Unless you followed Latin American politics in the mid-nineties, you may not recognize his name:  Abimael Guzman.  Guzman, who passed away last week at the age of 86, was the leader of the Shining Path, a Maoist revolutionary group that, beginning in 1980, terrorized the nation of Peru in its efforts to gain power and turn the country into an agrarian communist state.  Its history is a ugly one, yet one that, like most modern communist revolutionary movements, found impetus in the enormous social and economic inequities of many Latin American societies and the seeming inability of the democratic process to remedy them.

    Yes, Shining Path was extraordinarily violent.  It's difficult to say anything positive about its methods.  Shining Path brought death and destruction to thousands of innocent people in its fevered quest for power.  No one misses it, really.  In this, Guzman is a puzzle.  Educated at a Roman Catholic High School and, for a time, a professor of law at a Peruvian university, he nonetheless eventually developed a deep rooted penchant for bloody revolution.  One strives in vain to know his real heart.

    After Guzman's life sentence for terrorism was affirmed at a 2018 trial in civilian court, he left the courtroom shouting these words, "Long live the Communist Party of Peru!  Glory to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!  Glory to the Peruvian people!  Long live the heroes of the people's war!"

    Balancing our desire for justice with our commitment to our spiritual and social roots and circumstances is never an easy thing.  Unless we can find a way to fuse them into a single teleological framework:  the fact of God.

    May the world find justice rightly.