Background & Key Events

Basically, this group is the Communist Party of Peru, where its more common name is, "The Shining Path"; and is a Maoist organization located in Peru;where as well, the People's Guerrilla Army (Ejército Guerrillero Popular) is the official name of the armed branch of the party. In their hope to bring Peru to pure communism, they believed that by imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducing cultural revolution and leading up to  world revolution. During their first launch of the internal conflict of Peru in 1980, it stated their goal was to replace what it saw as  bourgeois democracy with, " New Democracy" or a Maoist concept based on Mao Zedong's "Bloc of four social classes".Though regardless of their vision, "The Shining Path" is classified as a terrorist organization to not only the Peruvian government but as well as, the U.S department of state's list of foreign terrorist organizations, included also on Canada's and the European Union lists. At first, when I found out what I really wanted to research,my first thought of the Shining Path was something like the yellow brick road out of,"The Wizard of Oz"  with people who wanted to just change their pathways of life,and so on. Anyway, back to the basis; when a group is on any of those lists, it prohibits providing funding or other financial support-so they're fundraising! I was just kidding on the fundraising part, though. But, before being actually known as the shining path in 1980, the group was founded in the late 1960's by , Abimael Guzman, a former university philosophy professor, or referred to his followers by,Presidente Gonzalo, whose teachings were inspired by Mao's cultural revolution in China or type of militant Maoist movement before.