Free Republic

There's a movie out now that imagines modern America in the grips of a civil war. It is, as far as I can tell, a wholly logic-free bit of fantasy (California and Texas uniting as a rebel front!), with a script that hits its ideological touchstones like a piledriver. It's an election year, so expect more of the same, but it's worth comparing this First World fever dream of social collapse with a story grounded in a very real, recent, historical moment. The Dancer Upstairs (2002) begins with four people driving at night along a country road. They're listening to...

Dorcas Hernández escaped death at the hands of Peru’s vicious Shining Path, who wanted to assassinate her father. Hernandez was twelve years old at the time. Now she’s an American citizen who loves her country and wants to represent Fl. House District 92. While Hernandez may be running for office in Florida, like many Floridians, it isn’t where she’s from originally. Hernandez was born in La Oroya, Peru, in the Andes mountains. Her parents were both pastors in the Christian missionary Alliance Church. Hernandez told the Florida Jolt that “I grew up in a home where faith and values were...

Peruvian president Alan Garcia Thursday proposed a national referendum [press release, in Spanish] on introducing capital punishment for convicted terrorists after a legislative proposal to that effect was defeated 49-26 in the Peruvian Congress [official website] on Wednesday. Garcia described the defeat as one contrary to the will of the Peruvian people, and "[it was his] duty to fulfill what [he has] promised... in [his election] campaign." Political observers believe that Congress is unlikely to support the referendum proposal, which itself requires the approval of Congress. Congressional opposition to the proposal cite the American Convention on Human Rights [text], which...

LIMA, Peru — A former president of Peru died on Wednesday after shooting himself in the head when the authorities tried to arrest him in connection with one of the biggest corruption scandals in Latin American history. A personal secretary for the former president, Alan García, 69, confirmed his death. The secretary, Ricardo Pineda, also told a Peruvian radio station that as the authorities arrived at the former president’s home with an arrest warrant, he locked himself into his bedroom, shot himself and was rushed to a hospital. The charges relate to Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction giant, which last year...

Imprisoned former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been pardoned by incumbent leader Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Mr. Kuczynski's office said in a statement that Fukimori, 79, was being released on health grounds. Fujimori-who was in power from 1990 to 2000-was recently taken from prison to hospital because of low blood pressure and abnormal heart rhythm. He has been serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses and corruption..... He was admired by some Peruvians for combating Maoist rebels, whereas his critics consider him a corrupt dictator. Fujimori has been in and out of hospital for a variety of health problems in...

Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso (American Spanish: [maˈnwel ruˈβen aβimaˈel ɡuzˈman reiˈnoso]; born 3 December 1934), also known by the nom de guerre Chairman Gonzalo (Spanish: Presidente Gonzalo), a former professor of philosophy, is the former leader of the Shining Path during the Maoist insurgency known as the internal conflict in Peru. Shining Path had been active in Peru since the late 1970s and began what it called "the armed struggle" on 17 May 1980. Wanted on charges of terrorism and treason, Guzmán was captured by the Peruvian government in 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment. While the activity of...

Editor’s note: While reports have been gaining lately about both Hezbollah and other Islamic forces being found in Latin America – this is the first (to my knowledge) of actual violence being done. For a report in Spanish of such activity, country by country, read here. Peruvian media outlets accused Hizbullah of being involved in violence and killing a Peruvian citizen during protests staged by locals a few weeks ago, al-Arabiya news website reported Saturday. During demonstrations staged by locals from La Pampa district against government projects, one of the demonstrators was shot and killed. Local media in Peru...

Two Poles and one Italian were killed by Shining Path guerrillas in 1991Three European missionary priests killed by Shining Path terrorists in Peru in 1991 have been beatified. According to Associated Press, 30,000 people attended the beatification ceremony for Franciscans Fathers Michal Tomaszek and Zbigniew Strzalkowski of Poland and Fr Alessandro Dordi of Italy in a stadium in Chimbote, in northern Peru, on Saturday. Italian Cardinal Angelo Amato presided over the ceremony and there were representatives from all of the dioceses of Peru and groups from Poland and Italy. Father Zbigniew, 32, and Fr Michal, 30, were killed on August...

President Barack Obama has an emerging slogan — “greater together” — that he’s using to spur support among younger voters worried about jobs, education and debt. The collectivist slogan is appearing in more places, including fundraisers and in the title of the “Greater Together Student Summit Tour,” which is sending Obama’s deputies to colleges to galvanize students and youth. On Feb. 1, Obama used the slogan to spur support among young and old African-Americans, and especially African-American women. Less than half of younger African-American men are in the workforce, and the average wealth of African-American families was slashed by the...

Billions would have died in the nuclear holocaust. But this was the plan from the Latin American warmonger Che Guevara, who's face is emblazoned on T-shirts around the globe: “What?!” Khrushchev gasped upon reading Castro’s telegram on Oct. 28 1962. “Is he proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba? But that is insane! Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before its too late!” instructed the Soviet premier. So much for the Camelot fable of JFK “standing up to the Russians,” during the Missile Crisis Khrushchev “blinked” alright. But at Fidel Castro and...

A brutal Maoist guerrilla group that terrorized Peru during the 1980s but pretty much disappeared when top leaders were captured in the 1990s is making a resurgence. In the latest of several recent attacks by the Sendero Luminoso, known in English as the Shining Path, 14 government soldiers were killed in an ambush this month. It was, a Sendero leader said afterward, "the strongest blow" against the government in quite a while. It also was not an isolated incident. "It's like that horror movie, 'Friday the 13th,' " said Bernard Aronson, President George H.W. Bush's assistant secretary of state for...

Peru's Shining Path have rebels killed 13 soldiers in two separate ambushes in the south-east of the country. The defence minister, Antero Flores Araoz, said the rebels attacked a military patrol with grenades and dynamite killing a captain and 11 soldiers in one of the most deadliest attacks by the guerrillas in the past decade. Both attacks took place in the Ayacucho region, 340 miles from the capital, Lima.

A recent surge in arrests and cocaine seizures in Peru points to an increased presence of Mexican drug cartels, counter-narcotics officials say. The cartels have also contributed to more drug-related violence in Peruvian cities, ports and in remote valleys in this Andean country where coca, cocaine's base material, is grown, the officials say. Peruvian claims of Mexican cartels expanding echo those by officials in other Latin American countries, from Honduras to Argentina, where Mexican gangs have supplanted once-powerful Colombian cartels as kings of the illicit-drug underworld. .... That Mexican drug lords are sending emissaries here is no surprise to Hidalgo...

The war against the Shining Path rebels, which took nearly 70,000 lives, supposedly ended in 2000. But here in one of the most remote corners of the Andes, the combination of a renewed military campaign, a resurgent rebel faction and a lucrative cocaine trade may be sparking it back to life. The drizzle-shrouded jungle of Vizcatán, a 250-square-mile region in the Apurímac and Ene River Valley, nine hours by four-wheel drive along switchbacks from the Maoist rebels' Andean cradle of Ayacucho, is Peru's largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine. The Shining Path controls a large part of...

For those of us who were covering the conflicts in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, there was no group more terrifying than Peru's Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) an Maoist organization intent on causing rivers of blood to flow in order to achieve the proletariat utopia. After many years and countless dead, Sendero was largely dismantled and its chief ideologue , Abimael Guzman, who ran a horrific cult of personality, was jailed. The group was widely thought to have been put out of business permanently. Now, as the Washington Post reports, Sendero, a designated terrorist entity, is coming back....

Red Star Ignorance - Cameron Diaz and the great Peruvian faux pas By Court Pearman Epoch Times Washington, D.C. Staff June 30, 2007 Oh, Poor Cameron Diaz! She got roasted for wearing a bag with a red star and a quote from Mao Tse Tung on it in Peru, a country that suffered massive bloodshed at the hands of Maoist rebels. People who survive civil wars are so uptight. It is not like she was wearing a bag with a Hitler quote and a black swastika on it. That would have been really bad. And she wasn't wearing a KKK...

Peruvians march for death penalty During the insurgencies Shining Path rebels would attack villages Thousands of Peruvians have joined a march in Lima supporting a proposal to introduce the death penalty for members of the Shining Path rebel group.Many of the crowd waved pictures of relatives killed by the Shining Path. Last week President Alan Garcia suggested changing the constitution to allow a referendum on the issue after parliament rejected the proposal. MPs argued that capital punishment would breach the American Convention on Human Rights, which Peru has signed. Protesters from the Association of Families of Victims of Terrorism,...

Suspected rebels in Peru have killed seven men, including five policemen, in an ambush in the country's coca-growing interior. The police convoy was attacked during a crackdown on illegal coca-growing in the second major ambush in a year. The interior ministry has not blamed any group for the attack but remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla movement are known to operate in the region. More than 20 police have been killed in ambushes in the last year. The rebel group, which led one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies in the 1980s and 1990s, has claimed responsibility for similar attacks. The...

Troops have been dispatched to the central Andean valleys of Peru in recent weeks to counter renewed guerrilla activity by re-equipped leftist rebels of the Shining Path, according to high level government officials. ... Twenty-three members of the group have been arrested since Shining Path resumed operations at the beginning of the year with a road ambush that killed eight police officers. In a videotape released at the end of last month, a hooded leader using the pseudonym of Comandante Artemio said the group would resume large-scale attacks in three months. ...Comandante Artemio threatened to renew attacks unless the government...

LONDON – Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, has established the first proof al-Qaida is playing a major role in the new Cold War between North and South America – with Osama bin Laden's terror network seeing itself in league with Mexican subversives in infiltrating the U.S. border. The evidence emerged as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez swash-buckled into London after scoring a win in yet another venomous battle with Washington for influence and economic advantage across the Latin American continent. Chavez is in London to meet the capital's anti-Bush mayor, Ken Livingstone, and other prominent British opponents of the war in...