Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

622 • SENDERO LUMINOSOThe SL was also the most brutal and violent of the recent leftistinsurgencies in Latin America and made the most effective use ofterrorism as part of its overall strategy. Insofar as Sendero Luminosoonce established de facto control over its “liberated zones” in theinterior Andean plateau and used terror to maintain control over thesubject population, it may be said to have used repression to achievequasi-state terror as well as pursuing its revolutionary goals.The Sendero Luminoso was founded in 1969 by Manuel Rubén AbimaelGuzman Reynoso, also known as Comrade Gonzalo, regarded byhis followers and himself as the “fourth sword of revolution” after KarlMarx, Vladimir Lenin, and Mao Zedong. Guzman was a philosophyteacher at Huamanga University, primarily a teachers’ training college,in the interior city of Ayachuco. After Guzman became personneldirector of the university in 1971, he systematically built up a facultywho supported his own version of revolutionary Marxism. Also responsiblefor the first-year course of teachers’ instruction, Guzmanand his fellow faculty members indoctrinated the student teachers, whoin turn indoctrinated an entire generation of schoolchildren in remotetowns and villages throughout the Andean interior of Peru. Guzman issaid to have remarked that it made more sense to educate children intorevolutionary Marxism than to indoctrinate adults since children didnot need to be politically reeducated. Guzman carried out his programof recruitment, indoctrination, and outreach into the rural communitiesfor 10 years before the SL embarked on actual revolution.Guzman exercised a highly personalistic and charismatic controlover his followers, who accepted Comrade Gonzalo’s word as law andobeyed his promptings without equivocation. Dissenters within the SLwere summarily expelled or executed. Guzman and the other Senderistaleaders showed little inclination to collaborate with other leftists,much less to enter into any dialogue with the regime they fought.Apart from its highly dogmatic Marxist component, SL doctrinealso incorporated within itself an Indian, nativist component that fedoff the resentments of the Indian and mixed-blood Peruvian population,who had been largely excluded from political participation anddeprived of basic benefits by the Peruvian ruling elites. Originally theSL was known as the Revolutionary Student Front for the Shining Pathof Mariatégui, the reference being to José Carlos Mariatégui, one of thefounders of the Peruvian Communist Party. Mariatégui had claimed inhis writings that Peruvian socialism had to be built on the communal-