Risky Path

Belaunde warily cracks down

Lima's commuters were heading home at 7:30 p.m. when the city was rocked by a series of detonations so powerful that they rattled office windows 15 miles away. As seven high-tension pylons collapsed in the dynamite explosion, lights in the Peruvian capital (pop. 5 million) flickered, then failed. In the darkness, terrified inhabitants were shaken by 20 more blasts, including one that gutted a Bayer pharmaceutical factory, causing more than $100 million in property damage. It could have been much worse: police later discovered a mortar hidden under a bridge in range of the downtown Government Palace. Authorities believe that the terrorists intended to use it to hurl sticks of dynamite into the room where President Fernando Belaunde Terry and his wife would be eating dinner.

A blazing hammer and sickle on a hillside outside of the city signaled that the attacks were the work of an increasingly active band of guerrillas who call themselves Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). Last week Belaunde reluctantly cracked down. For the first time since his democratically elected government took power in 1980 after twelve years of military dictatorship, Belaunde, 69, declared a 60-day national state of emergency, suspending civil liberties and giving police broad powers to seize suspected guerrillas for up to ten days without charges. Within 24 hours, police had arrested 200 people, although all but 14 were subsequently released. The harsh actions run counter to the government's efforts to promote democracy in Peru, but they reflect the seriousness of the challenge the insurgents now pose. Admits an Interior Ministry official: "We underestimated Sendero."

Although the assault on Lima was the most daring raid yet by the guerrillas, nearly 3,000 government troops and police have been battling them for months in their rugged Andean stronghold of Ayacucho, 200 miles to the southeast. In the past three years, skirmishes between the insurgents and the army have killed more than 1,000 people. Those numbers are now sure to rise: in a sign of the government's new sense of urgency, 50,000 police have been deployed throughout the country.

Until recently, Belaunde believed that he could afford to ignore the Senderistas, a small band of no more than 2,000 students and Indian peasants who claim a tenuous adherence to Maoism while following archaic tribal customs of the Incas. Since last December, however, the well-trained insurgents have become increasingly violent. They have killed nine policemen, seemingly at random, and terrorized mountain villages by executing their leaders.

Sendero claims to be fighting for Peru's 15 million rural and largely impoverished Indians and mixed bloods. They bitterly resent the nation's 3 million whites, who have dominated Peru's economy and politics ever since the Spanish conquest in 1533. The threat of ethnic conflict has been partly responsible for a surprising show of unity behind Belaunde's emergency measures, which even leftist Opposition Leader Senator Enrique Bernales admitted were "justified."

But as Belaunde well knows, the most likely threat to Peru's fledgling democracy is actually from the right. In Lima's coffee houses, talk often turns to fears that the Sendero attacks will strengthen the hand of military hard-liners who would prefer a more authoritarian government. There have even been rumors of a military coup similar to the one that deposed Belaunde in his first term as democratically elected President in 1968.

In fact, no one in the army is eager to challenge Belaunde's authority. Not only has he taken care to pay his generals well, but no military leaders are credited with his political skills. The Sendero threat has increased just as Peru is struggling with a severe drought in the south, flooding in the north and a crushing economic recession. Says a Peruvian Congressman: "Who else would want to try running things right now? It would be political suicide." With the Senderistas showing every sign of intensifying their attacks, Belaunde's job may soon be even less attractive. qed This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.