In 1962, Ayacucho’s university offered Abimael Guzman (born 1934) a job as professor of philosophy. Guzman developed radical views, travelled to China, and formed the Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) movement, which originally aimed to return land and power to disenfranchised campesinos.
By the late 1970s, it had become a brutal, terrorist organisation that plunged the country into a vicious and poorly-delineated civil war that ultimately killed about 80,000 Peruvians and displaced millions more.
The Shining Path’s influence extended throughout much of Peru, with car bombings in Lima, road blockages in the mountains and jungle, and the destruction of major bridges affecting travel.
Centred on Ayacucho, the war made that city and the impoverished surrounding countryside an especially dangerous place to visit … until the capture of Guzman in the house of a dance instructress in 1992. He is now in an underground cell in the Naval Prison of Callao, Lima.
Soon afterwards, several of Guzman’s main lieutenants were also captured, and the movement lost its power.
Now, it is not considered a threat to travellers anywhere in Peru. And PeruNorth ought to know, as Miles’ 2005 dissertation for his Masters in Latin American Studies at London University was on the subject of the remnants of the Shining Path.
Understandably, Peruvian tourism authorities are not keen to promote this painful episode in Peru’s recent past, but when in Lima, a visit to the Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (Place of Remembrance, Tolerance & Social Inclusion) (LUM) overlooking the coast in Miraflores, is recommended. It contains poignant memorials to the victims of the conflict, on both sides, but please note that most exhibits are in Spanish only.