The Shining Path is a Maoist guerrilla insurgent organisation in Peru. The group never refers to itself as "Shining Path", and prefers to be called the "Communist Party of Peru". It initiated the internal conflict in Peru in 1980, with the stated goal of replacing what it saw as bourgeois democracy with "New Democracy". The Shining Path believed that by imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducing cultural revolution, and eventually sparking world revolution, they could arrive at pure communism. The Shining Path is described by the Peruvian government as a terrorist organization.

On the 12th of February 2012,Comrade Artemio, one of the leaders of the Shining Path, was found badly wounded after a clash with troops in a remote jungle region of Peru. The capture of Artemio marked the defeat of the Shining Path in the Alto Huallaga valley - a centre of cocaine production.