Efraín Morote Best

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Efraín Morote Best
Rector of San Cristóbal of Huamanga University
In office 1962–1968
Personal details
Born	(1921-07-08)8 July 1921 Osmán

Efraín Morote Best (8 July 1921 – 7 April 1989) was a Peruvian lawyer, anthropologist, and academic administrator. From 1962 to 1968 he served as the Rector (i.e., chief administrator) of San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in Ayacucho, Perú. He and three of his children became members of Shining Path.

Biography

Morote was born in Ayacucho into a wealthy and established family that owned land in Ayacucho, Abancay, and

seminary in Ayacucho and make it into a modern university dedicated to improving the condition of the region's impoverished native population, Morote joined the new institution as professor of anthropology and vice-rector. The university began to operate in 1959. In 1962, Morote was chosen to succeed naval historian Fernando Romero Pintado as the university's leader.

Following a pattern which was not uncommon among

, one of Efraín Morote's sons, became the Shining Path's second-in-command. Efraín Morote's other two children also became members of the Shining Path.

Some observers, such as British writer Nicholas Shakespeare (who fictionalized the capture of Abimael Guzmán in his novel The Dancer Upstairs), have argued that Efraín Morote was probably the true intellectual leader of the Shining Path. Shakespeare described Abimael Guzmán as a man "absolutely without character" while he claimed that Morote was "incredibly intelligent and without emotion," a truly "evil" man.

Publicly, Morote remained until his death a respected social scientist of leftist political leanings.

Works

• Elementos de folklore ("Elements of Folklore"), 1950
• Aldeas sumergidas ("Submerged Villages"), 1988
• Pueblo y universidad ("People and University"), 1990

External links

• Michael L. Smith, "San Cristóbal de Huamanga University", Peruvian Graffiti
• "On the Trail of Abimael Guzmán" at the Wayback Machine (archived April 11, 2005), interview by Uki Goñi with author Nicholas Shakespeare