Paintings celebrating deadly bomb attacks, photographs of beheaded children and rusting home-made grenades fill a police museum dedicated to the 31,300 people killed by Peru's ruthless Shining Path rebels.
As the Maoist group's jailed leader Abimael Guzman faces a life sentence on Friday in a retrial, officials are encouraging Peruvians to reflect on the dangers of fanaticism in a country still afflicted by the chronic poverty that experts say allowed Shining Path to flourish.
"Shining Path is not just part of Peru's past. It reflects the country's social exclusion, injustice and poverty that creates monsters like Guzman," said Salomon Lerner, who headed a government truth commission in 2003.
Guzman, a former philosophy professor, waged a "popular war" from 1980 until his capture in 1992 to try to install communism in Peru, offering dignity to millions of Andean peasants. But his calls for followers to first cross a "river of blood" and kill 10 percent of the population ultimately alienated supporters and deeply scarred Peru.
Housed in a police building once bombed by Shining Path, the museum contains objects made by followers in Peruvian prisons created out of wood, stone, leather and even soap.
Wooden miniatures celebrate the start of Shining Path's war with the burning of ballot boxes in 1980 as Peru returned to democracy after more than a decade of military dictatorship.
A pair of Guzman's thick, trademark spectacles and his collection of pin-badges of China's Communist leader Mao Zedong, Shining Path's inspiration, form the centerpiece of the museum, built up by police after raids on rebel hideouts.
Comprising communist paintings, sculptures and flags given to Guzman by his followers, the artifacts show the now gray-haired 71-year-old as a heroic figure leading a war against Peru's European-descended, coastal elite that has dominated the country since the 15th century Spanish conquest. "In the paintings Guzman never holds a gun, only a book, even as he celebrates bomb attacks," said museum curator Ruben Zuniga, a police officer who helped capture Guzman.
"He envisaged creating a museum to celebrate his victory with all these objects," Zuniga said, who added that although the museum was open to the public, it remained under police control so it would not be glorified as a shrine. Police have added a section of photographs documenting the horrific bombing campaign in Lima in the early 1990s.
Black-and-white photos show the charred bodies, collapsed apartment buildings and children beheaded and stabbed to death. Other photos show entire Andean villages destroyed. Immediately following Guzman's capture, rebels carried out 65 attacks in eight days as Shining Path split into factions divided over whether to accept the group's defeat.
Today, remnants of the group are still at large and have forged links with drug traffickers in Peru, the world's No 2 cocaine producer, occasionally carrying out attacks on police. "The group have become protectors of the drug trade and have lost interest in seizing political power," said former interior minister and political analyst Fernando Rospigliosi. "They may try to gain attention with some kind of attack because of Guzman's trial but nothing more," he added.
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