Abimael Guzmán, and fifteen others gathered. MOVADEF has three sub-branches; the Central Historical Committee, the Provisional Central Committee and the National Executive Committee (CEN). The branch filed to become a political party in Peru with the National Jury of Elections (JNE) in 2011, though the application was denied. The Peruvian government has accused MOVADEF of advocating terrorism. The Front for Unity and Defense of the Peruvian People (FUDEPP) was created in 2015. In association with MOVADEF, the group announced that it had 73 provincial committees and allegedly received 400,000 to 500,000 signatures for the JNE to participate in the 2016 Peruvian general election. They were ultimately prevented from participating in the elections. History Origins The Shining Path was founded in 1969 by Abimael Guzmán, a former university philosophy professor (his followers referred to him by his nom de guerre Presidente Gonzalo), and a group of 11 others. Guzmán was heavily influenced by a trip to China and admired the teachings of Mao Zedong. His teachings created the foundation of its militant Maoist doctrine. It was an offshoot of the Peruvian Communist Party – Red Flag, which itself split from the original Peruvian Communist Party founded by José Carlos Mariátegui in 1928. Antonio Díaz Martínez, an agronomist who became a leader of the Shining Path, made several important contributions to the group's ideology. In his books Ayacucho, Hambre y Esperanza (1969) and China, La Revolución Agraria (1978), he expressed his own conviction of the necessity that revolutionary activity in Peru follow strictly the teachings of Mao Zedong. The Shining Path first established a foothold at San Cristóbal of Huamanga University, in Ayacucho, where Guzmán taught philosophy. The university had recently reopened after being closed for about half a century, and many students of the newly educated class adopted the Shining Path's radical ideology. Between 1973 and 1975, Shining Path members gained control of the student councils at the Universities of Huancayo and La Cantuta, and they also developed a significant presence at the National University of Engineering in Lima and the National University of San Marcos. Sometime later, it lost many student elections in the universities, including Guzmán's San Cristóbal of Huamanga. It decided to abandon recruitment at the universities and reconsolidate. Guzmán believed that communism required a "popular war" and distanced himself from organizing workers. Beginning on 17 March 1980, the Shining Path held a series of clandestine meetings in