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On September 11, 2021, Abimael Guzmán, known widely as Gonzalo, chairman of the Communist Party of Peru, died in an underground prison in a naval base outside of Lima, where he had been kept in solitude for 29 years, deprived of any ability to speak publicly except in limited court proceedings.
International mainstream media, together with local Peruvian press, were quick to characterize and defame him as a vicious “cultist leader” of a “terrorist” communist movement. This is false, and part of an effort to equate revolutionary struggles against the system with those movements whose goal is to terrorize the people. It is beyond the scope of this article to provide a thorough analysis of the life and role of Gonzalo, or of the leadership he gave to the revolutionary struggle in Peru. However, there is a need to make some clarifying points that orient people towards what is needed now. ..”