Perú: time of fear

When, on the night of his capture, Abimael Guzmán, leader of Sendero Luminoso, came face to face with General Antonio Vidal, head of Perú´s elite anti-terrorism police (DIRCOTE), he apparently told him: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This time it was my turn to lose. This equanimity, appropriate to a former philosophy professor, has been echoed in statements by his followers abroad. According to Adolf Olaechea, spokesman for Sendero Luminoso in London: “it’s more of a problem for Fujimori’s regime than for us, rally. They have relieved the party of the responsibility of looking after the Chairman. He added, almost as an afterthought: “it is a big blow, of course, losing the Chairman. It will delay a few things, but in the end it will change nothing”. Such apparent nonchalance suggests a bullet-proof confidence in the eventual out come of the “people’s war” launched by Sendero Luminoso more than twelve years ago. Olaechea said that the strategic equilibrium which Sendero claims to have reached with the forces of the Peruvian state would not be affected by Guzmán’s detention; nor would the “rottenness” of the regime and the peruvian people’s determination to be rid of it.