Shining Path Rebels Have Formed New Urban Front, Garcia Says
Shining Path rebels have formed a new front to push their insurgency into Lima and other coastal urban areas, President Alan Garcia said after two powerful car bombs exploded within blocks of the Government Palace. Garcia spoke Wednesday in an atmosphere of stepped up rebel attacks in Lima and a series of weekend raids around the capital that resulted in the seizure of five Shining Path safe houses and 31 arrests. The president, who leaves office July 28, said the newly formed People's Defense Revolutionary Movement, is the ``urban, metropolitan organ of the Shining Path.'' The Maoist-inspired Shining Path operates in at least half of Peru, especially in the mountains and jungle, but has had little success in expanding to coastal cities. At least 18,500 people have been killed in political violence related to the decade-old insurgency, which was launched in the Andean highlands. The Shining Path draws much of its support from indigenous peoples resentful of the economic and political dominance in the country of 22 million of descendants of European immigrants. The wave of violence comes four days before a presidential runoff that pits novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, a free-market activist, against centrist agricultural engineer Alberto Fujimori. The Shining Path has called on voters to boycott Sunday's vote and threatened election day ``armed strikes'' in Andean cities. In one of the guerrilla safehouses raided in an upper-class Lima suburb, police found tons of Shining Path documents and propaganda. They also found personal possessions that apparently belonged to Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman. Garcia said he believed the raids proved that ``the chief of terrorism actively participates'' in Shining Path operations. Guzman went underground in 1979 and, over the years, there have been numerous rumors he was dead. The raids also proved that the new urban front has been formed, Garcia said: ``The people who were captured were essential to the new movement.'' Two people were injured in the car bombings near the Government Palace on Tuesday night and Wednesday and Garcia called the upsurge in urban violence a ``desperate response'' to the weekend raids. In other violence Wednesday in Lima, a city of 6 million, four rebels armed with machine guns took over a neighborhood electoral office. They forced the electoral workers outside and set fire to the office. Firefighters said the blaze destroyed most of the documents in the building, including identification for electoral workers. Guerrillas blew up at least three high-tension power pylons Tuesday night, blacking out parts of the capital and other coastal cities where most of Peru's 22 million people live. In pre-dawn attacks Wednesday, guerrillas threw gasoline bombs at a city bus and at a stove factory owned by a senator-elect of Fujimori's Change 90 party, according to police. Tuesday's car bomb went off behind Lima's Roman Catholic cathedral, which faces the main plaza where the Government Palace is located. Police said the cathedral was not damaged, but one passerby was wounded. Operating out of its stronghold in Ayacucho, the Shining Path has spread throughout Peru's highlands since it launched its armed insurgency in May 1980. The movement, which seeks to impose a peasant-worker state, also controls much of Peru's jungle. Efforts to move into Lima's sprawling shantytowns, however, have been countered by strong police crackdowns.
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