GORRITI, Gustavo

(Gustavo Gorriti Ellenbogen)

PERSONAL: Born in Peru; immigrated to Panama, 1996.

ADDRESSES: Home—Panama. Offıce—La Prensa (Panama), Apartado 6-4586 El Dorado Ave., 12 de octubre, Hato Pintado Panama, Republica de Panama. Agent—c/o Author Mail, University of North Carolina Press, P.O. Box 2288, Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288.

CAREER: Investigative journalist. Caretas (weekly magazine), Lima, Peru, staff journalist; La Prensa (newspaper), Panama, began as deputy editor, became associate director. Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL), Lima, Peru, journalist-in-residence. Affiliated with North-South Center, Miami, FL.

AWARDS, HONORS: International Press Freedom Award, Committee to Protect Journalists.

WRITINGS:

Sendero: historia de la guerra milenaria en el Peru, Editorial Apoyo (Lima, Peru), 1990, published as The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru, translated from the Spanish and with an introduction by Robin Kirk, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1999.

La batalla, Instituto de Defensa Legal (Lima, Peru), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including Caretas, Peru21, El País, New York Times, New Republic, Journal of International Affairs, and Los Angeles Times. Has also written works under the name Gustavo Gorriti Ellenbogen.

SIDELIGHTS: Gustavo Gorriti is a prominent Latin-American investigative journalist whose stories about the connections between the government of his native Peru and the region's drug dealers have led to a variety of threats and harassment linked directly to the Peruvian government.

In 1992, Gorriti was arrested—or more accurately, kidnapped—by the Peruvian army. In addition, his computer was confiscated in what "probably has been one of the very first cases of computer kidnapping in Peruvian political history," Gorriti stated in an interview with Terence Smith on the Public Broadcasting Service program NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Gorriti apparently had been the victim of an attempt at revenge by longtime political enemy Vladimiro Montesinos, who had become chief adviser to Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori. In an article for the Peruvian news magazine Caretas, Gorriti revealed that Montesinos worked as an attorney for drug dealers and sold military secrets while serving in the army. Following his arrest, Gorriti was released only after international pressure focused on the Peruvian government and the journalist's unlawful detention.

In 1996, Gorriti moved to Panama, where he continued investigating and reporting on important Latin-American issues. A series of articles linking drug traffickers and the government led to the revocation of his Panamanian work visa. While the government claimed that Gorriti held a job legally reserved for Panamanians, Gorriti charged that he was being punished for his articles exposing government corruption. Once again, national human rights groups and a number of governments, including that of the United States, expressed displeasure at Panama's actions and pressed for reconsideration. After a tense six-week confrontation, the Panamanian government relented and renewed Gorriti's visa. "It represents a triumph for freedom of the press," Gorriti said in an article in Editor & Publisher. "There are no winners or losers here. We all have gained something."

As a journalist, Gorriti became an expert in the history and methods of a prominent Peruvian guerilla group the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path. Under the leadership of Abimael Guzmán, the Shining Path rose from "a backwoods guerrilla movement into one of the most formidable threats to the Peruvian state ever," reported Kenneth Maxwell in Foreign Affairs. In The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru Gorriti offers "one of the most informative accounts of the first phase of the insurrection . . . to overthrow the Peruvian state," noted Lewis Taylor in Journal of Latin American Studies. First published in Spanish in 1990 as Sendero: historia de la guerra milenaria en el Peru, the translated volume "retains all its immediacy and explanatory power," Maxwell noted.

Strongly influenced by Marxism and Maoism, Guzmán and the Shining Path attempted to apply Maoist ideas gleaned from Chinese leader Mao Tsetung's mid-twentieth-century Cultural Revolution to oppose Peru's government. The charismatic and influential Guzmán "was a master of ideological manipulation—he outmaneuvered possible rivals and mesmerized the largely young and naive recruits to his cause," reviewer Alan Angell pointed out in the Times Literary Supplement. The government Peruvian largely ignored the Shining Path, or dismissed it as a foreign-influenced conspiracy, until it was too late to control it. Gorriti presents the argument that the government was simply unable to contain the group, and incompetence and corruption in the intelligence and police services allowed the Shining Path to grow to a genuine threat. "Gorriti provides a brilliant indictment" of these failings, Angell remarked. When the government finally acted decisively, it acted with violence, leaving more than 30,000 dead in the Shining Path's Ayacucho region. "Gorriti provides a convincing assessment of the political circumstances and personalities that combined to produce these outcomes," Taylor commented.

"The book's hallmark is its meticulous attention to documentary detail," observed David Lehmann in a Times Literary Supplement review of Sendero. "Impeccably researched, rigorous in its analysis, and often elegant in its prose (as well as expertly translated by Robin Kirk), this important book is fundamental reading for those who wish to understand the Shining Path," concluded David P. Werlich, writing in Historian.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Editor & Publisher, November 8, 1997, "Panama Relents on Gorriti Visa,"p. 42.

Foreign Affairs, March, 1999, Kenneth Maxwell, review of The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru, p. 150.

Historian, fall, 2000, David P. Werlich, review of TheShining Path, p. 149.

Journal of Latin American Studies, February, 2001, Lewis Taylor, review of The Shining Path, p. 189.

New Republic, April 27, 1992, "Coup in Peru," p. 8.

New York Review of Books, June 25, 1992, Sarah Kerr, "Fujimori's Plot: An Interview with Gustavo Gorriti," p. 18,

Times Literary Supplement, July 26, 1991, David Lehmann, "The Shining Path to Terror," review of Sendero: historia de la guerra milenaria en el Peru,, p. 10; October 29, 1999, Alan Angell, review of The Shining Path, p. 32.

ONLINE

Public Broadcasting Service Web site,http://www.pbs.org/ (November 25, 1998), Terence Smith, "Rewarding Courage" (transcript of NewsHour with Jim Lehrer television interview with Gorriti).*