1983 Lucanamarca massacre

Massacre perpetrated by the Shining Path in 1983 October 2021 Lucanamarca massacre internal conflict in Peru File:Lucanamarca (Perú).JPG Location of Lucanamarca in Peru, with areas of Shining Path influence in yellow Lucanamarca, Peru Ronderos 1983 04 03 yes Shooting, massacre, war crime 69 Shining Path Axes, machetes, firearms Terrorism Retaliation for murder of Olegario Curitomay On 3 April 1983, Shining Path rebels killed 69 people in and around the town of Lucanamarca in the Department of Ayacucho, Peru. Shining Path carried out the massacre in reprisal for the killing of its local commander by villagers earlier in the year. Background On 17 May, 1980, the Maoist revolutionary group Shining Path began an insurgency against the Peruvian state. The group was based in the Ayacucho Region and had seized the town of Lunamarca. In March 1983, the local ronderos vigilantes captured Olegario Curitomay, a Shining Path commander in Lucanamarca, a small town in the Huanca Sancos Province of Ayacucho. Curitomay was taken to the town square, stoned, stabbed, set on fire, and finally shot.Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. 28 August 2003. "La Masacre de Lucanamarca (1983)". Accessed 10 February 2008. es Attack On 3 April 1983, Shining Path militants responded to the death of Olegario Curitomay by entering Lucanamarca and the villages of Yanaccollpa, Ataccara, Llacchua, and Muylacruz, and indiscriminately killing 69 Indigenous people in a revenge attack. Of those killed by the Shining Path, eighteen were children, the youngest of whom was only six months old. Also killed were eleven women. Eight of the victims were between fifty and seventy years old. Most of the victims died by machete and axe hacks, and some were shot in the head at close range. Aftermath This was the first massacre committed by the Shining Path against members of a peasant community. At the party's Third National Conference in July 1983, Abimael Guzmán (Shining Path's leader) criticized the massacre as a strategic mistake: “What happened in Lucanamarca should never happen again...That is an expression of bad politics — that’s not how to behave...It’s erroneous to apply this line of attack because it can generate grave political consequences...Excesses can be accepted, but extremism never."La Serna, Miguel, and Orin Starn (2023). Beyond the Gonzalo Mystique: Challenges to Abimael Guzmán’s Leadership inside Peru’s Shining Path, 1982–1992. Latin American Research Review 58, 743–761. https://doi.org/10.1017/lar.2023.25 Publicly, Guzmán later justified the massacre, telling El Diario (a pro-Shining Path newspaper based in Lima) in 1988 that it had shown Shining Path would be "a tough bone to gnaw." Ultimately, the Shining Path's insurgency against the Peruvian state faltered, and Guzmán and several other high-ranking Shining Path members were captured in Lima in 1992. On 10 September 2002, Guzmán told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission "We, doctors, reiterate that we will not avoid our responsibility [for the Lucanamarca massacre]. I have mine, I'm the first one responsible, and I will never renounce my responsibility, that wouldn't make any sense." See also List of massacres in Peru Communist terrorism Red terror References 13 48 28 S 74 21 06 W source:eswiki_region:PE_type:city title Category:Anti-Indigenous racism in Peru Category:Mass stabbings in South America Category:Terrorist incidents involving knife attacks in South America Category:April 1983 in South America Category:Deaths by firearm in Peru Category:Massacres in 1983 Category:Shining Path attacks Category:Massacres in Peru Category:Axe murder Category:History of the Department of Ayacucho Category:1983 murders in Peru Category:Terrorist incidents in South America in 1983 Category:Terrorist incidents in Peru in the 1980s Category:20th-century mass murders in Peru Category:Stabbing attacks in 1983 Category:Massacres of Indigenous South Americans