Tue 5 Aug 2008
Q&A: ‘All Political Violence Is Not Terrorism’
Posted by miren under New links, Articles by IPS, Interviews by the Author
Interview with Gustavo Gorriti, author of The Shining Path.
ROME, Aug 4 (IPS) - Gustavo Gorriti, author of The Shining Path, which examines both the insurrection and the government’s response in the internal war in Peru, has just reprinted his book. And that has raised some questions about terrorism today.
The Maoist group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) became notorious for indiscriminate bombings, assassinations, brutal killings, kidnappings, bank robberies, and attacks on embassies and businesses before it was beaten in the early 1990s. The human and economic toll was devastating. Human rights groups estimate that more than 30,000 people died in violence arising from the confrontation since the rebels took up arms two decades ago. In 2003, a government commission blamed the Shining Path for about 54 percent of the violent deaths caused by the civil war.
Gorriti, a well-known senderologo (as those who studied Shining Path have come to be called), talks to IPS Editor-in-Chief Miren Gutierrez about terrorism then and now.
IPS: You published ‘The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru’ originally in 1990. How relevant is the book today?
Gustavo Gorriti: The book is selling well, which probably means that its subject remains important to Peruvians. After some years of self-induced amnesia, many Peruvians are trying to understand that tragic period, among other reasons because its consequences and most of its protagonists are still with us.
IPS: Reporting about the Shining Path, what have you learnt about terrorism? Is it comparable to other armed groups?
GG: Armed insurgencies have some points in common and may have significant differences. The Shining Path attempted to forcefully graft into Latin America Mao’s ‘People’s War’ insurrectionary doctrine. Yet it had some differences with its historical model in that it tried to bring the Chinese ‘Cultural Revolution’ into the insurrectionary equation, as well as several elements from the Komintern, an international communist organisation founded in Moscow.
At the same time, Abimael Guzmán, the Shining Path’s supreme leader, studied the early Muslim conquests, to impress on his followers the importance of overriding conviction in achieving dramatic expansion and military victory.
