La cuarta espada: La historia de Abima el Guzmn y Sendero Luminoso / The Fourth Swore - Santiago Roncagliolo

La cuarta espada es una rigurosa investigacin periodstica sobre Sendero Luminoso y su lder, Abimael Guzmn.

Casi 70.000 muertos produjo la guerra entre el movimiento terrorista Sendero Luminoso y el Estado peruano entre los aos ochenta y noventa. Responsable de ms de la mitad de las vctimas, Sendero fue el grupo subversivo ms letal en la historia del continente americano. Abimael Guzmn, el hombre que condujo toda esa violencia y se considera a s mismo como la cuarta espada del comunismo internacional tras Lenin, Stalin y Mao, no llevaba armas. No tena poyo de Gobiernos extranjeros. Ni siquiera estaba presente en el campo de batalla. Detrs de un escritorio, armado con una rigurosa ideologa, puso en jaque a todo un pas durante doce aos. Su historia constituye un escalofriante ejemplo del poder destructor de las ideas.

Cmo se convirti Guzmn en un objeto de culto capaz de inspirar entre los suyos misiones kamikazes? Quines eran sus soldados? Cmo eran el amor y el odio entre ellos? La cuarta espada es la primera descripcin de las relaciones humanas en el interior de una cpula terrorista Sendero Luminoso con informacin proporcionada por sus protagonistas.

Pero ms all del documento periodstico, este libro se lee como una novela en la tradicin de A sangre fra, una inmersin en la mente del asesino, un retrato del Mal.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The Fourth Sword is a rigorous journalistic investigation about the Shining Path terrorist group in Peru and its leader Abimael Guzman.
Almost 70,000 deaths were caused by the civil war between the Shining Path terrorist movement and the Peruvian government during the eighties and nineties. Responsible for more than half of the victims, Shining Path was the most deadly and dangerous subversive group ever in the history of Latin America.


Abimael Guzman, the man who led such violence and considers himself to be the "fourth sword" of international communism after Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, was not armed. He had no support from foreign governments, and he did not even set foot on the battlefield. Sitting behind a desk and armed with a rigorous ideology, he brought turmoil to the entire country for twelve years.


His story depicts a chilling example of the destructive power of ideology. How did Guzman become such a cult leader capable of encouraging kamikaze missions among his followers? Who were his soldiers? How was the love-hate relationship between them? The Fourth Sword is the first-hand account of personal relationships inside a Shining Path terrorist group with information and accounts provided to the author by its protagonists. This work goes much further than a journalistic investigation, it reads like a a novel; it is an immersion into the mind of a murderer.