National Liberation Army (Peru)

The National Liberation Army (abbreviated as ELN, Spanish: Ejército de Liberación Nacional) was a Peruvian guerrilla group. It sought to gather militants regardless of their political affiliation. A short-lived movement that was formed in 1962 and carried out numerous small skirmishes and actions culminating in a seven-month peak of militant actions in 1965, the ELN was largely scattered by the Peruvian Army by December 1965.

The group had a varied composition that grew to share a "certain disdain of 'politics' and suspicion of any type of party organisation", as well as a few discontent members from the Peruvian Communist Party. This new movement included some former members of the MIR youth branch.

Hector Bejar [1], one of the military commanders of the ELN, later summarised it as an attempt to create a "free association of revolutionaries" and "an army which would draw combatants together regardless of their ideologies or political affiliations". Following their collapse, Bejar remarked that one of their core mistakes had been not liaising and keeping communications open with larger revolutionary movements that could have supported them as they were attacked by the Peruvian Army; instead, they had opted to believe they could remain self-sufficient and rely on local recruits from the villages and plantations.

In 1962, the group considered itself under the leadership of Juan Pablo Chang Navarro.

The ELN formed mobile training groups, desiring to have professional guerrillas sent into the rugged terrain rather than untrained volunteers. Approximately fifty group members were also believed to be entering southern Peru from Bolivia, after receiving training in Cuba. The group received assistance from the Bolivian Rodolfo Saldaña, who left later that year to fight in Argentina.

In January 1963, a group led by the 21-year-old poet Javier Heraud and Alain Elias crossed through Bolivia, where they picked up weapons and entered southern Peru. Plagued by Leishmaniasis infection, however, the 15-member team decided to enter the city of Puerto Maldonado on May 15 to seek out medical supplies.

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