‘Shining Path Is the Law’ : Peruvian Guerrillas Unite Peasants, Set Social Order

Inching across the broken backs of dynamited bridges and bouncing over 3-foot-wide trenches gouged into the road every 100 yards, it becomes jarringly evident that Peru’s government holds little sway in the world’s richest coca-growing jungle.

Less apparent, but potentially far more perilous for Peru and for the U.S. anti-drug campaign, are the changes taking place in the villages alongside the Jungle Highway in the Upper Huallaga Valley, on the eastern slope of the Andes.

Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), a Maoist guerrilla movement, is sometimes wishfully dismissed as a deadly aberration. Yet it is proving methodically efficient at organizing thousands of peasants into local committees--and imposing its own social order.

In a rare conversation with a foreign reporter, a Shining Path political officer in the region said the movement has built up five-member “base committees” in nearly every village. They oversee coca and other crops, approve marriages, resolve community disputes and judge those accused of “crimes against the people.”

Ordinary crime has virtually been wiped out in an area where decaying bodies became an unremarkable sight along the main highway two years ago. And violence, except that involving Peruvian security forces, has all but ceased, the rebel official said. More quietly than in previous years, but perhaps more profoundly, the revolution is moving forward.

Interviews with residents, aid workers and municipal officials in the region confirm a number of the official’s assertions. Certainly, the consensus is that once you leave Tingo Maria, the valley’s principal town, you are on Shining Path’s turf.

A prominent lawyer in Tingo Maria, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his caseload has fallen dramatically because many peasants no longer come into town and instead seek justice from the Shining Path committees.

“Until a year or so ago, the situation was very unstable. But now it seems to have stabilized, with Shining Path exerting more control,” he said. “Theirs is informal justice, but it is rapid and free, whereas the formal justice system is corrupt and expensive and slow.”

Few Abuses

Raul Aranda, chairman of the Tingo Maria Settlers Assn., said, “Now, there are very few abuses because the people complain to the companeros (comrades, as Shining Path members are known) . Now, Shining Path is the law. If you leave your camera or your car with the keys in the ignition in Tocache or Uchiza (towns in the valley), nobody will touch them. . . . Perhaps Shining Path is a necessary evil here. The government has never been able to impose order.”

Tingo Maria, at the southern end of the narrow, 150-mile-long valley, is an island of government control, with a 490-member police garrison and an army base. Troops behind sandbag barricades guard the bridge over the river to the town’s airstrip, where passengers on the flight from Lima are greeted by a cordon of air force troops. Even within the town, police and soldiers travel on trucks with assault rifles ready.

A police captain in Tingo Maria suggested that it would not be wise for a foreign reporter to travel north by road. Dangerous? “Suicide,” he answered.

But in the countryside, once convinced that the traveler was not an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the reception was guarded yet cordial.

“The party does not kill out of hand,” said the Shining Path political officer, using the term members prefer for the movement, formally known as the Communist Party of Peru. “Discipline is crucial to us.

First, a Warning

“First, we give a warning and an explanation, and then we seek self-criticism” from wrongdoers, he said. Those tried and found guilty may suffer expulsion from the community or, in some cases, “liquidation.”

The 40-mile drive to Aucayacu used to take 45 minutes on one of Peru’s best highways, the pride of former President Fernando Belaunde Terry. During Shining Path-led general strikes in 1987 and again last August, guerrillas blew up five bridges and organized villagers into teams that sliced deep trenches across the road for nearly the entire distance. The tortuous journey now takes at least two hours.

On the tarmac itself, graffiti in white paint exhorts “Viva Gonzalo,” the nom de guerre of top guerrilla leader Abimael Guzman, a former college professor, and “Death to the Dog,” meaning President Alan Garcia. A rusty Toyota sign bears the slogan “Develop the Popular War, Serving the World Revolution.”

The only indication of government authority is a heavily fortified base of the feared special operations police unit, surrounded by a mine field. It is located halfway up the road to Aucayacu, where officers halted all traffic, checked identification papers and searched cars and trucks.

Just before the roadblock, young boys emerged from the jungle to warn, “The sinchis are ahead!” Sinchi is the Incas’ Quechua language word for police officer, meaning, “He who can do as he wants.”

Houses on Stilts

Humble houses and shops, built on stilts amid the wild cane and banana trees that crowd up to the roadside, bear slogans advertising the guerrillas’ mutual interests with the drug traffickers: “Down With Imperialism; Down With Eradication!”

The Shining Path official acknowledged that the movement has taken on the task of defending the peasant coca growers in the Upper Huallaga, the world’s largest source of the leaf that is processed into cocaine. That means protecting the growers both from exploitation by Colombian buyers and from the U.S.-backed coca eradication project in the valley, he said.

He predicted a social explosion if the United States and Peru proceed with plans for aerial spraying of herbicides to eradicate coca, in place of the current manual eradication with blade cutters by crews dropped by helicopter.

“There will be an indefinite strike” if aerial spraying begins, he said. “There will be a generalized uprising.”

The current alliance with the traffickers is simply a matter of temporary mutual interest to protect the thousands of growers, the party official said.

The movement is absolutely opposed to cocaine use in Peru and ultimately, if it achieves its aim of taking power, intends to do away with narcotics trafficking, he said. The party recently called on peasants to select farmland on which a range of crops can grow, including corn and cocoa, and to plant crops other than coca.

Considerable Autonomy

The middle-aged guerrilla official spoke on condition that he not be identified nor the site of the meeting disclosed, other than the name of the district, Milagros (Spanish for Miracles), about 15 miles north of Tingo Maria. He agreed without hesitation to chat, but stressed that he was not speaking officially for the organization because he had not sought authority from his superiors. He also noted that each village committee has considerable autonomy, with varying interpretations of party ideology.

This official was critical of some Shining Path practices in the Andes mountain region where the movement was born, saying the peasantry there was less educated and less disciplined than the jungle settlers. His own committee opposed execution of criminals, but other regions felt no such reluctance, he said.

The party’s three primary rules are: Do not mistreat prisoners; do not steal “so much as a needle or a thread,” and return what you borrow, the official said.

“We don’t treat detainees like the police do. Everything is done with courtesy until the community sets down the verdict and sentence,” he said. “The police are very abusive. They stop cars and force men to lower their pants and lie down on the road. It is very humiliating. Because of the abuses, the government’s political problems began.

“Here, the people have raised themselves up and formed these bases because of the abuses. The government has practically stopped functioning,” he said.

The officer said he received no salary but received contributions from the community for his political work. He added that he had to account for every cent spent for travel and other needs.

‘Advanced 70%’

“We are now preparing the party to give it a better image. There are fewer armed actions now because we are concentrating on the bases. . . . It will be a number of years before we arrive at power,” he said. “But the party has advanced a lot. We think our power has advanced 70%.”

Socially, Shining Path is fiercely strict. Guidelines prohibit promiscuity and mistreatment of women, and “he who wants a relationship with a woman is observed (by party cadres). All serious relationships are approved by the party.”

Shining Path staged its first armed attack in the Andes in May, 1980. Assaults meant to destroy the nation’s political and economic fabric followed, including assassinations of mayors who refused orders to resign.

An estimated 15,000 people have been killed in conflict involving Shining Path and a smaller, urban-based Marxist group. Shining Path’s reputation for ruthlessness comes from tactics such as hanging dead dogs from lamp posts in Lima. Peru also has several legal Marxist parties, all of which condemn Sendero.

Guzman, Shining Path’s founder, calls himself the “fourth sword” of Marxism, after Marx, Lenin and Mao. After years in hiding--leading to speculation that he might be dead--Guzman gave an interview last year. As he has always done, he decried other Marxist groups as reactionary revisionists and socialist imperialists.

Shift in Tactics

From their Andes stronghold, guerrilla militants began penetrating trade unions and slum areas in Lima in recent years and also descended the eastern side of the Andes into the jungle. Nearly decimated in battles with the army in 1984-85 in the Upper Huallaga, the guerrillas shifted tactics, building links with the coca-growing peasants and intervening for them with the traffickers.

The combined threat of thugs, traffickers, newly organized peasants and rebels has already made it too dangerous for the authorities to deploy eradication teams by road. Since mid-1987, American-piloted helicopters have ferried eradication crews to the fields. Four more helicopters arrived in December, raising the total to nine. Two U.S. pilots have been slightly wounded by gunfire aimed at their aircraft.

Near the Bendencia River, 15 miles north of Tingo Maria, a 5-foot-deep hole in the highway remained unfilled, a reminder of a recent Shining Path ambush of a police convoy. Guerrillas set off a dynamite mine under the road, blowing up a police truck and killing four officers. East of that site, another attack on an army patrol left 22 soldiers dead.

The guerrilla political officer said the destruction of the north-south highway, the lifeline for the estimated 180,000 people living in the valley, was judged an ideological error because the goal had been to block the road, not render it useless. He said those guilty had undergone “self-criticism.”

Estimates of Shining Path’s military strength varies widely. There are believed to be a maximum of 2,000 armed fighters in the valley, although it remains unclear how many peasants can be mobilized to support them.

Even for those residents not sympathetic to Shining Path, the alleged abuses by Peruvian security forces often appear to strain community good will. A prosecutor noted that a beer distributor was detained by masked soldiers who robbed him of nearly $500 worth of local currency. “He complained, but the army is hermetic, a vacuum,” the prosecutor said.

Begging for Bus

At the local army base, a bus company owner was seeking an audience with the commander to get back his bus, seized the previous day at a roadblock when a suitcase belonging to one of the passengers was found to contain detonators. The bus owner, Victor Delgado, said all 30 passengers, including women with babies, were being held, and he wanted them released.

“This is not going to win friends for the government among the campesinos (peasants),” he said.

But he added that the damage to the road had also punished the residents, who could not get produce to market and “it’s all rotting.”

One river now must be crossed on rickety wooden pontoon bridges after paying a toll to the villagers who maintain it. At other crossings, tree trunks have been stretched across the bridges’ remains to allow light vehicles to cross. Villagers are also filling in many trenches, repairing the road with Shining Path’s approval, in return for a few cents from drivers.

Just short of Aucayacu, makeshift bridge beams had collapsed, and work crews, guarded by soldiers with assault rifles, carried out repairs while hundreds of people stranded on either side of the bridge looked on silently.

An Aucayacu shopkeeper, waiting out the repair, said guerrillas traveled freely through the jungle hills beyond the town, calling peasants to nightly meetings and charging them a percentage of their coca crop. Guzman has been influenced by ancient Inca practices, and Shining Path collects its share in the same way that Inca rulers taxed their subjects.

“There is no government of Peru here,” the shopkeeper said. “Shining Path has imposed its own law. It is raw justice, but it works. Crime has been reduced dramatically.”