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LIMA Narco-Terrorism

Indications are multiplying to the effect that the Marxist revolutionary movement Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) has allied itself with the powerful cocaine-exporting empire of Peru, thus linking the country’s two worst scourges, terrorism and narcotics. However, there is a fundamental divergence of aims that could militate against a permanent joining of forces. For one thing, Sendero Luminoso claims it wants the peasants to devote at least a third of their land to truck crops. For another, it has established a minimum price for coca leaves in order to protect the small farmers from exploitation by the drug dealers. Nevertheless, drug-enforcement officials point to movements of the drug underworld’s agents to the advantage of Sendero Luminoso. Then, in recent brushes with the authorities, the guerrillas have used sophisticated arms that they could only have obtained from the drug dealers’ arsenal.

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LIMA Narco-Terrorism

Indications are multiplying to the effect that the Marxist revolutionary movement Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) has allied itself with the powerful cocaine-exporting empire of Peru, thus linking the country’s two worst scourges, terrorism and narcotics. However, there is a fundamental divergence of aims that could militate against a permanent joining of forces. For one thing, Sendero Luminoso claims it wants the peasants to devote at least a third of their land to truck crops. For another, it has established a minimum price for coca leaves in order to protect the small farmers from exploitation by the drug dealers. Nevertheless, drug-enforcement officials point to movements of the drug underworld’s agents to the advantage of Sendero Luminoso. Then, in recent brushes with the authorities, the guerrillas have used sophisticated arms that they could only have obtained from the drug dealers’ arsenal.