In 1989 Berenson left the US and anthropology studies at MIT to travel through Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama. In Panama, she evidently made contact with the MRTA. She arrived in Lima in 1994, and was detained on Nov. 30, 1995 after she had entered the Peruvian congress with a false press pass alongside Nancy Gilvonio, wife of the now dead MRTA leader Nester Cerpa.

It's generally a violation of the security principles of both invisibility and invincibility to attempt ill-advised deceptions in the halls of a foreign government's power ...