan Lake, they also likes to dig into other people’s garbage. You see, the dance instructor is supposed to be living alone, but when they search her junk, well, it turns out she’s picked herself up a nasty psoriasis cream habit. And oddily enough, psoriasis is what Abimael Guzman suffers from. With that, the special-ed unit put three and two together. On September 12, 1992, an elite unit of cops kicks the doors in and busts eight people, including Guzmán and his female companion, Elena Iparraguirre. The trial is pure Kafka goes to clown college. The judges decides to appear in hooded robes like they is in some Hollywood Eyes Wide Shut sexy party, not just because they is kinky but to protect theyselves from the Shining Path’s revenge. And then the government gets nasty on itself. They make it a TV trial, lock Guzman up in a cage, then hire a fashion designer to dress him up like the Hamburglar and fat-shame him.

Aye. The court of fashion opinion can be so cruel, even if you is a psychotic mass murderer. But it works. Seeing their fearless leader Hamburglarized breaks the spirit of The Path, and they never commit mass genocide again. Guzman gets convicted of treason and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a maximum security prison with no psoriasis cream. Aye. But he’s got fun company, at least. Guzmán’s prison buddy list includes Vladimiro Montesinos, the former top dog of Peru’s Intelligencia Service. I’m guessing Vladimiro likes his prison digs, since he helped build it when he was running wild during President Alberto Fujimori’s heyday, who also happens to be imprisoned. Today, Peru is one of the safest countries to visit in South America, with petty theft being the most common crimes — a far cripes from the violence and terrorismo of its past. So, why isn’t Abimael Guzmán’s face plastered on the t-shirts and bedroom walls of pot-smoking hippie college students who likes to brag about fighting the system in between doing keg stands and beer pong like they do for guys like Che Guevara? It could be ‘cuz, even though Guzmán’s twisted sister vision of civil war claimed thousands of lives, he never got that elusive big Win. Nobody likes a loser. Plus, it’s hard to idolize some fat dude who got taken down because of a psoriasis cream addiction. I feels for him, though. We can’t all be photohygenic like Che. In more heartburning news, in the falls of 2006, while still in prison, Guzmán proposes to his lover, Elena Iparraguirre. She probably killed Guzmán’s ex-wife and is serving a life sentence, herself, but online prison dating sucks and beggars can’t be choosers. So, after fighting for the right to get married with a hunger strike, the two love birds tied the knot in late August 2010. Who knows? Maybe Montesinos was the best man?

Aye. El Amor.

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