Fourteen people, including two children, have been killed in a remote Peruvian valley where cocaine is grown, with the armed forces claiming responsibility for the killings of isolated guerrillas of the Maoist Light Trail movement.
The massacre may further escalate the already polarized election campaign ahead of the run-off on June 6th. The candidate of the populist right, Keiko Fuchimori, accuses her opponent, the candidate of the radical left, Pedro Castillo, of being connected with the political arm of the Bright Path, something that the interested party categorically denies.
The 14 villagers were killed in the village of San Miguel del Ene, in the valley of the rivers Apurimac, Ene and Madaro (central-south), the main coca-producing sector in Peru. According to the Peruvian army, the Bright Path, the Maoist rebel movement that fought against the state from 1980 to 2000, still operates in this area. This conflict had tens of thousands of victims.
“Brochures were found on the spot demanding that the population not participate in the 2021 election process,” the armed forces said in a press release, blaming a unit of the Path of Light led by Victor Cispe Palomino.
Although almost all of the Maoist guerrilla leaders have been in prison for years, some fighters remain scattered in isolated forest and mountain areas.
Authorities estimate that there are about 350 such fighters and accuse them of collaborating with drug traffickers.
“I unequivocally condemn the killing of these 14 people,” interim President Francisco Sagasti said on Twitter, ordering the deployment of “army and police patrols” in the area “so that this terrorist act does not go unpunished.”
The prosecutor’s office has instructed a directorate specializing in terrorism cases to investigate the killings. The Minister of Defense, Nuria Espars, promised that “they will not go unpunished”.
In 2003, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that 70,000 people had been killed or disappeared during the 20-year armed conflict between security forces and the Bright Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA, Guevara).
According to the Commission’s calculations, the Path of Light was responsible for 54% of the victims of the civil war. Among the bloodiest actions attributed to the organization was the killing in 1984 of a total of 117 farmers in Soras, Ayacucho Prefecture (south), for refusing to support the movement.
Peru is one of the countries producing the largest quantities of coca and cocaine leaves in the world, along with Colombia and Bolivia.
