Shining Path: Terror and Revolution in Peru

286 Pages Indexed. Originally published by HarperCollins in Great Britain this is the First U. S. Edition. Black boards with dark black quarter spine with white lettering. No defects noted. Dust jacket price $23.00 is unclipped. Despite the end of the cold war and the collapse of communism in most of the countries in which it had held sway, messianic ideology is far from dead. One of the world's most peculiar and secretive revolutionary sects - Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path - has arisen in Peru. Its origins, its extremely violent ideology, and especially the people who make up its membership are at the heart of this revealing book. Shining Path tells the story of a former professor of philosophy, Abimael Guzman, and how over nearly thirty years he has created a fanatical guerrilla movement that spans jungles, mountains, and coastal regions in a country more than twice the size of France, a movement that in April 1991 prompted the end of democratic rule in Peru. By mid-1992, Shining Path had dominated 40 % of the country, provoked a war in which nearly 30,000 people have died, and cost the Peruvian state more than $20 billion in damages, a sum nearly equal to the country's national debt. Shining Path evinces a grisly ruthlessness in pursuit of a classless utopia through a systematic campaign of armed assault and repeated bombing of roads, bridges, hospitals, and power stations. As a result, Peru has become a country of random violence and martial law-a world of endemic corruption, ruled by cocaine traffickers, apocalyptic rebels, and military thugs. After years of living in Lima, Simon Strong has written a book that cuts through the caricatures that have too often colored our view of Shining Path and what it portends. He gives the reader a remarkable degree of human insight as well as a balanced, clear-headed discussion of Peruvian politics.…