Introduction
Terrorism is not specific to any one group, region, complaint, aim, strategy, or age. Terrorists have used violence during the past century to further a variety of causes, including the establishment of new nations, revolutions, the fulfillment of racial agendas, the release of animals from cruel experiments in laboratory testing, the legalization of abortion, and much more. Therefore, it may seem strange that organizations with such disparate goals may all be categorized as terrorists. They all have one thing in common: they are driven to use violence by deeply held ideologies.
This is the case with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Shining Path (Spanish: Sendero Luminoso) in Peru. The phrase “terrorism” has such a lengthy and problematic history, partly because it refers to a wide range of behaviors and causes. Generally, violence perpetrated by individuals or groups with specific ideological and political goals is regarded as constituting terrorism. This violence is typically directed toward civilians. Terrorist groups have different purposes, but their main aim is to go against liberals and promote communism by conducting cruel actions.
The FARC and The Shining Path Similarities
Similar Ideological Beliefs
Terrorists in the left-wing category often want to topple capitalist regimes they perceive as corrupt, aristocratic, and dictatorial since they are motivated by anti-capitalist, Marxist ideologies. They make the case that by opposing capitalism and bureaucracy, they would be able to advance equality for the entire population rather than advocating for a certain segment of it. In 1964, Jacobo Arenas and Marulanda Manuel founded the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organization (Mapping Militant Organizations, 2019). After a decade of Colombia’s civil war (1948–1958), the FARC was created to advocate for the best interests of the rural populace (Feldmann, 2022). The FARC first sought to oust the Colombian government, and it used the sale of drugs, abduction, blackmail, and the unlicensed mining of gold to fund its activities.
The Shining Path (Spanish: Sendero Luminoso) in Peru was founded towards the end of the 1960s by Abimael Guzman, a philosophy professor at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University (Becker, 2019). Mr. Guzmán was a big opponent of Peru’s ruling political class. His supporters drew on Marxist ideologies and Cuba’s Fidel Castro as an example, forming a sizable and ruthless guerrilla army that frequently employed terrorist methodologies in their attempt to topple the sitting Peruvian government (Blaxland, 2020). The primary goal of the groups was to overthrow the Peruvian government and replace it with a communist peasant revolutionary authoritarian rule while limiting the influence of other Latin American guerrilla organizations.
Use of Violence
To further their cause, the groups used violence; those who were members of Colombian security forces were targeted; the FARC saw them as government enforcers. As a result, the organization’s fighters planned ambush attacks on patrols; they also attacked police posts and military bases. The group was spreading drugs in Colombia when it was officially banned (Norman, 2018). The movement was large in this country, and it became almost impossible to get rid of the problem.
These days, the problem remains important. Many people were crippled by landmines laid by the group. They also kidnapped people for ransom; an example is Luis Mendieta, a police officer who was abducted in 1998 after an attack on the police station where he was stationed (Brett, 2018). He was in captivity for more than a decade before being rescued by the military.
Similarly, The Shining Path employed the same strategy: use violence to overthrow Peru’s democratically elected government, damage the country’s economy, harm the state’s standing with the peasant class, and ultimately harm the state’s standing with the broader public. It is estimated that more than 70,000 individuals lost their lives in the conflict between the state and the Shining Path faction (Trzyna, 2018).
Anyone suspected of being pro-government or who even mildly disagreed with Shining Path’s core principles was a potential target for torture and execution. Shining Path specifically targeted local officials, including mayors, middle-level administrators, police officers, and government figures in the area. However, around 1983, the organization then increasingly added state agency executives and affluent people to its list of targets.
The movements and ideologies of the FRAC and The Shining Path have a lot in common, as most of the actions were considered illegal, but the fight against it was not spread in developing countries. These anti-capitalist groups were equally damaging to innocent people who did not work in governmental positions. Torture and abuse of the rights of people unite FRAC and the Shining Path. Humiliation was a key part of the movements and was used to increase the financing of people controlling developing countries (Chen, 2021). The regulations introduced many years ago are difficult to change, making both parties influential and massive in many parts of the world.
Practice of Illegal Activities
These groups were not funded by their governments; they had to find means to fund their operations, and of course, one way they managed to achieve this was through activities like drug trafficking. In the late 1970s, the FARC started trafficking cocaine; this activity consequently led to the organization’s explosive rise. In the truest sense, the FARC organization was not a drug trafficking syndicate; rather, it had a well-established tax structure that applied to every aspect of the drug sector.
They controlled checkpoints that were used to transport any materials required for the commercial exploitation of narcotics trafficking (Gutiérrez & Thomson, 2020). The FARC was entitled to a portion of the proceeds from coca cultivation on land portions larger than 4 acres, and the coca processors were required to pay specified fees according to the quantity of cocaine processed. The proceeds from these activities allowed the group to acquire more ammunition and recruit more members to help in their cause. One of the main similarities between the parties is based on illegal actions like drug supply to developing countries (Norman, 2018). Shining Path additionally demanded that local buyers and sellers of raw cocaine pay more than market rates in exchange for safety and the chance to purchase fire farms from them.
Conclusion
The initial aim of movements was to free governments from unjust rule, but the governance of anti-capitalist parties turned into terrorism. Both rebel groups were formed with the aim of opposing capitalism and bureaucracy and advancing equality for the entire population in their respective countries. The founders and their followers were so committed to their ideological beliefs that they were willing to do anything to realize those beliefs. Since they needed funds to kick-start their movements and keep their operations running, they resorted to engaging in illegal activities like drug trafficking, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom. Activities that can be easily categorized as terrorist activities, effectively rendering them terrorist groups.
References
Becker, M. (2019). FARC, Shining path, and guerillas in Latin America. Web.
Blaxland, J. J. (2020). The shining path. In Insurgency prewar preparation and intrastate conflict (pp. 67-101). Palgrave Macmillan.
Brett, R. (2018). The role of the victims’ delegations in the Santos-FARC peace talks. The Politics of Victimhood in Post-conflict Societies, 267-299. Web.
Feldmann, A. E. (2022). Internal displacement in Latin America. In The Routledge history of modern Latin American migration (pp. 294-308). Routledge.
Gutiérrez D, J. A., & Thomson, F. (2020). Rebels-turned-narcos? The FARC-EP’s political involvement in Colombia’s cocaine economy. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 44(1), 26-51. Web.
Mapping Militant Organizations. (2019). Revolutionary armed forces of Colombia. Web.
Norman, S. V. (2018). Narcotization as security dilemma: The FARC and drug trade in Colombia. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 41(8), 638-659. Web.
Trzyna, T. (2018). Cain’s crime: The proliferation of weapons and the targeting of civilians in contemporary war. Wipf and Stock Publishers.