Another piece of advice for US citizens abroad is to stay out of local politics. Reading a couple of newspaper or magazine articles in the US, coupled with “good intentions,” doesn’t substitute for detailed knowledge of a country acquired from intensive reading and/or living in the country. The poster child for this adage is Lori Berenson. Anyone with just a cursory knowledge of Peru would have realized that by the mid-1990s, after having suffered over a decade of terror from Sendero and others, coupled with the capture of Sendero honcho Abemael Guzman, neither the government nor the people of Peru had a high tolerance for those who were involved with terrorist organizations. The blue passport was not a magic protective wand for Lori Berenson- nor should it have been.