I return to Peru after half a year and the great novelty is the journalistic texts that are published everywhere, by accredited or improvised journalists.
Many deal with the truly extraordinary case of Abimael Guzmán, founder and top leader of Sendero Luminoso, a movement inspired by Mao Tse Tung, who wanted to apply the ideas of the Chinese leader in the Peruvian highlands.
From which Lima, the capital of Peru, was not excluded, where many attacks were perpetrated by those young boys, seduced by "the fourth sword of Marxism", as Abimael Guzmán called himself, after Marx, Lenin and Mao Tse Tung, and in absolute correspondence with them.
How many Peruvians died as a result of the theories of this chubby fanatic, married a couple of times, an accomplished dancer and who aspired —no less— than to be the mainstay of the communist revolution in the Peruvian highlands?
I am convinced that Abimael Guzmán's theories, directly or indirectly, caused, with the destroyed villages and the savage reprisals taken by the "senderistas" against the communities that were slow to join the "revolution" under way, or were hostile to it. she, and those of the police and the Army, many more victims than the officers.
I always wondered, in the midst of the bombs and murders of Sendero Luminoso, who supported these ideas and the theses of Abimael Guzmán.
Now, at least, that's pretty clear.
They were middle-class ladies and rare families and frustrated young people, that is, fed up with the rhetoric that accompanied communist movements, and who, impatient for direct action, adhered to the hosts of Abimael Guzmán, without actually constituting a uniformed mass. , such as the Aprista or the innumerable groups called “Marxists” who, linked to Moscow or Popular China, opposed the theses of Sendero's founder.
The truth is that these theses were only followed by insignificant minorities of militants, and that the vast majority of them rarely had a clear awareness of what they were adhering to, which, of course,
According to Carlos Paredes, one of the most recent authors trying to explain the "case" of Abimael Guzmán in his book
La hora final
Little by little, the police developed a more scientific system to follow the clues that Guzmán was leaving in his constant moves throughout Lima.
Because, although he had been a professor at the University of Huamanga, when the actions were unleashed according to his convictions, the truth is that Abimael Guzmán, contrary to what has been said, remained in Lima, and never set foot in the mountains, where they met. practice his revolutionary theories.
That is one of the great revelations of this book: contrary to his theories, Abimael remained during all the attacks—the murders, rather—that were perpetrated in his name, in Lima.
And what was happening there was terrible, without exaggeration.
For that you have to watch some documentaries, for example those by Judith Vélez,
The head of the GEIN, a special group created for the fight against terrorism, who appears in one of the documentaries, says that Abimael Guzmán was "a highly educated man" and with "many readings."
I don't have the same impression.
My idea of Abimael Guzmán is that he was an opportunist who, given the fervor that surrounded him, entrenched himself as "the fourth sword of Marxism" and created an almost religious state of adherence to his person, in which very few individuals began to reflect.
In fact, all the forces of the Peruvian left were very hesitant to adhere to his thesis and the great majority of them resisted them as “adventurists”, an adjective that this time corresponded rigorously to them.
The reason why Abimael Guzmán remained hidden for a long time and out of the reach of the police has a first and last name: a girl from a good family who put herself at the service of Abimael Guzmán and who, thanks to this, spent 25 years in the jail.
I refer to that young ballet dancer, who, after serving years in prison, lived for a time on the outskirts of Lima and now apparently lives abroad: that is, Maritza Yolanda Garrido Lecca.
She rented the house where Abimael Guzmán lived in hiding for months or years, she maintained a dance school where girls from "good families" attended, so they could receive ballet classes given by Maritza, and for a few months or years Abimael Guzmán was protected there, until the police, after discovering his hiding place, assaulted and subdued him.
In one of Vélez's documentaries about the capture of Abimael Guzmán, he reassures the officer who is pointing a revolver at him.
“Calm down,” the Senderista leader tells him, “you are armed and I have lost.
Calm down."
Indeed, with that capture the nightmare that Peru lived through ended.
And with its innumerable deaths, according to my calculations, the sinister adventure that had begun years before came to an end, with dogs hanging on the posts of Lima, in which none other than the author of the extraordinary development of Popular China was insulted, that is, the leader Deng Xiaoping.
He was accused of selling Mao Tse Tung's homeland to Yankee imperialism.
Yes, the culmination of the dead that Peru experienced on that horrendous night that lasted several years was this tragic end to what can be called an operetta.
What happened to Maritza Garrido Lecca?
She has never spoken, nor explained why she did what she did, and the years in jail that she served for all of it.
Her case is unique in the annals of the revolution.
There are not usually such discreet figures of the supposed transformation of a country as is the case with her.
Is Peru better off, after that bath of horror that destroyed the myth that it was a peaceful country, that, unlike other Latin American countries, was free of political violence?
Judging by recent events, Peru seems a long way from having achieved peace and harmony among its citizens.
Perhaps the most positive fact that we have to celebrate is that the Army, which supported Fujimori when he carried out that coup d'état and replaced the free elections —which he had won but which were not enough for him and he tried to set himself up as a tyrant—, this Once he refused to support the coup plotters and threw all his support into the constitutional arrangement that has brought Vice President Dina Boluarte to power, an intermediate leap, until there are new elections in Peru.
The last elections, by the way, brought to power an almost illiterate leader who fell after staging a coup that would have turned Peru into one of the worst Latin American monstrosities in living memory.
This is how we go, with a vice president who, according to the clauses, represents a formula that adheres to current laws and who has promised to hand over power to the successor chosen by Peruvians.
© Mario Vargas Llosa, 2023. Press rights in Spanish in Spain and Latin America reserved for Ediciones EL PAÍS, SL, 2023. Press rights in Spanish for other territories and for other languages, reserved for Mario Vargas Llosa c/ o Carmen Balcells Literary Agency, SA.
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