Martyrs of Communism in Peru

The year 1968 was a dramatic one, all over the world.

In 1968, the president of Peru was deposed in a military coup. His successor lasted several years until he was also deposed during a military coup. During this unstable time period, many political groups, both on the left and the right, struggled for control of the government and the support of the Peruvian people.

In 1970, Communist Party of Peru broke up into multiple factions because of internal disagreements over how to bring communism to the country. One of those factions took their inspiration from a quote by the leader of the first Communist Party of Peru, who predicted that “Marxism-Leninism will open a shining path to revolution.”

Most people do not think of revolution as a desirable thing; eighteenth-century American colonists spent decades trying to avoid one. But as history has shown, typically the only way that a country will accept communism is when it is shoved down their throats through starvation, violence, and revolution.

The leader and members of this Peruvian faction, true followers of Marx and Lenin, thought that sounded like the perfect approach. Hoping to follow in the glorious footsteps of Stalinist Russia, Mao Zedong’s China, and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, they used that quote and gave the name “Shining Path” to their group of communist guerrillas. Their word choice is certainly ironic, since everything about their subsequent actions would be better described as dark and cruel, not shining and light.

Shining Path organized bombings and assassinations to destabilize the Peruvian government. It used intimidation and violence to recruit members from rural areas. It killed peasants, elected officials, trade union organizers, and even members of rival communist groups—anyone who got in the way of its anticipated glorious revolution. It is not surprising that the Communist Party of Peru today even distances itself from the past actions of Shining Path.

Michal Tomaszek was born in communist Poland in 1960, and his father died when he was only nine years old. After Michal graduated from high school, he recognized God’s call to become a priest in the Conventual Franciscan order. That meant he not only completed a five-year novitiate with the order, but he also studied theology and philosophy before his ordination in 1987. Zbigniew Adam Strzalkowski was born in 1958, also in Poland, and he too recognized a vocation to the priesthood and to the Conventual Franciscans. He completed his theological and philosophical studies and was ordained a priest in 1986.

Zbigniew was sent by his order to serve the poor of Peru in November 1988; Michal was sent to Peru several months later in July 1989.¹ The two young men eventually met and served the people of the town of Pariacoto in the Andes mountains together.

The mission of the two priests was not political. As true followers of Saint Francis of Assisi, they had been sent to minister to the souls and bodies of the poor people of this town. It was hard, tiring work, as the priests lived in poverty among the people, learned their customs, traditions, and language, and encouraged devotion to God and religious vocations.

Shining Path guerrillas also lived in the area, and they threatened the missionaries because the priests were making it difficult to recruit new members. After all, they were teaching the people about Gospel values and helping to lift them out of poverty, rather than fostering resentment and violence, which was Shining Path’s preferred solution to poverty. Only a short time before the priests’ deaths, a religious sister spoke to the two men about the dangers of Shining Path. Father Zbigniew simply smiled and told her they couldn’t abandon their people.

On August 9, 1991, Shining Path members covered Pariacoto’s town square with graffiti and kidnapped the town’s mayor. Their guerrillas then kidnapped the two priests after they had finished celebrating Mass. The men were thrown in a pickup truck and taken to another village for a “trial”.

What crimes did they accuse the priests of committing in this mock trial? Impeding Shining Path’s desired revolution by preaching about peace and forgiveness. Distributing food from “imperialist” charitable organizations like Caritas. Helping poor people. After this “interrogation”, the guerrillas took the two priests and the mayor to a nearby cemetery and executed them.

In 2015, the Church beatified the two priests as martyrs, several months after the beatification of a similar martyr, Salvadoran archbishop Oscar Romero.

The lives and deaths of Blessed Michal and Zbigniew show us that it is only by walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ—sharing the poverty of the poor, teaching and living the Beatitudes, and leading one another to God—that we can conquer the darkness of our world. His path of peace and forgiveness is the only one worth following.

Endnote:

¹ Blessed Alessandro Dordi, an Italian priest, was also martyred by Shining Path and was beatified with the two Polish priests. However, he was killed a few weeks later, so his feast day is separate from theirs.