Shining Path and Political Violence in Peru

On April 19, 1980, in a remote corner of Ayacucho, a long, meticulous and patient preparation for a new insurrectional adventure was brought to a close. On that day the Arequipa-born university professor Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, supreme leader of one of those known as the Partido Comunista del Perú — better known in journalistic and political circles as "Sendero Luminoso" — closed, as proven by documents whose authenticity no one doubts, the first military school, which he called ILA '80 (so that it would be remembered as the one that Initiated the Armed Struggle in 1980). On that day, the so-called comrade Gonzalo said to his men: "This first military school of the party is seal and opening. It seals and opens. It seals the times of peace and opens the times of war. The era of unarmed hands has concluded. Our armed word begins today: Raise the masses, raise the peasants under the unfading banners of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought! ... We seal what has been done up to here, we open the future. The key is action. The objective: power! That is what we will do: history demands it, the class requires it, the people have foreseen and desired it and we must fulfill it and we will fulfill it." (Excerpt from the preface).