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Latin American Herald TribuneLIMA – The Shining Path guerrilla group “is increasingly improving its firepower” in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers, known as the VRAE region and considered Peru’s principal cocaine-producing area, the former chief of the counter-terrorism police said.
Gen. Marcos Miyashiro, one of the key men involved in the 1992 capture of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman, made the comment in an interview published Sunday by the daily La Republica. The expansion of the guerrilla group’s firepower explains “why they dare to directly attack the military bases located in the VRAE,” where more than 40 soldiers have died in ambushes and attacks staged by the Shining Path in recent months, the retired general said.
The current incarnation of the Shining Path in the VRAE is not the same as the group that launched its armed struggle against the Peruvian state nearly 30 years ago, with the main difference being that the organization’s current leader, “Comrade Jose,” limits attacks to the security forces, establishing links to local people instead of murdering them, Miyashiro said.
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“For the people of the VRAE, who mainly work in drug trafficking and related activities, Shining Path is their protector. That is why they do not cooperate with us, because we are trying to put an end to that protector,” the retired general said.
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I've been to the VRAE. Except for the occasional soldier, the Peruvian state is absent.
You can grow coca legally in Peru and sell it to ENACO, the state coca monopoly. But coca farmer union leaders in the VRAE told me that only 10,000 of the 40,000 coca growers are registered with ENACO and thus legal. But, of course, nobody knows anybody that is selling coca destined to be turned into cocaine.