Shining Path: Communist Insurgency, Not Conventional Civil War

Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) was a Maoist revolutionary group that launched an armed insurgency (1980–1992) to overthrow the Peruvian state and establish a communist regime. The conflict killed ~70,000. While it bore civil-war intensity, it was ideologically a revolutionary war—the group sought total systemic transformation, not merely secession or power-sharing. Its brutal tactics drew universal condemnation.