A Mao-Inspired Rebel Rage Grows in the Back Country of Peru

UPPER HUALLAGA VALLEY, PERU — They rise at 4:30 a.m. while the jungle is still asleep. As dawn breaks, they perform rigorous calisthenics on the soccer field of an abandoned village surrounded by lush tropical vegetation.

After a breakfast of noodles and boiled yucca roots, more than 100 young recruits of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas, ranging in age from 10 to 25, learn how to disassemble and operate automatic weapons, practice military maneuvers, study Mao Tse-tung and undergo a severe “self-criticism” session which amounts to a public confession of their faults.

At first glance their war games seem child’s play. They crouch in dense foliage, simulating an attack on an army post. They rush their opponents, screaming and imitating the sounds of gunfire. Laughter breaks out. But this is no game. Shining Path guerrillas employ these tactics; on Nov. 22, they attacked a military convoy, leaving 22 soldiers and seven civilians dead, taking five soldiers as hostages.

The guerrillas are Mao fundamentalists who fervently believe social change is impossible through parliamentary democracy. They are convinced that Peru’s elected government is fascist and must be defeated by a people’s war.

They shun the term Shining Path, referring to themselves instead as “the party,” the only legitimate Communist Party of Peru, headed by Abimael Guzman, 53, a former university professor. They believe all other Communist parties, including the Soviet and Chinese, are “rotten revisionists.”

The trainees are sons and daughters of peasant farmers recruited from the jungle and nearby Andean villages. Some speak Spanish with heavy Quechua Indian accents. They wear tennis shoes and T-shirts; most are armed with submachine guns.

The only change in their normal routine is the first-time presence of three journalists--a photographer, a TV cameraman and a writer. Initially, they regard us with suspicion and distrust. Their reserve gradually relaxes, but some think we might be spies intent on betraying them to their enemies--the army, the anti-drug police and a dozen U.S. drug-enforcement agents whose helicopters roam the valley daily in search of illegal coca fields and clandestine processing laboratories.

During a week-long stay we share their starchy food, attend their classes and sleep on a concrete floor in the abandoned schoolhouse that serves as temporary headquarters for the six-month mobile training program.

This is the second tier of organization, atop the support committees numbering several hundred peasant families, most of whom tend a few acres of coca. The third level is an elite corps of 30 well-trained guerrillas. The rebels say they have the entire Huallaga Valley organized into many three-tier units, coordinated by a Central Committee.

Conservative estimates put the figure of armed rebels in this valley at 2,000. Colombian drug lords and their armed bodyguards used to reign here, but the guerrillas routed them last year after a deadly gun battle.

Sendero has taken over the business, organizing farmers to demand better prices for coca. The growers are required to donate 15% to the party.

When we arrived at a small coca farm on our first day in the jungle, we saw several guerrillas, weapons strapped to their backs, helping farmers gather the drying coca leaves into large sacks.

They told us that drug traffickers pay Sendero a war tax in exchange for permission to operate in the area. A squad leader bristled when I asked if the movement hadn’t corrupted itself by taking funds from narcotics runners. He said the party found no problem in accepting drug dollars, but severely punished members “without ideological formation” who took money for their own benefit. Drug trafficking would eventually be eliminated, he said, but not until Sendero took over the country.

Guerrillas get as much as $5,000 per flight when the drug traders airlift coca paste from clandestine jungle landing strips. “We don’t know what they’re doing with the money,” said a U.S. Embassy official, “but we know they’ve got lots of it.”

These guerrillas are accused of letting social resentment turn to terrorism and destruction. They regularly assassinate policemen in cold blood and routinely execute pro-government peasant leaders. Their car bombings in Lima have claimed innocent lives. They have encouraged young people on suicide missions, even sending children with explosives into police stations.

The issue of violence rises at an evening meal of rice and potatoes shared with three squad leaders who operate under assumed names. Sonia, 18, a tough-talking comandante in charge of trainees, described a car bomb: “You put it into the gas tank and it expands until it eventually explodes. Then, boom!” She pauses, smiles and continues, “It’s beautiful.”

Her attitude, however repugnant, mirrors documented accounts of the military and police torturing or killing innocent peasants. One fanaticism spawns another.

“To think that terrorism is the only form of violence is a crass error,” said Sen. Enrique Bernales, author of a recent report on the roots of Peru’s social conflict. As the study points out, Incan society was no paradise lost; the 16th-Century Spanish conquerors came ostensibly to Christianize and civilize, but left a legacy of genocide, domination and deep divisions--of class, race and economic status--that characterize Peru today.

It’s not uncommon to hear Lima matrons speak about their Indian maids with racial disdain or to witness nods of approval in upper-middle-class circles when the army massacres innocent peasants in Andean villages.

After supper, I asked the young guerrillas to explain why they have joined the cause. “Misery, hunger, exploitation, abuse,” said Luis, a 15-year-old, his tone suggesting that I should have known.

Tomas, a leader in his mid-40s wears a permanent scowl on his face and a Magnum revolver on his hip; he said he left his farm to join the armed struggle because a series of exploiters continually robbed him of his meager earnings.

Guerrilla complaints jibe with testimony from a local judge and two district attorneys interviewed earlier in Tingo Maria. They spoke of political corruption, of drug traffickers’ payoffs to policemen and of endless cases of police and military abuse against peasant farmers, including beatings and extortion.

Judge Luis Nieva said U.S. drug-enforcement agents and Peruvian police had an airport shoot-out with drug traffickers in August, only to discover that two of the traders were off-duty Peruvian civil guardsmen exchanging coca paste for U.S. dollars. Later, a U.S. Embassy official confirmed the story.

Nieva’s home was bombed recently by a right-wing paramilitary group. He said security was impossible in an area where the state was practically non-existent. “We have no protection,” he complained. “There’s total chaos here.”

In the Huallaga Valley guerrillas have replaced the state with the so-called “Republic of the New Democracy.” Sendero government appears to be rigid, hierarchical and authoritarian. Anyone who opposes the party is called a soplon --stool pigeon--and is liquidated without mercy. Sexual mores are austere; promiscuity is punishable by death.

Thieves, exploiters and cattle rustlers receive three warnings, then face execution if they fail to mend their ways. A missionary nun who visits the area said the rebels had eliminated common crime, but added: “The only problem is that the guerrillas don’t believe in the Fifth Commandment (‘Thou shalt not kill’).”

An outsider cannot easily identify with the guerrillas’ brutal methods or unbending ideology. I searched for traces of humanism but found only a messianic cult full of blind rage and atavism. It is difficult to determine how voluntarily peasant farmers support the guerrillas’ cause. What is clear is that Sendero is the only group determined to defend peasant interests.

In the Upper Huallaga, the U.S. government funds a three-pronged attack to eradicate coca plants, substitute other crops and destroy illegal processing laboratories and landing strips. These repressive measures, however, ignore basic issues affecting the farmers--poverty, exploitation and abandonment by the central government. Until these issues are addressed and growers have viable alternatives, coca production and rebel insurgency will continue to grow side by side.

Some experts believe a multinational economic aid program combining debt relief with buying up coca leaves and supporting alternate crops would be a step in the right direction. This would starve the traffickers’ coca supply and erode Sendero support among the population.

The rebels have lately added another enemy to their list--drug enforcement agents drawn into counterinsurgency operations by the force of events.

Recently, according to embassy sources, a U.S. contract pilot was wounded in such a skirmish. The guerrillas told us they have engaged in battles with U.S. agents, though their details were sketchy. Sources close to the Drug Enforcement Agency do not deny the clashes, but they believe the assailants may have been security guards protecting the drug traffickers.

Whatever happened, the expanding presence of U.S. advisers in the valley is a time bomb ready to explode.

Meanwhile, President Alan Garcia has called upon President-elect George Bush to increase U.S. aid--now $5 million a year--for Peru’s anti-drug operations. The U.S. Congress needs to ask if additional funds and manpower will be used to fight drug lords or guerrillas.

As we headed back out of the jungle on the back of a pickup truck, we spotted drug-enforcement helicopters flying north above white tufts of clouds. Here, as in the rest of Peru, problems seem insoluble and wisps of hope are hard to find.