Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

674 • TÚPAC AMARU REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENTother revolutionary leftist groups in Peru by maintaining a traditionalhierarchical military command and discipline, with its cadreswearing uniforms with insignia of rank, and by its attempts to avoidthe targeting of civilians in its operations.On 28 September 1984, three MRTA gunmen machine-gunned theexterior of the U.S. embassy. On 9 November 1985 MRTA gunmenthrew dynamite sticks at the U.S. embassy and raked it with machinegunfire. On 4 April 1986 the MRTA made a similar attack on thePeruvian-U.S. Cultural Institute, wounding a guard, as well as attackingtwo Citibank offices, an IBM warehouse, and a Sears office. On 9 June1990 the MRTA launched mortars at the U.S. ambassador’s residence,and on 18 July 1990 bombed the U.S. embassy, wounding three guards.The MRTA also bombed the courtyard of the Interior Ministry on 25July 1985 and attacked the Presidential Palace and the airplane carryingnewly elected President Alberto Fujimori in November 1991.At its peak, the MRTA had 1,000 to 2,000 members but followingthe crackdown of the Fujimori administration, more than 400 ofits cadres, including its founder, Víctor Polay Campos, were arrestedand imprisoned. Whereas the MRTA was mainly active only in Limaduring the 1980s, in the 1990s it carried out activities in Cuzco, Peru,and in areas bordering Bolivia. The appearance of the MRTA in highlyvisible urban operations in 1984 may have moved Sendero Luminosoto open its campaign within the cities rather than relying solely on therural guerrilla strategy of encircling the cities in order to prevent itsnew rival from taking center stage within Peru. The most dramatic actionof the MRTA was the 17 December 1996 takeover of the Japaneseambassador’s residence during a diplomatic reception in honor of theJapanese emperor’s birthday, in which 14 MRTA members initiallyseized around 490 guests, including many ambassadors and highrankingPeruvian government officials, including Carlos Giusti Acuña, a member of the Supreme Court. With the Peruvian government’ssuccessful hostage rescue raid on 22 April 1997 in which the topMRTA leader, Nėstor Cerpa Cartolini, was killed along with his fellowhostage takers, fewer than 100 MRTA cadres were left at large and sothe organization was thought to have been destroyed. In fact, afterwardthere were still sporadic MRTA attacks, including one upon Radio CaracasTelevision in Venezuela on 10 September 1998, an attack on twoPeruvian radio stations on 5 October 1999, and another upon a foreignnews agency’s office in Peru on 5 October 1999; the most recent attack