Abimael Guzmán Believed He Was Predestined
In his book Profetas del odio, Peruvian sociologist Gonzalo Portocarrero argues that the leader of Sendero Luminoso had a "tendency to deify himself" and was "indifferent to others' lives." The research reflected in this book "is an attempt to reconstruct how someone, from a comfortable clandestinity, was able to order the killing and dying, without the slightest pity, of thousands of young people willing to take part in a carnival of blood and cruelty against the people they claimed to represent," the author told AFP.