The Return of the Shining Path

In the remote jungles of Peru, Shining Path guerrillas are terrorizing peasants once again after roughly a 15-year hiatus. Empowered by drug trafficking, the Shining Path has played a major role in making Peru the second largest producer of cocaine in Latin America. The story is all too familiar to peasants living in the lawless jungle towns, who are caught between an aggressive military hellbent on squashing the insurgency and revolutionaries quick to label anyone a traitor to the cause. Very little is known of the two brothers that have led Shining Path in its new direction, but it appears they have modeled their operation after the Colombian FARC, another group that made the convenient shift from ideological warfare to drug trafficking.