Meet & Greet

Footage of Abimael Guzmán, the leader of the Shining Path. He founded the terrorist organisation Shining Path in 1969 and led a brutal armed conflict with the Peruvian state until he was captured in 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment for terrorism and treason.

This photoshoot somehow turns into a celebration, with “Zorba the Greek” blasting in the background. For a lot of Peruvians, that song is now inseparable from this scene. It feels surreal: a group of wanted people posing proudly, smiling, almost like a band promo shoot. This video ended up helping authorities identify and arrest them during Operación Victoria on September 12th of 1992.

It’s a weird mix of spectacle and collapse. A reflection on absurdity, the praise of a leader turned into celebrity, and how fanaticism makes people perform in ways that are hard to believe in retrospect. Everything is on display and that’s exactly what condemns them in the end.