He founded the organization Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path (PCP-SL) in 1969 and led a rebellion against the Peruvian government until his capture by authorities on 12 September 1992.

Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reinoso was born on 3 December 1934 in Mollendo,[4] a port town in the province of Islay, in the region of Arequipa, about 1,000 km (620 mi) south of Lima.

In 1962, Guzmán was recruited as a professor of philosophy by the rector of San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in Ayacucho, a city in the central Peruvian Andes.

Encouraged by Morote, Guzmán studied Quechua, the language spoken by Peru's Indigenous population, and became increasingly active in left-wing political circles.

In 1965, Guzman attended a cadre training course in China, returning to Lima and taking a leave of absence from his professorship to focus on party activism.

[citation needed] In 1970, Bandera Roja expelled Guzmán because of his and his group's "occultism" - a Marxist-Leninist term for refusing or being unable to carry out open or legal political work, and excessively focusing on covert activities.

[7]: 58 Guzmán adopted the nom de guerre Presidente or Comrade Gonzalo and began advocating a peasant-led revolution on the Maoist model.

In his political declarations, Guzmán praised Mao's development of Lenin's thesis regarding "the role of imperialism" in propping up the "bourgeois capitalist system".

In May 1980, the group launched its war against the government of Peru by burning the ballot boxes in Chuschi, a village near Ayacucho, in an effort to disrupt the first democratic elections in the country since 1964.

Shining Path eventually grew to control vast rural territories in central and southern Peru and achieved a presence even in the outskirts of Lima, where it staged numerous attacks.

The purpose of Shining Path's campaign was to demoralize and undermine the government of Peru in order to create a situation conducive to a violent coup which would put its leaders in power.

The Shining Path targeted not only the army and police, but also government employees at all levels, other leftist militants such as members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), workers who did not participate in the strikes organized by the group, peasants who cooperated with the government in any way (including by voting in democratic elections), and middle-class inhabitants of Peru's main cities.

[citation needed] Successful operation In 1992, during the first administration of President Alberto Fujimori, the National Directorate Against Terrorism (DIRCOTE) began surveillance on several residences in Lima because agents suspected that terrorists were using them as safehouses.

[17] Guzmán was tried by a court of hooded military judges under provisions of articles 15 and 16 of Law 25475 adopted by Fujimori's government in May 1992 after April's constitutional crisis.

[18] After a three-day trial, Guzmán was sentenced to life imprisonment and incarcerated at the naval base on the island of San Lorenzo off the coast of Lima.

[19] Subsequently, he was said to have negotiated with a presidential advisor at the time, Vladimiro Montesinos, in order to receive some benefits in exchange for helping the Peruvian government put an end to the Shining Path's militant activities.

[27] Guzmán's body was cremated on the dawn of 24 September 2021 and his ashes were dispersed in a secret location in order to prevent a monument honoring him from being created.