Peru

The Shining Path, self-named the Communist Party of Peru, is a far-left political party and guerrilla group in Peru, following Marxism–Leninism–Maoism and Gonzalo Thought. Academics often refer to the group as the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path to distinguish it from other communist parties in Peru.

When it first launched its "people's war" in 1980, the Shining Path's goal was to overthrow the government through guerrilla warfare and replace it with a New Democracy. The Shining Path believed that by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducing a cultural revolution, and eventually sparking a world revolution, they could arrive at full communism. Their representatives stated that the then-existing socialist countries were revisionist, and the Shining Path was the vanguard of the world communist movement. The Shining Path's ideology and tactics have influenced other Maoist insurgent groups such as the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) and other Revolutionary Internationalist Movement-affiliated organisations. The Shining Path has been widely condemned for its excessive brutality, including violence deployed against peasants, trade union organisers, competing Marxist groups, elected officials and the general public.

As its power grew, the Shining Path changed its official ideology from "Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong thought" to "Marxism–Leninism–Maoism–Gonzalo thought" – according to some authors, a cult of personality grew around Guzmán.

The Shining Path is regarded as a terrorist organisation by the government of Peru, along with Japan, the United States, the European Union, and Canada, all of whom consequently prohibit funding and other financial support to the group. Since the captures of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzmán in 1992 and his successors Óscar Ramírez in 1999 and Comrade Artemio in 2012, the Shining Path declined in activity. The main remaining faction of the Shining Path, the Militarised Communist Party of Peru (MPCP), is active in the Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene y Mantaro (VRAEM) region of Peru, and it has since distanced itself from the Shining Path's legacy in 2018 in order to maintain the support of peasants previously persecuted by the Shining Path. The common name of this group, the Shining Path, distinguishes it from several other Peruvian communist parties with similar names. The name is derived from a maxim of José Carlos Mariátegui, the founder of the original Peruvian Communist Party (from which the rest of communist parties split; now commonly known as the "PCP-Unidad") in the 1920s: "El Marxismo-Leninismo abrirá el sendero luminoso hacia la revolución" ("Marxism–Leninism will open the shining path to revolution").

American hard rock band Guns N' Roses quotes a speech by a Shining Path officer in their 1990 song "Civil War", as saying:

We practice selective annihilation of mayors and government officials, for example, to create a vacuum, then we fill that vacuum. As popular war advances, peace is closer..

The Shining Path primarily comprises two groups and their sub-branches; the People's Guerrilla Army (Ejército Guerrillero Popular) and United Front (Frente Unido). It followed a "concentric construction" model of structure with Communist Party organs as the complete center, followed by the People's Guerrilla Army surrounding it, and lastly the United Front in the outermost circle. This ensured the political party retained control of both its armed and social branches, contrasting itself with the more frequent foquismo model that swept through Latin American insurgencies after the Cuban Revolution. The People's Guerrilla Army (Ejército Guerrillero Popular, EGP) was created for the purposes of combat, mobilisation and producing an income for Shining Path. The Army was officially created on 3 December 1982. Recently the EGP has made money from selling cigarettes, clothes, candy, competitions and other methods. Although the reliability of reports regarding the Shining Path's actions remains a matter of controversy in Peru, the organisation's use of violence is well documented. According to InSight Crime, Shining Path would kill their opponents "with assassinations, bombings, beheadings and massacres" as well as "stoning victims to death". The Shining Path rejected the concept of human rights; a Shining Path document stated:

We start by not ascribing to either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the Costa Rica Convention on Human Rights, but we have used their legal devices to unmask and denounce the old Peruvian state.. For us, human rights are contradictory to the rights of the people, because we base rights in man as a social product, not man as an abstract with innate rights. "Human rights" do not exist except for the bourgeois man, a position that was at the forefront of feudalism, like liberty, equality, and fraternity were advanced for the bourgeoisie of the past. But today, since the appearance of the proletariat as an organised class in the Communist Party, with the experience of triumphant revolutions, with the construction of socialism, new democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat, it has been proven that human rights serve the oppressor class and the exploiters who run the imperialist and landowner-bureaucratic states. Bourgeois states in general... Our position is very clear. We reject and condemn human rights because they are bourgeois, reactionary, counterrevolutionary rights, and are today a weapon of revisionists and imperialists, principally Yankee imperialists.

After the collapse of the Fujimori government, interim President Valentín Paniagua established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the conflict. The Commission found in its 2003 Final Report that 69,280 people died or disappeared between 1980 and 2000 as a result of the armed conflict. The Shining Path was found to be responsible for about 54% of the deaths and disappearances reported to the commission. A statistical analysis of the available data led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to estimate that the Shining Path was responsible for the death or disappearance of 31,331 people, 46% of the total deaths and disappearances. According to a summary of the report by Human Rights Watch:

Shining Path ... killed about half the victims, and roughly one-third died at the hands of government security forces ... The commission attributed some of the other slayings to a smaller guerrilla group and local militias. The rest remain unattributed..

The Shining Path has been accused of violence against LGBT people. Between 1989 and 1992, the Shining Path and the MRTA killed up to 500 "non-heterosexual" people. According to one woman who was kidnapped by the Shining Path in 1981, a homosexual man's penis was cut into pieces before he was murdered. The Peruvian government did not reveal the name of the victim. The Shining Path defended its actions by saying that LGBT individuals were not killed because of their sexual identity, instead, they were killed because of their "collaboration with the police.". The number of women involved in the armed struggle remained high throughout the war, participating at almost all logistical, military and strategic levels as militants, guerrilla commanders and top party leaders of the organisation. Up to forty per cent of the guerrillas were women, and there were countless "ladies of death" who led military commandos. In 1992, at least eight of the nineteen members of the Central Committee were women, including three of the five members of the Politburo, and in 1980 more than a third of the women arrested had a degree. In criminal proceedings against senderista in 1987, the majority were women.

The Shining Path declared that it was a feminist organisation and in accordance with this declaration, many women acquired leadership positions. In the organisation, 40% of the fighters and 50% of the members of its Central Committee were women..

Throughout the 1980s, the Shining Path grew both in terms of the territory it controlled and in the number of militants in its organisation, particularly in the Andean highlands. It gained support from local peasants by filling the political void left by the central government and providing what they called "popular justice", public trials that disregard any legal and human rights that deliver swift and brutal sentences including public executions. This caused the peasantry of some Peruvian villages to express some sympathy for the Shining Path, especially in the impoverished and neglected regions of Ayacucho, Apurímac, and Huancavelica. At times, the civilian population of small, neglected towns participated in popular trials, especially when the victims of the trials were widely disliked. The Shining Path's credibility benefited from the government's initially tepid response to the insurgency. For over a year, the government refused to declare a state of emergency in the region where the Shining Path was operating. The Interior Minister, José María de la Jara, believed the group could be easily defeated through police actions. Additionally, the president, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, who returned to power in 1980, was reluctant to cede authority to the armed forces since his first government had ended in a military coup.

Ideologically Maoist, the Shining Path is unique because it did not completely accept orthodox Marxist doctrine, instead, it considered the teachings of Guzmán to supersede the teachings of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Guzmán's philosophy combined Marxism-Leninism, Maoism and indigenous Indian traditionalism, championing the liberation of Peru's Quechua-speaking Incans and mestizos. The party's name was also coined by Guzmán, who infused his communist rhetoric with Inca mythology, he described his form of Marxist-Maoist thought as a "shining path" towards the liberation of Peru's natives. Because of this, the Shining Path also featured elements of Incan particularism, and it also rejected outside influences, especially non-indigenous influences..

On 29 December 1981, the government declared an "emergency zone" in the three Andean regions of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurímac and granted the military the power to arbitrarily detain any suspicious person. In some areas, the military trained peasants and organised them into anti-rebel militias, called "rondas". They were generally poorly equipped, despite being provided arms by the state. The rondas would attack the Shining Path guerrillas, with the first such reported attack occurring in January 1983, near Huata. Ronderos would later kill 13 guerrilla fighters in February 1983, in Sacsamarca. In March 1983, ronderos brutally killed Olegario Curitomay, one of the commanders of the town of Lucanamarca. The Shining Path's retaliation to this was one of the worst attacks in the entire conflict, with a group of guerrilla members entering the town and going house by house, killing dozens of villagers, including babies, with guns, hatchets, and axes. This action has come to be known as the Lucanamarca massacre. Additional massacres of civilians by the Shining Path would occur throughout the conflict.

Anyone who was related to or was identified as part of the "bourgeois state", or a collaborator with it, deserved execution, which is why cruelty in murders was encouraged to achieve the obedience of the masses..

By 1990, the Shining Path had about 3,000 armed members at its greatest extent. The group had gained control of much of the countryside of the center and south of Peru and had a large presence in the outskirts of Lima. The Shining Path began to fight against Peru's other major guerrilla group, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), as well as campesino self-defense groups organised by the Peruvian armed forces. The Shining Path quickly seized control of large areas of Peru. The group had significant support among peasant communities, and it had the support of some slum dwellers in the capital and elsewhere. The Shining Path's interpretation of Maoism did not have the support of many city dwellers. According to opinion polls, only 15 percent of the population considered subversion to be justifiable in June 1988, while only 17 percent considered it justifiable in 1991. In June 1991, "the total sample disapproved of the Shining Path by an 83 to 7 percent margin, with 10 percent not answering the question. Among the poorest, however, only 58 percent stated disapproval of the Shining Path; 11 percent said they had a favorable opinion of the Shining Path, and some 31 percent would not answer the question.".

Polls have never been completely accurate since Peru has several anti-terrorism laws, including "apologia for terrorism", that makes it a punishable offense for anyone who does not condemn the Shining Path. In effect, the laws make it illegal to support the group in any way. Many peasants were unhappy with the Shining Path's rule for a variety of reasons, such as its disrespect for indigenous culture and institutions. However, they had also made agreements and alliances with some indigenous tribes. Some did not like the brutality of its "popular trials" that sometimes included "slitting throats, strangulation, stoning, and burning.". Peasants were offended by the rebels' injunction against burying the bodies of Shining Path victims. The Shining Path followed Mao Zedong's dictum that guerrilla warfare should start in the countryside and gradually choke off the cities. According to multiple sources, the Shining Path received support from Gaddafi's Libya. Initial government efforts to fight the Shining Path were not very effective or promising. Military units engaged in many human rights violations, which caused the Shining Path to appear in the eyes of many as the lesser of two evils. They used excessive force, tortured individuals accused of being sympathisers and killed many innocent civilians. Government forces destroyed villages and killed campesinos suspected of supporting the Shining Path.

Additionally, the state began the widespread use of intelligence agencies in its fight against the Shining Path. However, atrocities were committed by the National Intelligence Service and the Army Intelligence Service, notably the La Cantuta massacre, the Santa massacre and the Barrios Altos massacre, which were committed by Grupo Colina. In one of its last attacks in Lima, on 16 July 1992, Shining Path detonated a powerful bomb on Tarata Street in the Miraflores District, full of civilian adults and children, killing 25 people and injuring an additional 155. On 12 September 1992, El Grupo Especial de Inteligencia (GEIN) captured Guzmán and several Shining Path leaders in an apartment above a dance studio in the Surquillo district of Lima. GEIN had been monitoring the apartment since a number of suspected Shining Path militants had visited it. An inspection of the garbage of the apartment produced empty tubes of a skin cream used to treat psoriasis, a condition that Guzmán was known to have. Shortly after the raid that captured Guzmán, most of the remaining Shining Path leadership fell as well. The capture of Guzmán left a huge leadership vacuum for the Shining Path. "There is no No. 2. There is only Presidente Gonzalo and then the party," a Shining Path political officer said at a birthday celebration for Guzmán in Lurigancho prison in December 1990. "Without President Gonzalo, we would have nothing.".

The cult of personality around Abimael Guzmán was promoted by the Shining Path, reaching the level of fanaticism. Described as a "messianic leader", the capture of Guzman directly led to the Shining Path's collapse. Upon his death a national debate ensued that led to the cremation of his remains..

At the same time, the Shining Path suffered embarrassing military defeats to self-defense organisations of rural campesinos – supposedly its social base. When Guzmán called for peace talks with the Peruvian government, the organisation fractured into splinter groups, with some Shining Path members in favor of such talks and others opposed. Guzmán's role as the leader of the Shining Path was taken over by Óscar Ramírez, who himself was captured by Peruvian authorities in 1999. After Ramírez's capture, the group further splintered, guerrilla activity diminished sharply, and peace returned to the areas where the Shining Path had been active. Although the organisation's numbers had lessened by 2003, a militant faction of the Shining Path called Proseguir ("Onward") continued to be active. The group had allegedly made an alliance with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the early 2000s, learning how to use rockets against aircraft. In 2003, the Peruvian National Police broke up several Shining Path training camps and captured many members and leaders. By late October 2003, there were 96 attacks in Peru, projecting a 15% decrease from the 134 kidnappings and armed attacks in 2002.

The Shining Path sought to replace the Republic of Peru with a "People's Republic which would adhere to the doctrine of New Democracy" (Spanish: República Popular de Nueva Democracia, RPND), also known by its proposed name of "People's Republic of Peru" (Spanish: República Popular del Perú). The RPND was first named at the third session of the first central committee, held in 1983, with its establishment meaning that the armed branch of the group would become a "People's Liberation Army," as per the group's so-called grand plan. Additionally, the term "People's Republic" was also suggested as a possible name for the upcoming state..

In January 2004, a man known as Comrade Artemio and identifying himself as one of the Shining Path's leaders, said in a media interview that the group would resume violent operations unless the Peruvian government granted amnesty to other top Shining Path leaders within 60 days. Peru's Interior Minister, Fernando Rospigliosi, said that the government would respond "drastically and swiftly" to any violent action. In September that same year, a comprehensive sweep by police in five cities found 17 suspected members. According to the interior minister, eight of the arrested were school teachers and high-level school administrators.

Classist Teachers Coordination was a Peruvian organization formed by communist insurgents of the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (PCP-SL). Its goal was to usurp the influence of the Single Union of Education Workers of Peru (SUTEP), which held ties to one of the Shining Path's political rivals, Red Fatherland (PCP-PR). The CCM was to be purposed as a unification of Peru's teachers to serve as both dissemination and recruitment for the Shining Path's violent takeover of the country..

Despite these arrests, the Shining Path continued to exist in Peru. On 22 December 2005, the Shining Path ambushed a police patrol in the Huánuco region, killing eight. In April 2009, the Shining Path ambushed and killed 13 government soldiers in Ayacucho. Grenades and dynamite were used in the attack. The country's Defense Minister, Antero Flores Aráoz, said many soldiers "plunged over a cliff". His prime minister, Yehude Simon, said these attacks were "desperate responses by the Shining Path in the face of advances by the armed forces" and expressed his belief that the area would soon be freed of "leftover terrorists".

Gonzalo Thought categorised all types of private property or commerce as capitalist, going so far as murdering cattle and destroying hydroelectric plants; the justification was that all of these were capitalist instruments. This action was compared to British Luddism of the 19th century. Furthermore, highland peasants were prohibited from buying or selling, for the very fact that it was considered capitalist..

Into the 2020s, Shining Path has existed in remaining splinter groups. The main remaining group, called the Militarised Communist Party of Peru (MPCP) of about 450 individuals remained in the Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene y Mantaro (VRAEM) region, reportedly making revenue by escorting cocaine traffickers and are reportedly led by two brothers; Víctor and Jorge Quispe Palomino. The MPCP has attempted to recharacterise themselves to distance itself from the original Shining Path groups that had attacked rural communities in the area, describing Abimael Guzman as a traitor. According to InSight Crime, Shining Path's stronghold in the VRAEM, headquartered in Vizcatán, is a similar strategy as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Another notable splinter group called the Communist Party of Peru – Red Mantaro Base Committee (PCP-CBMR), which remains loyal to Abimael Guzman, also operates in the VRAEM region.

According to the human rights organisation Waynakuna Peru, the PCP-CBMR has infiltrated schools in the area setting up "Popular Schools" to spread the group's propaganda. The group has in the past signed documents with the Communist Party of Ecuador – Red Sun..

Following a five-year intelligence operation that began in 2015 and was codenamed Operation Olimpo, 71 alleged members of the Shining Path's United Front and People's Guerrilla Army were arrested on 2 December 2020. Alfredo Crespo, the secretary general of MOVADEF and Guzmán's former lawyer, was included among those arrested. Operation Olimpo included 752 military personnel and 98 government prosecutors that utilised evidence obtained through wiretapping, undercover agents and surveillance. Those arrested were charged with operating shell operations to initiate terrorist activities in Callao and Lima. The United Front serves as the political and bureaucratic arm of the Shining Path. It has two main branches: the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (MOVADEF) and the Front for Unity and Defense of the Peruvian People (FUDEPP). Within the United Front, the Shining Path instrumented multiple smaller "mass organisations", usually specified to a particular purpose or issue. Examples of these include:

Peru People's Movement

The Peru People's Movement is a Marxist–Leninist-Maoist mass organisation formed by members of the Shining Path to spread party propaganda abroad. It was founded in Malmö, Sweden by Javier Esparza (brother-in-law of Abimael Guzmán) and later expanded to other countries including Germany, Norway, Spain, and the United States.

The MPP recruited among Peruvian migrants by proposing to help them to fit in their new homelands and with administrative procedures, along with exiled members of Shining Path. The main purpose of the MPP was to spread ideological materials and propaganda abroad, with emphasis on drawing international support for the Shining Path's "people's war". Another purpose was to make links with local Maoist or left-wing parties, whether to propagate propaganda or to try to influence them into the Gonzalo Thought.

Materials include literature, leaflets, posters, and even music. For example, in 1999, the MPP helped create and distribute an album called Songs of the Shining Trenches of Combat from Shining Path prisoners held in Miguel Castro Castro. Years before, the Musical Guerrilla Army made tours to perform pro-Shining Path songs. The Red Sun is a magazine founded by Shining Path supporters in Denmark, originally named "Red Sun Study Circle" in the 1990s.

Musical Guerrilla Army

The Musical Guerrilla Army was a British musical group formed by the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path. The group was founded by Adolfo Olaechea in 1991 as part of the Shining Path's international propaganda arm. The EMG was made up of various Latin American musicians (especially Peruvian) residing in Great Britain and would typically play both folk and revolutionary songs at yearly May Day events in London.

Support Committees for the Peruvian Revolution

Support Committees for the Peruvian Revolution (Spanish: Comités de Apoyo a la Revolución Peruana, CARP) were a series of associations purposed to rally support for the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path, as part of the party's international arm. Support committees were established in Sweden, France, Spain, United States, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Mexico, and Bolivia. Objectives include performing proselytism (policy of attempting to convert people's religious or political beliefs), collecting funds, making propaganda, and spreading a positive image of the Shining Path. The committee's financial support for the Shining Path was raised through cultural and artistic events such as the Musical Guerrilla Army, conferences, and selling brochures such as El Diario, the official newspaper of the group.

The support committees were also involved in the Shining Path's clandestine terrorism, such as the 1988 assassination of Peruvian captain Juan Vega Llona and the 1992 Peruvian embassy attack in Stockholm. In 1988, Peruvian captain Juan Vega Llona was shot to death during a trip to La Paz, Bolivia by a hit squad of Shining Path assassins supported by CARP-Bolivia. The Central Committee had ordered for Llona's annihilation in retribution for his involvement in the 1986 Peruvian prison riots, in which 224 Shining Path prisoners were killed during an uprising. CARP's branches were also used to vandalise and threaten numerous Peruvian embassies, a tactic mainly inspired by the 1992 attempted assassination of Peruvian ambassador Gustavo Silva Aranda in Stockholm, Sweden.

Young Pioneers

The origin of "pioneer" children in the Shining Path comes from an inspiration of the Young Pioneer organisation formed in the early Soviet Union for children up to the age of 14. This form of youth politicisation would be repeated by the communist parties of the United States, East Germany, and China. These youth would often be trained into the political and military indoctrination of the party, in the anticipation to join the armed forces of the People's Guerrilla Army as necessary. Pioneer children would typically begin education in revolutionary "people's schools" between the ages of 8 to 10, learning the Shining Path's ideological and cultural expectations for their new society, as well as various tactical maneuvers of escape in the case of government attack. According to testimony published by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

They didn't teach us to read or write, everything was verbal. Only they [the subversive commanders] had a notebook to be able to draw: they graphed how we should escape from the military, how to dodge bullets and all that..

At age 12, it's reported the pioneer children were taught the use of weapons. Young women had to wear braids and all were expected to wear clean clothes even if they were extremely impoverished. Pioneers were seen as a legitimate group to be used in warfare. For the Shining Path would:

Make children actively participate in the people's war so they can carry out various tasks through which they understand the need to transform the world... change their ideology and adopt that of the proletariat..

The Shining Path would threaten or massacre families that refused to hand over their children to the ideological training of the party. Throughout the internal conflict in Peru, groups such as the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and the Shining Path splinter Militarised Communist Party of Peru (MPCP) have been shown to use child soldiers. A pioneer movement is an organisation for children operated by a communist party. Typically children enter into the organisation in elementary school and continue until adolescence. The adolescents then typically join the Young Communist League. Prior to the 1990s there was a wide cooperation between pioneer and similar movements of about 30 countries, coordinated by the international organisation, International Committee of Children's and Adolescents' Movements, founded in 1958, with headquarters in Budapest, Hungary.

Popular Intellectual Movement

The Popular Intellectual Movement (Spanish: Movimiento Intelectual Popular, MIP) was an academic-based mass organisation created by the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path in 1979 as part of the party's Fourth Expanded Plenary Session, which defined the structure and duties of various legal fronts to serve recruitment of the united front. The MIP was directed by Hugo Muñoz Sánchez and targeted students, professors, writers, artists, and journalists.

The organisation had influence in both universities and pro-Sendero neighborhoods, which would be used to form an ideological justification for the party's subversive actions, including its terrorist attacks. MIP was involved with the propaganda of other mass organisations, such as the Popular Women's Movement, The Front of Mariateguist Artists and Intellectuals (FAIM), The Pink School (in France), and The Ayacucho Study Circle (in Sweden).

Anti-revisionist in nature, Gonzalo Thought was the ideological basis of the Communist Party of Peru—Shining Path (PCP-SL) and the trigger for the Peruvian Civil War of 1980–2000. The ideology is based on the synthesized philosophies of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, and José Carlos Mariátegui. The term "Gonzalo Thought" comes from the alias used by Abimael Guzmán, "Chairman Gonzalo", who was considered by his followers to be the "Fourth Sword of Marxism", a direct successor to Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

Gonzalo Thought adheres to the anti-revisionist line of Marxism, considering revisionists as:

A cancer, a cancer that has to be ruthlessly swept away, otherwise we will not be able to advance in the revolution; and remember what Lenin said, synthetically, we must forge in two issues, forge in revolutionary violence and forge in the implacable struggle against opportunism, against revisionism...

Gonzalo Thought calls for the use of violence through the "people's war" and the "blood quota." For Guzmán:

Regarding violence, we start from a principle established by Chairman Mao Tse Tung: violence is a universal law without any exception, I mean revolutionary violence; This violence is what allows us to resolve the fundamental contradictions with an army and through the people's war. It is a substantive question of Marxism because without revolutionary violence one class cannot be replaced by another, an old order cannot be overthrown to create a new one, a new order led by the proletariat through communist parties.

Although initially raised from the Peruvian reality through a Marxist analysis, Gonzalo Thought expanded to culture, society and language outside Peru and formed the ideological basis of revolutionary groups abroad. The figures who inspired Abimael Guzmán were Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and José Carlos Mariátegui, as well as the academic Efraín Morote Best (folklorist and father of the senderista Osmán Morote Barrionuevo), who was rector at the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga (UNSCH) in Ayacucho. The bases of Gonzalo Thought are:

• Marxism, from which he interprets the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat as realities of the world. Therefore, the revolution in a certain place had to be part of the proletarian world revolution, to which it had to belong and support. In addition to the belief in the inevitability of the evolutionary transition that would take human societies from capitalism to communism.
• Leninism, from which he adopted the idea that the revolution would be possible through the work of a party constituted as a "war machine", made up of a vanguard of "cadres" that would in turn be the most advanced expression of the world proletariat, destined to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. In addition, imperialism is described as a new stage of capitalism.
• Maoism, which mainly included the experience of the Chinese Revolution and the concept of people's war, to which Guzmán granted the category of principle of universal validity, along with Mao's theory of contradictions, according to which the struggle of opposites would be generalised at all levels of matter, society and thought.

Finally, Gonzalo Thought unites all of the above and applies it to the Peruvian reality as a development elaborated by Guzmán from the thought of Mariátegui (Mariátegui's thought being considered a "political expression of the Peruvian working class"). Gonzalo Thought was accepted by Guzmán's followers as an official ideology, as it would be "the only scientific one", a superior way of appreciating reality. Inspired by Mao's Cultural Revolution (which sought to eliminate the remains of what were considered capitalist and traditional elements of Chinese society), Gonzalo Thought promoted a permanent "cultural revolution" that would eliminate representatives of the previous society, "changing souls" and preventing the return of capitalism.