The arrest of four Peruvians in El Alto, Bolivia this week may point to a renewed ideological foundation for the Shining Path.
Sendero Luminoso was once a Maoist ideological insurgency that, like its counterparts in Colombia, gradually turned to drug trafficking and other crime to fund its activities. In the 1990’s, several key military defeats by the Fujimori government including the arrest of top leader Abimael Guzman left the group decimated.
For several years in the early 2000’s, Sendero numbered less than 150 people. Most analysts considered them a drug trafficking group that was hiding under the old brand name of the Shining Path. Peru’s government dismissed them as “narco-terrorists.” Even Guzman, the group’s former leader, denounced the existence of what he considered to be a criminal group operating under a false name and fake ideology.
Surprisingly, Sendero’s ideology appears to have reappeared in the past few years. Recent seizures of drugs and weapons from Sendero stockpiles have turned up pamphlets with Communist and Maoist propaganda. Links with militant coca farmers groups in rural Peru appeared that they went beyond pragmatism and into some sort of ideological kinship. Now, the arrest of several alleged Sendero members in Bolivia may signal a resurgence of an ideological insurgency that Peru’s government thought was dead and with which Bolivia’s government must now be concerned.
In late June, Bolivian authorities arrested three Peruvians and a Bolivian who were wearing Bolivian counternarcotics police (FECLN) uniforms. That criminal cell, led by Ulser Pillpa Paitán, alias “Comrade Johnny”, was attempting to traffic over 40 kilos of cocaine across the Peru-Bolivia border near Lake Titicaca. Peruvian authorities said Pilpa was a member of Sendero Luminoso. During interrogation, Pilpa said he was working with the Minaya Romero brothers, two men who once ran arms and drug trafficking in Peru’s VRAE, a Sendero Luminoso stronghold (also see InSight Crime’s recent investigation on the VRAE). Pilpa indicated that the Minaya Romero brothers (William and Hugo) had begun operating out of El Alto, Bolivia. This began a month-long effort to coordinate intelligence between Peru and Bolivian authorities to see if they could wrap up others in the Sendero cells they believed were operating along the border.
During the first week of August 2011, Bolivia’s counter-narcotics police (FECLN) arrested the Minaya Romero brothers and two other Peruvians - Blanca Riveros Alarcón (alias “la camarada Rosa”) and José Antonio Cantoral Benavides - in El Alto, Bolivia, the sprawling poor suburb that surrounds the capital of La Paz. The four had been handing out pamphlets with ideological messages in front of the Public University of El Alto (UPEA). They were arrested with false documents including fake identification cards and the Bolivian government is also holding them on charges of “public instigation.”
The public instigation charges come as some of the pamphlets were encouraging protests against the Evo Morales government. They read: “Alerta, ¡no al gasolinazo!, fuera las transnacionales de Bolivia, socias de Evo, ¡Viva el marxismo, leninismo maoísmo!”. Other pamphlets encouraged college students to attend classes about Marxist political ideology and fighting class warfare: “Escuela de Formación Política Marxista”; “Los temas serán: lucha de contrarios, lucha de clases, semi feudalidad.”
On top of the charges they face in Peru, Bolivian authorities claim that the four arrested individuals were attempting to form a criminal cell that could rob houses and businesses in the area. They also attempted to link them to drug trafficking, but found no drugs during the arrest.
The arrests have not been without controversy. While three of the Peruvians have no status in Bolivia and should be easily deported or extradited after judicial proceedings, the fourth, José Cantoral, has a long history of both political involvement and criminal activity that is complicating this case.
Cantoral was accused (with some valid evidence it appears) of being a member of the Shining Path by the Fujimori government in the early 1990’s. However, in one of the many abuses of power of which the Fujimori government was guilty, Peruvian authorities arrested his brother, Luis Alberto Cantoral Benavides, and unlawfully detained for four years (1993-1997). The case went to the Inter-American Human Rights Court and the Fujimori government was found guilty.
As a result of his brother’s unlawful arrest and perceived political persecution, in February 1993 José Cantoral was granted political refugee status in Bolivia, even though the Peruvian government continued to claim it had evidence he was tied to Sendero. Since that time, it appears Cantoral has built up quite an influential network in El Alto, while simultaneously maintaining covert ties to Sendero Luminoso and drug traffickers in Peru. According to local media, he worked for the Asamblea Permanente de los Derechos Humanos in the early 1990’s and was a representative for some international human rights networks from 1997-2000. For the past few years, Cantoral was serving as a professor of math and physics at the Isaac Newton Center of Learning near the University of El Alto. Authorities are now investigating the Isacc Newton Center to find out if it is a front for a political extremist group.
These long time political links by Cantoral have left him with many defenders in El Alto. Radical political groups in the Bolivian highlands, many of which have broken with the president in recent months over gasoline subsidies and other economic policies, claim these arrests are a form of political persecution. The Asamblea Permanente de los Derechos Humanos, now run by Yolanda Herrera, has said these arrests are a violation of the free speech rights of those handing out pamphlets. The Centro de Estudios Populares (CEP, website located at: http://estudioyrealidad.blogspot.com/), an organization that helped organize anti-Morales protests last December, has also denounced the arrests. It appears all four of the Peruvians were regular visitors to the CEP.
The National Council on Refugees (CONARE) will review the case of Cantoral to determine if his refugee status should be stripped so he can be deported to Peru.
If the facts in this case turn out to be accurate, Sendero Luminoso is using Marxist rhetoric to organize political unrest in Bolivia and potentially recruit new individuals to their cause in Peru. That’s a serious step back towards ideological insurgency and a problem for both the Humala and Morales governments. Even if they are only using the ideology to cover up for their drug trafficking, the links some Sendero operatives have built to radical political groups and human rights NGOs in both countries blur the lines of operation and complicate prosecution (criminal groups forming these links also endangers the NGOs and human rights activists who try to do good work in these countries).
President-elect Humala, who spent part of the early 1990’s fighting Sendero Luminoso, has vowed to fight criminals and drug traffickers and “solve this issue for good.” However, part of Humala’s political base comes from the Peru-Bolivia border region. If Sendero is returning to an ideological position, it may attempt to increase the already high political tensions in those regions and make governing particularly difficult for the new president.
For Morales, whose government has often claimed that destabilizing terrorist forces are behind its political opponents, there may be some short term benefits to being able to link certain political groups in El Alto with Peru’s insurgency. That said, the current opposition to Morales is real and not just a conspiracy by leftist or rightist “terrorists.” Most of those radical politicians have a real concern about Morales’s positions. Bolivia’s president could find himself chasing shadows and provoking political opposition instead of trying to compromise with the sectors of society that used to be strong political supporters.
Sendero’s ideology was never widely followed in Peru or elsewhere. It was at the fringe of fringe ideologies and could never come close to winning the hearts and minds of Peruvians, even those who may be open to Marxism or other policies that involve wealth redistribution. That said, it only takes a few hundred believers willing to commit violence for their disturbed ideology to create a danger for the governments in the region. If Sendero Luminoso is no longer just another violent criminal groups, but rather one with a renewed political cause and followers, it is an increasing threat to Peru and its neighbors.
Sendero Luminoso was once a Maoist ideological insurgency that, like its counterparts in Colombia, gradually turned to drug trafficking and other crime to fund its activities. In the 1990’s, several key military defeats by the Fujimori government including the arrest of top leader Abimael Guzman left the group decimated.
For several years in the early 2000’s, Sendero numbered less than 150 people. Most analysts considered them a drug trafficking group that was hiding under the old brand name of the Shining Path. Peru’s government dismissed them as “narco-terrorists.” Even Guzman, the group’s former leader, denounced the existence of what he considered to be a criminal group operating under a false name and fake ideology.
Surprisingly, Sendero’s ideology appears to have reappeared in the past few years. Recent seizures of drugs and weapons from Sendero stockpiles have turned up pamphlets with Communist and Maoist propaganda. Links with militant coca farmers groups in rural Peru appeared that they went beyond pragmatism and into some sort of ideological kinship. Now, the arrest of several alleged Sendero members in Bolivia may signal a resurgence of an ideological insurgency that Peru’s government thought was dead and with which Bolivia’s government must now be concerned.
In late June, Bolivian authorities arrested three Peruvians and a Bolivian who were wearing Bolivian counternarcotics police (FECLN) uniforms. That criminal cell, led by Ulser Pillpa Paitán, alias “Comrade Johnny”, was attempting to traffic over 40 kilos of cocaine across the Peru-Bolivia border near Lake Titicaca. Peruvian authorities said Pilpa was a member of Sendero Luminoso. During interrogation, Pilpa said he was working with the Minaya Romero brothers, two men who once ran arms and drug trafficking in Peru’s VRAE, a Sendero Luminoso stronghold (also see InSight Crime’s recent investigation on the VRAE). Pilpa indicated that the Minaya Romero brothers (William and Hugo) had begun operating out of El Alto, Bolivia. This began a month-long effort to coordinate intelligence between Peru and Bolivian authorities to see if they could wrap up others in the Sendero cells they believed were operating along the border.
During the first week of August 2011, Bolivia’s counter-narcotics police (FECLN) arrested the Minaya Romero brothers and two other Peruvians - Blanca Riveros Alarcón (alias “la camarada Rosa”) and José Antonio Cantoral Benavides - in El Alto, Bolivia, the sprawling poor suburb that surrounds the capital of La Paz. The four had been handing out pamphlets with ideological messages in front of the Public University of El Alto (UPEA). They were arrested with false documents including fake identification cards and the Bolivian government is also holding them on charges of “public instigation.”
The public instigation charges come as some of the pamphlets were encouraging protests against the Evo Morales government. They read: “Alerta, ¡no al gasolinazo!, fuera las transnacionales de Bolivia, socias de Evo, ¡Viva el marxismo, leninismo maoísmo!”. Other pamphlets encouraged college students to attend classes about Marxist political ideology and fighting class warfare: “Escuela de Formación Política Marxista”; “Los temas serán: lucha de contrarios, lucha de clases, semi feudalidad.”
On top of the charges they face in Peru, Bolivian authorities claim that the four arrested individuals were attempting to form a criminal cell that could rob houses and businesses in the area. They also attempted to link them to drug trafficking, but found no drugs during the arrest.
The arrests have not been without controversy. While three of the Peruvians have no status in Bolivia and should be easily deported or extradited after judicial proceedings, the fourth, José Cantoral, has a long history of both political involvement and criminal activity that is complicating this case.
Cantoral was accused (with some valid evidence it appears) of being a member of the Shining Path by the Fujimori government in the early 1990’s. However, in one of the many abuses of power of which the Fujimori government was guilty, Peruvian authorities arrested his brother, Luis Alberto Cantoral Benavides, and unlawfully detained for four years (1993-1997). The case went to the Inter-American Human Rights Court and the Fujimori government was found guilty.
As a result of his brother’s unlawful arrest and perceived political persecution, in February 1993 José Cantoral was granted political refugee status in Bolivia, even though the Peruvian government continued to claim it had evidence he was tied to Sendero. Since that time, it appears Cantoral has built up quite an influential network in El Alto, while simultaneously maintaining covert ties to Sendero Luminoso and drug traffickers in Peru. According to local media, he worked for the Asamblea Permanente de los Derechos Humanos in the early 1990’s and was a representative for some international human rights networks from 1997-2000. For the past few years, Cantoral was serving as a professor of math and physics at the Isaac Newton Center of Learning near the University of El Alto. Authorities are now investigating the Isacc Newton Center to find out if it is a front for a political extremist group.
These long time political links by Cantoral have left him with many defenders in El Alto. Radical political groups in the Bolivian highlands, many of which have broken with the president in recent months over gasoline subsidies and other economic policies, claim these arrests are a form of political persecution. The Asamblea Permanente de los Derechos Humanos, now run by Yolanda Herrera, has said these arrests are a violation of the free speech rights of those handing out pamphlets. The Centro de Estudios Populares (CEP, website located at: http://estudioyrealidad.blogspot.com/), an organization that helped organize anti-Morales protests last December, has also denounced the arrests. It appears all four of the Peruvians were regular visitors to the CEP.
The National Council on Refugees (CONARE) will review the case of Cantoral to determine if his refugee status should be stripped so he can be deported to Peru.
If the facts in this case turn out to be accurate, Sendero Luminoso is using Marxist rhetoric to organize political unrest in Bolivia and potentially recruit new individuals to their cause in Peru. That’s a serious step back towards ideological insurgency and a problem for both the Humala and Morales governments. Even if they are only using the ideology to cover up for their drug trafficking, the links some Sendero operatives have built to radical political groups and human rights NGOs in both countries blur the lines of operation and complicate prosecution (criminal groups forming these links also endangers the NGOs and human rights activists who try to do good work in these countries).
President-elect Humala, who spent part of the early 1990’s fighting Sendero Luminoso, has vowed to fight criminals and drug traffickers and “solve this issue for good.” However, part of Humala’s political base comes from the Peru-Bolivia border region. If Sendero is returning to an ideological position, it may attempt to increase the already high political tensions in those regions and make governing particularly difficult for the new president.
For Morales, whose government has often claimed that destabilizing terrorist forces are behind its political opponents, there may be some short term benefits to being able to link certain political groups in El Alto with Peru’s insurgency. That said, the current opposition to Morales is real and not just a conspiracy by leftist or rightist “terrorists.” Most of those radical politicians have a real concern about Morales’s positions. Bolivia’s president could find himself chasing shadows and provoking political opposition instead of trying to compromise with the sectors of society that used to be strong political supporters.
Sendero’s ideology was never widely followed in Peru or elsewhere. It was at the fringe of fringe ideologies and could never come close to winning the hearts and minds of Peruvians, even those who may be open to Marxism or other policies that involve wealth redistribution. That said, it only takes a few hundred believers willing to commit violence for their disturbed ideology to create a danger for the governments in the region. If Sendero Luminoso is no longer just another violent criminal groups, but rather one with a renewed political cause and followers, it is an increasing threat to Peru and its neighbors.
Source: http://southernpulse.com/CustomContentRetrieve.aspx?ID=3945794
