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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1993-04-08
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THE WEEK, Page 20WORLDEnd of a Myth
Peruvian police capture the hemisphere's deadliest rebel movement
Plainclothes antiterrorist police had been tracking the
movements of a lithe young couple in their middle-class home in
a Lima suburb for weeks, suspecting that they were members of
Peru's Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement. Their huge
purchases of food, liquor and clothing in sizes much too large
for themselves suggested that they had company in the house.
Butts of Winston cigarettes in the trash led the detectives to
believe that the guest might be none other than the group's
elusive and ruthless founder, Abimael Guzman, who went
underground in the late 1970s. When the cops finally stormed the
house, they found to their amazement no bodyguards or caches of
weapons -- just an overweight and sickly terrorist leader.
Almost immediately, the invincible "Presidente Gonzalo," as
Guzman has called himself, surrendered without a fight.
Shining Path's gruesome 12-year campaign has led to the
deaths of 25,000 Peruvians. Because Guzman dominated the group's
ideology as well as its centralized command, analysts expect his
arrest to cause a severe setback that will put the force of
5,000 active militants on the defensive. But the guerrillas have
vowed to pursue their bloody fight to destroy all of Peru's
institutions and install a peasant-worker state. Last week they
set off a bomb and killed a policeman to demonstrate their
continued resolve. "Once a new central committee is formed,"
Guzman apparently told his captors, "the revolution will move
ahead."
The government has two weeks to prepare charges of treason
against Guzman and his cohorts for trial in a military court
next month. A guilty verdict would undoubtedly give a political
boost to President Alberto Fujimori, who already has
overwhelming popular support in Peru for abolishing a do-nothing
Congress and judicial system last April and now for taking an
important step toward fulfilling his promise to pacify the
country by 1995. With Guzman safely behind bars, progovernment
candidates for constitutional congress elections in November are
likely to win a majority.