Abimael Gusman - Anti-communist inquisitors or how to bury a myth?

Every year, on the same day, they gather to celebrate, but above all to recall their great contribution, without compensation, to the rescue of democracy in Peru, as they claim. They are retired policemen of various ranks, members of GEIN, the special intelligence unit set up within the National Anti-Terrorist Directorate, the notorious DINCOTE. They started in the early 1990s under the presidency of the social democrat Garcia and continued during the years of the fascist Fuhimori. Operation Victoria. Eighty-six carefully selected police officers, led by Captain Benedicto Jimenez, went on the hunt for the leadership of the illegal Communist Party of Peru after being recruited, trained and equipped with advanced technology hardware by the US Embassy in Lima and the CIA.

It was September 12, 1992, when the hunt succeeded in locating the priceless prey. Late in the evening of that day, after weeks of surveillance, a team of police officers stormed a three-story house in the Los Sausages neighborhood, at what is now Warsaw Street, number 459, in Lima's middle-class Surquillo neighborhood. It was one of the many Central Committee hideouts in the capital. They arrested the historic party leader Abimael Gusman Reynoso, known as President Gonzalo, and other important members. It was the beginning of the end for one of the bloodiest armed uprisings in Latin America and the beginning of a campaign of history being written by hands drenched in blood! That is, by the victors, local and foreign, who did everything to rescue the reactionary, minority and corrupt Peruvian regime. In order to give objectivity to the smear campaign, they even set up a commission later on. They called it the Truth Commission! So that it could convincingly reproduce the most monstrous lies! Charging the Peruvian Communist Party with more than half of the dead of the period, which according to many estimates exceeded sixty thousand. And presenting the party and the guerrilla as mad terrorists and ruthless killers! "When we arrested Gushman, the CIA agents disappeared", said a GEIN officer years later with disarming honesty. The job was done. The team was subsequently disbanded but everyone got grades, honors and rich benefits. They were called "heroes of the Republic"! Jimenez tried unsuccessfully to get elected as a member of parliament and almost escaped jail when he was accused of links with organised crime. Indicative of the quality of US-trained headhunters. Today they are an active association of demobilised soldiers who want to influence political developments, considering themselves the guardians of the regime and the anti-terrorist struggle. In May this year, before the presidential elections, they issued a statement highlighting the danger posed by the election of Castillo, warning of the political return of the Light Path! They had gathered symbolically to make statements on Tarata Street, in Lima's affluent Miraflores district. This is where the Centrists carried out one of the bloodiest bombings, a few months before Gusman's arrest. This was preceded by the Fuhimori coup in April 1992, the suspension of the Constitution, the dissolution of Congress and the escalation of the war against the Shining Path with mass killings of civilian peasants in the countryside. It was the time when apart from the army and police, paramilitary right-wing gangs led by state agencies joined the conflict, competing in mass massacres of peasants and students. The notorious Colina group, formed during the Fuhimori years, was the protagonist in the mass crimes at Lima's Barrios Altos and at the Enrique Gusman i Valle University, in the massacre of nine students and a professor, known as the Cantuta case.

This year the annual meeting had an additional reason to be festive. A day earlier, the death of Abimael Gusman was announced. 86 years old, literally buried for 29 years in a cramped underground cell since the day of his arrest in the courtyard of the Kayao naval base, he had been suffering from serious health problems. Despite appeals from the international solidarity movement for his life, the new government, after a short period of hospitalisation, sent him back to the prison tomb. Gusman was tried twice after being vilified and demonised to an overwhelming degree. In the first court, the military judges wore hoods! In the second, which took place during the Toledo presidency, after the fall of the fascist Fujimori, even journalists were forbidden to attend after the first public hearing. On that day, Gusman and the other leaders on trial stood up and with clenched fists shouted revolutionary slogans. The Peruvian "democracy" did not have to be a "democracy".