Peru's Shining Path Narco Terrorists: From Commie Civil War to Cartel Muscle

Peru’s Shining Path, a Marxist-Maoist guerrilla force, plunged the Andean nation into a two-decade civil war that put villagers of the VRAEM, a remote, coca-producing region, on its bloody frontline.

The Peruvian government captured the movement’s despotic leader, and the war died. But the rebels switched gears, protecting coca shipments from Peru’s interior to its coast, and out across Latin America.

Today the VRAEM is the global trade’s ground zero — even for the leaves that make their way, via an odd, winding journey, into Coca-Cola bottles worldwide. And the Shining Path, though weakened, are still among the embattled region’s biggest players.

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