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

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:57.3	It's May 23, 2021, in a remote jungle hamlet buried in the dense Andean hinterlands of central Peru.
1:07.3	As the crow flies, it's just a few dozen miles from here to Kusko, capital of the ancient Incan Empire, where tourists flock to down beers and wander through colonial churches before setting out on trails to the lost city of Machu Picchu.
1:22.8	But the area surrounding Peru's most famous attraction, which is called the Valley of the Apulmirak,
1:28.9	N-A-M-M-R-A-E-M-O-R-A-E-M-R-A-E-M-R-A-E-M-R-E-M-R-E-M-R-E-M-E-M-E-N-E-Lis, is no place for
1:43.6	their livelihoods.
1:45.3	The Inca's called coca leaves divine, and chewed or drank as a tea,
1:49.8	they've been used to relieve altitude sickness or as a stimulant for over 8,000 years.
1:56.3	But since the mid-1800s, coca leaves have also been used to produce one of the world's most popular illegal drugs.
2:03.6	I think you can guess which one.
2:05.8	And for years, coca farmers in the Vreim have increasingly sold their product to cartels
	...

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