Shining Path is targeting the capital’s middle classes with unprecedented intensity, laying aside a systematic “indoctrinate or assassinate” campaign in favor of wild car-bomb attacks on everything from schools to gas stations, embassies to crowded shopping areas. “This isn’t Maoism, Marxism or Leninism,” says military analyst Enrique Obando. “It’s pure terrorism.”
Yet there is a method to the guerrillas’ madness: the attacks are designed to destroy the presidency of Alberto Fujimori. Shining Path’s invisible army of roughly 5,000 cadres is not capable of a frontal attack on Lima or on the 120,000-strong army. Yet that has never been the goal of Sendero Luminoso, as the group is known in Spanish. “Sendero’s hope is not to overwhelm the government but to undermine it to the extent where it will fall on its own,” says one diplomat in Lima. The bombings have already undone Fujimori’s can-do image. Four months after he seized dictatorial powers and vowed to eliminate subversion, Fujimori has yet to offer a real strategy to defeat Shining Path. He hid out in his military bunker during the wave of attacks, emerging after a week to vow an army sweep of Shining Path strongholds and swift military justice for terrorists. The president also announced tight controls on the chemicals widely used for mining and fertilizing that can double as car bomb ingredients. Peruvians still felt vulnerable. “We have no security,” lamented housewife Ines Morales after one bombing. “Our armed forces are not just ornamental. Why aren’t they doing anything?”
The answer: Fujimori is improvising. A mathematician by training, he astutely calculated the immediate effects of his autogolpe (self-coup). Public support shot up to more than 85 percent. Fujimori is sure-handed when it comes to infighting-three quarters of the hundreds of decrees he has signed since the coup were designed to fire political enemies or promote loyalists. But he has waffled on his vow to establish a clear timetable for a return to democratic rule. As one former associate put it: “Fujimori and his advisers know how to fix a watch, but they have no concept of time.”
And time is short. Even before the bombing Fujimori’s popularity had dropped to 65 percent, according to one poll. Not bad, given that his economic shock program has decimated wages, exports and buying power. But Peruvians are notoriously fickle. (Former president Alan Garcia’s popularity rating plunged from 96 percent to 16 percent during his term.) And Fujimori no longer has Congress or the judiciary to blame for his failure to contain Shining Path. Says Hernando de Soto, a former Fujimori adviser who heads a free market think tank that was bombed last Monday: “The moment he falters and loses credibility, the whole system collapses.”
The armed forces are the main pillar sustaining the Fujimori government, but they are increasingly divided. Army sources say officers feel betrayed by the lack of big raises and budget increases following the selfcoup-and by corruption and political favoritism within the high command. Midlevel officers have even formed a secret group known as COMACA (commanders, majors and captains) to push for real change. As long as public support stays relatively high, a coup is not imminent. “But if this situation continues deteriorating, if the president loses credibility and confidence, then the armed forces will feel obligated to come out and find their own solution,” says retired Gen. Sinecio Jarama. “Peruvians would applaud.” Fujimori is lucky that, for now, he is Peru’s only alternative.
Photo: A traumatized capital: Victims’ relatives plead for peace at a rally in Lima (HECTOR MATA–GAMMA LIAISON)
