‘Romantic Revolutionaries’ : Peru’s Tupac Amaru Rejects Bloodshed

The flash of a dynamite blast lights the gray dawn, shattering doors and windows of a bank on the deserted streets of central Lima.

There are no victims, for the bombing has been timed to avoid casualties.

Among the shards of glass and twisted metal door supports float pamphlets claiming the attack for the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, the smaller of Peru’s two guerrilla groups.

“They’re really just a bunch of romantic revolutionaries,” an Interior Ministry official said. “They do sometimes kill people, but it is almost by accident.”

Embassies Targeted

Tupac Amaru, estimated by security sources to number about 500 active guerrillas, operates mainly in Lima, specializing in bomb attacks on foreign embassies and business interests.

Recent bombings of the Bolivian Embassy and the U.S. Consulate to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the death of Latin American guerrilla leader Ernesto (Che) Guevara were typical Tupac Amaru actions, diplomats say.

The bombs caused substantial damage but went off early in the morning and late in the evening, when few people were around.

The movement also revels in Robin Hood-style “appropriations,” hijacking trucks of produce and distributing it in the shantytowns that surround Lima.

Less Threatening

Against the backdrop of a bloody Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) insurgency, which has claimed several thousand lives in the last few years and in which police and politicians are gunned down on the streets of the capital, the Tupac Amaru movement appears to pose less of a threat.

But security sources say the Tupac Amaru guerrillas are well armed and that their bombs are often more sophisticated than those of the larger Sendero group.

The Tupac Amaru guerrillas, mainly from the ranks of disenchanted middle-class university students, have inflicted millions of dollars worth of damage to foreign interests in Peru.

“They want to show they are a force to be reckoned with,” said the Interior Ministry official, who asked not to be named. “But really, their revolutionary demands are more in line with those of an opposition party.”

Movement’s Demands

These demands, spelled out in a recent issue of The Rebel Voice (Voz Rebelde), the movement’s official newsletter, include a refusal to pay Peru’s $14-billion foreign debt, subsidized basic foods and medicine, prosecution of officials accused of corruption and the lifting of a state of emergency in many Peruvian provinces.

The group takes its name Tupac Amaru from the leader of an 18th-Century Indian rebellion against Spanish colonial rule who was executed by being torn limb from limb by four horses in the main square of Cuzco, the old Peruvian capital. He is now a national hero.

The movement surfaced in September, 1984, with a machine gun attack on the U.S. Embassy in Lima, and in the following months it staged several similar assaults. but there were no injuries, and the movement appeared more concerned with grabbing headlines than inflicting casualties.

As its attacks continued, deaths began to occur, many of them security guards moving packages that turned out to be bombs or police who inadvertently caught guerrillas red-handed as they were placing explosives.

Traditional Movement

Contrasted with Sendero, whose Maoist philosophy from China’s Cultural Revolution era mixes with Andean self-sufficiency to form a strange hybrid, Tupac Amaru is very much a traditional Latin American revolutionary movement.

It seeks to create guerrilla “focos” or activity centers in line with the revolutionary theories of Guevara, and it maintains strong links with guerrilla groups in other Latin American countries.