Anatomy of a Nightmare

This is the nightmare of Peru's able President Fernando Belaunde Terry:

Communist guerrillas, operating in the remote Andean highlands, inflame the impoverished Indians into open hostility against the government before Belaunde can fulfill his own grand design of bringing a better living standard to the highland people.

Last week Belaunde's fears had substance in at least one region of Peru -- the mountainous district of Andamarca, 160 miles northeast of Lima. One afternoon, a band of about 60 guerrillas wearing Cuban-style, olive green uniforms and armed with submachine guns, invaded two big cattle estates, burning houses and barns, destroying a butter-and-cheese plant and cutting telephone wires. Then, six of the guer rillas rode to a mine, hijacked a mining company truck carrying 20 cases of dynamite, and blew up two bridges near the village of Concepcion. Other guerrillas attacked at least two other haciendas and surprised two small police outposts, captured four police and seized arms and ammunition.

Witnesses reported that the guerrillas took special care to treat all peasants like friends, even passed out some of the food taken from the haciendas. The guerrillas talked 15 miners into joining up on the spot, went away saying that they sought only "to establish a socialistic government with equality for everybody." A farmer who encountered one band on a road reported that three members spoke with Cuban accents. From the extent of the raids, police estimated that at least three bands were operating in the area, and reports put their strength at anywhere from 200 to 1,000 men. One of the guerrilla leaders was identified as Luis de la Puente Uceda, 36, a well-known Peruvian troublemaker who studied tactics in Cuba and visited both Russia and Red China.

The outbreak of systematic guerrilla warfare did not catch Belaunde's government entirely by surprise; his intelligence chiefs have been warning for the past ten months that Peru's Communist Party has been reorganizing for agitation, sabotage and insurrection. After last week's incidents, the government ordered 400 civil guards to track down the guerrillas and alerted an army battalion to move into the area if the Communists were spotted. Belaunde's long-range hope is to contain the guerrillas until his own self-help housing, health, and road-building plans begin to make an impression on the long-neglected Indians, rendering them less susceptible to Communist promises.

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