Abimael Guzmán, the historic leader of the Shining Path, died on Saturday at the age of 86 in Peru while serving a life sentence in the maximum security prison of the Callao Naval Base.
Also known by the name "comrade Gonzalo," Guzmán died due to a generalized infection at the Naval Hospital, where he was being treated for deterioration in his health.
A former philosophy professor, he had been serving a life sentence for terrorism and treason since 1992. In 1969 Abimael Guzmán and 11 others founded the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso in Spanish), a guerrilla group of Maoist influences which tried to lead a "people's war" to overthrow Peru's bourgeois democracy.
