Below: Quechua women chew coca and keep watch over the expansive hills around Ayacucho, Peru. It was in these hills and in the city of Ayacucho that the Maoist guerrilla movement known as the Shining Path was born.

September 12, 2012 will mark the 20th anniversary of the capture of Abimael Guzmán, founder and leader of the Shining Path, but the group has yet failed to completely disappear. Revitalized with money from its entrance into the cocaine trade, the Shining Path still survives, although Guzmán has proclaimed from his jail cell that the remaining rebels are simple drug traffickers that should not be allowed to claim philosophical affiliation with the Shining Path. As the fight against drugs in neighboring Colombia causes Peru to increase production and become the world’s leading producer of coca, the rebels in the hills are not going anywhere.

 

Below: The city of Ayacucho, Peru.

 

Below: Ayacucho’s future. A young boy stands for a portrait with Ayacucho, Peru in the background.