Town in the Sendero VRAE stronghold region of PeruI like it when people take me to task.
After commenting yesterday on the 13 (now 14, sad to say, and another is still missing) soldiers killed by Sendero terrorists last week, I received today the following mail from somebody who prefers to remain anonymous. Suffice to say that this person is someone who is in a position to know what they're talking about and whose view I greatly respect. I think it's worth reprinting here and have been given permission to do so.
I will add my own two cents' worth, though. The whole subject of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) is still a very touchy one in Peru. Locals' memories are still of the open wound variety about what went on in the 1980s and 1990s and people that criticize the official government standpoint make themselves targets for totally unwarranted accusations of being sympathizers. But enough of me, here's the insightful and worthy mail I received this morning:
I will add my own two cents' worth, though. The whole subject of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) is still a very touchy one in Peru. Locals' memories are still of the open wound variety about what went on in the 1980s and 1990s and people that criticize the official government standpoint make themselves targets for totally unwarranted accusations of being sympathizers. But enough of me, here's the insightful and worthy mail I received this morning:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On what basis do you say this with such confidence?
Peru: "Despite what you might read in the NYT or Comercio this isn't a resurgent idealogical struggle, more like a bunch of heavily armed narcos trying to defend what they consider their patch."
My humble opinion is that there is very little good investigative reporting on Sendero, or on the various Sendero factions operating in Peru today, and while it is convenient to write them off as just a bunch of "delincuentes y narcos", I remember Peru in the early 1980s when Belaunde said the very same thing. And we all know how that ended up (for the record, the legal left initially said it was all an invention by security forces to maintain power and priviledge, after stepping down from government).
Around 3000 senderistas and alleged senderistas have been released from jails in recent years, and no matter how much we care about their rights to remake their lives (and I certainly do), we have to assume that at least some of them remain committed to subversive activity. Some faction of them are winning elections in San Marcos again, and perhaps La Cantuta, and then we have the folks in VRAE and in Alto Huallaga. Who thanks to working with the drug runners, dont have to coerce the locals so much -- they can buy them off, do the hearts and minds stuff. So, maybe they are "just delincuentes" or maybe they aren't, and maybe this involvement in the drug business as a source of income (while others pursue legal channels to power, like university elections), means that THEY have learned from the past, even while others have not.
It concerns me that there are maybe 4 or 5 "experts" on Sendero and drugs who are quoted all the time in the media, and who knows if they have a clue what is happening on the ground.