The strategy for Shining Path was to use violence to bring down the country’s democratic institutions, prevent citizens from participating in local government, and disrupt and destroy Peru’s economy. Initially, Shining Path targeted local authorities in these impoverished areas, such as mayors, bureaucrats, police, and other local political figures. Shining Path carried out many assassinations on specific individuals, political party leaders, and others; including an American citizen, two French aid workers, an Italian priest, and two Polish priests.
To combat the Shining Path, the Peruvian government began using the military to train local peasants and organized them into militias, called rondas, to fight Shining Path insurgents. In 1983, a group of ronderos (members of the rondas), captured and killed a leading member of the Shining Path regime in the city of Lucanamarca. In response, Shining Path went into Lucanamarca and other surrounding villages and massacred 69 people, some of which were women and children. This was the first instance where Shining Path killed peasants, the very people they were trying to empower to overthrow the government. Similar attacks on peasant populations followed in Hauyllo and Marcas. The Shining Path rebels often used machetes, axes, and knives to kill their victims in order to save on ammunition.
Shining Path attacks were not limited to countryside villages. The group performed many terrorist acts in the capital city of Lima; destroying electrical towers that caused blackouts, attacks on industrial plants, and also detonated bombs near government buildings. One of their last attacks in Lima, which occurred in 1992, was detonating a car bomb in the middle of highly public street killing 25 people and injuring 155 others.
Between 1980 and 1992 the combined death toll in Peru due to conflicts with Shining Path reached 70,000. This number includes Peruvian citizens, government personnel and security forces, and Shining Path recruits. The more then decade long conflict cost the Peruvian government over $20 billion.