A WORLD TO WIN    #16   (1991)

 

Yankee Go Home!

1991 -- Year of International Solidarity with the People's War in Peru

A Call by the Committee of the RIM for a World-Wide Campaign

The towering granite and steel wall of oppression that girds the world is being breached in the mountains of Peru. There the poor have risen up, guns in hand, and their guns are thundering a challenge to the imperialist rulers of the U.S. and other countries. Now these imperialists are seeking to blast them back into submission. Now is the time for all those who hate the world order to come to the aid of the people's war in Peru.

Peru is where the world revolution is breaking through today. Those at the very bottom of society, led by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and its Chairman Gonzalo, have formed a People's Guerrilla Army whose soldiers and commanders alike are mostly peasant men and women. They get their weapons by capturing them from the enemy, so they owe nothing to any power. Though this revolutionary army started very small and is growing step by step, its strength comes from relying on the masses of people for everything, from supplying bread and military intelligence to steadily swelling the ranks of fighters. They are defeating the army of the centuries-old order of domination, murder, rape and humiliation.

These revolutionary military victories have made it possible for the People's Committees to flourish. In these villages, it is the formerly downtrodden who now rule. They are seizing the land, replacing exploitation with voluntary cooperation and transforming the old social relations, habits and ideas accumulated through centuries of subjugation. Their red flag --our red flag -- is now flying defiantly in the light of day above many villages where once the peasants' backs were stooped and broken by landlords and despots.

This war centred in the countryside can never be blockaded into surrender. Instead, it is the ruling classes, barricaded in the big cities, that are being encircled by this war drawing tighter and tighter around their strongholds each day. In Peru's shantytowns, the clandestine armed platoons of the poor are dealing blows, contributing to developing the people's war and preparing for the time when this war advances to the point where the cities themselves can be captured through urban insurrection.

The PCP is a participant in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, formed by Maoist parties and organisations in many countries as a step towards enabling the international proletariat to lead humanity to emancipation. These parties are waging revolutionary war or carrying out revolutionary work to prepare for waging such a war according to the conditions of their particular countries. Their goal is not a half-way revolution where a new set of exploiters emerge, but rather continuing the revolution until communism, the creation of a world without oppressors or exploiters in any form. In Peru today, after 10 years of people's war, the seizure of nationwide political power can now be seen on the horizon. This is irrefutable proof of the power of a revolutionary war waged by the masses of people, relying on themselves and led by a proletarian party wielding the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology, a people's war fought not in the manner of reactionary armies but in a way that gives full play to the strengths of the masses of dispossessed.

The very success of the Peruvian revolution has set it on a collision course with the U.S. The Yankee rulers, despite their

bloated bragging at the moment, are well aware of the danger of getting bogged down in what they fear will be "another Vietnam", a war that was a disaster for them, including within the U.S. itself. But they cannot allow the People's Republic of Peru to

be born without a fight. U.S. exploitation of Latin America is the dirty secret behind much of Yankee wealth. Though the people who run the U.S. arrogantly consider Latin America their "back yard", hundreds of millions of Latin Americans long to break free of them. With a Maoist revolution Yankee power would begin to unravel.

The U.S. armed forces and CIA have been fighting secretly in Peru since the start of this war in 1980. Now the U.S. government is openly sending Green Beret "advisors", pilots and other armed personnel, along with helicopter gunships, jet bombers and river patrol boats. Pentagon planners are drawing up the charts for future large-scale moves under the pretext of "the war on drugs". They are also making political preparations, including preparing public opinion, for the possibility of massive intervention by the U.S. armed forces directly and/or through the U.S.-commanded armed forces of a neighbouring country.

In this, the U.S. can count on the backing or complicity of the world's governments. The Peruvian revolution has nothing to rely on but its own strength and the support of the world's proletariat and peoples.

The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement has declared an international year of solidarity with the people's war, starting December 26th 1990. The parties and organisations of the Movement will be taking responsibility for implementing this campaign in their countries, according to the conditions and their tasks. The need for this campaign stands out even more strongly in the wake of the Gulf war, which gave proof of the imperialists' appetite for intervention and also of the crucial importance of the political content, ideology and military strategy of any struggle which claims to oppose them. Already many people opposed to U.S. intervention in Peru have stepped forward to push this campaign out in other oppressed countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa and within the belly of the imperialist monsters, including the U.S. itself, and many more can be united in the course of this year of solidarity.

The cry "Yankee Go Home" will find an echo amongst all of the world's people who see in this revolution the embodiment of their own hopes for a completely different world, and among all those opposed to imperialist aggression. The Yankee imperialists can and will be stopped!

March 9th 1991