Luminous path (summary): what it is, origin and ideology

What is the Shining Path?

Shining Path is the name of a communist political organization in Peru, whose ideology is based on various tendencies of Marxist, Leninist and Maoist thought.

Sendero Luminoso is characterized by committing guerrilla and violent acts and, in some countries, is considered a terrorist organization.

Origin of Luminous Path

The organization Sendero Lumino was founded by Abimael Guzmán, approximately, in the late sixties, as a political party that separated from the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) that, later, would split into the Peruvian Communist Party, from which it emerged Bright trail.

The name of the Shining Path emerged from a phrase by José Carlos Mariátegui, founder of the Peruvian Communist Party, in which he explained that through Marxism-Leninism, the shining path that would lead towards the revolution in Peru was opened.

Luminous Path Goals

The objective of the Shining Path, in principle, when it was conceived, was to carry out the revolution through armed struggle and to position the countryside as the most important and the city as complementary.

Also, another of his goals was to replace the institutions or entities considered bourgeois with other organizations that were representatives of the rural revolution, something very similar to what Mao did in China.

Understand more about What is a Revolution?

Luminous Path ideology

The political guidelines of the Shining Path are based on the political positions proposed by Marx, Lenin and Mao, which expose the various guidelines that characterize communism and socialism as the best political, philosophical, economic and moral tendency to put into practice.

From Marxism, Shining Path adopted the position that the peasants and all those who live in rural areas and the proletariat are the ones who must fight against those they considered capitalists, exploiters, and even against the State.

From the Leninist position, as a model of Russian communism, the members of the organization took the idea to impose, through force and weapons, their power over all people and in all possible spaces that were under their control.

From Maoist thought, the organization adopted the idea that the main actors of the revolution and changes that they have wanted to impose in Peru, must be carried out by the peasant population and the proletariat through violent acts, which they consider inevitable.

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Luminous path and terrorism

The Shining Path is considered in many countries as a terrorist organization due to the criminal acts that its members have planned and committed, and in which thousands of people have died.

However, the Shining Path is a political organization that is still active although it no longer has the support of previous years, precisely because the peasant and proletarian people do not fully approve of violence as a means of carrying out the proposed plans.

The last attack on the Sendero Luminoso in Peru was on April 9, 2016, when members of the organization attacked a military patrol that guarded the electoral ballot boxes, which would be used the following day during the presidential elections, leaving a balance of ten fatalities.

Learn more about What is Terrorism?