Spectator's Journal/Out to Lunch with Sendero
Symmes, Patrick W.
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL OUT TO LUNCH WITH SENDERO Lima I n a corner of the cellblock, the guer- rillass keep a gift shop. They while away their sentences making jewelry and trinkets for the...
...Cesar is handsome and shy, but Javier recites doctrine aggressively...
...they simply lacked an effective Communist party to carry the revolution to its end...
...I try to bargain, but in the revolution prices are fixed—three dollars for both paintings and the assassination scene...
...He is shown supporting us...
...Behind him are portraits of the previous three "swords": Marx, Lenin, and Mao...
...Genuine security concerns overlapped with that most Latin of vices—a love of stamps, seals, and all things official...
...My guide apologizes and suggests a walk...
...Over lunch, my guide explains the world situation today...
...Among them were Cesar, 19, and Javier, 22, both serving long sentences for terrorism...
...Was she elected democratically...
...A spokeswoman arrives, a tall and elegant woman in her forties...
...FORWARD TO VICTORY IN THE PEOPLE'S WAR, reads the slogan at his feet...
...A favored tactic is to seize a village and stage show trials: the mayor, a schoolteacher, a local priest, or a foreign aid worker is executed for "crimes against the people...
...More slogans urge me to remember the Four Phases of Struggle, to Build World Maoism, and to Boil All Drinking Water...
...One dollar at a time, they seem to think, Sendero Luminoso will build up its war chest until all Peru is conquered...
...The walls are twenty-five feet high, just enough room for huge murals of the revolution and its patron saints...
...There are earrings etched with a tiny scene of the world exploding in flames...
...In June of 1986, things got very nasty indeed...
...The guerrillas have benefited from the cocaine trade, too, financing the revolution by taxing every kilo of coke that leaves Peru...
...Guerrilla cadres revere him as the "Fourth Sword of Marxism" and repeat his utterances on every subject...
...Among the guards, there is nervous laughter that slowly dies out...
...Lunch comes to an abrupt end when a set of antennae emerge from my rice...
...In the second, they are shown blowing up a police station...
...Name withheld, an editor of the Los Angeles Times The explosive story of the most remarkable family in America, The Paper Dynasty is a thrilling, monumental four generation saga...true as only fiction dares to be...
...They lookclosely at the little figures, the machine guns, the street covered with blood...
...This has put them in the way of anti-drug efforts, and Washington has now decided that fighting drugs requires fighting the guerrillas: in October, Congress released $34 million in military aid to Peru, and by the end of the year fifty American advisers will be in Peru training the army to fight the Shining Path...
...He holds up the little model, and the ring of faces draws in closer...
...endero is no democracy...
...Then he leans in close and lowers his voice...
...Clifton Fadiman Many thanks for sending along a copy...which I look forward to reading...
...Fidel Castro is the worst of all things, a revisionist servant of the United States...
...At another spot, he is shown towering over a tiny column of Chinese peasants...
...more than a hundred of them were shot in the back of the head after surrendering...
...The collapse of Communism worldwide means nothing to her—as far as Sendero is concerned, world Communism collapsed the day Mao Tse-tung died...
...With his slim good looks and stylish clothes, he could be out on the street chasing girls...
...For more upbeat hype or ordering information call: ALLEN A. A. KNOLL, PUBLISHERS, INC...
...Chairman Mao beams down benignly from behind a basketball hoop...
...Wriggling legs soon follow...
...The police counterattack killed some 300 guerrillas...
...There was a breeze up, and in the men's courtyard more than a hundred prisoners lay on cots, dozing or idling in the shade of sheets strung overhead...
...A soldier cheerfully wrote the number "150" on my bicep in ballpoint: I feared this was to help identify the bodies if things don't go well inside...
...The model, like the prison itself, is a miniature Marxist fantasy of what is to come for Peru...
...The guerrillas roam the countryside, attacking every trace of govern26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 ment authority and brutally enforcing a rigid Marxism...
...I ask...
...We visit the gift shop, with its strange array of handicrafts...
...Many are drug addicts, smokers of basuco, the crude cocaine paste sold by guards...
...Who has the nicer murals, us or the women...
...Sendero Luminoso is the last bastion of true Communism in the world...
...Their fanatical insurgency has reduced Peru to the point of collapse: 22,000 dead in eleven years of fighting and half of the country under a state of emergency, with villages occupied and army patrols ambushed almost at will...
...This torrent of dogma continues as we are served plastic bowls of rice and an oily stew with a number of small bones...
...Portraits of Marx, Mao, and Lenin are posted on the walls beside quotes from each...
...They cook their own food, even raising rabbits in their cells, and organize their days around exercise, ideology classes, singing, mural-painting, and military drills...
...Neatly dressed in flowery blouses and slacks, some in high-heel shoes, they begin to sing a tribute to their leader and their party, which can be roughly translated as: . . . we advance with you To final victory in the popular war...
...Guzman, a philosophy professor, has adopted the nom de guenE of President Gonzalo, and he cultivates the image of a warrior-philosopher, an austere and disciplined revolutionary...
...Ducking my head, I pass under an arch of red hammer-and-sickle flags and enter the Marxist dream of Peru's future...
...She explains that this "member of the reaction" was now a victim of the "people's war...
...Three guerrillas are machine-gunning a government official as he steps out of his limousine...
...The Sendero prisoners are segregated in two cell blocks: 1-A holds about 80 women, and 4-B about 300 men...
...Sendero prisoners took over three Lima jails in a coordinated uprising...
...Joseph Epstein The similes are...not very good...
...Muchisimo...
...Scores of common prisoners mill about there in tattered shorts, begging and harassing visitors...
...We are all equal...
...The captain comes over, and puts on a broad smile...
...Little is known about Sendero—they don't speak to the press...
...C anto Grande jail is a dank and crowded concrete fortress on the outskirts of Lima...
...The best are chosen," she says...
...800) 777-7623 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 27 a touch of shyness, he talks about the "immense love" of the people for the revolution...
...There are tote bags decorated with the hammer-and-sickle...
...He is sitting at a desk, a pudgy figure with thick glasses...
...There are no leaders in Sendero," she says, fingering her glass of tea...
...Here the revolutionary psyche is put on display for those who would know Sendero's mind...
...Decoration is stanby Patrick W. Symmes dard-issue Socialist Realism: red banners declare "Long Live the People's War...
...From Tiananmen Square to the capitals of Eastern Europe, she explains, the masses are ready for a violent revolution...
...Marxist logic explains everything: "You are either for the revolution or you are against it...
...When I realized that point, I joined the party...
...He shrugs his shoulders indifferently...
...On my way out, the quiet Cesar walks with me...
...Just tell me this," he says...
...This is a member of the public," she says, almost whispering across the top of the figures...
...They while away their sentences making jewelry and trinkets for the revolution...
...If you are against exploitation, you are for violent revolution...
...According to Sendero doctrine, the Khmer Rouge had the right techniques...
...While attendants buzz about her, bringing tea and bowls of fruit, she insists that she is "just an ordinary prisoner, someone with knowledge of the situation...
...He was a student at San Marcos University until his arrest for bombing a store, and he hopes to go back to school after the revolution...
...How was she chosen as a leader...
...The unlikely target of their worship is Abimael Guzman, the nondescript leader of Sendero...
...Looking at the attendants waiting on her, I point out that she must be some kind of leader...
...A greeting committee of young women surges forward, applauding vigorously and calling out "Welcome, comrade...
...The prison has become a finishing school for the cadres...
...The Peruvian Communist Party, The army of the new state...
...And two watercolors made with a childlike simplicity...
...The odor of rancid food and urine rises from the cement, while from upper windows, bare-chested men shout insults and rain down crumpled trash and spittle on visitors...
...But in Canto Grande, the senderistas have constructed their own chilling fantasy of Peru's future, a kind of Disneyland of the revolution, complete with gift shop and tour guide...
...She points at one tiny doll shaking his fist in the air...
...The masses reject the government," he says...
...At the entrance to the women's pavilion, government control ends...
...Boys, look how childish it is," he says...
...They love us very much," he says dreamily...
...It is a prisoner's stroll—up and down the tight courtyard attached to the Sendero cells...
...Like Pol Pot in Cambodia, he remains hidden, present in slogans and paintings but almost mystically removed from the struggle...
...The little model of an assassination is there, beside piles of revolutionary kitsch...
...My guide, a serious and commanding woman, bends down over a card table to show me one of the gifts for sale: a little model no bigger than her hand, made of cloth and painted paper...
...The room is blindingly clean, the air fresh, the faces jolly...
...The aim of the revolution is rebirth through violence...
...There are no windows inside the T fortified guardhouse, and in the cool darkness the young guards gather around to look at my souvenirs from the gift shop...
...Over two hours, I was inspected at three checkpoints, frisked, fingerprinted, and inked on my forearms with seven different purple stamps...
...The model is childlike, but the scene is not...
...It was the only time that day I saw her smile...
...Like the Khmer Rouge, Sendero believes in cleansing society with blood...
...The first shows a scene of happy villagers cooking and singing under a red flag and golden sunset...
...Fully stamped, inspected, and labeled, I was sent through a steel doorinto the prison's central courtyard...
...He speaks easily of feudalism, mobilization, the means of production...
...About 300 members of Sendero Luminoso, or the Shining Path, are imprisoned here for crimes of terrorism...
...The survivors had been concentrated here at Canto Grande, and five years later both sides say they are expecting a repeat...
...Another mural shows Guzman, the Fourth Sword himself...
...I ask if his bomb killed anyone...
...It was a capitalist store," he says...
...Prison guards have ceded control of the block to Sendero—apparently because of threats to their families—and the guerrillas live independently...
...Tom Wolfe I'll certainly make an effort to read your book—especially as I had a passing acquaintance with a Chandler or two...
...Lovingly painted rivulets of blood run down his centimeter-high body...
...China is run by capitalist-imperialist dogs...
...Quivering and pale-faced, they wander in a nervous daze around the circular courtyard...
...A Sendero prisoner checks my documents, like the border guard of a tiny liberated zone...
...Private property is distributed to the poor and boys as young as 13 are impressed into the ranks of the insurgency...
...Several journalists looking for them in the field have received the ultimate "no comment...
...Patrick W Symmes is a writer living in McLean, Virginia...
...With CELEBRITIES SPEAK ON Sorry I won't have time to get to "The Paper Dynasty...
...Jack Smith Los Angeles Times ...a bit offensive...
...He simply does not look like a killer...
...She stares at me icily...
...Of course we know we are going to win...
...On a burning Sunday morning, I joined the long queue of visitors snaking through the prison parking lot...
...The group C is obsessively hierarchical, half-Maoist army and half-personality cult...
...He goes on to explain the four phases of revolution, the two antagonistic paths, and the struggle against "parliamentary cretinism," known elsewhere as elections...
Vol. 24 • December 1991 • No. 12
