Elena Iparraguirre, also known as Comrade Miriam, is a high-ranking member of the Peruvian Maoist revolutionary and terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). Iparraguirre was captured in Lima in 1992 along with her lover, Shining Path founder Abimael Guzmán. In 1992, she received a sentence of life imprisonment by a secret military tribunal.[1] She was awarded a new trial in a civilian court in 2004, but the proceeding ended as a mistrial. After a third trial in 2006, both Iparraguirre and Guzman again received life sentences.[2]
Elena Iparraguirre was born in Ica, Peru in 1948 to a family of merchants, and spent her childhood on the Peruvian coast. Her father, Alberto Iparraguirre, was a member of the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP), which was banned at the time for its socialist ideology, and had spent several years in prison for his participation. Elena Iparraguirre studied to become an elementary school teacher and later did her master on mental retardation in minors in Paris. She married Javier Verástegui, a chemical engineer, and had two children.
In 1968, Iparraguirre joined the Peruvian Communist Party, which was at the time divided between the Chinese and the Soviet approaches. From the very beginning, Iparraguirre became involved with the Maoist faction, which later became Sendero Luminoso, The Shining Path. From then on, Iparraguirre supported prisoners convicted of leading popular movements in Ayacucho and gave classes to teachers, known as "popular schools".
In 1969, she met Augusta La Torre, the wife of Abimael Guzmán, who had traveled to Lima seeking to release Sendero’s leader, who was detained due to his involvement in the violent uprisings of teachers from the public sector that took place in Aycucho during that year. Between 1970 and 1974, Iparraguirre lived in Paris with her husband, and upon her return she formed, together with Augusta La Torre, the Women’s Popular Movement, whose purpose was to pull in women of lower and middle class background.
In 1976, incapable of reconciling her personal obligations as mother and wife with her revolutionary work, Iparraguirre abandoned her family in order to dedicate herself fully to Maoist militancy. “I rebeled against the roles which society imposes on the woman, tied my heart with my own guts and left without looking back”, she told the EFE.
In 1977, as member of the Central Directorate of The Shining Path, Iparraguirre had to go underground. From 1979, she participated in the Politburo which, led by Guzmán, initiated the war against the state on May 17, 1980 in Aycucho. The Sendero leadership launched its bloody attacks from Lima, due to the fact the Guzmán suffered from a disease that prevented him from living in an altitude higher than 2000 meters, which is the minimum height in which one finds any of the major Andean communities. Iparraguirre’s work was of vital importance, and following the death of Guzmán’s wife, in November 1989, for reasons not yet clarified, ‘Comrade Miriam’ became second-in-command in the Maoist group.
In September 1992, Iparraguirre was captured alongside Guzmán and several other prominent Senderistas in Lima. She was imprisoned at the Callao Naval base, where a month later she was sentenced to a life in prison by the military court. However, the decisión was later annuled for being unconstitutional.
In 1993, Sendero proposed a peace treaty with the government of Alberto Fujimori, the president at the time (1990-2000). In early 2005, Iparraguirre was transferred to the women’s prison of Santa Monica. She was separated from Sendero’s founder, her lover since the death of La Torre, and isolated from other political prisoners. In 2006, Elena Iparraguirre and Abimael Guzmán were finally sentenced to a lifetime in prison by the new trial held in the Callao Naval Base.
On August 20, 2010 Iparraguirre married Guzmán in the Callao Naval Base prison, after they had both initiated a hunger strike against the Peruvian government for denying them the possibility of matrinomy.