"In Peru, socialism will not be made by tracing or copying others. It will be forged by its own historic creation." Jose Carlos Mariategui, founder of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP).
Although it may seem idle to repeat it, theoretical discourse in a Western industrialized country as compared with a backward country where a People's War is developing is (and must be) completely different.To understand what is happening in Peru, we need to analyze the historic roots and the social fabric that generated the armed struggle started on May 18, 1980 by the PCP.
The facts we will present in an effort to explain the People's War in Peru which undoubtedly have big repercussions throughout Latin America and the world are, by necessity, mere shadow of what is represented by the centers of this reflection.
The actions of the PCP are rooted in the context of an international situation of "sharp confrontation between revolution and counterrevolution." This Party indicates "three fundamental contradictions." The first and principal contradiction: between oppressed nations and imperialist superpowers; second: between proletariat and bourgeoisie; the third is inter-imperialist. The Party highlights the determining role of revolutionary struggles, although history does not unfold mechanically.
We are living in "the most profound crisis of capitalist society" (Miguel Ballestero), which is greatly contributed to by the voraciousness of finance capital with an exorbitant external debt.
FACTUAL SUMMARY
PERU is one of the six richest countries in the world in terms of natural resources; 24.5 million inhabitants, of which close to 9 million live in Lima. In the capital, about 1 million are in the middle and upper classes combined; approximately eight million are jammed into the marginal neighborhoods (shantytowns), where people don't eat one day a week, and only once a day. About 80% of inhabitants are from the Andean sierra. More than 85% of the active population is jobless or underemployed. Out of every 1,000 children, 250 die before reaching the age of five from malnutrition. Life expectancy: 55 years; in Ayacucho, 45. External debt: $20 billion. The dollars from the drug trade (approx. 1.5 billion) are made official through a decree that authorizes the "repatriation" of foreign currency without investigation of its origins.HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Colony
When the Spaniards invaded Tahuantinsuyu [1] in 1532, they found a vast empire that was extraordinarily organized and which met all the needs of its inhabitants. The basic social structure was an agrarian community, the Ayllu, more than 10,000 years old, with ethnic groups that developed very advanced technology (without using the wheel) which were capable of transforming infertile regions into agricultural ones. The community was not immutable due to many factors and, over times, a great variety of forms associated with other types of social organization developed, without losing the same basic characteristics.Toward the Seven Century AD, the State appeared with the Wari (Wari people populated Ayacucho, the first great city of South America) and the hierarchical forms of leadership and appropriation of the surplus value of collective labor multiplied. Later, the Incas of Cuzco conquered them, widened and perfected this empire.
Without the existence of money, the concept of ownership of land was unknown, only its usefulness was evident. The land was known as "Pacha Mama," a myth that produced plants, animals and people, belonging to everyone and no one, like the sun. The strict community ethic was based on an emotional relationship with the land through labor, happiness and finally life itself. The community ethic was (and is) implacable but fair. Democracy existed (but different from that in the West), men and women had the same rights; but there were also elements of authoritarianism proceeding from other social structures. Many branches of the Incan bureaucracy and priesthood developed forms of servitude that tended toward slavery.
In 1532, the empire was in crisis, with many peoples and overseers anxious to liberate them from the Incan theocracy. Some of them allied with the Spanish, thus making the conquest of Tahuantinsuyu possible. A double contradiction is initiated: Andean peasants against the Europeans, and local lackeys (curacas) along with the Europeans against the communal dwellers (comuneros). It is the germ of an as yet nonexistent nation and of the class struggle, a very complicated process of innumerable contradictions in the midst of the unprecedented violence of the conquistadors with the Andean people in constant rebellion. Thus, in Peru, an orgy of blood and gold totally disparaged cultures and social structures, joined in a way that produced, in our country, the first synthesis strongly marked by the native stamp.
Here a reflection on the "national identity" is fitting, a much exploited theme used by the "culturist" offensive of the North American imperialists to derail the masses from the revolutionary struggle. In this respect, their document Santa Fe II, a strategy for Latin America in the 1990s, is very clear: "Nevertheless, the fundamental problem is cultural" (p. 5). The "culturist" offensive understands the peasants' movement, among others, whose "political program" consists of a national identity based in the ancient cultural values, a "nativism" (paseismo or indiginismo). In Peru the authentic nationality "can only be achieved where there is unity in all fields." In referring to the subversive threat, Santa Fe II says: "it grew in the last decade ( . . . ). The possibility of having to involve the North American military forces to fight this was publicly proposed in a Congressional committee (.. . ) The price that the U.S. might be obliged to pay will surpass whatever we might have paid in 200 years of our history."
THE SECOND LIBERAL REPUBLIC AND MARIATEGUI
In no other Spanish colony did the aristocracy fight the independence movement with such tenacity as in Peru. Despite this, with the founding of the liberal Republic (1823), the aristocracy retook power and fabricated a history to suit its interests, minimizing the role of the principal protagonist: the people. After independence, the colony continued functioning but with a different label. At the beginning of this century a man appeared who revolutionized Peru: Jose Carlos Mariategui (1894-1930), a self-taught intellectual who was the first real Marxist in Peru and Latin America. He carried out a giant labor to spread Marxism ("I confess to being a Marxist-Leninist of conviction"), he rediscovered native values, revealing the true history of the country. Mariategui characterized Peru as semi-feudal and semi-colonial. He proposed (violent) revolution through stages with the peasantry as the principal force. These theses were published before those of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. He founded the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP) and the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), affiliated with the Third International.The wars of independence financed by English capital had opened up a continent-wide market, subsequently hoarded by North American capital, and in Peru a comprador bourgeoisie had arisen that had no similarity to the European bourgeoisie which was the product of a long development.
U.S. ALLIANCE FOR PROGRESS AND THE ROLE GENERAL VELASCO
In 1961 the U.S. launched its new political strategy for Latin America, inspired by the thesis of the Center for the Economic development for Latin America (CEPAL). Belaunde Terry of Accion Popular Party, who was the president of Peru (1965-1968), was not able to carry it out. In October 1968, army general Juan Velasco Alvarado led a coup and implemented the "Alliance for Progress" program. Thus, the U.S. hoped to contain and eventually stop the revolutionary rise of the masses and displace the national capitals, invested in agriculture, into the industrial sector, that is to say "replace feudalism with capitalism" (Gunder Frank).In January 1964, in the IV National Conference of the PCP, the Maoist fraction expelled the bureaucratic leadership of the Party, taking 85% of the militants; in this process the Red Fraction (a fraction in the Leninist sense) of the Regional Committee of Ayacucho played a determining role. In 1965, the focoist guerrilla Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) launched an armed struggle led by Luis de la Puente Uceda. It ended in only six months in a blood bath.
General Velasco's "revolution" defrauded the masses, which rapidly redoubled their struggles with an increasingly political character. On the other hand, the imperialist investments were increased greatly by such companies as Toyota, Volvo, Honda, Bayer, Massey-Ferguson, etc. The foreign debt in 1968 to 1972 went from $690 million to $1 billion. In 1975, Velasco was displaced by his Minister of Economy and Finance, army general Francisco Morales Bermudez.
AYACUCHO
In the decade of the 1960s, the "most dangerous guerrilla struggle in the world" according to Reagan, surged in Ayacucho. The leader of the Regional Committee of Ayacucho of the PCP and leader of the Red Fraction was Dr. Ruben Abimael Guzman Reynoso (born in 1934), a philosophy professor in the University of Huamanga (Ayacucho) since 1961. He has one doctorate in philosophy: "The Kantian Theory of Space," another in law: "The Bourgeois State." He is exceptionally cultured: "the most brilliant mind since Mariategui" declared former professors to the Peruvian magazine Caretas. President Gonzalo, dedicated himself to politicizing students, specially to children of Quechua speaking peasants, and of forming investigating teams to systematically study the country. One of these intellectuals was the sharp analyst of Peruvian reality, professor Antonio Diaz Martinez (a visiting professor at the University of Geneva). He was assassinated by the corrupt genocidal government of Alan Garcia on June 19, 1986, along with 300 other political prisoners in the prison at El Fronton, Lima.After long scientific investigations, it was proven that the central theses of Mariategui were still valid; however, they needed to be developed. The Red Fraction declared the immediate task to be: "The reconstitution of the Party, especially in the understanding of Mariategui's thoughts," all this in the midst of a prolonged internal two-line ideological struggle.
President Gonzalo's teams traveled throughout the country, secretly politicizing small nuclei of men and women, and fundamentally collecting scientific data. In the 1970s, popular pressure grew rapidly and the U.S. had to replace, in Latin America, the "authoritarian" governments of military regimes with "democratic" ones. In 1978, general Morales Bermudez convened the Constituent Assembly to sanction "structural changes." Elections were set for 1980 and the left revisionist parties (except the PCP) were legalized, up to that point the fake "left" had talked about "the armed struggle." They accepted, agreeing among themselves as the United Left (IU) that the objective conditions to start the armed struggle did not exist and that they must "accumulate forces." Only the PCP, who had for years characterized the military government as fascist and corporativist and declared the need for "centering ourselves in the revolutionary project and not the bourgeois project." The PCP affirmed that: "Peruvian society is living through a developing revolutionary situation, this is the fundamental question and the point of departure of proletarian politics." "It was the rigorous calculation of the historical situation of Peru by the Party ( . . . ) that oriented this revolutionary organization to start the armed struggle."
The field was cleared, the phony left was unmasked, they were part of the rotten system. "Let the armed groups without arms sprout and flourish!" [2], said President Gonzalo in his famous speech "For the New Flag" (June 1979). On May 17, 1980, on the eve of the presidential elections, in order to demonstrate that the Party was on the offensive, the people began their armed uprising in Chuschi, Ayacucho, burning ballot boxes and exploding dynamite, because they had no other arms. No one thought them to be important. Belaunde said they would be wiped out in a month.
THE SHANTYTOWNS
Toward the end of the 1950s, the flow of migrants from the Andes (sierra) to Lima grew rapidly. These were not "acultured," "ruthless," "ignorant" nor "declassed" people like the reactionary sociologists like to say. They are the heart of Peru. They have organized some 6,000 provincial clubs where they perpetuate all the manifestations of Andean culture, and they constitute the bulk of the famous "informal sector" (street vendors) that represent a parallel economic structure that, according to objective estimates, represents some 40% of the nation's internal commerce. The ties to mother land remains: each migrant has at least a few furrows in the Andes cultivated by the family or community. In reality, the community, with its astonishing capacity for adaptation, has reconstituted itself in the shanty towns, creating new organizational forms. Naturally they also generate delinquency and vices, but all in all they constitute the iron belt surrounding Lima, and in the shanty towns, much to the regret of Fujimori's massive massacres, the members of the PCP are "like fish in the sea." Not being stupid, the military has already divided them into grids on a map for an eventual strategic bombing with an estimated 250,000 casualties from the first phase. This is part of the U.S. advice called "low intensity warfare," part of the tactic of "masses against masses" that the lackey Fujimori vainly attempts to implement.
OLD CLICHES AND STUBBORN REALITY
The People's War is advancing and the imperialist press continues to emit old cliches: "fanatics, millenarians, Pol Potian." Henri Favre of CNRS (Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques), the first Frenchman who aspired to earn his beans as a "senderologist," declared in Lima's El Nuevo Diario of August 28, 1986: "Instead of trying to analyze senderismo, many politicians have confined themselves until today to exorcizing a terrifying phantasm. Because to affirm that senderismo is a millenarian', archaic', pre-political' movement is to submit to performing an exorcism and not analysis. (...) As extreme as it may be, the senderista violence is not gratuitous, uncontrolled nor indiscriminate. It is inscribed within a strategy of seizing power toward the realization of a social project that is not at all Inca' nor Andean' that is neither indigenous' nor utopian'."In 1985 the Minister of War of the Peruvian state declared: "Yes, it is a war and for this reason we apply the principle of national security." Nevertheless, those same generals who hold power in Peru do not respect the laws of war (established by international agreements signed by the old State) against those they hypocritically call "terrorists." From another perspective, on February 18, 1988, Virgilio Roel, a respected economist, declared what the world already knows: "We are living in a revolution and we don't wish to see this." On April 24, 1989, retired Army major Fernandez Salvatecci, former chief of intelligence for Velasco, told El Diario: "No one can deny that the PCP is winning the war. That party is developing a revolution."
General Mercado Jarrin (ex-prime minister for Velasco, a West Point Graduate) told the magazine Que Hacer of DESCO in April 1989: "No war in history, and this is a war, is ever won without taking the initiative ( . . . ). Unfortunately we are taking the defensive ( . . . ). The process of subversion is happening very fast and occupying large areas of the national territory." By official statistics this is more than 30% of the country. In Que Hacer, April 1989, Raul Gonzalez, a sociologist with close ties to the Peruvian police, a "senderologist" rabidly opposed to the PCP whines: "In Upper Huallaga" (an extensive and dense jungle region) "Sendero Luminoso can count on the support of the villages that do not question their style of making politics nor their right to act in the zone. Sendero has gained a legitimacy that the Peruvian State never achieved, Sendero has done it voluntarily not by way of terror as the skewed official versions have it ( . . . ). In Upper Huallaga the Peruvian state does not exist." Obviously, he was calling for a massive army intervention in the Huallaga which became a reality years later.
On May 24, 1989, Dr. Alfredo Torero, vice president of the National University of San Marcos, an internationally renowned linguist said: "This non-conventional war is being won by those who started it, because they are taking the offensive. In military terms, those who are on the offensive are assured of victory from that point."
THE GENOCIDAL "DEMOCRACY"
It is said that the guerrilla war established the violence, but in fact it existed for centuries, implacably exercised by the dominant classes. This violence was not exclusively from arms: hunger, mistreatment and forced labor in mines and fields caused far more deaths than bullets, but these deaths are generally "invisible" until they are revealed by a revolution like the PCP's. Who paid any attention to Peru before the People's War was launched? Obviously only the imperialists in order to sack Peru's resources and exploit its labor force, and now who is interested in Peru? The peoples of the world pay close attention to the development of the People's War."Misery marginalizes important groups of humans. It is an injustice that cries to the heavens." (Assembly of the Conference of Latin American Bishops, Medellin, 1968.) "The Church discovers with astonishment the cruel realities it is in the middle of without paying attention to it." (Monsignor Luciano Metzinger. FAIM Development Magazine No. 56, February 1989. Paris, CCFD.) The human rights violations in Peru are in the public domain. For the last 17 years and in a growing way (the principal departments are under a state of emergency and military curfews), the military conducts daily sacking, rapes, tortures, assassinations and disappearances of men, women and children.
In 1986 a Senate Commission on Human Rights asked the army sub-lieutenant Hurtado, responsible for the massacre of peasants: "Why did you kill the babies?" "Because they were seeds of terrorists." Few years later, he was given immunity by the regime and the Minister of War called him a "hero of democracy" and promoted him.
The denunciations by Amnesty International, Catholic organizations and other human rights groups of the atrocities being committed by Fujimori's government could fill a book. The universities have been raided over and over again by troops, students killed and disappeared, the "freedom of the press" trampled on such as in the case of El Diario (car bombing of the office, dynamite attacks, detention of its editors and journalists). Janet Talavera, Director of El Diario, was assassinated during the prison massacre in Cantogrande. Luis Morales, the reporter for El Diario in Ayacucho was assassinated by the Fujimori regime. More than a hundred journalists at the national level have been imprisoned. All these crimes were denounced to the international community, including the Human Rights Commission of the OAS and UN.
There are many journalists who are not members or supporters of the PCP that report the truth but are later repressed by the regime. Who does not recall the genocides in the three prisons of Lima (one of them a women's prison) on the 18th and 19th of June, 1986, during the inauguration of the Congress of the Socialist International in that city? The political prisoners rebelled, demanding the government complies with an agreement it signed on October 1985 (previous to this the forces of order had burned 40 political prisoners with flamethrowers) that guaranteed a minimum of humane treatment. On that 18th of June, the genocidal thief Garcia Perez, in his role as chief of the armed forces, ordered them to intervene in the prisons. This was named "Operation Savage." More than 300 unarmed men and women (85% of them still awaiting trial) were killed after heroic resistance, dug entrenched in their dungeons. "They died singing their revolutionary hymns and the Internationale" (testimony of the guards). Not even the New York Times could conceal the crime: "The horrible and premeditated massacre of political prisoners"; for a long time they had denounced to the world that there was a plan of extermination. An ex-Minister of the Interior, general Cisneros, had stated a principle: "If we kill 60 people and among them there are three senderistas, then this is good." This was applied to the letter during the government of Garcia Perez and is applied today under butcher Fujimori.
In 1984 a small guerrilla group appeared, the MRTA (usurping the name of the revolutionary Tupac Amaru), they very well equipped and addicted to press conferences and conciliatory "peace accords." In July 1985, when Alan Garcia assumed the presidency, the MRTA gave him a year's cease fire "in order for him to comply with what he had promised to the masses during election time." After a year, they resumed their actions. Their leader, Polay (ex-APRA member and friend of Alan Garcia) and all their top leaders where captured while they were bargaining for "peace accords." In sum, this is a revisionist group that was rapidly extinguished.
SOME ASPECTS OF THE PCP
They say that "the PCP is mysterious and publishes nothing." Cynthia McClintlock, an American senderologist (a frequent guest at Congressional hearings on Peru) cites her Peruvian counterpart Ivan Degregori head of the CIA-funded NGO CEP in Peru: "Sendero has only published a couple of pamphlets." [Peru's S.L. Rebellion, in Power and Popular Protest by Susan Eckstein, p. 83] Later she paraphrases the police-sociologist Raul Gonzales: "Sendero receives money from the drug trade . . . Sendero hail's cocaine as an anti-imperialist weapon" [Senderologist Gonzales, Andean Report, March 1987, p. 38]. First, no party in the world has published as many doctrinaire documents as the PCP.For years, thousands of these publications have been circulating in the world. What is happening is that these senderologists are doing their dirty work as servants of Yankee imperialism and each government in turn so they look only at one side of the coin. On the question of drugs, the enemy has never been able to prove their accusations because it is simply untrue. On the contrary, it is well proven that the Peruvian government, their narco-generals and Fujimori's close advisors are in up to their necks with the drug traffickers.
The PCP is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought party, which signifies (and is constantly being reemphasized) the application to Peruvian conditions of the three previous stages of Marxism, with Maoism being principal.
With the Fifth National Conference (November 1965) "in a two-line struggle the fraction ( . . . ) approached the point of struggling for the construction of the three instruments of the revolution: Party, the army and the united front" (as indicated by Mariategui) [3].
In Latin America we tend to see broad fronts based on multi-party alliances, of a legal nature when possible, such as the United Left (IU) in Peru, the FMLN in El Salvador, the Zapatistas, the Workers' Party in Brazil. All these fronts have failed disastrously.
The United Front of the PCP is a class front and is forged "in the crucible of the armed struggle." It is constituted by the worker-peasant alliance and "the petty bourgeoisie of a broad stratum, as is appropriate in an underdeveloped country, who see their dreams destroyed by the inexorable pauperization that the social order imposes." The national bourgeoisie is "weak and lacks capital, develops unevenly and is torn between revolution and counterrevolution, while each new crisis ruins them and pushes them to the limits of asphyxiation." "These are the four classes that, historically, make up the people in our land." [4]
In the internal struggle, the red fraction reemphasized "the necessity to count on a Party that is ideologically and organically centralized" and proposed "the Reconstitution of the Party." This task was carried out in three periods:
- "Determination of the Reconstitution" (following a proposed strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside), "putting the bulk of the Party in the countryside," etc. "Retake Mariategui and develop his ideas, the key word is develop', because it is not enough to retake him. There were two key reasons for this: the development of Marxism-Leninism by Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the development of bureaucratic capitalism."
- "Application of the Reconstitution." This follows a broad analysis of "the fascist and corporativist government of Velasco." In February of 1970, the Party is split, and the red fraction assumes leadership. There is a continuing exposition on "left liquidationism" that "negated the possibility of mass work because the fascists gave no room for open work" and which upheld the "relative stability of capitalism." This "left liquidationism" was defeated in 1975 in a Plenary session of the Central Committee. [5] "In this period the political comprehension of Peruvian society advanced profoundly ( . . . )." "The opportunist tendency of tailing a faction of the big bourgeoisie, invoking unity and struggle with the national bourgeoisie" is beaten."
- "Culmination of the Reconstitution. Culminate and lay the foundations" (bases for the launching of the armed struggle), after a long process of an internal struggle where right opportunism is opposed to violent revolution, the armed struggle, and people's war. Finally, the "right opportunist line is crushed in the Ninth Broadened Plenum of the Central Committee of May 1979, when under the slogan of define and decide' the initiation of the armed struggle was approved." "The Reconstitution had ended and a new stage had begun, the stage of armed struggle." The Eight Plenum had already sanctioned the "backbone of the armed struggle" and defined that in Peru, the revolutionary war must develop as "a unity in the countryside as well as in the city." [6] "The peasantry is the principal motive force as the proletariat rises up and develops as the leading class of our revolution."
The people's war in Peru has specific characteristics. "People's war is universally applicable, according to the character of the revolution and must be specified for each country ( . . . ). In our case, the particularities are very clear. It is a struggle that is unleashed in the countryside and city [7], as was established in 1968, and is the scheme for people's war." (President Gonzalo, El Diario, interview of July 24, 1988.)
Since 1982, Chairman Gonzalo has been called President because the new power exists, the parallel power that Lenin talked about as Soviets or Mao as People's Committees. "These are joint dictatorships, a New Power. These Committees have multiplied by the hundreds; those in an area form a support base and the sum of these is the People's Republic of New Democracy in formation." (President Gonzalo, Interview) We note that the lands of the Andean communities, due to an accident of geography, were generally dispersed, very far from each other. The PCP rejects all the "self-proclaimed socialisms of today" [revisionism], and does not receive aid from anyone in order to remain independent, keeping its autonomy through self-reliance. The scraps given by the masses sustain the Party.
The PCP's main weapons: dynamite from the many mines and the guns ripped from the hands of the enemy. "Modern weapons are necessary, but function according to the ideology of the people who wield them ( . . . ), our problem points especially toward people, to their ideological and political strength, of the people's army in this case, as well as its military construction." (President Gonzalo, Interview)
From the beginning, the PCP indicated it planned a "protracted war," in accordance with the Maoist strategy, but: "the conditions of general crisis that the decrepit social system of Peru has entered into tells us that these decisive years can powerfully accelerate, and they will accelerate conditions and develop the revolutionary situation." "Since 1976 we have had guidelines for working in the cities. Taking neighborhoods and shantytowns as bases and the proletariat as leadership, this was our directive." (President Gonzalo, Interview)
The national bourgeoisie is "weak and lacks capital, it develops unevenly and wavers between revolution and counterrevolution, ruined by each new crisis and crushes them to the point of asphyxiation." The role of the shantytowns is of great importance for the revolution, which so many "experts" try to construct a false image of, and worse, through many concrete actions (and great waste of money) the old state and imperialist NGOs try to impose models. For example, the diagnosis of bourgeois feminists such as Robin Kirk of America's Watch: "The principal problem of women in the shantytowns is the lack of orgasm".
Thousands of popular schools throughout the country are charged with explaining the national situation and the international context. The PCP militants and supporters act with open eyes and not as blind fanatics. For this reason, the ideological preparation in the science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought is essential.
In 1990 the PCP reached the strategic equilibrium and began to "build the insurrection" through "armed strikes," massively observed with armed actions, under political-military command in the cities.
Naturally, the world knows that North American imperialism is mobilizing all its resources to crush the People's War, through a war with a neighboring country, Ecuador, Chile or Brazil, for example, or through massive U.S. intervention. This would have incalculable repercussions.
There are many aspects of the People's War that show its historical roots, for example, the true equality between men and women: women are the majority of the military leaders, they make up a great part of the best cadre, and are at the top level of political decisions. There is absolute discipline but by consent, exact compliance with slogans and complete liberty of personal initiative if the circumstances require it. There is community order and justice, although implacable without excesses. There are constant manifestations of popular and native culture, with the dynamism of a revolutionary struggle.
Here are some extracts from documents of the First Congress of the PCP, carried out in February of 1988 in the midst of fierce repression. Since its founding by Mariategui in 1928, the celebration of this Congress had been pending. [8]
First part: on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. They expound on Maoism and stress that: "The Party develops and changes according to the stages of the revolution and the periods within those stages." On the United Front: "As is evident, it is not the same in each stage of the revolution; furthermore, it has its specifications according to the different periods within each stage."
Second part: on Gonzalo Thought. "In its process of development ( . . . ) each revolution ( . . . ) generates a group of leaders, and one primarily ( . . . ). In our case this has materialized through necessity and historical chance in President Gonzalo, leader of the Party and of the revolution."
Third part: Program and Statutes. Some points from the programme: 5. "Respect for the property and rights of the national bourgeoisie, or middle bourgeoisie, in the countryside as well as in the city."
This is the reason why the PCP never affects their properties; not so with imperialist property, such as when in one night $300 million dollars of Bayer property was burned by the PCP. 8. "Complete the formation of the Peruvian nation, truly unified throughout the country ( . . . ) safeguarding the rights of minorities." 10. "To defend the freedoms, rights, benefits and conquests that the working class and the masses have achieved at the cost of their own blood, recognizing them and guaranteeing their authentic enforcement in a Declaration of the Rights of the People. To observe, particularly, the freedom of religious conscience." 12. "A new culture as a combat weapon to solidify the nation." 14. "To struggle ( . . . ) for the complete victory of the democratic revolution nationwide and after completing this stage, at once, without pause, to begin the socialist revolution."
Later, in five brief points the current period is characterized and the necessity of applying "a concrete program for this period, with the following specific objectives":
Concrete Program . . . Statutes. "It would be necessary to gather detailed facts on the growing desertions in the ranks of the enemy, the clandestine police organization the people in uniform' and the Army's sleeping lion' that publicly denounce the atrocities and corruption of their leaders; who massacred peasants and assassinations, and then blamed them on the PCP; the indescribable chaos that reigns throughout the country in the midst of the total collapse of the economy and crumbling of the bourgeois State."
To conclude, we will merely quote some thoughts produced by minds far more lucid than ours. "Once the Andean peasant has made the socialist idea his own, he will serve it with a discipline, a tenacity and strength that few proletarians of other means can match." Mariategui.
"Perhaps in Ayacucho the true liberation of Latin America is being forged." Manuel Scorza, a great Peruvian writer who died tragically in 1983, writing in Le Monde Diplomatique a few months before his disappearance.
"We humans are mere fragments of time and heartbeats, but our deeds will remain for centuries, stamped on generations after generations. We will people the Earth with light and happiness." President Gonzalo.
Notes.
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