Peru: Life after the GEIN

Caretas magazine runs another "Where are they now?" article on the team from the GEIN that caught Shining Path supremo Abimael Guzmán.

One interesting point is that the majority of them were fairly young, as 70% of them are still working 20 years on. Another is that, as I've mentioned before, they did not receive much gratitude or recompense for their achievement. In fact, many of them are still working a second job, presumably to make ends meet. This, despite the fact that their intelligence operation took down Peru's most-wanted fugitive ever and contributed massively to the collapse of Sendero.

José Luis Olano, Dennys Cotera and Carlos Iglesias went through the rubbish in the Lima district of Surquillo and came across the medication that Guzmán used for his psoriasis. Olano now works for the police in Huancavelica, Cotera works for the Dircote (ie he is still in police intelligence) but in administrative tasks, and Iglesias works in the Miraflores district of Lima. On his days off from the police, he works as a security guard.

The GEIN members were essentially victims of Vladimiro Montesinos and his desire to promote the intelligence agency he himself led, the SIN. It's a shame that this situation has never been rectified.


La Vida Después del GEIN (Caretas)