In 1985, Alan Garcia, a representative of the aprist party, became the new president of Peru. In general, he continued his pro-American policy in the economy, and in the field of national security he tried to neutralize the activities of left-wing radical groups by maintaining the state of emergency and creating "death squads". Under the leadership of American instructors, a counter-terrorist battalion called "Sinchis" was formed and trained, which was subsequently often accused of massacres and human rights violations in Peru. Meanwhile, it was the years of the reign of Alan Garcia that became the period of maximum activation of both Sendero Luminoso and the Revolutionary Movement of Tupac Amaru.
By 1986, the RDTA merged with the Left Revolutionary Movement MIR -Voz Rebelde (Left Revolutionary Movement - Rebel Voice). This organization enjoyed some influence in Northern Peru - in the departments of Ancash, Lambayeque, La Libertad, San Martin, as well as in Lima. It had its own military-political organization, the Comandos Revolucionarios del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Commands). The amalgamation of the two organizations under the leadership of Victor Polay Campos has significantly strengthened the RDTA and allowed the movement to move to more active actions not only in cities, but also in rural areas.
For military operations outside the urban space, the Tupac Amaru People's Army was created, the bases of which the activists tried to deploy in the Pariahuan area in the Junin department. Here the emitters began distributing food rations and sets of agricultural tools to the peasant population, which, according to the leaders of the organization, should have raised its popularity among the peasant environment. The peasantry was seen as the natural social base of the organization. In 1986, the emrtists tried to deploy armed resistance in the Tocache area of the San Martin department, but there was a powerful group of Maoists from Sendero Luminoso, who immediately turned against the presence of competitors and refused to create a united front with the RDTA. According to the senderists, the only possible way was to include the RDTA in the Sendero Luminoso, which the guevarists, the emitters, could not agree to. Thus, the two largest left-wing radical armed organizations in Peru could not find a common language. Moreover, occasionally there were even clashes between the fighters of the two organizations.
In the San Martin region, where the positions of the MIR VR organization, which became part of the RDTA, were previously strong, the North-Eastern Front of the RDTA of 60 militants was deployed, 30 of which were members of the RDTA and 30 were members of the Left Revolutionary Movement MIR VR. The insurgent camp was organized by the militants in the Pongo de Kainarachi area, where in July-September 1987 they underwent a three-month course of military and political training. The commander of the North-Eastern Front was personally appointed by the General Secretary of the RDTA Victor Polay Campos.
In the meantime, the government has seriously stepped up its crackdown on left-wing organizations. Thus, on August 7, 1987, agents of the Directorate for Combating Terrorism abducted a member of the National Executive Committee of the RDTA, Alberto Galvez Olaechea, and on October 23, 1987, a member of the Central Committee of the RDTA, Luseo Cumplo Miranda, was arrested. The organization's activities in the impoverished districts of Lima suffered a serious blow, which also influenced the desire of the leaders of the RDTA to transfer the main activities of the organization to the countryside. On October 8, 1987, the RDTA militants captured the city of Tabalosos in the Lamas province. This is how the military operation "Che Guevara is alive!" 10 days later, on October 18, a group of RDTA militants captured another city - Soritor in the province of Mayobambo. In parallel, the militants carried out an agitation and propaganda campaign in rural areas, calling on the local Indian population to support the RDTA.
However, despite the facts of successful raids into the cities, the operation "Che Guevara is alive!" did not give the desired results. Therefore, the command of the RDTA decided to conduct a new operation - "Liberator Tupac Amaru". A column of militants of 60 people attacked the city of Huanghui on November 6, 1987. The militants attacked the city's police commissariat, the headquarters of the Civil Guard and the Republican Guard, and the city airport. By nightfall, the militants had left Huanghui and moved to San Jose de Sisa, which was captured at 4 a.m. on November 7. The San Jose de Sis police fled, so the city fell into the hands of the militants. On November 9, the city of Senami was captured, and on November 19, the Chasuta region. These events forced the Peruvian government to declare a state of emergency in the department of San Martin and transfer additional military units there.
The insignificance of the armed forces of the RDTA did not allow the organization to hold the captured cities and engage in direct armed clashes with army units. Therefore, the RDTA gradually focused on the tactics of kidnapping officials and entrepreneurs for ransom. Over time, these activities became the main source of funding for the organization, while Sendero Luminoso received far more funds from ties with the Peruvian drug cartels. The militants kept the captured entrepreneurs in special "people's prisons" and released them after receiving a ransom from their relatives. Unlike Sendero Luminoso, RDTA was less prone to violence against the captured businessmen. Affected by the increased attention of the Guevarists to the moral and ethical aspects of the revolutionary armed struggle.
However, by 1988, the first serious contradictions began in the ranks of the RDTA, which led the organization to the need to use "internal repression". In general, among the left-wing radical terrorist organizations in Asia and Latin America, internal repression was not so rare. The Red Army of Japan became notorious in this regard, the militants of which shot their comrades for any "offenses". In Peru, the leadership in terms of the scale of internal repression belonged to Sendero Luminoso. But they also took place in the ranks of the RDTA. Pedro Ojeda Zavala led a group of oppositionists in the ranks of the Northeastern Front of the RDTA. This group included members of MIR VR, dissatisfied with the policies of Victor Paul Campos. Savala was sentenced to death and shot on October 30, 1988. At the same time, the brothers Leoncio Cesar Cuscien Cabrera and Augusto Manuel Cuscien Cabrera were executed. They were accused of a "counter-revolutionary crime" - the murder of two of their direct commanders and one militant. On June 1, 1988, their sister, Rosa Cuscienne Cabrera, was also shot and killed in a hospital in Lima, who was accused of working for the secret services. Internal repression did not contribute to the positive image of the organization. RDTA began to lose support and the Indian peasant population after the execution of the leader of the Indian Self-Defense Association "Ashaninka" Alejandro Calderon. He was accused that 23 years ago, in 1965, as a child, he handed over the whereabouts of the revolutionary Maximo Velando of the "Left Revolutionary Movement" to the police. Calderon was killed, which caused a sharp negative reaction from many Indian peasants and a rift between the RDTA and the Ashaninka organization.
On December 17, 1989, an army patrol killed 48 RDTA fighters, bumping into a militant training camp. So the end was put in the history of the organization's North-Eastern Front. By this time, the RDTA was active in the central regions of Peru. Here, the local population was in a difficult economic situation, and the leaders of the RDTA hoped to enlist the support of the peasants. The central region of Peru has become the scene of constant clashes between the RDTA and Sendero Luminoso, which sometimes took the form of real battles between two left-wing radical organizations. At the same time, the RDTA suffered serious losses from the actions of government forces.
In response to the actions of government forces, on May 5, 1989, the RDTA fighters detonated a car filled with explosives at the San Martin army barracks in Lima, on May 29, 1989 - a truck at the Jauha barracks. On January 9, 1990, the car of General Enrique Lopez Albuhar Trint, formerly the Minister of Defense of Peru, was shot from machine guns. The general was killed.
Considering themselves apologists for revolutionary morality, the RDTA fighters on May 31, 1989, attacked a bar in the city of Tarapoto, where local homosexuals gathered. Six gunmen burst into a bar and shot eight local transvestites and homosexuals. The RDTA immediately claimed responsibility for this outing, accusing the authorities and the police of complicity with the "social vices" corrupting Peruvian youth.
Meanwhile, the government continued to take increasingly harsh measures against terrorists. On February 3, 1989, in the city of Huancayo, the general secretary of the RDTA, Victor Polay Campos, was arrested. On April 16, 1989, in Lima, his closest associate, a member of the RDTA leadership, Miguel Rincon Rincon, was arrested.
After the arrest of Victor Polay Campos, Nestor Serpa Kartolini (pictured) became one of the most prominent leaders of the RDTA. He was born on August 14, 1953 to a working class family in Lima. In 1978 he participated in a strike and the takeover by workers of the Cromotex textile factory. In the early 1980s. Nestor Serpa joined the RDTA and soon became one of the most prominent militants, and then the leaders of the movement. In 1985 he traveled to Colombia, where he commanded the Leoncio Prado detachment, which was in alliance with the Colombian M-19. After returning to Peru and the arrest of Victor Polay Campos, Nestor Serpa Kartolini quickly rose to the top of the organization.
Alberto Fujimori, who replaced Alan Garcia as President of Peru in 1990, stepped up the government's actions to combat left-wing terrorist organizations. The beginning of the 1990s was a period of serious blows to the positions of both the RDTA and Sendero Luminoso. But if the Senderists were more numerous, then for the RDTA, government punitive operations were in many ways fatal. To secure the release of the arrested comrades, the leader of the RDTA Nestor Serpa Kartolini decided on an operation that became the most famous action of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
On December 17, 1996, the insurgent team "Edgard Sanchez", consisting of 14 militants under the command of Nestor Serpa Kartolini himself, seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima. It was a very symbolic move, since the President of Peru, Fujimori, is an ethnic Japanese. At the time of the seizure, there were about 600 guests in the residence building, including both foreign citizens and high-ranking officials of the Peruvian government. All of them were held hostage by the RDTA militants. Nestor Serpa Kartolini demanded that Fujimori release all the militants of the organization who were in the prisons of Peru. When many of the militants began to be released, Kartolini released about two hundred hostages. However, Kartolini was not going to release the embassy until the final fulfillment of the set requirements. As the months passed, foreign guests and high-ranking officials continued to be held hostage by the Peruvian rebels.
By the early spring of 1997, the residence of the Japanese ambassador continued to be under the control of the detachment of Nestor Serpa Kartolini. By this time, however, the militants had freed most of the hostages. In the building there were about 70 hostages and the emitters themselves. In the end, President Fujimori decided to order the storming of the building. On April 22, 1997, special forces of the Peruvian armed forces began an assault on the residence of the Japanese ambassador. In the ensuing battle, all the RDTA activists were killed, including the leader of the organization, Nestor Serpa Kartolini. From the side of government forces, two special forces soldiers were killed. In addition, one hostage was killed. Thus ended the most high-profile action of the RDTA, which actually put an end to the history of this left-wing radical organization.
The remaining members of the RDTA tried to revive the movement and even create a new National Leadership, but these attempts were in vain. Among them there were no people with sufficient experience of underground political activity, capable of restoring the RDTA practically from scratch. In the province of Junin, a small rebel column was formed, but in August-October 1998, and it was completely destroyed by government troops. Tupac Amaru's revolutionary movement ceased to exist.
Many former active fighters of the RDTA are currently in prisons in Peru. The historical leader of the organization, Victor Polay Campos, is also alive. Until now, many episodes of the bloody civil war in the country in the 1980s - first half of the 1990s, in which the Revolutionary Movement of Tupac Amaru took part, have not been investigated.
The fate of the main competitors of the RDTA for primacy on the fronts of the Peruvian civil war - "Sendero Luminoso" - turned out to be much more prosperous, if such a word can be applied to underground armed organizations. Detachments of the Communist Party of Peru "Shining Path" (Shining Path) continue military operations in hard-to-reach regions of the country, training camps are still functioning, and human rights activists accuse senderists of forcibly recruiting teenagers into their partisan formations. Thus, the Maoists from the "Shining Path" managed, unlike the RDTA, not only to enlist the support of the peasant population in the backward mountainous regions of the country, but also to maintain their combat effectiveness, despite numerous anti-terrorist operations by government troops.
