Colombia-FARC peace talks: 5 ways the Left lives on in Latin America

The Shining Path, known as the Sendero Luminoso in Spanish, was founded in the late 1960s by hardline communist and former philosophy professor Abimael Guzman. It was not until the '80s, however, that the Mao-inspired group, a faction of Peru’s Communist Party, turned into a guerrilla insurgency that terrorized Peru, both in urban centers and rural areas, where it had its stronghold. The conflict, which also elicited widespread repression by the Peruvian state, is responsible for some 70,000 deaths. The Shining Path is listed, along with the FARC, as a terrorist organization by the US. With Mr. Guzman’s capture in 1992, the group has been severely weakened. But Peruvian President Ollanta Humala faces the organization's remnants, which have regrouped in recent years, despite the fact that Guzman remains jailed. This April, the rebels captured 36 natural gas workers, the first mass kidnapping of its kind since 2003.