The influence of Maoism in Peru

Abstract

The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; only mobilizing the masses and relying on them can wage it. People’s War Peru’s Maoist guerrilla movement, known as Shining Path, was far and away the most radical and violent in Latin America. The group’s founder and leader, Abimael Guzman Reynoso, claimed to be a devoted Maoist and a faithful interpreter of Mao Zedong’s ideology, strategy, and tactics as he directed a people’s war based largely in rural, impoverished, and predominantly indigenous areas of Peru between 1980 and his capture in 1992. However, Guzman was trained in China as a potential Third World guerrilla during several extended visits beginning just before the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and continuing during it, as were several other members of his organization. As a result, he and other Shining Path central committee members were much more influenced by the post-revolutionary ideological dogmatism of the Gang of Four than by Quotations from Chairman Mao , also known as the Little Red Book, or Mao’s reflections on the course of the Chinese revolution itself. However, by 1976 the Gang of Four had lost its struggle for political control in China, which meant that Shining Path was cast adrift and left to fend for itself.