"The oppressed are allowed to decide every few years which members of the oppressor class will represent them and crush them in parliament." Marx
In countries like those of Latin America, elections have solely been the instrument of domination by feudal landlords and big capitalists; they are a periodic renovation of that domination or for the preservation and legitimization of military coups and the malformed constitutions they generate, as is the case in Peru. The recent "presidential" in Peru have been, as they must be within the imperialist social order, an instrument in the hands of the comprador bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic bourgeoisie that through contradictions and constraints has determined the class character of the elections. From this we can deduce the following:
1) The Peruvian state is a landlord-bureaucratic state, a dictatorship of feudal landlords and the big bourgeoisie under the control of North American imperialism. The people's alternative: fight for the construction of a state of New Democracy that requires the destruction of the old order.
2) The Peruvian state, like every state, is sustained, defended and developed through the use of violence. The people's alternative: revolutionary violence, surrounding the cities from the countryside.
3) The elections are a means of domination by landlords and the big bourgeoisie. They are not for the people, they are not instruments of transformation or "modernization", nor a means to overturn the power of the ruling class. From this we derive the correct line of using them with the goals of agitation and propaganda.
The general elections of 1995, as they must, have been presented as a defense of the decrepit existing order and the evolution of Peruvian society. In this framework the parties like Cambio 90, Nueva Mayoria, Union Por el Perú (UPP), Fim, IU, Renovación, and APRA uphold and defend goals and objectives that are fundamentally the same, and are only differentiated in form and means and methods.
As even the state apparatuses admit, in these elections more than 300,000 members of the armed forces and police have been mobilized. Furthermore they have mobilized all their institutions, as well as unleashing propaganda not only to get votes, but to pressure the population at bayonet point to vote and fight the People's War; all of this aside from the lowest and most vile demagogy. We emphasize the growth of direct participation in Peruvian politics not only of the repressive forces, but of the Catholic Church "as a spiritual power". At the same time it is worth noting the performance of evangelism in the elections and the so-called non-governmental organizations, within which Yankee imperialism acts. These elections more openly shown how everything is useful and that the reactionaries, in the midst of their internal contentions, are capable of using everything to defend their group interests--what might they be capable of in the struggle against the people and the revolution? Within the course of the elections they have unleashed four tactics:
1) That they have gained a military and diplomatic victory over Ecuador in the recent border problem.
2) They deny that the state is being hit harder than ever by the People's War, propagandizing that the revolution was "defeated" and 99% of its leaders dead or in prison. This illusion of theirs is only reflects the psychological war against the civilian population.
3) They deny the record growth of at least 5 million people plunged into hunger and misery as a consequence of the politics of genocide in the countryside. They maintained there was an "economic miracle", that the people were "modernized" and better off than before, as each government in turn has crowed.
4) Absolute control of the electoral process through the army and the SIN, with the complicity of Gavidia the OAS representative (another thug and former narco-president of Colombia) and the NGO "Transparencia", and appendage of Yankee imperialism. Thus they carried out machinations with impunity where even the dead voted; traps, schemes and fraud in the overseeing of the elections against the background of repression and massacres mainly in the countryside which reeks with the stench of fascism.
Taking into account the approximate figures of the "Total Calculation of the General Political Elections of April 1995" of the Court of National Elections, approximately 30% of the eligible voters didn't vote. To this number must be added the void and blank votes.
What stands out is the extremely low turnout for traditional candidates, including the revisionists of the United Left that barely got 0.5% of the vote. Where are the masses they frequently boast of controlling? The so-called Partido Unidad (Unity Party) of Del Prado, expelled from the PCP in the 1960s, allied itself with the representative of the big bourgeoisie Perez de Cuellar and thus was buried for good. Here is the self-proclaimed triumph of "democracy" and the supposed defeat of "terrorism"!
The low percentage of the votes implies the collapse and extinction of the old traffickers of Peruvian politics and the consolidation of the "two hills" that contend for power: the genocidal military leadership with Fujimori at the head and People's Liberation Army led by the PCP.
Developing may actions in different parts of the country, combatants of the People's Liberation Army (EPL) boycotted the elections, dealing hard blows to the rotten reelection campaign of the genocidal Fujimori, who seeks to reinvigorate bureaucratic capitalism and contain the growing People's War that will complete 15 years of victories this May.
With the slogan Don't Vote!, the combatants boycotted the farcical elections, applying the four forms of struggle: agitation and armed propaganda, sabotage, annihilations and guerrilla actions such as:
On March 26, a contingent of the PCP overran the police barracks of Julca and Bolívar in the department of La Libertád. 11 police were annihilated and many soldiers were captured. The officers Miguel Ganoza, Fidel Perez, and Gaspar Alvarado, chief of the office of forced recruitment of the Army were brought to justice in the middle of the public plaza.
On March 29th, after chasing out the members of Fujimori's army, a PCP contingent overran for several hours the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho, the birthplace of the People's War in 1980.
On March 31, at least 200 combatants of the PCP chased away Fujimori's genocidal police from their barracks and were joyfully greeted by the people. One barracks was destroyed, the town hall was burned down, and the people held a big meeting in the town square and listened with joy to the message of the revolutionary Maoists. Hundreds of youth then joined the ranks of the Maoists.
In Villa El Salvador the streets were painted with the slogan DON'T VOTE! and various balloting tables where taken apart by Maoist contingents in sector 3 among others.
Similarly in the city of Huaraz the chief of the notorious paramilitary force (peasant ronda) Felix Epifanio Sanchez was annihilated. This killer of northern peasants was the most cruel and arrogant of the genocidal army in the north.
In Lima various imperialist firms were sabotaged; also in Lima over 6 local offices of Cambio 90 were turned to garbage by separate attacks of the Maoist guerrillas.
In Leonicio Prado, Huanuco, the comrades took over the military base of Venenillo and five other military bases were simultaneously taken and then destroyed.
In Piura (Huancabamba) and Huancayo there was a blackout and then an immense explosion in a military barracks. Other actions occurred in Junín, Pasco, Apurimac and Huancavelica. In the north there was an armed strike on April 8th, in Tocache and Uchiza there was an armed strike for four days (April 6th -April 10th); in Ayacucho the armed strike of April 8-9 paralyzed the entire city; in Callao, Ventanilla, Comas, Tahuantinsuyo and in Cusco there was sabotage and agitation with armed propaganda; in the central highway in Lima the shanty town dwellers mobilized with flyers, blocked the roads with stones, tires and other material, thus showing their rejection of the false electoral circus of the genocidal dictator, while his cops with arms in hand and with painted faces vainly deployed themselves in the major locations. Thus the Maoist guerrillas were able to implacably continue their actions.
IMPERIALISTS, LACKEYS AND SENDEROLOGISTS: WHERE IS YOUR DEFEATED SENDERO? The crude slander of a defeated PCP ended up as one more stupidity rather than as psychological wrecking ball, like everything the police and armed forces of the landlord-bureaucrat state do. Just one more farce that not even the Yankee advisors believe any more when Fujimori opens his mouth. WHAT THE REACTIONARIES DON'T UNDERSTAND: the People's War is in charge of an integrated force made up of the best of human element in Peru and is not comparable to M-19 in Colombia, the FMLN in El Salvador or the fleeting group in Chiapas, Mexico; all of them were opportunistic fighters or armed adventurists with no more ideology than the providentialist chimera that has led them to get bogged down in situations with no way out except capitulation. These fighters have never constituted nor do they constitute the living expression of a Communist Party, unlike our People's War led by the PCP, which develops despite the temporary bends in the road inevitable in any revolution, unconquered on the shores, mountains or jungle.
The hallucination of the reactionaries is to see the People's War broken down. Thus, in every election, the vulgar journalists, the senderologists and the political demagogues fill their mouths saying "the big loser in the elections has been Sendero"; or when there is a pause in the acts of revolutionary violence they trumpet that "Sendero is dying". When there are violent acts the newspapers and television stations say "Sendero is in a desperate crisis", "they have been defeated politically and militarily", "they no longer have popular support", as three of the most nauseating rats on the Peruvian political spectrum, the senderologists Carlos Tapia, Raúl Gonzales and Degregori, have been saying now for 15 years (see Oiga magazine, March 20, 1995). The people know them now and with their rejection of the elections they have placed them permanently in the place where every reactionary should be: the puddle of opportunism. In other words, no matter how they look at the situation, for these reactionary gentlemen the PCP is already extinguished (didn't they say the same thing in 1991-92?). Nevertheless the massive purchases of helicopter gunships and heavy weapons, the cries for help to the Pentagon and Clinton, and the expenditure of billions of intis to cover the costs of the counterinsurgency, more areas are subjected to a state of emergency and the suspension of all basic civil rights, and their is a growing budget for the repression of the people.
Once more the example which hits home to them is that in Peru, for almost 15 years the proletariat under the leadership of the PCP leads the People's War, with the results that everyone recognizes. In the face of this recognition there is no slander or genocide that can prevail. The