A Maoist rebel group, Shining Path was lively in the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties, spreading terror in the nation by way of a bombing marketing campaign that focused buildings and infrastructure reminiscent of electrical energy towers.
Its prominence started to fade after Guzman, often known as Camarada Gonzalo, was captured and sentenced to life in prison in 1992.
"At approximately 6:40 in the morning in the maximum-security detention center of the El Callao Naval Base, inmate Abimael Guzman Reynoso died due to complications with his health," the Penitentiary Institute stated in a quick assertion.
El Callao Naval Base is about 15 kilometers east of Peru's capital, Lima.
Under Guzman's management, the group declared warfare on the Peruvian authorities in 1980, finishing up bombings and assassination operations, which by official accounts killed greater than 30,000 Peruvians throughout the subsequent 20 years.
Another 30,000 Peruvians died by the hands of the federal government and paramilitary teams in the battle in opposition to the group, a authorities fee stated in 2003.
The group additionally carried out a quantity of devastating assaults in Lima. It blew up electrical transmission towers, inflicting citywide blackouts, bombed factories, and set off explosives close to authorities workplaces and contained in the ruling occasion's political headquarters.
Its 1992 assault on Tarata, a residential avenue in Lima, killed a minimum of 25 individuals and was the group's deadliest assault.
In the countryside of central and southern Peru the place the rebels have been strongest, the Shining Path waged an assassination marketing campaign in opposition to authorities officers, the heads of state-owned farming collectives, enterprise homeowners and even peasants who opposed the guerrillas. Political rivals, together with different Marxists or leftists, have been additionally focused by the group.
CNN's Hannah Ryan contributed to this text.