PERU Escalation in the Highlands

After three months of fighting in the remote Andean highlands of central Peru, the Communist bands that President Fernando Belaunde Terry once dismissed as a "mere fiction" still operate. They are now a recognized fact of life. The constitutional guarantees suspended two months ago, putting the country under a form of martial law, are still suspended. Last week the Peruvian Congress went a step farther by authorizing military courts to impose the death penalty on captured guerrillas, and voted $7,400,000 to step up an already major operation against what the lawmakers called "imperialistic Communist aggression."

A Military Swarm. At first, the Peruvian government thought that rural police units could handle the Communists. It turned out to be too big a job, and now the army has taken over. The departmental capital of Huancayo, 120 miles east of Lima near the heart of guerrilla activity, swarms with soldiers and military vehicles. On nearby air fields, military transports land with supplies, while helicopters and bomb-laden twin-jet Canberra bombers stand ready for takeoff. In the field some 1,500 soldiers -advised by U.S. anti-guerrilla experts -are committed against the Red terrorists.

In a coordinated attack earlier this month, Canberra bombers swept in to blast a guerrilla stronghold near Pucuta, a tiny village 90 miles from Huan cayo. Ground forces overran the en campment, killing 20 guerrillas, but an other 40 managed to escape. A few days later, another will-o-the-wisp band of guerrillas attacked the village of Satipo, only 70 miles away, killing two policemen and a civilian before fading back into the hills.

Indian Fatteners. The best estimate is that the guerrillas are in four bands, totaling possibly 1,000 men, and strongest in the area around Huancayo. Their leaders are Communist professionals: Guillermo Lobaton, 34, a Peruvian trained in insurgency in Cuba and Red China and reported to have fought with the Viet Cong, and Castroite Lawyer Luis de la Puente, 36, wanted in Lima for a 1962 murder. The terrorists preach the usual Communist line about capitalist exploitation and free land for all, attempt to counter the government's own considerable efforts at aid and social reform among the Indians by warning that free flour is distributed merely to fatten the Indians, the better to make soap of them later.

While the agitators have so far largely eluded the government's troops, they have at the same time failed to provoke a popular uprising among the masses. Few of the Indians have fallen for the line. Those who have joined up have responded to a more down-to-earth approach: payment of 1,000 soles, or $37, which in the highlands of Peru is more money than an Indian ordinarily expects to see in a year.

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