A
Sober Look at the Situation of the Peru Revolution and Its Needs
The
trial of Abimael Guzman (Chairman Gonzalo) and 23 other accused
leaders of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) for “aggravated terrorism
against the state” that began in September 2005 is continuing
as of this writing, May 2006. Yet according to both the government
and the defence, there has never been any doubt that its only
purpose is to have Peru’s current civilian courts confirm the
convictions decreed, in most of the cases, by hooded military
officers acting in great haste and secret in 1992. In advance
of this new trial, various officials promised that the 70-year-old
main defendant would never leave prison alive. The candidates
in Peru’s current presidential electoral campaign seem to be competing
as to who can pledge the worst fate for the imprisoned PCP leadership.
This
is nothing but a flagrant act of revenge by the protectors of
the old order. A mass upsurge, especially one on the scale of
the revolutionary war in Peru that began in 1980, cannot be labelled
terrorism. No one who believes in justice can accept this attempt
by the US-backed Peruvian government to punish Chairman Gonzalo
and others for having waged a people’s war, an armed struggle
deeply rooted in and reliant upon the country’s scorned, poorest
masses. That is what this trial and the inevitable sentencing
are about, no matter what the current views of the defendants
may be, and that must be opposed.
This
frenzied lust for vengeance has a calculated political purpose:
The conditions for the vast majority of Peru’s people are still
desperate and outbursts of mass anger and even violence show that
they have not become resigned to their fate. The waning of the
people’s war cannot be explained mainly by any change in their
circumstances. It’s not hard to understand why the country’s rulers
want to crush and criminalise the very idea of mass armed rebellion
and revolutionary change.
In
the years since Chairman Gonzalo’s arrest in 1992, the people’s
war has suffered very serious setbacks. The level and geographic
extent of the fighting has declined dramatically, especially since
the late 1990s. It is not clear how many if
any Open People’s Committees – the revolutionary political
power of the peasants the party established in the countryside
during the high tide of the people’s war – and how many clandestine
People’s Committees survive.
In
December 2005, around dates when the PCP historically carried
out major military operations, for the first time in several years
there were successful ambushes of police patrols in the Huallaga
jungle and Ayacucho. The first area has been considered a stronghold
of PCP forces that seek a “political solution” to end the war
– and threatened armed action to force the government to grant
amnesty as a “way out” of the conflict.[1]
The second has been considered a focus of those who have
sought to continue the war. Were these attacks coordinated, as
the authorities claim? Since both actions were carried out in
the name of Chairman Gonzalo, it is very difficult to understand
which of these two contradictory political goals they were meant
to serve. There have been no major political statements clarifying
the party’s political orientation for years.
What
makes this situation all the more complicated is that Chairman
Gonzalo’s conduct in the course of this current trial has added
even greater weight to the serious and concurring evidence from
many different sources over the years that he is very likely to
have been the source of the call to end the war. How the PCP faced
this situation has been central to the development of the current
state of affairs.
Chairman
Gonzalo was captured in September 1992, as the people’s war seemed
to be surging forward. But an even greater blow to the party was
yet to come. In October
1993, Peru’s US-backed strongman Alberto Fujimori triumphantly
announced that Abimael Guzman had written him a letter asking
for negotiations to end the people’s war. Afterwards he released
a video of the chairman and Elena Iparraguirre (a top party leader
known as Comrade Miriam, Chairman Gonzalo’s companion) reading
the letters. Still photos showed the two flanked by other prisoners,
some known to be prominent leaders as well.
The
party’s Central Committee, comprising those party leaders remaining
free, rejected this call as a “Right Opportunist Line” (ROL).
“What goes against principles cannot be accepted,” the party said,
adding, “It is an international communist norm that one cannot
lead from inside prison.” But they said more than that: The whole
thing was a “hoax” concocted by the regime in collaboration with
the US and a “black grouplet” of renegade imprisoned (and now
expelled) party members. The idea that Chairman Gonzalo could
be associated with it was a “plot”, part of US-sponsored “low
intensity warfare” against the people’s war.[2]
The man who looked like Gonzalo, the party told people,
was an actor.
Any
revolutionary party would risk being shattered if its chair tried
to reverse previous positions touching on basic questions of orientation
and strategic concepts and advocated abandoning the revolutionary
war. This was even more the case for the PCP. At the core of the
party’s historical identity was the concept of jefatura, the idea
that Gonzalo was more than the chairman of the party’s Central
Committee, a jefe (literally chief, but here meant to designate
a special category of leader) who played a role not only through
the party but over and above it. Party members swore their unconditional
subordination to him personally. Now the man who had led the launching
and development of the people’s war seemed to be telling the party to struggle for a peace accord
with the Fujimori government to bring the war to an end. In return
for such an agreement, it was argued, the party should dissolve
the People’s Committees, and disband the army led by the party.
The
Central Committee’s “solution” to the problem, the idea that it
was all a “hoax”, might have seemed like the only way out to those
leaders determined not to surrender. But in fact, this idea turned
out to be a trap. It worked against the party’s ability to persist
in the people’s war for two reasons. First, because, if there
was certainly unclarity at the beginning as to the circumstances
of the call for peace accords, there was never real evidence that
it was a "hoax". How could continuing the war be sustained
on the basis of telling party members to shut their eyes as Chairman
Gonzalo's call for peace accords seemed more and more likely to
be the reality? Second, this approach tried to avoid the problem
of analysing and defeating the arguments being given for why it
was necessary to end the people’s war.
Chairman
Gonzalo and the Peace Accords
The
strongest argument for the “hoax” idea was that the calls for
peace accords really did go against what Chairman Gonzalo had
previously stood for. Shortly after his capture, when put in an
animal cage to be presented to the media and a howling pack of
police and other reactionaries, he mocked their triumphalism.
The arrest was nothing more than a “bend in the road” of the people’s
war, he said, shouting to be heard over the roaring motors of
a hovering military helicopter. He called for the party to persist.[3] Was it really true, however, that Chairman
Gonzalo could never change his thinking and come to a different
conclusion? Increasingly, the declared impossibility that such
a thing could happen became the main line of reasoning. Tautologically
(a circular form of argument in which the conclusion is taken
as the starting point), any evidence to the contrary was discredited
because given this impossibility, it couldn’t possibly be true.
When
the video came out, it was natural not just to accept it without
examination, given its source. Then Chairman Gonzalo’s relatives
abroad reported that the Fujimori regime, for its own reasons,
had let him and Iparraguirre telephone them and argue at length
for why he believed that the peace accords were necessary. This
could not be ignored or dismissed with the circular contention
that since the relatives became supporters of the peace accords,
they must have invented the phone calls to justify their stand.
The
same reasoning was used to reject a political interpretation of
an event that for many people turned the possibility that Chairman
Gonzalo was behind the ROL into a strong probability: the “about
face” of Margie Clavo (known as Comrade Nancy), a member of PCP’s
central leadership who along with Oscar Ramirez (Comrade Feliciano,
who assumed party leadership after Gonzalo’s capture), was a key
leader of the opposition to the peace accords line. When she was
briefly hauled before the media in handcuffs after her arrest
in 1995, she was defiant, shouting “Persist, persist, persist!”
in the people’s war. Yet six months later she appeared on television
again, telling an interviewer that she had been taken to talk
to Chairman Gonzalo and that he had convinced her of the necessity
of the accords. She had
agreed to this broadcast, she said, so that she could make public
self-criticism for her role in leading the Central Committee to
persist in the war instead of immediately accepting Chairman Gonzalo’s
appeal.[4]
Ramirez,
captured in 1999, was put in a cell next to Chairman Gonzalo.
He also said that Gonzalo argued with him for the peace accords
line, although Ramirez’s conclusion was not the same as Clavo’s.
In a letter to Peru’s president and in court in May 2004, he said
he had decided that Peru’s present “democracy is the best system”
and that it had been wrong to launch a revolutionary war in the
first place, criticising Chairman Gonzalo more for that rather
than for calling a halt to it.[5] Comrade Artemio, who succeeded Feliciano as
party leader and head of the forces that wanted to persist in
the war, later turned into a staunch supporter of the ROL even
though he remained free. He said that Chairman Gonzalo had talked
to him from prison, over a radio transceiver provided to Gonzalo
by the authorities, and won him to seeing that the war had to
be brought to an end.[6] Artemio
was reported to have explained that no one can claim that he and
others had not tried to maintain the people’s war, even though
it was impossible.
All
these party leaders had several things in common. When they had
one understanding of the possibility and need of continuing the
war, they acted bravely in defence of revolution, and when they
were convinced of a different understanding, they acted differently.
When the call to end the people’s war first came out, they argued
that the call attributed to Chairman Gonzalo was a hoax and that
the war could and should continue and that that was his real position.
After speaking to him, they concluded that the war could not and
should not continue because that was Gonzalo’s real position after
all. (The important difference is that Ramirez [Feliciano] became
a self-described anti-communist, while the others continued to
argue in the name of Maoism.) Chairman Gonzalo’s personal involvement
in the ROL is the most likely explanation of why the party’s entire
known central leadership turned against the continuation of the
people’s war.
Although
they pale in comparison with what the actions of these party leaders
have told us, there are other indications relating to public and
private statements by prominent figures and others, including
Iparraguirre’s mother (who has had regular contact with her daughter
and at times Chairman Gonzalo since 1993) and Gonzalo’s lawyer
Manuel Fajardo, who has visited him often since 2000. Alfredo
Crespo, the lawyer who defended Chairman Gonzalo before a military
tribunal in 1992 and was punished with almost 14 years in prison
in retaliation, joined Gonzalo’s defence team in December 2005,
shortly after he was released. He explained, “I have decided to
accept the defence of Dr Abimael Guzman because Shining Path,
also known as the Communist Party of Peru, now has a new political
line. It stands for national reconciliation and a political solution
to the problems derived from the war.”[7]
What
is remarkable is not the ever-accumulating body of facts but the
stubbornness with which they have been continually dismissed by
some people.
Chairman
Gonzalo’s recent courtroom appearances do not contradict his role
in arguing for a Peace Accord. At the televised opening session
of his second trial in 2004, a public event witnessed by more
than a hundred journalists, Chairman Gonzalo embraced all but
one of his co-defendants, including Clavo
– all publicly identified with the peace accords line.
(The exception was Ramirez.) Then he led them in standing together,
raising their fist and chanting, slowly and deliberately, while
the authorities frantically tried to restore order, “Long live
the Communist Party of Peru! Glory to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
Glory to the Peruvian people! Long live the heroes of the people’s
war!”
Nothing
in these chants is inconsistent with the ROL. This courtroom gesture,
which a leader of Chairman Gonzalo’s calibre must have carefully
thought out in advance, could not have contrasted more with the
cage speech he gave in far more difficult circumstances. He failed
to utter the one word that would have demarcated between the two
lines in the party, the word “Persist!”, the word that Clavo had
once shouted when she had only seconds to make her views known.[8]
His
stand at his current trial is no different. Although this time
independent filming has been prohibited to avoid letting Chairman
Gonzalo create another fiasco for the regime, a continuous audio
feed is available to journalists. There have been many reporters
in the courtroom itself on key occasions, although after nine
months the media in general is no longer covering it much. Chairman
Gonzalo’s courtroom strategy, his two lawyers have explained,
is to refuse to recognise the legitimacy of this trial, maintain
silence, await the inevitable conviction, and hope for an appeal
before the Inter-American Human Rights Court in Costa Rica, which
previously contested the legality of the military tribunal that
sentenced Chairman Gonzalo to life in prison right after his arrest.[9] If Chairman Gonzalo were opposed to the call
for peace accords, he could certainly have seized the opportunity
of the trial to denounce and dissociate himself from the other
defendents. In the past, no one has been able to stop him when
he wanted to speak. The man who managed to get his word out to
the world even when caged is still communicating.
The
Peace Accords Line and the Central Committee
Actually,
the strongest indication that the ROL was not just something cooked
up by the American and Peruvian intelligence services but that
Chairman Gonzalo was behind it was the line itself and the documents
that argued for it. They did not put forward a crude rejection
of Maoism, revolution or the necessity for people’s war. Instead,
they marshalled philosophical, historical and political arguments,
purporting to uphold and apply the principles of what the PCP
called Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought to the very real
problems the party was facing.
They
referred to two kinds of issues. The first was the objective situation.
Even before Chairman Gonzalo was taken prisoner, the PCP had begun
grappling with a changing international situation in the wake
of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, which, these documents concluded,
marked a “strategic ebb of the world revolution”. Further, there
were theoretical and practical problems in terms of how – and
under what conditions – the people’s war could hold on to its
achievements, in the face of some setbacks, and advance beyond
the level it had attained so far. There was the question of Yankee interference
and even invasion – and whether this might provide the opportunity
to broaden the united front and advance to the countrywide seizure
of political power. There was also debate about how much semi-feudalism
remained a factor.[10] In
short, there was a recognised urgent need to reassess the objective
situation and its consequences for the future course of the people’s
war. Chairman Gonzalo’s capture came at a time when the revolution
faced a crossroads.
The
second kind of argument advanced by these documents was the “problem
of leadership”: Chairman Gonzalo had been snatched up and much
of the rest of the party’s long-standing central leadership was
dead or in prison. It was said that there were no leaders who
could replace him in the needed timeframe to solve the first category
of problems. The ROL’s conclusion was that for many reasons, chief
among them the unfavourable international situation and above
all the “problem of leadership”, the people’s war could not continue.
Any attempt to do so would only lead to the destruction of the
party, and given the circumstances, even if the people’s war could
hold out it would eventually become a “war without perspective”
– with no clear goal or possibility of seizing nationwide political
power – and disintegrate into scattered “roving rebel bands”.
By entering into negotiations to call off the people’s war now,
the argument went, the
party could save itself from destruction at the hands of the enemy
and endure to relaunch the armed struggle under more favourable
conditions in the future.[11]
This
was not the empty ranting of a police agency. It represented a
coherent line. The questions it posed had to be analysed and answered.
No matter who first propounded it, this line could take hold among
party members because it offered answers – although wrong answers
– to crucial questions thrust forward by life itself. The revolutionaries
needed to start out by identifying, analysing and refuting these
arguments on the level of political line, that is, as ideas to
be examined and found correct or incorrect reflections of reality.
This included an objective (not wishful) assessment of the balance
of forces to determine whether or not it was in fact possible
to persist in the people’s war and whether or not, in the concrete
conditions prevailing at that time,
entering negotiations was a viable way for the party to
gain time to rebound or, in fact, a death trap.
Shortly
after the call for a peace agreement arose, the Committee of the
RIM (CoRIM), the leading body of the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement, examined the available information and documents in
an attempt to understand and guide RIM in taking part in a momentous
line struggle that would not only determine the future of the
revolution in Peru but have great consequences for RIM and the
international communist movement. The Committee argued
,“In these circumstances, it is incumbent upon RIM not
only to continue its support for the People’s War in Peru but
also to join this two-line struggle: to undertake the necessary
investigation, study, discussion and struggle to achieve a correct
and comprehensive understanding of all the questions involved
and on that basis render the most powerful support to the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
line and the comrades carrying it forward in Peru.” It established
criteria for evaluating the call for peace negotiations: “Do they
serve the task of seizing political power through revolutionary
warfare” and “safeguard the ‘fundamental interests of the people’
referred to by Mao, that is, the essential core of the people’s
power and the revolutionary armed forces?” After an intense process
of investigation, evaluation and struggle, RIM adopted a position
that the call for peace accords should be opposed and that a two-line
struggle should be waged against the Right Opportunist Line in
Peru and internationally. Regarding the role of the PCP chairman,
it said, “It is important to continue to try to determine Chairman
Gonzalo’s current views. The key question, however, is the line,
not the author.” Furthermore, the Call said that those who had
advocated the ROL should “repudiate this line... and retake the
revolutinary road.”[12]
As
part of this process CoRIM had also asked the Union of Iran Communists
– the predecessor of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
– to write a major analysis and criticism of the peace accord
arguments. That document concluded: “The people’s war is far from over. Partial defeat is not absolute
defeat.” The only way to preserve the achievements of the people’s
war and solve the party’s problems was to persevere in it. It
raised a clear warning: a people’s war, once launched, could not
be turned on and off like a water spigot, including
because the reactionaries themselves would use this to
crush the revolutionary forces.[13]
The
importance – and courage – of the firm stand against the call to end the revolutionary
war taken by the remaining PCP leadership cannot be overestimated.
The ROL was very wrong in arguing that the most important thing
of all was to save the party. In return, it was willing to surrender
the red political power that Gonzalo had called the “bone marrow”
of the revolution because of the way it brought about the conscious
involvement of the masses, and to dissolve the people’s army,
without which, as Mao said, “the people have nothing” to defend
their interests or even their lives. Such a step would objectively
mean betrayal of the hopes and sacrifices of the masses who had
taken up the people’s war, those who supported it and those around
the world who looked to it. This discrediting of Maoism would
have led to a far worse setback and demoralisation than would
have been produced by defeat alone. If it did this, instead of
leaving a precious legacy the party would turn into an obstacle
for the present and future generations of revolutionaries to push
aside – even if the reactionaries didn’t tear it apart and kill
as many of its members as they could.
However,
it was not at all inevitable that the only choice was between
glorious or inglorious defeat. One thing at stake was a point
of basic orientation: whether or not to persist in fighting for
the revolutionary interests of the masses, in line with communist
objectives, which meant figuring out how to continue that under
new and very difficult conditions. But this stand, however basic,
had to be grounded in something more than moral commitment. In
the end, as the actions of PCP leaders have told us, people act
on the basis of how they understand things, what they think is
possible and necessary.
The
enormity of the problem can’t be denied: the leadership which
had been responsible for developing the line and strategy for
the revolution could no longer do so with a correct orientation,
and instead was apparently calling for a reversal of the whole
strategic direction and principles they had been basing themselves
on. But the difficulty of what was required didn’t make it any
less necessary. Of course, those remaining had to work out the
answers to burning questions step by step and as required over
time. To do that, it really wasn’t possible to say, “OK, our chairman
has left our side, so let’s re-examine everything we ever believed
before we do anything else.” Maybe this is what the revolutionaries
thought they were avoiding with the “hoax” line. They had to persist,
and figuring out how to do that was as necessary as breathing.
But even if Chairman Gonzalo had turned out not to be behind the
call to end the people’s war, it would not have been true that,
as the Persist forces claimed, the thinking and line developed
under his leadership to that point was sufficient to lead the
people’s war to victory. Further, over time it would become impossible
to persist in the people’s war without a review of the party’s
line and practice – and theory and experience internationally
– to find the roots of the ROL and formulate new analyses and
strategic concepts. In other words, without making the breakthroughs
in theory and practice ceaselessly required for the advance of
this and any revolution.
This
would have been very hard for anyone, and perhaps the remaining
party leaders did not feel up to the task – especially since they
were probably up against their party’s chairman. But what else
could they do but use their heads and their grasp of Maoism and
play a real leadership role as best they could? Communist leaders
are not born. Leadership involves talents acquired in many different
ways and takes time to develop. But it is fundamentally a matter
of ideological and political line (orientation and method). It
means wielding Maoism to lead the party in seeking to understand
the world and change it. Ironically, the only way to refute the
thesis that the remaining party leaders were incapable of continuing
without Chairman Gonzalo was for them and new leaders who came
forward to rise to the occasion, raising their level as party
leaders on all fronts, including tackling and beginning to resolve
the line questions involved. It should also be pointed out that
the ROL’s charge that the remaining leaders were “incompetent”
was particularly cruel when it was the ROL itself that was the
biggest obstacle placed in the path of the revolution and those
trying to lead it forward.
The
“hoax” conception was tightly linked to and in fact became a vehicle
for a particular conception of political struggle in a communist
party. The CC adopted an attitude of trying to persevere through
practice alone (“smash the ROL through people’s war”) and ignore
the specific content of the ROL beyond generally denouncing it
as “black vomit”. Although the February 1994 PCP CC statement
said “pay attention to the two-line struggle”, it argued that
the stand of the ROL had put its members “outside the party by
their own free will”, as if there were no ROL inside the party
itself and no real need to wage two-line struggle against it.
To take up and attempt to refute the ROL’s arguments, some maintained,
would mean falling for the enemy’s trap and giving credence to
the hoax. Two-line struggle, it was said, should be waged among
revolutionaries. The ROL and its “black heads” only needed to
be “crushed” physically. PCP supporters abroad spread the attitude
that the most serious problem was not the peace accords line but
those who refused to accept the “hoax” theory.
One
of the most vociferous proponents of this approach was the Peruvian
journalist Luis Arce Borja. At the time RIM was adopting its position
“Rally to the Defense of Our Red Flag Flying in Peru” and calling
for a vigorous two-line struggle against the proposal for seeking
a peace accord, Arce Borja launched a frantic attack on RIM and
its Committee which, for a while, confused some of the friends
and supporters of the PCP. Arce criticized RIM’s understanding
of the two-line struggle in the PCP. He wrote, “To hold that the
‘peace agreement’ is part of a process of internal conflict within
the PCP portrays it as an organisation corroded by a scandalous
division, an organisation divided and undermined and on the very
verge of destruction. This point of view is similar to that of
the die-hard enemies of the revolution”[14]. In reply, an article
in A World to Win magazine pointed out that two-line struggle
is a permanent feature of all communist parties, even though it
has “high tides and low tides” in different periods, as a reflection
of the existence of the contending classes in society and the
resulting clash between ideas. What’s more, such two-line struggle
“is absolutely necessary to educate and transform the outlook
of party members and the masses.”[15] Arce reacted to this polemic by even more rabidly
casting RIM and any others who refused to accept the “hoax” thesis
into the camp of Fujimori and the imperialists.
Arce
is on record upholding this position regarding the “hoax” through
June 2004. Suddenly, during the trial in November of that year,
the great defender of the faith against all “doubt” was assailed
by doubts. A year later, Arce explodes. Chairman Gonzalo is a
“traitor” and has been since October 1993! He wrote the peace
letters after all. But this journalist lets slip not a word of explanation
or even mention of his previous position. The fault, Arce squeals,
lies with RIM for not having denounced Guzman back then and for
calling for his defence from the Peruvian state ever since![16]
Unwilling
to confront the task of waging the necessary two-line struggle,
the Persist forces were only digging themselves deeper and deeper
into a pit. Especially if Chairman Gonzalo was the head of the
ROL, but even if he were not, it was not the case that this line
represented deliberate betrayal and conscious treason of the kind
committed by someone who, for example, informs on comrades to
save their own life. It could represent a horrible mistake, meant
to save the revolution even while objectively leading to its death,
a wrong understanding and a wrong line — which would not negate
what was correct in the line associated with Gonzalo previously,
nor the disastrously harmful
nature of the ROL. The main question in determining whether a
political line is right or wrong is not one of subjective intent
– whether or not its proponents want revolution. Political lines
need to be examined in terms of what they call for and carry out,
and where that would lead, no matter what some people might want.
At any rate, no matter who put it forward and why, the ROL had
to be taken on as a line and refuted as such.
A
major two-line struggle against the ROL’s political line and the
orientation and method behind it and the beginning of a clear-eyed
summation of the experience of the past period and the situation
faced by the party and the revolution could lead to at least an
initial idea of how to move forward. This would mean trying to
work out how persevering in the people’s war could be linked to
and serve the building up of revolutionary strength and both hastening
and awaiting a change in the international and national situation,
as Mao said during a difficult period in the Chinese people’s
war, when countrywide political power could be seized as a base
area for the world proletarian revolution.
There
is no guarantee that if the Central Committee had taken this approach,
the people’s war would have been able to advance or even hold
out. First, there was no getting around the terrible fact that
the bulk of the party’s leadership had taken a wrong road. Second,
this was taking place on the stage of difficult objective conditions
as well. But it is particularly tragic that despite the wrong
assessment of the CC, there was a sharp two-line struggle – waged
by only one side, the ROL. By acting as if nothing had happened
– as if the ROL were not real, as if its emergence did not reflect
real questions, and as if Chairman Gonzalo could not possibly
have anything to do with it, the “hoax” line and the associated
conception of two-line struggle led those who wanted to persist
to act on the basis of an analysis and plan increasingly out of
accord with reality. No matter what other problems they faced,
the “hoax” line made a bad situation even harder to resolve in
a positive direction.
The
experience of the people’s war in Peru and the issues and lines
involved need to be thoroughly studied. The great achievement
in launching and carrying forward the People’s War and the subsequent
setback constitute a very important
experience of the Maoist movement in the period since the overthrow
of socialism in China. This experience, in both its grandeur and its pain, are part of the common heritage
of the whole international communist movement and especially RIM.
A materialist examination of the whole complex affair, including
the roles of all who took part in it, is necessary not only for
the re-orientation and rebuilding of the PCP by the genuine Maoist
forces in Peru but concerns all those who take seriously their
responsibility to lead revolution in other countries and on a
world scale. It is necessary to continue to defend the imprisoned
Chairman Gonzalo and others who initiated and led forward this
great uprising of the oppressed even if it is not possible to
uphold their current political positions. Ideological and political
assistance must be extended to those in Peru who seek to overcome
the setback of the revolution. Nothing is more despicable than
those who, seeing the value of their “capital” diminish, seek
to cut their losses and look for new investments.
There
are many aspects of political and ideological line that emerged
in the course of the People’s War and the two-line struggle in
the PCP that need to be studied, understood and debated more thoroughly.
New advances in Peru will come in conjunction with and as part
of the transformations and advances that are required of the international
communist movement as a whole.
Footnotes
1.
Huallaga Regional Committee and main PCP leader after 1999 Comrade
Artemio. See La Republica transcription of radio interview, 16
April 2004, and its own interview with him, 28 August 2004. Also
the British Channel 4 TV interview broadcast 7 January 2004.
2.
CC statements of 7 October 1993 and February 1994. A World to
Win magazine no. 21.
3.
Cage speech, AWTW no. 18.
4.
Later it was disclosed that the television programme had been
made in cooperation with Fujimori’s right-hand man Vladimiro Montesinos,
who supervised the filming. In fact, it seemed that Clavo had
been following a previously-agreed script when she spoke. This
is not surprising, given that the regime and Clavo had come to
a temporary agreement in pursuit of different ends.
5.
A copy of this unpublished letter sent abroad by a reliable source.
Its content was substantially repeated in a 10 April 2003 written
interview in Caretas magazine.
6.
La Republica interview, 28 August 2004. After the fall of the
Fujimori government in 2000, documents putting forward the ROL
concluded that because the CC members remaining free had refused
to take up the call to negotiate with Fujimori directly, a peace
accord was no longer possible. Nevertheless, the immediate goal
remained forcing the regime to accept a “political solution”,
including amnesty for most prisoners and those like Artemio with
a price on their heads. After carrying out an implicit ceasefire
with the government for several years, in 2004 Artemio announced
his forces would return to armed struggle if “a political solution
to the war” were not achieved in six months
7.
Agenciaperu.com, 18 December 2005. He has confirmed this stand
in private letters as well.
8.
If some revolutionary-minded people abroad took Chairman Gonzalo’s
chants as proof that he was opposed to the peace accord line all
along, it is because they have not understood the real terms of
the two-line struggle in the PCP – that it has not been between
some people who opposed revolution and others who condemned it,
but between two currents of thought that both claimed the mantle
of Maoism, even though they called for opposite policies. This
is why lines have to be studied before Marxism can be distinguished
from revisionism.
9.
Radio Programas Peru interview with Manual Fajardo, Gonzalo’s
attorney, broadcast 17 October 2005. This approach was confirmed
in letters received in April 2006 by prominent supporters of the
International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Abimael
Guzman (IEC) abroad, signed by Crespo and Iparraguirre, who repeated
her references, written in other correspondence and statements
over the years, to “the strategic turn and the political solution
that we had been proposing since ‘92”.
10.
This was discussed at the party Central Committee’s Third Plenum
in 1992. In addition to mentioning other political, military and
theoretical problems the party was facing, the Third Plenum report
reflects the heavy toll taken by the prison massacre of previously
captured party leaders in May 1992. The main document is unpublished
(some shorter documents are available at www.redsun.org). But
Chairman Gonzalo alluded to some main points in his cage speech,
particularly the question of whether or not the war had exhausted
the potential of anti-feudal revolution and had to go over to
a national liberation struggle.
11.
The foundational ROL document, purportedly a transcription of
a speech given in prison by Chairman Gonzalo, “Take Up and Fight
for the New Decision and the New Definition” (Asumir). There are
several slightly different transcripts circulating. An early,
relatively short version which appeared in a Lima daily in January
1993 was reprinted as a background document for studying the line
struggle in Peru in AWTW no. 23.
12.
“Rally to the Defence of Our Red Flag Flying in Peru”,
AWTW no. 21. Also see the 11-point programme of the peace accord
forces, reprinted as reference material in that same issue.
13. “It’s Right to Rebel”, AWTW no. 21. This document was
first circulated internally in RIM as part of the process of
investi!gation and study. It was published in October 1995 along
with the aforementioned Call “Rally to the Defense of the Our
Red Flag Flying in Peru”.
14.
“Trappist Monks Turn Into Village Charlatans: Another Summersault
of the Circus Acrobats of RIM”, El Diario Internacional, March
1995. About half of this article, including its main points, was
reprinted as reference material in AWTW no. 22.
15.
“An Initial Reply to Arce Borja: On the Maoist Conception
of Two-Line Struggle,” AWTW no. 22.
16.
“The Red Guards of Political Trafficking”, EDI, January 2006.
Note that Arce Borja’s only constants are hatred for RIM and very
special venom for Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist
Party, USA, a founding party of RIM. Also see “Peru: The Remnants
of a Betrayed Revolution”.
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