A fearless Peruvian democracy revolutionary, Maria Elena Moyano, may finally see her killer brought to justice. An arrest was made of the Shining Path Marxist terrorist who most likely did it 14 unpunished years ago this afternoon in Peru. I wrote about her case about a year ago here.
Source: Peru Hilfe
Moyano was a Peruvian community leader in a poor slum who organized to get the poor included into the system too. Instead of out in guerrillaville. The Shining Path hated her intensely for it, threatened her, tried to kill her, and eventually killed her.
There’s a big difference between standing up for justice is a corrupt difficult system like Peru’s and just running off to the mountains to act out revolutionary fantasies. Moyano took the harder, and better, route, fighting the system, and the people she enraged were the terrorists.
She was competition to these thugs who like all thugs seek recruits, but unlike them she sought fairness and political power to poor Peruvians, not spoils, and she did so through democratic means. The Shining Path preferred guns and brutality and didn’t have much of idea of what justice was anyway.
So, doing things as they always do, they gruesomely killed her, in front of her children.
With an arrest today, the thug who may have killed her may be brought to justice. I hope he gets an ice cold Andean cell full of drug addicts who take a distinct dislike to him.
EFE reports the story here:
Police arrest terrorist who killed Peruvian “Mother Courage”
Lima, May 8 (EFE).- Peruvian police arrested Monday a member of the Shining Path rebel squadron that 14 years ago killed a widely respected community activist in a shantytown on the outskirts of this capital.
It is thought that Saenz, nicknamed “Gringo,” was part of the Shining Path death squad that gunned down Maria Elena Moyano, known as “Mother Courage,” at a fundraising event in Villa El Salvador.
The community leader was slain in front of her two youngest children and her body was dynamited at the orders of Abimael Guzman, then Shining Path’s top leader, because she had opposed his guerrilla group’s attempt to take over grassroots organizations in the Villa El Salvador district. In Oct. 2000, Peruvian authorities arrested Jenny Romero Coro, alias “Comrade Lucero,” who belonged to the group that killed “Mother Courage.” Moyano, who organized soup kitchens, community clinics and economic development programs and later served as mayor of Villa El Salvador, was honored in 1987 with Spain’s Asturias Prize. Bestowed in the name of Crown Prince Felipe, the Asturias awards are the Spanish-speaking world’s equivalent of the Nobels.
Shining Path still has terrorists in the central Peruvian jungles led by an insurgent known as “Artemio,” who does not accept the cessation of hostilities decreed by Guzman. Guzman was arrested together with a dozen followers on Sept. 12, 1992. EFE wat/cd