The PCP Shining Path and Its Ideology. Second Edition

In May 1991, the PCP Sendero Luminoso publicly declared that it had reached the stage of strategic equilibrium. What did this mean? In plainer terms, it means that its people's war had advanced so far that only one more stage remained — the "strategic offensive" — before it would seize power in Peru. For that reason, the strategic equilibrium implied an increase in the number and in the modality of attacks and acts of sabotage. It also implied the gradual shift from group guerrilla warfare to a war of movements (which explains the large numbers of people taking part in the attacks); and the transformation of clandestine popular committees into open popular committees (a kind of open defiance of the State). All of this, they said, were clear manifestations of the emergence of a New State designed by Gonzalo Thought. A year later, in July 1992, the accelerated increase in violent acts seemed to prove them right. Because the attacks were already being counted by the dozens, the dead also by the dozens, while car bombs and blackouts were becoming more frequent. This reality shook the Peruvian population, making it live in a kind of widespread paranoia. (Excerpt from the foreword).