Presence of PCP-SL begins to be noticed in Alto Huallaga

The presence of the PCP-SL in Alto Huallaga did not begin to be felt until 1980-81, approximately six years after the beginning of the drug boom in the area. The Shining Path cadres would have initiated their party's political work in the countryside taking as their cause the defense of coca, clandestinely joining the coca growers' organizations and encouraging the peasants to resort to violent means in their demonstrations and marches. One family, well known in the area between the hamlets of La Victoria and Siete de Octubre, who had suffered particularly badly from the mistreatment of the PIP and the Civil Guard, returned to the Huallaga to start the armed struggle, accompanied by three more people: Gabriel, Richard alias 'el Manco', and Artemio. A coca growers' strike in 1981 was the event in which a hidden PCP-SL presence was voiced and felt for the first time in Aucayacu.