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1984: The MRTA is founded by organizations from the radical-left, including the MTA and the MIR-IV .

In 1986/87, the MRTA begins its armed struggle against the government of Alan Garcia. Its actions were concentrated in the regions of San Martin, Loreto, and Uyacali in the northern Amazon region.

February 1987: The MRTA occupies seven radio stations in Lima and reads a communique against the increasing militarization of the society .

July 1988: An MRTA commando kidnaps retired air force general and businessman Garcia .

February 1989: Police arrest MRTA leader Victor Polay and imprison him in Canto Grande prison in Lima .

End of the 1980s: The MRTA becomes increasingly active in rural areas.

January 9, 1990: An MRTA commando shoots former Defense Minister E. Lopez Albujar.

July 1990: Victor Polay and 46 other inmates escape from Canto Grande prison via a 315 meter long tunnel .

June 10, 1992: Victor Polay is arrested again.

November 30, 1995: 30 Tupac Amaristas are arrested after a plot to occupy the Peruvian Congress, holding its members hostage in exchange for jailed MRTA militants, was foiled.

December 17, 1996: An MRTA commando occupies the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima and takes all the guests at a reception in honor of Japan's Emperor hostage. Most of the hostages were released but the commando continued to hold 72 people prisoner, including the brother of President Alberto Fujimori, several generals and heads of police divisions, Peru's Foreign Minister, Supreme Court judges, Members of Congress from the ruling party, and the ambassadors of Japan and Bolivia.

April 22, 1997: A raid is launched on the embassy compound by Peruvian special forces. All 14 members of the MRTA's "Commando Edgar Sanchez", including the group's leader Nestor Cerpa, are killed.

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MRTA was named for an 18th-century rebel leader who fought Spanish colonial, Tupac Amaru, because he symbolizes the Peruvian people's struggle against their oppressors. Tupac Amaru was drawn and quartered in the square in Cuzco after leading an anti-Spanish rebellion which almost shook off Spain's domination of a large part of South America.

The goal of the MRTA is to replace the representative democracy with the "power of the people". The organization has three levels: the revolutionary forces, which consist of full-time soldiers; when needed, these forces are backed up by part-time militias; then there is the base, in the villages, where there are self-defense committees whose duties extend well beyond military matters into social, political, and legal fields as well. MRTA does not establish "liberated zones" in the classic sense of the term, rather it supports, with military means, the creation of "organized bases of popular power".

MRTA launched its armed struggle in San Martin province, where the conditions were most favorable. In the countryside, the farmers were organized, as the region was the most stable base of the CCP (Confederacion Campesina del Peru) in all of Peru. In 1985/86, MRTA began to build up its forces, and in 1987 launched its first actions.

During the campaigns Che Vive and Tupac Amaru Libertador, it temporarily occupied a few provincial cities, attacked police stations, and carried out public meetings. In 1987, MRTA was able, for the first time, to take over a provincial capital, Juanji, a city of 25,000 inhabitants. That same year it occupied the Sisa Valley for two weeks.

According to Victor Polay, MRTA's leader at the beginning of the 1990s, Peru is no longer semi-feudal, rather it has become a dependent capitalist country. There is a bourgeoisie which represents the interests of imperialism. The working class has grown enormously, so the MRTA needs anti-capitalist elements in its political theory.

According to MRTA's theory, in every factory and in every school there must be mechanisms of direct control by the people. The monopolies must be transformed into property of the people but not state controlled because public corporations are dependent on the government, and are therefore subject to bureaucratization and corruption.

The fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe affected the MRTA because it revealed the bureaucratization of the society and the privileged role of one party, and the USSR's domination of COMECON, which led to the distortion of many structures. According to Polay the revolution cannot be exported, it must be created everywhere by the people where they live.

Another of MRTA's leaders, known as Comandante Andres, thinks that in Peru there's a pre-revolutionary condition with some of the traits of a revolutionary situation. According to Andres the defeat of the regime, of the "imperial" social and economic system, and the building of a new model through revolution, through armed struggle, is possible.

However, it isn't the MRTA that's going to make a revolution in Peru, but the Peruvian people, through their numerous social and political organizations, within which the MRTA has an important role. MRTA isn't the vanguard, the only vanguard, but part of the social vanguard.

MRTA sees Sendero Luminoso as dogmatic and Stalinist. Their lack of theory is coupled with a dictatorial, terrorist-militarist praxis, which in many cases is directed at the people itself. Sendero represents the more marginalized sectors of the society.

There's more that separates MRTA from than unites it with Sendero Luminoso. Sendero believes that its leaders' ideas express a qualitative development, a fourth stage of Marxism-Leninism. MRTA leaders have conceptual and concrete differences in the practice of revolutionary struggle.

Sendero is characterized by its negative image. They don't seek to win hearts and minds, but impose their direction on the people, which is why they don't hesitate to kill to achieve their dominion. Sendero is also characterized by its cruelty, which is strongly repudiated.

Their Pol Pot concept of life and revolution is a long way from what MRTA leaders think of as revolution. But at the same time, Sendero achieved a certain strength because of certain actions it took. In 1980, Sendero began the armed struggle at a time when other organizations were saying it wasn't possible. Later, through its actions, it showed its true character and that objectively limited its growth.

MRTA `s aim is to approach and become involved closely with the people. Aside from the political work done by the organizations at various opportunities - it uses armed propaganda, mainly in the cities.

MRTA hopes to build socialism because capitalism has not been, nor has the possibility of being, according to them, the solution to the Peruvian people's problems, not a socialism styled and modeled after the eastern European countries, a model which failed in practice, but a socialism appropriate to conditions in Peru.

MRTA leaders don't want state centralism or the bureaucratization of Pesociety but a democratic, very participatory society; not an electoral democracy every five years, but a democracy where men and women get involved in their workplace, their community, their neighborhood and decide their own destiny, a "participatory democracy with the people as the actors".

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Victor Polay Campos is a member of the Central Committee of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA).

Victor Polay is a jurist, fluent in both French and Basque. He studied in both France and Spain - together with Alan Garcia (who later became President of Peru), with whom he lived for a short time.

After 1987, Polay, now known as Comandante Rolando, carried out a series of guerrilla actions in San Martin, until he was arrested during a raid on a tourist hotel in Huancayo.

In July 1990 Polay and 46 other MRTA militants staged a spectacular escape from Canto Grande Prison. Polay was re-arrested in 1992 and is detained in total isolation in the Callao navy base.

Nestor Cerpa Cartolini the leader of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, known by the nom de guerre Comandante Evaristo, took the helm of the Tupac Amaru organization after its founder, Victor Polay, was captured in June 1992. Cerpa was a founding member of the group and its military commander.

Unlike other leaders of Tupac Amaru, who come from the middle class, Cerpa was from a working-class family and was active in the labor movement of the 1970s. As a young union official nearly 20 years ago, Cerpa and his fellow workers took control of a bankrupt textile factory after its owners tried to close it down. Four people died in the conflict, and Cerpa served a year in prison.

After his release, he joined the leftist movement and later went underground. Cerpa has displayed an uncanny ability to elude capture.

Cerpa was the leader of the commando who took hostages the guests at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima in December 1996 and died during the attack on the embassy compound on 22 April 1997.

Shining Path, Tupac Amaru Peru, leftists What kind of terrorists operate in Peru? There are two main rebel groups operating in Peru, both leftist: the Maoist Shining Path (known in Spanish as Sendero Luminoso) and the Cuban-inspired Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru). Their attacks terrorized Peru for decades before they were beaten back in a 1990s crackdown, but a March 2002 car bomb attack near the U.S. embassy in Lima summoned up old Peruvian fears of terrorism. The State Department still identifies both groups as terrorist organizations.   What types of attacks do they commit? In the 1980s and early 1990s, vicious terrorist attacks were daily occurrences across Peru. Shining Path and Tupac Amaru were notorious for indiscriminate bombings, assassinations, brutal killings, kidnappings, bank robberies, and attacks on Western embassies and businesses. The human and economic toll was devastating, and Peruvians have a particular dread of terrorism to this day. Human rights groups estimate that more than 30,000 people have died since the rebels took up arms two decades ago. What has Peru done to combat terrorism?   Car bombing outside U.S. Embassy, Lima, Peru, Mar. 2002. The bombing was reminiscent of previous Shining Path attacks. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo) Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori waged an aggressive and highly successful campaign against Shining Path and Tupac Amaru. Fujimori, originally an elected leader, seized near-dictatorial powers in April 1992, with military support, and disbanded Peru’s congress and courts, which he said were limiting his ability to crack down on terrorism. Within a few years, Fujimori had captured most of the leaders of the rebel groups, and terrorism subsequently declined sharply. Thousands of Peruvians were convicted of terrorism-related charges and sentenced to life imprisonment by military courts. Human rights activists accuse the Peruvian military of committing widespread human rights abuses during the crackdown, including the jailing of thousands of innocent Peruvians.   A Peruvian military tribunal convicted an American, Lori Berenson, of terrorism in 1996 and sentenced her to life in prison. After protests by the U.S. government, Peru retried Berenson in a civilian court in 2001. She was convicted of aiding Tupac Amaru and sentenced to 20 years in prison, where she remains. How did Shining Path and Tupac Amaru form? Experts say the groups arose in response to Peru’s entrenched system of race- and class-based discrimination, which has deeply impoverished most of the country's population, especially citizens of indigenous descent. What are their goals? Both groups seek to topple the existing Peruvian government and impose their own communist regimes. How do the groups differ? Shining Path, established in the late 1960s by the former university professor Abimael Guzman, is a militant Maoist group that seeks to install a peasant revolutionary authority in Peru. The group took up arms in 1980, and its ranks once numbered in the thousands. Experts consider it one of the world’s most ruthless insurgencies; Shining Path often hacked its victims to death with machetes. The group, which now has only several hundred members remaining, operates mainly in jungle areas. Tupac Amaru, named for an 18th-century rebel leader who fought Spanish colonial control, was founded on many of the communist principles that led to the Cuban revolution. The group, which is Marxist and wants to rid Peru of all imperialist elements, took up arms in 1984 and at its height had close to 1,000 members, mainly in rural areas. Experts consider Tupac Amaru less violent than Shining Path. Tupac Amaru members, who normally conceal their identities by wearing bandannas, have tried to promote a Robin Hood image of stealing from the rich to help the poor. The group is best known for its 1996 takeover of the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima. Most of Tupac Amaru’s leaders were killed in 1997 when Peruvian forces raided the Japanese compound and freed the hostages. The group has fewer than 100 members today. Do Shining Path and Tupac Amaru have ties to other terrorist groups? Shining Path is not sponsored by any state and has no known links to other terrorist groups. It considers itself the only remaining true communist revolutionary movement. According to David Scott Palmer, a professor of Latin American studies at Boston University, Tupac Amaru initially received support and some training from Cuba and has historical ties to two leftist insurgent groups, the FARC in Colombia and the FMLN in El Salvador, where some Tupac Amaru rebels fought. These associations waned with the end of the Cold War and Tupac Amaru's own decline. Shining Path and Tupac Amaru have no known ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.   Do these two groups cooperate with each other? No. There is bad blood between them. Shining Path sees Tupac Amaru’s fighters as traitors to communism. In the past, the two groups have fought each other for members and for the “taxes” that they both collect from cocaine smugglers operating in jungle areas under rebel control. Peru is the world's second-largest producer of cocaine (after Colombia), and such “taxes” are a major source of revenue for the insurgents. Are the rebels popular in Peru? No. Most Peruvians regard Shining Path and Tupac Amaru as terrorists who caused thousands of deaths and untold suffering. But despite the Peruvian government’s successful antiterrorist campaign, the rebels retain a small number of sympathizers among the rural poor. Do these groups still pose a threat? Peruvian and American authorities say that since Fujimori’s crackdown, terrorism has not been a problem in Peru. But in March 2002, just days before President Bush became the first sitting American president to visit Peru, a powerful car bomb exploded in a shopping arcade across from the U.S. embassy in Lima. U.S. and Peruvian officials say the bombing, which killed nine people and injured 30 others, was reminiscent of past Shining Path attacks. Some terrorism experts have warned that Shining Path is regrouping and recruiting new members, but few Peru-watchers believe that the group can regain its prior scale.

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