Their self-declared goal was to demonstrate to leftist groups in Peru that sought change through the current government the viability of radical revolution.

[3] The group was led by Víctor Polay Campos until he was sentenced to 32 years' imprisonment in 1992[4] and by Néstor Cerpa Cartolini ("Comrade Evaristo") until his death in 1997.

[3] In their official statements, the MRTA drew a connection to the anti-colonial struggle against the Spanish to the twentieth century, arguing that Peru was still a subordinate economy to the west especially the United States.

[10] The MRTA sees the IMF and World Bank as important instruments of neo-colonialism, and argues that the policies enforced by these organizations on Peru have caused unemployment and stalled development.

[3] The prominence of Peru's Indigenous past in the MRTA's rhetoric meant they never aspired to fully merge with a global movement, only that they wished to aid like-minded allies.

[11] The former gathered several ex-members of the Peruvian armed forces that participated in the leftist government of Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–1975), and the latter represented a subdivision of the Revolutionary Left Movement, a Castroist guerrilla faction which was defeated in 1965.

[15][16][17][18] Peru's counterterrorist program diminished the group's ability to carry out guerrilla attacks, and the MRTA suffered from infighting as well as violent clashes with Maoist rival Shining Path, the imprisonment or deaths of senior leaders, and loss of leftist support.

Under orders from then-President Alberto Fujimori, armed forces stormed the residence in April 1997, rescuing all but one of the remaining hostages and killing all 14 MRTA militants.

Fujimori was publicly acclaimed for the decisive action, but the affair was later tainted by subsequent revelations that at least three, and perhaps as many as eight, of the MRTistas were summarily executed after they surrendered.

[7] In September 2003, four Chilean defendants, including Jaime Castillo Petruzzi, were retried and convicted of membership in the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and participation in an attack on the Peruvian North American Cultural Institute and a kidnapping-murder in 1993.

[19] On 22 March 2006, Víctor Polay, the guerrilla leader of the MRTA, was found guilty by a Peruvian court on nearly 30 crimes committed during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

[20] In a case that attracted international attention, Lori Berenson, a former MIT student and U.S. socialist activist living in Lima, was arrested on 30 November 1995, by the police and accused of collaborating with the MRTA.

Further, the existence of groups like MRTA, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission argues, legitimized the authoritarian, militaristic, and repressive policies of the government of Alberto Fujimori.