La Serna Miguel - The shining path: love, madness, and revolution in the Andes

ORIN STARN AND
MIGUEL LA SERNA

The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes is a work of nonfiction. Certain names have been changed.

Copyright 2019 by Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Starn, Orin, author. | La Serna, Miguel, author.

Title: The Shining Path : love, madness, and revolution in the Andes / Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna.

Description: First edition. | New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018054651 | ISBN 9780393292800 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Sendero Luminoso (Guerrilla group) | PeruPolitics and

government19681980. | PeruPolitics and government1980 | RevolutionsPeruHistory20th century. | Guerrilla warfarePeruHistory20th century. | TerrorismPeruHistory20th century. | GuerrillasPeruBiography. | RevolutionariesPeruBiography. | CommunistsPeruBiography.

Classification: LCC F3448.2 .S73 2019 | DDC 985.06/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054651

ISBN (ebk.) 9780393292817

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.

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W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS

T he old man had dozed off in front of the television.

He woke to the sound of keys in his steel door. One, two, three, four ... one by one, the deadbolts clicked open.

Good evening, Guzmn, said the policeman. The old man sat on his cot. He reached out to shake the proffered hand. Three others, two women and a man, crowded into his tiny cell. A man with a video camera trailed behind.

The police officer said theyd come to search the cell. We have a judicial order from the Third District National Court.

The old man listened, then chuckled. Are you joking?

No problem, laugh if you want, the policeman said.

The old man had been locked away for more than two decades. He was kept mostly in solitary confinement, but he hadnt lost his sparring skill. And it annoyed him to be awoken by late-night visitors.

Ladies and gentlemen, he said, as usual, you dont know what youre doing. Hed been a lawyer once. He waved and gestured, evidently taking some pleasure in the fray.

Wed be thankful, the policeman pleaded almost as if the prisoner himself, if youd allow us to proceed with our work.

At this hour? the old man snorted, looking at his watch for effect.

And then, surprisingly spry for a man soon turning eighty, he sprang up, almost lunging at the officer.

No, sir! he said. No, you wont!

He was not just anyone, after all. As maximum leader of a lethal guerrilla insurgency, he had once issued the orders for assassinating government leaders and assaulting military bases. His followers sang anthems exalting his name. The government built this concrete prison just to hold him.

The old man knew his countrymen hated him. When the newspapers reported his hospitalization for gastrointestinal troubles, readers took to the comment sections wishing him a terrible death. Make this traitor Communist piece of shit drink his own diarrhea. Cut him to pieces. Dump them in Lake Titicaca. Most people considered him a mass murderer.

It did not bother the old man. He had dedicated his life to fighting for a new world. He took heart that Miriam, his wife and fellow revolutionary, remained steadfast as she, too, grew old in her own prison cell far across the sleeping city.

Miriam, my only one, he wrote, however bad the times, no matter the distance or circumstances, you live in me.

The old man acquiesced to the police search at last, helpless to stop it. Youll get all my things out of order, he could only grumble. He had always been orderly in everything.

Thank you, thank you, sir, one woman said. She was a prosecutor. Well be quick.

They went to work.

There wasnt much to finda little Santa Claus figurine, an empty Coke can, a self-help book, Getting Old Doesnt Mean Slowing Down .

Then his visitors filed out, locking the old man down again.

He usually slept well, despite a bad hip. Heads split open by a machete? A woman blown to bits before her two little boys? A country in flames? The old man believed their war had been just despite its ugly costs. He did not fear dying alone in his windowless cell. A true revolutionary kept his spirits. Ive got an almost built-in optimism, he told an interviewer once.

He was penning his movements history.

Hed be at it early the next morning.

T he train from Cuzco left early so as to get back the same day.

It was the only way to one of the worlds great wonders, Machu Picchu. The fabled Lost City of the Incas lay three hours away down a twisting whitewater canyon where no road reached. A shuttle bus brought tourists the last few miles to the stone ruins perched so gloriously high above the Urubamba River.

Susan Bradshaw had always wanted to see Machu Picchu, ever since coming across a National Geographic spread about it. I know a guy who can take you, a friend told her. Susan had just split up with her lawyer husband, and, still only in her late thirties, wanted an adventure.

Shed gone to meet Buz Donahoo, the man her friend recommended. Buz ran his own travel company, Condor Adventures, but he struck Susan more like some mythical alpha male from a Hemingway novel than any ordinary tour guide. As a young man, hed bummed from San Francisco to Santa Fe and Belize with stints in the Coast Guard and as an apprentice architect to Frank Lloyd Wright. (Be an integer, the great man had cryptically counselled, One thing throughout.) It was 1986 by now, Buz almost fifty. He remained a great storyteller, ladies man, and the life of every party. Susan signed up for his next Peru trip.

Pack your sun dress! Buz told her. Get ready for some fun. Recent troubles in Peru did not bother Buz at all, even reports about a malignant guerrilla insurgency, Shining Path. Avoid visiting places where they are particularly active; they have no love of foreign tourists, counseled one guidebook. Susans parents wanted her to cancel. Seven others did drop out, shrinking Buzs group to four. They flew into Lima, the Peruvian capital, before heading up to Machu Picchu.

It was hard to imagine a gloomier city than Lima, hardly the place for a sun dress. Hungry kids hawked penny candies between rubble and garbage. Tanks and soldiers guarded government buildings. This looks like Dresden , Susan thought. The Spanish viceroys splendid seat had been famous for its gilt, gardens, and courtly processions back in colonial times. Susan could barely imagine it.