The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes

A narrative history of the unlikely Maoist rebellion that terrorized Peru even after the fall of global Communism.

On May 17, 1980, on the eve of Peru’s presidential election, five masked men stormed a small town in the Andean heartland. They set election ballots ablaze and vanished into the night, but not before planting a red hammer-and-sickle banner in the town square. The lone man arrested the next morning later swore allegiance to a group called Shining Path. The tale of how this feroci...