Ivan Quispe Palomino, brother of comrade José, was captured by the PNP during an identity control operation in the San Juan de Lurigancho district. He was imprisoned in the 90s and became a police informant at that time. Iván, who is no longer part of this terrorist faction, is considered a traitor by comrade ‘José’, Víctor Quispe Palomino, leader of the Militarized Communist Party MPC.
Quispe Palomino would have been living in the La Raucana Human Settlement, in Ate Vitarte, with his mother Irene Palomino and his sister Rina. This arrest occurred during the operation called ‘Genesis’ that the Railway Police developed within the framework of continuous identity control at the stations of Line 1 of the Lima Metro.
In mid-August, the Judiciary issued 18 months of preventive detention against his brother, Comrade ‘José’, who was accused of being the direct perpetrator of the terrorist attack against 16 people in May 2021, in the district of Vizcatán del Ene, in it Vraem. Among these murdered people were two minors. The terrorist action took place in the bars ‘La Quebradita’ and ‘El Mangal’.
Who is Víctor Quispe Palomino, the terrorist leader who was wounded in Vraem?
Víctor Quispe Palomino, born in Ayacucho on August 1, 1960, He studied Anthropology at the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga. According to a BBC report, he joined the terrorist organization Luminous Path in the early 1980s, along with his brothers Marco and Jorge, influenced by their father, Martín Quispe Mendoza, who was also part of the group and was murdered by ronderos during the conflict.
Over time, he adopted the alias ‘Comrade José’ and rose through the Shining Path hierarchy. He participated in violent acts such as the Soras massacre in July 1984, in which 108 peasants died brutally, as well as in the Lucanamarca massacre in 1983, where 69 peasants were murdered.
What happened in the San Miguel del Ene massacre?
On May 24, 2021, in the San Miguel del Ene town center, Two individuals known as ‘Carlos’ and ‘Anselmo’ perpetrated a massacre that left 16 dead, including four minors. This violent act took place in two local bars between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., and was attributed to the Movement for Peace and Change (MPCP)led by ‘José’, alias Víctor Quispe Palomino, who supports himself financially through drug trafficking in the Vraem.
After the homicides, the murderers fled, and the community alerted local authorities about the tragedy. At dawn, the president of the Self-Defense Committee, along with an unidentified person, notified the local Justice of the Peace, Leonidas Casas Marmolejo. Subsequently, the judge and mayor Alejandro Atao Guerreros confirmed the crime scene, finding bullet casings and pamphlets protesting the MPCP. Both reported the events at the nearest police station, in Pichari, Cusco.
The lack of cooperation from the police and military forces, which alleged insecurity for not intervening in the investigations, complicated the situation. The criminal prosecutor Alfredo Casavilca, supported only by members of the self-defense groups and local residents, was the one who finally led the initial proceedings.
