The Communist Party of Peru, more commonly known as the Shining Path, is a communist militant group in Peru. When it first launched the internal conflict in Peru in 1980, its stated goal was to replace the bourgeois democracy with "New Democracy". 

During the 1980 election, they stole ballot boxes and burnt them, at the same time in the city of Lima they hung dogs in doorways of houses and public buildings with Chinese revolutionary slogans on placards tied around their necks. The slogans stated that corrupt people would be treated like mad dogs. This was the first public evidence of the Sendero as an active revolutionary agent in a violent sense before then they were acting clandestinely throughout the 1970s. 

The Maoist Sendero Luminoso take their name from Peru's first prominent Marxist, José Carlos Mariátegui, who said that Marxism will open the shining path to revolution. That path has been tarnished by the brutal campaign waged by the Sendero Luminoso. The long-suffering people living in the highlands in Peru were caught between the violence of the revolutionary Sendero and the terror waged by the state. 

Sendero Luminoso aimed to destroy everything and build from the ashes, anyone standing in their way, including development workers risked being murdered. María Elena Moyano was one such victim of their brutal regime. She, like many Peruvian women, was trying to keep the show on the road through small organisations, organising food kitchens and glasses of milk for the poor, but for the Sendero Luminoso this was counter-revolutionary and not the way to bring about change. Maria Elena Moyano was a tremendous leader and she led a group of female activists called the Federación Popular de Mujeres. She was a big threat to the Maoist revolutionaries as she frequently spoke out against them, labelling them terrorists. Her violent death led to public outcry in Peru and her funeral was attended by thousands of people from all over the country. 

Why did this group take hold in Peru and what was the influence of its leader Abimael Guzmán? How did things change after his arrest in 1992? 

Produced by Roisin Boyd and presented by Ann Daly. 

First broadcast 29th of March 1993