A. The Takeover of the Japanese Embassy On December 17, 1996, an MRTA commando made up of 22 guerrillas took the Japanese Embassy in Lima by assault. More than 600 individuals were taken hostage. Among them were several officials of international organizations, 15 ambassadors and undercover operatives (CIA/USAID), hooded judges, government ministers, chiefs of the police and armed intelligence services (SIN/SIE), members of Fujimori's parliament, executives and entrepreneurs. At the end, out of the 600 plus only 72 of them remained. The action took place while those inside were celebrating Emperor Akihito's birthday, and lasted for four months.
Initially, the wide publicity given to the Embassy action at an international level resulted in spontaneous support, especially from progressive and anti-imperialist sectors of society who obviously did not know the real objectives and goals of the MRTA. From the people's perspective abroad, if you heard about an action of that nature occurring in an oppressed/exploited country at war like Peru, would you be against the capture (among the hundreds of hostages) of known imperialist blood suckers and native war criminals at the Japanese Embassy? There is another positive side, besides its theatrical and tragicomical episodes of this event, the action revealed interesting lessons that we must take into account in our struggle. Concretely, we must analyze how the regime and its masters (mainly U.S. imperialism) have handled this matter politically and militarily. A summary of the latter follows:
1. The Peruvian regime and the MRTA were comfortably seated at the negotiating table. All protagonists in the hostage crisis, including the MRTA had free access to the media. MRTA's demands were basically the following: the appointment of "guarantors of peace," release of their prisoners, changes of the government's economic policy, a war tax, and that the assaulting commando would be taken to the jungle. The first demand was quickly complied with by the government when it appointed (with MRTA's endorsement) two sworn enemies of the Peruvian people as "guarantors of peace." Those appointed were the priest Juan Luis Cipriani and the Canadian intelligence expert Anthony Vincent. Besides, the regime had the participation of Domingo Palermo (an individual close to SIN). The three of them have been heavily involved in the counterinsurgency war in Perú on behalf of the regime for years. The apprentice of Pinochet Hermoza Ríos, chief of the reactionary armed forces, candidly admits the participation of these three individuals on behalf of the government: "the information they gave us was fundamental to evaluate the psychological profile of each of the terrorists, their daily routine and their lack of confidence. Also, SIN utilized secret technical procedures -planting of devices to monitor inside, including their daily schedule to play soccer." (Pg. 99, Nicolás Hermoza Ríos, Mamotreto "Operation Chavin de Huantar.")
With regard to the second demand: MRTA offered the regime the capitulation of its 400 prisoners it holds in prisons, vowing to forever abandon the armed struggle in exchange for their incorporation into the legal politics of the country. In reality, this particular demand and the others met fully the regime's political objective. Then it is fair to ask: why did the regime decide to annihilate the MRTA hostage takers? The answer is given by the same genocidal General Hermoza Ríos in his pamphlet mentioned above, in which he stated that annihilation was planned from the start of the conflict. He said that in order to utilize the hostage crisis as "an important tool in the psychological war against the Communist subversion," he meant against the People's War led by the PCP, "it was necessary to annihilate the other terrorists inside the embassy." (Ibid.) As expected, the butchery at the Japanese embassy was publicized by the reactionary media as the "triumph of democracy over terrorism." What is clear today is that the handlers of the counterinsurgency war in Perú understood quite well that the public capitulation of the MRTA prisoners would not have changed in their favor the correlation of forces between revolution and counterrevolution at all, while the strength of the People's Army of Liberation led by the PCP is kept intact.
2. Diversionary talks were held between lackey Fujimori and opportunist Fidel Castro, and then with Leonel Fernandez (the puppet from the Dominican Republic), fooling the MRTA leaders who were genuinely convinced that a peaceful outcome of the crisis was around the corner.
3. While the "guarantors of peace," Fujimori and Castro performed the role of clowns in the MRTA's circus, the biggest player of the game (the Yankee Pentagon) was dispatching its Delta Force to Perú. This is a special SWAP commando unit based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina (NC-USA), including a selected group of CIA terrorists apparently also based in a secret training camp in NC.
According to a CIA spokesperson interviewed by American Broadcasting Company (ABC-TV) on April 23, 1997, the Yankees trained and led a selected "Special Forces" of the Peruvian armed forces, who after digging several tunnels underground, stormed the building and annihilated all MRTA members. It is important to note that the "official" entourage of Fujimori in his trips to Washington, Dominican Republic and Cuba included representatives of the bogus opposition in Perú, Rolando Breña Pantoja (leader of revisionist Patria Roja,) and Alfonso Grados of UP (party of the big bourgeoisie led by Perez de Cuellar.)
4. Typical CIA methods of infiltration (planting of surveillance devices and informants inside the building), and psychological warfare were used. For example, in order to build the underground tunnels and distract the attention of the captors, there was outside a large movement of troops and military vehicles, and "marches for peace" organized by the intelligence services, with the aid of reactionary and revisionist parties, which was accompanied by loud speakers and flying helicopters. In this plan, the participation of the Red Cross cannot be ignored. According to Hermoza Ríos, Michael Minning assured the captors that there was not any evidence that a tunnel was being built (page 80, ibid.)
5. Several native and foreign individuals involved in the "low intensity warfare" campaign of imperialism and the regime were unilaterally released by the traitor Cerpa Cartolini : All CIA/AID operatives, Anthony Vincent (Canada), Heribert Woeckell (Germany), Carlos Chiappori Cambana (President of Nissan), Juana Fujimori (sister of the puppet), Alexander Kouri, Lee Wong Young (South Korea), Juan Assereto, Kamiya Teruya, General José Rivas Rodriguez, Police Commander Luis Valencia Hira (head of Delta Unit of Dincote). If it is known the total dependance of lackey Fujimori to the armed forces and imperialism, why did MRTA release the foreign mercenaries? The response to this question is described below.
For those who know and understand the politics and practice of the MRTA, the Japanese embassy takeover never sought any revolutionary goals. On the contrary, it sought to bolster the political-military plans of the Peruvian government and imperialism (mainly U.S. imperialism)against the Peruvian people. Although spectacular, under the mask of "peace talks for lasting peace," the main goal of the MRTA's action was to seek dialogue and capitulation. For this reason, as soon as Peruvians learned that one of the demands of the MRTA was for "the government to change the course of its neoliberal economic policy," and to establish "peace with social justice," they realized that the charade was just another prank.
The Peruvian reactionaries also distinguished clearly the actions of the MRTA from the People's War in Perú. For example, Francisco Tudela, Fujimori's foreign minister captured at the Embassy was candid when he told the Peruvian Daily Gestion: "...Once I was sure it was not Sendero who took over the Embassy but the MRTA, I started to breathe much better." This is the typical reaction of the ruling classes before the revolution: FEAR! But at the same time, RESPECT for the COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERÚ(PCP) for the simple reason that it genuinely defends the interests of the oppressed masses in our country, and delivers in deeds whatever it preaches.
From experience, the popular masses know that asking the hunger-bearing regime of Hermoza Ríos and his figurehead puppet Fujimori for "peace with social justice" is a waste of time. It is like trying to sneak a camel through a needle's hole. Also, to ask demagogically for the Peruvian regime to change its economic policies and to replace this or that minister, while keeping Hermoza Ríos, Fujimori or any other representative of the big bourgeoisie in power, mean preserving the old Peruvian State, whose nature or character is the root cause of the chronic crisis that the country is facing today.
POLITICAL TRAJECTORY AND PUBLIC STATEMENTS OF THE MRTA The first communique of the MRTA was issued soon after the December 17, 1996 action and emphasized the following:"The MRTA has always been an organization ready to dialogue, but only finds rejection and contempt by the government . . . "This is crystal clear! In his "Interview," (See the complete interview at http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp) President Gonzalo, leader of the Peruvian revolution, teaches how during a revolutionary war, "agreements signed at the table only reflect what has already been established on the battlefield, because no one is going to give up what they have not obviously lost." In other words, if one of the parties has little or no strength in the military and political arena little or nothing will be able to demand and achieve by means of negotiations, other than its own capitulation and surrender. Has the time arrive for negotiations? That moment has not arrived. We are far from diplomatic talks and treaties, which are unwarranted under the present power set-up. Then, what sense is there to call for "peace talks" and "dialogue?" Simply put, they aim to undermine the revolution in Perú, the People's War. That is their objective.
The second communique of the MRTA proposed without much ado that its embassy occupation was meant only "to take the first step toward a global solution to the problem of political violence in the country, by engaging in dialogue to reach a lasting peace agreement." This was a typical disguise for a full-fledged capitulation with one of the most criminal and sellout regimes ever in Peruvian history.
"Dialogue" and "lasting peace agreement" are the key words that synthesize the political objectives sought by MRTA since its appearance in 1984, and were seen more clearly during the occupation of the Japanese embassy in Lima. It was evident that such an action was planned exclusively to publicize the "peace agreement" eagerly sought by the MRTA . That's why it got so much coverage by the reactionary Peruvian media and the foreign press, who spread it to the four corners of the world. Nestor Cerpa Cartolini the group's "commander," had free acces to radio broadcasters, the printed press and television. Thus, instead of censoring or cutting down news on the events (as they usually do with the People's War)or prosecuting and arresting journalists and lawyers for "apology of terrorism" (as they have been doing with hundres of people), the government actually encouraged and assisted TV crews, reporters and journalists to propagate the "humane and compassionate" character of the MRTA guerrillas seeking a "lasting peace agreement with Fujimori," as compared with the bigger and evil guerrilla: "the so-called pol pot Shining Path or Shining Pathway." What was the end result? The armed forces and their CIA handlers murdered all their negotiating partners ("the good guerrillas"), like M-rats.
MRTA's request for the regime to change its economic policy was as symbolic as an early "salute to the waving Flag." It was a cheap demagoguery delivered solely as a publicity stunt. Can anyone imagine that just by taking over a foreign embassy it would be enough to force reactionary governments and their imperialist masters to change their criminal economic policies? No. That was not MRTA's intention at all but a ruse. This was verified by Cerpa Cartolini (alias "Commander Huertas") during the hostage event. Here is what the editor of the Daily Gestion, economist Francisco Sagasti (hostage himself freed before the embassy storm) tells of his conversation with Cerpa Cartolini (reprinted in Spain by El País 2/20/97, and Caretas 2/18/97 Via Internet):
" We received the first visit and had the first chat with Commander Huertas, who we had clearly identified as Nestor Cerpa. He said that the aim of the government's economic model is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. He revealed an ideology that is a mixture of rudimentary communitarianism of our profound roots with the use of the market with a social dimension. Cerpa repeated this point of view while going from hall to hall in the embassy. He said that the MRTA is not terrorist, but `guerrilla fighters' and stated the possibility of a political solution of the same kind that happened in Colombia with the M-19, and claimed that they (MRTA) have approached the government in 1985 and 1990 respectively."
In synthesis, the MRTA basically agrees with the economic model (neoliberalism) imposed by imperialism through the IMF and the World Bank, except its social dimension. This is the myth of "market socialism" preached first in Eastern Europe (late 1980's) with the catastrophic results we know.
The remaining MRTA's demands were: the payment of a "war tax" and to be transported to the jungle. These demands were comparable to those made by a gang of bank robbers, both easy to comply with, and without major political consequences.
At the end, the only beneficiaries of the MRTA action were the genocidal and country selling regime and its masters, mainly Yankee imperialism. It helped the reactionary propaganda of the supposed "containment of the Sendero" as part of their political and counterinsurgency plan (low intensity warfare), which imperialism and the reactionary armed forces have been implementing against the Peruvian people led by the Communist Party of Perú, the (PCP).
The People's War continues to be the number one problem for the old Peruvian State. Fujimori promised to liquidate it by July of 1995, but we are in 1998 now, and the puppet's dream has already turned into a nightmare. Nowadays, the People's Army of Liberation and the PCP continue to grow and are becoming stronger. Even the enemies of the Peruvian Revolution recognize it.
"We are facing a re-composition of Sendero Luminoso. It has regrouped from the setback caused by the capture of their top leaders. Sendero is growing again, recruiting new people, training them, and putting them to fight."(Fernando Rospigliosi in Caretas Magazine, May 23, 1996.)
During the hostage crisis, the Peruvian press launched a huge disinformation campaign highlighting the civic and patriotic values of the dialoguing guerilla as opposed to evil Sendero, presenting the People's Army of Liberation and the PCP as "ruthless, merciless terrorists who murder for the sake of murdering the civilian population."
It is not a coincidence that the same communique in which the MRTA proposed a "lasting peace agreement" with the bloody tyranny, launched hysterical and vicious attacks against the PCP. In its third communique, MRTA pointed out: "We cannot accept it when we are constantly being compared to the Shining Path, an organization that we have repeatedly condemned for their irrational use of violence that affects the people themselves."
This communique shows the counterrevolutionary role the MRTA was eager to fulfill had the government accepted its "peace" proposal. Without much hesitation they said: "Our petition must be granted and in the long run, it will enable us to reach full and lasting peace. We will responsibly join in this endeavor."
The people of Perú and Latin America have long suffered and experienced repressive methods by the various types of regimes (civilian or military) such as assassinations, kidnaping, disappearances, imprisonment, torture to impose what they have labeled as "full and lasting peace," the kind of peace that the MRTA begs to join "responsibly."
We reaffirm that in the current circumstances, dialogues and peace agreements are instruments of the counterinsurgency plans, reverting to favor the interests of the big transnationals of imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism, entrenched in the countries of the Third World and in Latin America, in particular. In the oppressed countries "dialogue" and "peace agreements" have been institutionalized as instruments of counterinsurgency strategies designed to attain "pacification" in countries experiencing internal conflict. "Peace agreements" under the current political situation, yield immense political benefits to imperialism and its reactionary regimes in the oppressive countries. These false "peace agreements" are treacherous stabs in the backs of the people. They are full-fledged capitulations in which the only victims are the poor masses, the sons and daughters of the people who for years (even decades) have shed their blood and gave up their lives for a new society, in which their children would live. Let us look for example, at Central America. Just a few years after the FMLN leadership from El Salvador capitulated, one hears the poor masses of that country complaining bitterly: "Eighty thousand of our people are dead and, for what? For nothing!" Where is the so-called "peace agreement" signed at the United Nations? It is dumped into the dustbin of history. The only winners were the native big bourgeoisie, Yankee imperialism, and a handful of traitorious FMLN leaders who became mercenaries or parlamentarians.
In Perú, the crude fabrication known as "the peace letters by the Shining Path" (created by the CIA and the Army Intelligence Services SIE/SIN in 1993), which became the leitmotif of the government's counter subversive policy, was vigorously crushed by the masses led by the PCP developing further the People's War.
MRTA itself provides proof for us of their eagerness to be a tool of Yankee imperialism. Take for example, the freeing of Jose Maria Argot, Guatemala's ambassador to Perú and one of the hostages at the Japanese embassy. This diplomat was freed. According to MRTA, as a "recognition of the peace agreement signed on December 29 of the previous year, between the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG) and that country's government." The freeing of this diplomat was a clear signal of MRTA's willingness to reach a similar agreement with the Peruvian government.
MRTA is even clearer in its No. 1 Communique, saying that the occupation of the Japanese embassy was to "protest the interference by the Japanese government in the political life of our motherland, usually availing the acts of violation of human rights carried out by the government." No one doubts that the regime defends the interests of Japanese imperialism as well as the interests of other imperialist powers (e.g., British, French, German, etc.) But we must emphasize that today the number 1 enemy of the Peruvian people is U.S. imperialism. It is Yankee imperialism with its whims and wishes, and to suit its own best interests, decides what type of regime we will get, and what economic policies should be implemented in the country at any given time. For instance, let's compare the 5,408 million dollars (USD) invested by Yankee imperialism in Perú with the 39.46 million dollars invested by the Japanese (Gestion Magazine, February 28, 1996.) However, this does not acquit Japanese imperialism as enemy of the Peruvian people. That's why Peru, like the other Latin American countries are considered by the Yankee rulers to be their "backyards." Inside this "backyard" the Japanese as well as other imperialist powers collude themselves, and also clash for markets and better profits with Yankee imperialism. This dynamics is what generally controls and shapes the economy in our oppressed Latin American countries.
While the tragic outcome, favored the interests of the government as well as imperialism, the capture of the Japanese embassy exposed the fragility of the old State in its strongest redoubt: the capital (Lima). It also showed the risks that imperialist investors must face in Perú and the farce about the "respect for human rights."
On the one hand, the developments of the hostage crisis exposed the MRTA as a treacherous revisionist organization alien to the interests of the people of Peru, and on the other hand, the government and its armed forces were confirmed as genocidal and sellouts, violators of the most basic people's rights, who slowly murder political prisoners and prisoners of war, and kill millions of Peruvians from hunger and disease.
The seizure of the Japanese embassy, at first applauded by the peoples of the world, who expected fair and just punishment of the criminals captured inside, very soon turned into a comedy without significant danger to the government. The compound was transformed into a comfortable hotel, in which kidnappers and hostages ate three meals a day, as a courtesy of the government and the Red Cross. They fraternized and laughed, enjoyed color TV, cellular phones, played chess, guitar and soccer, including the exchanged of 9,588 messages or letters with their relatives and friends outside. There were no dead or wounded to precipitate military action by the government. On its "own will," the MRTA freed more than 60 percent of the hostages. Among them were a few innocent individuals whose release no one questions, but there were also criminals such as the head of the antiterrorist police, some close relatives of the terrorist Dictator, Fujimori, and the "peace guarantors" like the murderous Bishop Juan Luis Cipriani -a member of the Opus Dei Sect who trains paramilitary peasant rondas in Ayacucho- and Canadian Ambassador Anthony Vincent. They even let a Jesuit priest (Mr. Wicht), a Yankee informant, to remain in the embassy "so he could celebrate mass for the hostages."
The work of the "guarantors of peace," especially Cipriani and Vincent enabled the penetration of SIN agents into the compound. They entered inside disguised as medical doctors and maintenance workers, planting electronic surveillance devices in several locations. Thus, the massacre of all of the members of the MRTA commando was the result of the betrayal of Cerpa Cartolini and his "guarantors of peace." At the end, the heads of the regime: Hermoza Ríos, Montesinos and the puppet Fujimori, were shown on T.V. celebrating and stepping on the bullet ridden corpses of those murdered sons and daughters of the Peruvian people.
C. IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE OF THE MRTA The MRTA, which smudges the name of the 18th Century anti colonial resistance hero José Gabriel Condorcanqui, "Tupac Amaru II," has a revisionist ideology, which is a melange of Foco Guevarism, Castroism and APRAism. It has never been a threat to the stability of the Peruvian State and even less to imperialist interests.
Is the MRTA a revolutionary organization? What does the MRTA want? What is its main target? What are the links between this armed group and the counterinsurgency plans of the Peruvian state? The answers to these fundamental questions are found in the statements and documents published by the MRTA leaders.
"The minimal condition that we demand is to go over a process of pacification. A necessary prerequisite to achieve this end is the defeat of the Shining Path. To deliver our weapons in the present conditions would be conducive to more violence because it would result in the growth of Sendero . . .In this context, we are ready to defeat the Shining Path politically and militarily, just like we did in this area (Department of San Martin), where we eliminated more than 60 combatants of Sendero. This would be our contribution to the pacification of the country . . . " (Interview with "Germán and Ricardo," regional commanders of MRTA. Published by Caretas, July 15, 1991.)
In what historical context did the MRTA emerge? This organization surfaced in 1984, when the old Peruvian State was already rocked by the armed struggle led by the PCP, which the reactionary press labels, the "Shining Path." The Maoist guerilla has been the main problem confronted by the State and its repressive forces. Due to the People's War, the contradictions between the social classes have been reaching their maximum expression. The official parties, including those labeled as "left," had begun to decompose rapidly. At the governmental level, the plan of the Belaunde regime at the time (as happened later with Garcia, and is happening today with Fujmori) was failing in all of its endeavors.
The armed struggle began in the Department of Ayacucho in May of 1980 and spread quickly to other regions. During the two first years, the Police Forces (120,000 men) and their elite corps advised and trained by Yankee imperialism, proved themselves to be incapable of putting down the insurrection and were defeated. In December of 1982, the government put the Armed Forces (army, navy, and air force) to combat the rebellion. Thus, when the military entered the war, it applied genocide against the masses that they deemed to be the guerilla's base of support. In only two years (1983-1984) the armed forces murdered more than 4,000 civilians in the Departments of Ayacucho, Huanvavelica, and Junin alone. But this brutal repression fueled more revolution: as a result, "the People's War" further developed.
It is in these circumstances that MRTA emerged with a handful of isolated actions that were highly publicized by the reactionary press in Perú. Here are a couple of examples: One action was an assault on a historical museum in Lima to steal the sword used by General San Martin (an Argentinian who participated/declared independence from Spain in 1823), another action was a "spectacular" kidnaping of a TV reporter of Lima's Channel 5. MRTA obtained ample TV coverage in exchange for her release. It was reported later on, that this "kidnaping" was a scheme. This "reporter" had a visa to live in the U.S. and a job at the reactionary Spanish paper "El Diario La Prensa," New York (owned by Gannett, a major Yankee publishing corporation,) waiting for her. From the pages of this reactionary sewer in New York, many despicable slanders against the Peruvian revolution led by the PCP, have been published in the 1980's and 1990's, while consistently praising the MRTA and the regimes of Garcia Perez and Fujimori.
The MRTA's strategy and program are simply a duplication of the old discredited versions of revisionist organizations in Perú, such as the United Left (IU), Unidad, Patria Roja, PUM and others, who still call themselves "Marxist-Leninist." The similarities between MRTA and these "leftist" groups are evident in most of their political positions: they participate in the fraudulent elections, collaborate with the old State, fight against the People's War led by the PCP, generally support the regime's economic policies, deny the class struggle, work closely with the Church and the military, form coalitions with the bourgeois parties, denies the semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature of Peruvian society, support the old State in the oppression of the peasants, are partially or wholly funded by international non governmental operations (NGOs) and imperialist powers (mainly Yankee imperialism), and are advocates of bourgeois reforms who are adamantly opposed to revolution.
If we compare MRTA's positions with classic works like Marx's "Communist Manifesto," or Engels's "Socialism: Utopian or Scientific," Lenin's "State and Revolution" or Mao's "Democratic Revolution" (all upheld by the PCP), we conclude beyond any doubt that MRTA's ideology is the complete opposite of what either Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao taught.
First, the question of Power. In Perú, or anywhere in the world, the main objective of a genuine Marxist organization, in the current historical context, is the struggle for power for the proletariat and the people, which has the strategic goal of achieving Communism. That is the essence of the proletariat ideology. The MRTA and revisionism do not fight for the people's interests but act as cushions of the old State, while hypocritically, they are playing the role of "opposition" in the bogus "parliament." They try to legitimize the charade of "democracy" and effectively serve the interests of the great bourgeoisie and imperialism.
Second, MRTA and Elections. Since 1980 Peru is experiencing an internal war for almost 18 years. Most of its territory and population are ruled under a permanent state of emergency. One feature of this reality is the intense and bloody contest for Power between revolution (PCP) and counterrevolution (armed forces). As a result, the country has been militarized and violation by the Peruvian State of its own laws has become a routine. This included a military coup in 1992 that crushed the last Congress Perú had, including its own Constitution and judicial system. The dictatorship created its own bogus "Congress" controlled by the intelligence services, and also drafted a "Constitution" tailored to the needs of the counterrevolutionary war. However, the regime and its armed forces have been violating this so called "rag" that they call the "Constitution" at will. For example, they dismantled the Constitutional Tribunal, legalized the widespread use of death squads to quash any political opposition, persecuted and arrested defense attorneys and relatives of prisoners of war, and control of the National Electoral Board. This ensured the "reelection" of Hermoza Ríos through his puppet Fujimori obtaining a "victory" with 20 percent of the electorate in the 1995 presidential elections (including fraud and the active electoral participation of the military on behalf of the regime), and today they are preparing the dictator's perpetuation in power.
The armed forces' "political and military command" is above any judicial power, municipalities, or other civilian authorities. In the countryside, during the elections, the citizens are forced at gun point, to get out and vote at the ballot box for whichever candidates the military orders them to vote for. The armed forces deny the citizenry the most elementary civil rights. Therefore, these elections (municipal or presidential) are just a farce with no legitimacy whatsoever. To willingly participate in such electoral charade, as the United Left, or support those who do (as MRTA does), it is tacit endorsement and legitimization of the reactionary political system, which tries to legitimize the staged fraud and the anti democratic nature of the bourgeois elections.
Since 1980, aside from fraud and the prevailing circus, elections have been profoundly influenced by the activity of the People's War led by the PCP. Every election is a hard-fought battle between revolution and counterrevolution, a sharp confrontation, often violent, between Maoist forces calling to boycott elections and the official political parties -the parties of the great bourgeoisie (Cambio-90, APRA, UP, etc.), independents and "leftists" (all brands of revisionists and trotskites) and the military of the old State becoming "the great elector" in this farce. This confrontation of revolution (the people led by the PCP calling for the boycott) and counterrevolution (reaction and revisionism led by the armed forces calling for electoral participation) has been called the clash between "democracy vs. terrorism" by the bloody regime and Yankee imperialism.
Here is the evidence of how the MRTA concepts on "democracy," "elections," or "terrorism" are very similar to those used by the regime, the bourgeois parties and the police: "The electoral boycott called by Shining Path has been a complete failure. The Peruvian people repudiated the policy of threats and terror developed by Shining Path. The fact is that a few thousand senderista militants have been and will always be unable to change the will of more than twenty million Peruvians." (Interview with Victor Polay Campos, head of the MRTA, Daily "El Nacional" December 17, 1989.)
In 1989, MRTA closely allied to the United Left (IU), launched its electoral career. Under the IU's program and platform, MRTA called for the participation of the people in the municipal elections. About MRTA's electoral participation, Polay said: "... on one side we have the reactionary right, headed by FREDEMO of Vargas Llosa, with anti-people alternatives, and on the other, we have United Left and MRTA," (Interview with Victor Polay Campos, Daily "El Nacional" December 17, 1989.)
In 1990, MRTA again participated in the elections in which they backed the election of the stooge of Japanese origin Kenyo (Alberto) Fujimori. For Congress, they had their own candidates who were included in IU's list or by themselves. Polay Campos confirms it: "On the other hand the presidential elections created great expectations . . . Our position in the first election was complex, because we faced a complex reality. We recognized it and backed a wide spectrum of alternatives ranging from null and blank votes, to endorsing the consistent candidates in the IU lists . . . Several of the members of parliament elected are from the most advanced sectors of IU." (III Central Committee of MRTA. Report on the national situation, September 1990.)
Who constituted these "most advanced sectors of United left (IU)?" No less than the corrupt parliamentarians who facilitated the dissolution of Congress by the dictatorship in 1992, and whom IU not just supported in the 1990 runoff election, but willingly and knowingly participated with two members in Fujimori's first cabinet (e.g., Gloria Helfer, First Minister of Education of Fujimori.)
The above examples and quotations show an MRTA hooked up completely to the Peruvian State's electoral wagon. This is a refutation to anyone pretending that MRTA struggle is "to conquer political power." If MRTA truly wants power for the workers and the other oppressed, why then do they legalize (with their participation) the electoral farces staged by the representatives of the Peruvian State? Casting aside masks, what is the MRTA really after? They attack the PCP and hate the government of peasants and workers (the People's Committees). This goes along with MRTA's endorsement of each and every electoral circus, their collusion with the official "left" and even APRA. All of this makes the MRTA an important tool of the old State's efforts to reinvigorate its decadent political system.
D. MRTA's Counterrevolutionary Actions Against the Peruvian Revolution Even more than the collusion and convergence between MRTA and IU on electoral matters is their fierce struggle against the so-called "Shining Path terrorism." From the regime-controlled parliament to the weakened municipalities, the reactionary press, and State organizations, these revisionist organizations openly and unconditionally support the political and military plans of the government and Yankee imperialism. Since 1980, IU had been committed to organizing counterinsurgent paramilitary groups (peasant rondas) turned into Civil Defense Committees by the military), neighborhood committees and serenazgos (watchmen or snitches in the cities.) All of them have been coordinating their activities with the armed forces against the People's War led by the PCP. This fact is confirmed by an MRTA leader as follows:
" Yes, with the United Left we are working in unity. But in the case of Sendero it is an entirely different matter. They are an antagonistic group."(Alberto Galvez Olaechea, Caretas Magazine, August 15, 1988.)
This "anti-PCP unity" between the MRTA and the official "left" is a strategic task to save the old oppressor State and enable the present system of exploitation to continue. Whether openly or covertly, MRTA supports the peasant paramilitary rondas and has joined the reactionary armed forces in combat against the People's Army of Liberation. For example, this happened at least twice in the Department of San Martin. Here is the testimony of Sisterio Garcia Torres (Commander Ricardo), former leader of the North Oriental Front of the MRTA. "Under instructions from Nestor Cerpa Cartolini and Victor Polay Campos, I coordinated activities and met on six occasions with Mr. Nicolas Reategui, an emissary of General Mario Brito, Chief of the military base in the city of Tarapoto. General Brito sought to stop the continuous attacks of Sendero against the oil companies (e.g., Occidental, Shell) operating in this part of the jungle. We were assigned an emergency radio frequency to coordinate military offensives with General Brito. This coordination was suspended only after General Brito was ambushed by Sendero." [La Republica March 19, 1997, Notimex March 20, 1997] Indeed, in May 1990, a contingent of the People's Army of Liberation attacked the military base of Tarapoto, and General Brito was put out of combat. Soon thereafter, the entire North Oriental Front of the MRTA, including "Commander Ricardo" publicly deserted to the government (this was reported by the press in Perú as a "massive capitulation of Senderistas.")
MRTA repeated word by word the hoaxes fabricated by the government and Yankee imperialism (psycho-social warfare) against the revolution led by the PCP. It repeated the same lies spread by SIN and the CIA against the People's War. They blabbered without a shred of evidence that "Sendero is split," "the PCP is Pol Pot," "narcoterrorist," "Sendero murders leftists, priests, workers and peasants," "Gonzalo vs. Feliciano," "Peace Letters," and countless innuendo fabricated and propagated by the terrorist regime and the bloodstained "white papers" released by the Yankee State Department.
The Declarations by the MRTA Chief are eloquent in this respect: "More than 90% of the casualties resulting from Sendero's actions are among the civilian population. They not only kill members of the armed forces, mayors and government officials but also peasants, religious ministers, foreign technical personnel, and popular leaders. Their 'messianic' (Andean/Inca) vision of society likens them to the Islamic Fundamentalist Movement. Senderistas are convinced that they are the only truth keepers, and that they are the Peruvian version of Pol Pot." (Interview with Victor Polay Campos by Tomas Borge, Published in Barricada-Nicaragua, and Caretas in December 1991.)
MRTA supports the Civil Defense Committees (paramilitary peasant rondas organized by the armed forces.) "We have confronted Sendero at the level of the peasant communities. They practice a dictatorial policy based on forceful recruiting methods, and forms of organization that are alien to the Andean peasantry. MRTA helped the communities to reject them, and we've caused them 20 casualties." (Victor Polay Campos, Interview in "SI" Magazine, May 8, 1989.)
Here, a simple question will suffice to deflate the self-righteous mouth of "Chief" Polay. We ask him: who organizes, finances and controls all of those peasant rondas, night watching systems and urban neighborhood rondas you so much support? The reactionary armed forces, with the direct intervention of imperialism and indirectly through NGOs.
MRTA and Human rights. Under the guises that they are "confronting both Sendero and the Army" and that the people are caught up between these two fires, MRTA and the bogus left traffick with "human rights" hooked to foreign funded Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Polay says: "We equally agree to support the promotion of peasant and neighborhood rondas to counter the dirty war by both the Army and the Shining Path against the people . . . Sendero proposes, in effect, a dictatorship of the Communist Party over the whole of society . . . In the course of the war, they do not abide by the principles consecrated in the treaties and conventions of Geneva, and they use indiscriminate terror as a weapon." (Statements by Victor Polay Campos before Perú's antiterrorist police. TV-Frequency Latina, June 18, 1992.)
Here, Polay uses an old trick learned from his former APRA leader Haya de la Torre. Thus, Polay's demagoguery is analogous to the past endeavors of Haya, who, in order to confuse and fool the people used to say in his times: "We are neither with Washington nor with Moscow," but in fact, the old fox was compromised up to his ears, with the interests of Yankee imperialism. Similarly, after the capture of Chairman Gonzalo (August 1992), dreaming that the People's War had been defeated, even frustrated "scholars" or senderologists, who for their own purposes and interests used to equate the revolutionary violence (PCP) with the reactionary violence (armed forces)- had to revise their speculations on that matter. For example, the mercenaries Degregori, Tapia, and Raúl Gonzales now openly say that they supported the armed forces.
E. Who Are the Allies of MRTA? MRTA is characterized by its demagogic speeches and its counterrevolutionary practice. On the one hand, they claimed that they want to lead a revolutionary war to achieve socialism, yet the allies that they seek are invariably in the camp of the enemies of the revolution. They look for allies among sectors addicted to official power, and for those who struggle against any type of revolutionary change in Peru. They attempted to legitimize themselves in the midst of the legal left. They have been always in concert with APRA and the "social base" of the Fujimori dictatorship.
They hook themselves to the tail-end of political corpses and reactionaries such as the marionette Perez de Cuellar (former U.N. General Secretary and Bush puppet during the bombings against Iraq, today leads UP a Party of the great bourgeoisie). For years, they have been attempting to build bridges of unity with the army, police and the reactionary Peruvian church. All this "unity" is, as Polay himself says, to oppose "the communist dictatorship" by the Shining Path. In his own words he states:
"Despite the deep moral and economic crisis we now face, there are in Perú a sufficient number of healthy and democratic forces inside the political parties, both traditional (right) and the left, as well as inside the people's organizations, the armed forces, the police forces. We believe that the Bishop's Conference should play an important role. Also, prestigious individuals such as Javier Perez de Cuellar, should be able to function as mediators to begin a process of discussion and dialogue at various levels, and thereupon reach some agreements." (Victor Polay Campos, La República July 8, 1992.)
The "unity" and "alliance" that the MRTA refers to are based on the support of the present social, economic and political system and safeguard the rotten old State, and do not in any way, shape, or form carry out a revolution. This group's "mass work" is designed and practiced to alleviate social tensions in Perú'.
When MRTA began its armed activity (1984), because of the unstoppable advance of the People's War, the "official left" had already entered a process of internal decomposition. This "left" discredited and repudiated by the masses, was incapable of controlling the explosiveness and struggle in the popular sectors. With the armed struggle launched in May 1980, the class struggle reached maximum polarization. The People's War led by the PCP has been a powerful pole of attraction. The poorest masses consciously support and participate in the armed struggle. The People's War is the best and most effective road in conquering our people's genuine historical vindications. It is in the middle of this process that MRTA's birth takes place in order to resuscitate the discredited IU, and stop the advance of "Sendero."
"We are already capable of facing greater tasks such as the reorganization and unity of the left and our people." (MRTA III Central Committee, Report on the National Situation, September, 1990.)
In 1990, the MRTA joined the IU to try to set up a "Front of masses" for electoral purposes, and primarily, to stop the "advances of the Shining Path." MRTA relies basically on the revisionist organizations especially IU: "Together with them we must build, strengthen and provide with accurate and firm revolutionary leadership the embryos of the people's power, expressed today by the People's Assemblies, Defense Fronts, Rondas and Peasant Communities as well as the highest expression of centralism: the People's National Assembly (ANP)."(II Central Committee of MRTA, August of 1988.)
Note that all these organizations that MRTA calls "embryos of people's power," that is those not led directly by the genocidal armed forces, were led until then, by Patria Roja, the Unified Mariateguist Party (PUM), and Unidad, who made up the IU. The rondas and peasant communities MRTA speak about have become Vietnam-style strategic villages and fire bases under army control.
The MRTA's postures and spectacular actions were meant to gain publicity in order to appear in the evening news and to distort Peruvian reality, disorient and confuse the masses. In this process, they manage to recruit few incautious youth so it could lead them into suicide adventures such as kidnaping, bank robberies, and extortions. A round business! MRTA's "Commander Ricardo" reported:"By 1990, we raised about 50 million dollars . . . we had many businesses such as three large commercial stores in our Region, transport vehicles, and small shops." [Notimex, 3/19/1997.] This type of MRTA "revolutionary entrepreneurship" is not different from the many types of "investments or businesses" done by European and U.S. bogus "left" groups (a.k.a.Yankee revisionists, trotskites and anarchists). They whisper about "revolution" but practice capitalism.
Evidently, the primary goal of the MRTA still is to defuse the People's War. MRTA leaders say so with clarity: "We do not want this Civil War, we want to avoid it . . . The people of this country demand a change, and they are mature for a change. This country is pregnant for a revolution. The birth pangs are felt by all of us, so we all must help this new society to be born. The opportunity exists to have it done through a Civil War, or through an understanding." (Victor Polay Campos, "Interview in the Underground," Revista Desco, August 1985.)
Polay's statement about "avoiding a Civil War" was done when the revolutionary war led by the PCP, had five years of successful development and the dynamics of the class struggle created an ever growing participation by the masses in the revolution. When "Comandante Rolando" spoke about "avoiding a Civil War by way of an understanding," he was very clearly referring to fighting against the People's War.
POLAY INITIATES THE "DIALOGUES."
Both Garcia and Polay were raised and shaped in the fascist mold created by Haya de la Torre, the legendary APRA Chief. In his APRA times, he was known as "Buffalo Polay," nowadays "Marxist-Leninist" Comandante Rolando, who quickly ran to offer his assistance to his former APRA Comrade, the new President of Perú. This was at a time when MRTA's military capacity was not yet capable of setting an abandoned bus on fire that was parked in the jungle. Garcia Perez is remembered as a corrupt, genocidal butcher of 300 unarmed prisoners in El Fronton, El Callao, and Lurigancho, whose government was nefarious in the history of Peru. In July of 1985, Alan Garcia Perez, leader and presidential candidate of APRA, fraudulently won the presidential elections. The United Left, led by another "reformed" APRA member, Barrantes Lingan, yielded power to Garcia Perez without a runoff election. So, at last, APRA came to power!
One month later, in August of 1985, MRTA called a much publicized "press conference in the underground," to announce a "truce" proposal to the recently installed Aprista government. MRTA's "truce" sounded hollow and became the prime subject of countless political jokes throughout Peru. How can someone with no saying whatsoever on the PCP-led People's War, call for an end to that People's War? So the jokers and cartoonists had a good time. To counter this, MRTA "guerrilla" began their assaults, kidnaping, and demands for ransom. This "revolution" consisted in a handful of actions done a la Al Capone. But they had one unusual particularity, it was accompanied by a massive publicity in the reactionary press.
MRTA's main activity was to send press releases to the news media. However, MRTA's "armed activity" never worried the Peruvian police much and even less the APRA, where "Buffalo Polay," or "Comandante Rolando," was a familiar character.
Polay's statements justifying that "truce," were widely publicized on newspaper front pages and TV news, revealing the secret ties between MRTA and the APRA regime and its reactionary armed forces. In these circumstances Polay stated: "We believe that the recent change in government opens up a new political situation in the country . . . We are living in a new political situation, and a historical opportunity is opening up before us . . .We do not want a Civil War, and we want to avoid it if we can first obtain justice. Now we have this historic opportunity."
In the same conference Polay said: "We know and believe that there is in the APRA government a will to change, or at least they have committed themselves before the people to make a change. We want to give them that opportunity, and we are going to believe in what APRA does, and the first thing for now, are not to carry out any actions against the government, or against the APRA Party who had the majority of the votes . . . Respectful of this majority, MRTA will not carry out any military actions against APRA and the new government for as long as they do not attack the people." (Ibid) However, the APRA government had already earned a horrendous record of genocides against the people by the time "Buffalo Polay" announced his truce and offered his services to APRA. In the same month, August of 1985, a military patrol entered the village of Accomarca (Ayacucho,) and decapitated 69 unarmed peasants. On August 27, 1985, the army exterminated 70 unarmed residents in the localities of Umaro and Bellavista, also in Ayacucho. In the capital, Lima, on the eve of Polay's truce announcement, a humble university student, Mr. Castillo, was murdered by the police in Villa El Salvador, a poor shanty town of the capital.
Polay did not limit his capitulation to his APRA schoolmates, but extended it to the criminal armed forces: "With regard to the armed forces, we consider that they have a very rich past and tradition. The armed forces were born out of structuring the `montoneros,' the guerrillas who fought for independence . . . of course we know that there are healthy elements inside the armed forces, the army and the navy, whom we support and from whom we have great expectations . . . " (Ibid.)
While surely there are some honest men in the lower ranks of the military (those drafted by force), MRTA offered its support to the genocidal armed forces as an institution, at the time when they already had their hands soaked in the blood of unarmed civilians. These reactionary armed forces are very brave when murdering unarmed masses, but too cowardly when they die in the battlefield facing the People's Army of Liberation (EPL) led by the PCP.
From 1980 to 1985 more than 12,000 unarmed civilians were murdered by the APRA Government, by its armed forces and paramilitary. By then, more than 5,000 had been "disappeared" and kidnaped by repressive forces in areas declared under state of emergency.
On March 26, 1989, the MRTA sent the then Cardinal Juan Landazuri a letter asking for his mediation with the government, to establish a dialogue to "put an end to the war." In July 1989, MRTA again took a capitulationist initiative, kidnaping APRA militant Demetrio Tafur, president of the Regional Development Corporation of the Department of San Martin. However, the kidnaped APRA official was "converted" as one of theirs, and then released to become the MRTA spokesman. Tafur stated that the MRTA sought the church's mediation to "dialogue and depose arms." Curiously, all these "peace initiatives" by the MRTA are launched with full coverage by the reactionary media, exactly at the time the People's Army launches new military offensives as part of the plan to develop the People's War or coincidental with the announcement of an armed strike in the cities by the People's Revolutionary Defense Movement (MRDP,) a PCP generated organization in the cities.
In July 1990, an obscure character by the name of Fujimori reached power as a figurehead of the armed forces. He was engineered into power by the National Intelligence Service (SIN) and the U.S. Embassy who funded his campaign and drafted his government plan through an organization called Institute of Freedom and Democracy (ILD).
Two months after Fujimori's inauguration, and following its capitulationist traditions, MRTA pleaded with the new government for Dialogue. Just like in APRA times, it was a recycling action with free publicity. This time MRTA "kidnaped" parliamentarian Gerardo Lopez, a former member of Patria Roja (legal left) then turned militant of SIN/Fujimori party Cambio-90. Same script: after a few days the "kidnaped" was freed and announced his "conversion" and willingness to function as an "emissary of MRTA revolutionaries." Gerardo Lopez said: "MRTA is willing to dialogue and even to depose weapons."Not much new in that!
The above narrative proves that not every armed struggle is revolutionary. Even the Yankee CIA organizes armed struggle, witness Nicaragua with the murderous Contras; or Afghanistan, "Unita" of Jones Savimbi in Angola, Bay of Pigs, groups in Iraq, Kurdistan, the Balkans, etc. Also, Russian social imperialism, and Chinese revisionists used to organize guerrillas as part of their contention-collusion quarrels with Yankee imperialism.
The character of a revolutionary movement depends on the historical context, the reality in which it develops, the social class it serves and represents, its political objectives, its ideology, its independence and self-sustenance. In that context, as we have seen, MRTA is completely alien to the ideology of the proletariat. It is not at all Marxist, much less representative of the Marxism of today: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. MRTA represents the same interests as the domesticated and legal "left" of Perú. Its purpose is to safeguard the system and preserve the oppressive old State. It tries to derail any serious attempts to destroy the old State and replace it with something entirely newly and incomparably better as the People's War that is being led by the PCP since 1980 to the present (1998).
By its class character, its revisionism, its opportunism and its countless betrayals to the aspirations of the people, the official Peruvian "left" is but a tool of the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie, the faction of the big bourgeoisie ruling Perú during most of its recent republican life. Those are MRTA's true mentors.
In Perú, the two factions of the big bourgeoisie in power (the bureaucratic and compradore) are not only in continuous collusion, but also have conflicts and internal struggle to determine who controls the power of the State at any given time, as well as protect their economic interests and maximize their profits. These conflicts are expressed through political parties, factions in the church and the armed forces, and so on. For example, in 1968, General Velasco Alvarado deposed President Belaunde by a coup. Belaunde's party, Popular Action (AP), representing the compradore bourgeoisie, was declared illegal and many of its leaders were deported! Velasco consolidated and amplified the interests of the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie. He expelled the representatives of the liberal right from the country as well. He was pressured by the intense conflict of these two factions of the big bourgeoisie, and especially after the bold mass protests for vindications or demands that resulted in the deepening of the class struggle, and the preparations for the launching of the People's War. In the late 70's, General Morales Bermudez overthrew General Velasco. In 1980, after the failure of the Velasco regime, Popular Action returned to power. In July, Fernando Belaunde Terry again returned to the presidency. A month before, on May 17, 1980, the Peruvian people, tired of so many empty promises and betrayals by the big bourgeoisie, initiated the heroic People's War (ILA-80), which is now approaching its 18th Anniversary, and is continuing its vibrant and victorious course.
In 1985, Alan Garcia Perez of APRA, recaptured power for the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The APRA government charged against the interests of the compradore bourgeoisie tied to finance capital (the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.) But APRA's attempt to statize the financial system, and the banks failed. So in 1990, Kenyo Fujimori, a stooge of Yankee imperialism, rapidly concerted alliances with the compradore bourgeoisie, attempting to repress the APRA, dissolved APRA's paramilitary groups (death squad Rodrigo Franco), and withdrew the military escort of his predecessor, Garcia Perez, who, fearful of the people's just and fair sanctioning (for his many genocides), fled the country. Every so often, his successors, the murderer Hermoza Rios and puppet Fujimori remind and scare APRA that they could extradite Garcia Perez by way of Interpol or CIA kidnappers, and try him for corruption as a common criminal.
These examples, show how MRTA's "armed struggle" depends on the particular political situation and the interests in play. In sum, it is used to strengthen the power of one of the two factions of the big Peruvian bourgeoisie in power backed by U.S. imperialism. And when once in a while, the typical brutal and genocidal nature of the reactionary armed forces touches this group as it happened during the genocide in the locality known as Los Molinos or at the Japanese embassy it is not because they represent any danger for the stability of the State, but it is the result of internal quarrels within the big bourgeoisie. Besides, do not forget the Nazi like practices that "Comandante Rolando" learned at APRA, from the "Chief" Haya de la Torre himself (this matter will be explained in detail below). The same risks of repression by the regime can also affect the legal "left" or even a rightist party: all may be occasionally subject to persecution, repression, jailing or even murder. However, these isolated cases do not confer them revolutionary credentials. Even in the midst of the armed forces, quarrels and violent political struggles occur such as the repression against General Salinas, Robles and others, even ruthless assassinations by SIN/SIE death squads have been occurring, such as the one against Colonel Obregón, Director of the Chorrillos Military Academy in Lima. The presence of the victims of repression within the armed forces, does not change the reactionary and genocidal nature of the armed forces as an institution. It is a struggle of contention and collision between the fascist faction in power (Hermoza, Montesinos) against the demo liberal faction or others.
But clearly the Peruvian State and its repressive forces act differently when confronting a genuine subversion. They treat the PCP prisoners of war one way, and MRTA prisoners in a different way. The example of Victor Polay is illustrative. In February 1989, "Comandante Rolando" was arrested and the Peruvian mainstream press converted him into a hero. It was the Garcia's Aprista regime final years. Polay Campos was sent to the Cantogrande prison, in Lima and there assigned an apartment all to himself, to which he even had a key, it had a color TV, a Kitchenette, bath, radio, library, refrigerator and the right to have interviews with the press, receive newspapers and magazines. Witness what high MRTA leader Lucero Cumpa, also imprisoned at the time in Cantogrande, said in her interview by Caretas, published on March 25, 1991:
Question (Q): "Is it true that Victor Polay has the key to his own cell?"
Lucero Cumpa (LC): That was a common thing at the prison, not only for 'political prisoners' but also for other inmates (Note: By "other inmates" she refers to drug traffickers)For a very different treatment of political prisoners, in Cantogrande prison, in the same period, read the story about the PCP document "Heroic Resistance," May 6-10, when 100 PCP prisoners of war were ruthlessly murdered.
At his comfortable Cantogrande cell, Polay received all sorts of regular and special visits, family and relatives, friends, parliament aries, journalists, and even ministers of the APRA cabinet. So much is narrated by the writer (an MRTA-fun) Guillermo Thorndike in his book the Mole, "Los Topos." "'Hello Victor, how are you today?' said the Prime Minister familiarly. He had been a presidential candidate in 1989 and several times held the general secretariat of the party. "I am a friend of your father . . . I have requested that your rights be respected fully and completely. And I assure you that's the way it's going to be." (Los Topos, page 64, by Guillermo Thorndike, 1991 edition.)
On July 8, 1990, a few days before the APRA government handed the reigns of power over to Fujimori, Polay and 47 other MRTA prisoners "miraculously" escaped from prison through a 332 meter (1090 feet) long underground tunnel. In Peru, it was a "secret" shouted from rooftops that the alleged "escape" was fully coordinated by the APRA government, and in particular, by Agustín Mantilla: a sinister APRA operative who at the time, was Garcia's Minister of Interior, and also one of the main perpetrators of the genocide of 300 political prisoners in June of 1986 by the regime. The tunnel through which Polay successfully made his escape, was part of the payment that was due to MRTA for being "a good guerrilla," who was always eager to dialogue and promote peace of the cemeteries between the exploiters and the exploited, between the poor or hungry with the filthy rich.
The government has established a two-tier jailing system. Soft and cushy for MRTA and other "good revolutionaries" (if anything goes wrong it is immediately reported by the reactionary press); and another, entirely different, for the "big bad guerrilla of evil Sendero," meaning the prisoners of war and political prisoners related to, or unrelated by being suspected as connected or sympathetic to, the COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERÚ (PCP). That much is corroborated by the genocides perpetrated against them:
- (a) October 4, 1985, the police burning alive 30 unarmed PCP political prisoners in Lurigancho prison (Lima); commemorated since then by the people as the DAY OF THE PRISONER OF WAR."
- (b)June 19, 1998, the Armed Forces and Police forces, including Republican Guards and marines committed one of the worst genocides in the history of the country, 300 unarmed prisoners of war were simuntaneously slaughtered in the concentration camps of Lurigancho, El Fronton and Callao; The DAY OF HEROISM is celebrated in memory of those best children of the people who delivered their lives that day for the Party and the Revolution.
- (c) May 6-10, 1992, the genocidal dictatorship of the serpentine dwarfs Fujimori and Hermoza murdered 100 unarmed political prisoners in the Cantogrande prison after a fierce resistance by the prisoners, using only whatever makeshift defensive tools they could find in the course of those days: a feat now celebrated annually as the DAY OF THE HEROIC RESISTANCE.
Why are PCP prisoners ruthlessly murdered, while other prisoners have tunnels built to facilitate their escape? Victor Polay, the "Chief" of MRTA, was recaptured in June 1992, first taken to Yanamayo prison, in Puno (near to Lake Titicaca); then moved to the Navy's Special Operations Base in El Callao: The same prison wherein President Gonzalo, leader of the PCP, is confined since April 3, 1993 for more than five years. Chairman Gonzalo has not been allowed at the El Callao base (or elsewhere he is) to receive any visits of any kind, neither by family, relatives nor friends, nor by his lawyers or medical doctors who are worried about his health. Furthermore, he is not allowed a legal defense. In fact his lawyers, Drs. Jorge Cartagena and Alfredo Crespo, were themselves imprisoned under the trump up "charge" of "apology of terrorism" for his legal representation before the regime's hooded military judges. The brutal repression against democratic and progressive lawyers, especially those representing political prisoners, has been intense after the 1992 military coup. The latest was in March 1998 when the fascist dictatorship arrested 10 lawyers for filing motions to the military tribunal on behalf of prisoners of war.
President Gonzalo remains completely isolated and in communicated from the outside world, while the SIN and the CIA fabricated all sorts of hoaxes in his name: "peace letters," "peace videos," "peace phone calls"; all as part of the psychological warfare against the people of Perú. On his side, Polay, supposedly a neighbor of President Gonzalo, receives several visits by family and relatives every month and his attorneys are permitted to represent him in all matters.
Another serious element in national reality under Fujimori, we want to mention here, is the sharpening of the economic crisis and the increase of poverty. The publicized "economic springtime" of Fujimori proved an overinflated gas balloon that burst up in tiny pieces. The auctioning out of the State enterprises has basically ended (unless the sell out Fujimori try to sell the water and the air), international bankers and Wall Street reaped off billions of dollars by way of the foreign debt, and today there are more poor and unemployed than in 1990 under Garcia. The salaries of hunger are equivalent to those of 1963. Also, the noxious influence from the shameful military defeat suffered in the armed clash with Ecuador in January of 1995. As a result, the old State started a frantic armament buildup that is weakening the fragile Peruvian economy even more. Add to this the total lack of prevention and lack of state support during the meteorological effects of El Niño that has wiped out several villages from the map with hundreds of inhabitants. The puppet Fujimori has taken advantage of this tragedy to trafficking for his electoral campaign, distributing calendars with his criminal face stamped on them.
This situation further aggravates the poverty and social crisis in the country. Note that, just as their predecessors so-touted border conflicts with Ecuador,"this government used this border problem as a psycho social element to generate support for its genocidal armed forces. The PCP has stated the truth: They are very brave when murdering prisoners, children and unarmed masses, but too cowardly to die defending the country's borders!
We must also mention the role of drug trafficking, which, while providing a profitable income for the putrid State, creates a situation of generalized corruption pervading the top echelons of the armed forces, police, the judiciary, as well as the executive power (Montesinos, Santiago Fujimori, Nicolas Hermoza and several generals and other high ranking officers in the armed and police forces.) These are not isolated cases like the Yankee DEA reports try to make us believe. It is part of an institutionalized corruption -a narco State.
In conclusion, MRTA is a counterrevolutionary guerrilla whose only goal is to divide, confuse and demoralize the poor masses of the country. Their leaders' aspiration is to insert themselves in the "pacification" plans developed by Yankee imperialism for Perú and Latin America.
F. THE LEADERSHIP OF THE M.R.T.A. The media presented the leader of the MRTA as a radical "Marxist-Leninist," a follower of Castro and Che Guevara. But in real life Victor Polar Campos ("Commander Rolando") was ideologically shaped in the crucibles of the infamous American People's Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). He was initiated in that party at the age of seven, and remained in its ranks until the end of 1980. He held middle level positions in the party's structure, and was one of the favorites of Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, chief of APRA. APRA is one of the parties of the Peruvian big bourgeoisie (some Yankee scholars fallaciously call it "nationalist"). It was founded in December 1924 by Haya de la Torre. This nefarious character made anti-communism the hallmark of his entire political career. Haya de la Torre (a.k.a. "el Jefe" or the chief) accumulated a long record of wheeling and dealing with domestic and international politics. Among them were betrayals and treacherous pacts with military coup rulers as well as with civilian satraps (Prado, Odria, Perez Godoy, Morales Bermudez, Eudocio Ravines, etc.) Since its birth, APRA tried to disguise itself as a people's party. Toward that end, it used a camouflaged rhetoric as "nationalism" or "social nationalism," adorned with "anti-imperialist" poses and pretenses. Ideologically APRA is a mixture of pseudo populist theory and a fascist practice.
This party never was a democratic political force, not even from the viewpoint of bourgeois democracy. Throughout its existence, and more noticeably so during its government (1985-1990), APRA was a sworn enemy of the peasants, workers and other oppressed classes. It allied itself with the big landowners, the financial oligarchy and foreign powers, and in particular, helping the interests of Yankee imperialism.
Haya de la Torre lived in Berlin in the mid 1920s. At the time, the Nazi movement began its ascent. From the Nazis he copied organizational structures, the criminal methods of operation, and the fascist imposition that has always characterized APRA. Even the APRA's salute -the extended right arm held high when the chief is passing by- was a copy cat from the Nazi hordes. APRA has been characterized for the close links that it keeps with agents of imperialist penetration. Through a ghost labor Front, pompously called the Peruvian Workers Confederation (CTP), controlled by this party for over 50 years, it keeps close ties to U.S. imperialism through its CIA-sponsored foreign labor branch, the AFL-CIO.
Julio Antonio Mella, founder of the Communist Party of Cuba, murdered in Mexico City in 1928, a contemporary and comrade of José Carlos Mariátegui, from the start, denounced APRA as a new fascist group in Latin America, which disguises itself under an "anti imperialist" cloak, but whose fundamental objective was to struggle against Marxist influence in Latin America. Haya de la Torre was an intolerant and rabid enemy of the Soviet Republic, then led by Lenin and Stalin. He concerted alliances with the most recalcitrant anticommunist elements in the Americas to confront the parties and forces of the Third International, the Communist International, and in particular, the Communist Party (PCP) founded by Mariátegui, affiliated to the Third International, at the time under the name of the Socialist Party.
After World War II, APRA supported the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Haya negated the need to have a party of the working class and instead, set forth the party of the "intellectual and manual workers," led by the intellectuals. To disguise its servility to Yankee Imperialism, APRA trafficked with the slogan: "Neither Washington nor Moscow, but only APRA, will save Peru." Polay Campos, whose parents were life time APRA militants, became an APRA member in 1958. He was registered at the children's organization (CHAP), which was structured after Hitler's Nazi youth and this had forged the character of the future party cadre. While Victor Raul Haya de la Torre was alive, it was up to the CHAP children to provide an angelic atmosphere for the public festivities organized each year by the party, during the birthday celebration of the APRA Chief.
In 1968 Polay Campos was appointed as foreign affairs secretary of the "APRA University Commando (Comando Universitario Aprista CUA), a crude imitation of Hitler's brown shirts, or Mussolini's black shirts (In Italian `fascios de combattimento.') This CUA group headed by Polay was hated by the students and faculty, but feared for their ruthlessness and brutality, which for 30 years terrorized the Peruvian universities. Many students were murdered trying to confront the murderous APRA hoards. The APRA youth commandos (CUA) were structured and functioned as paramilitary groups. Their political line and action was and is still nourished by an intolerable anti-communism. CUA has always counted, to perpetrate crimes, on the police's overt and covert assistance. APRA used to have and still has members in the armed and genocidal armed and police forces.
The decade of the 1960's, Victor Polay's "golden age," is remembered as the most violent times in the history of Peruvian universities. By way of its paid bullies and mercenaries, code named "buffalos," APRA managed to control the most important universities of Perú. Once APRA took over the government in 1985, the infamous "Buffalo Pacheco," a notorious criminal who led a "APRA commando" helped by the police, expanded its activities to humble sectors of the population (the young towns of Lima). Buffalo Pacheco became part of an APRA paramilitary group led by Army Commander (R) Rodriguez Rabanal code named DOES and the Special Forces Radio Patrols. But why was this sinister Commander Rodriguez Rabanal hated so much by the people? He was the head of the sinister APRA government's death squad known as Rodrigo Franco. He was charged with training paramilitary, and with carrying out the "war without prisoners." Rodriguez Rabanal (known in military circles as the "Macho-man Rodriguez") had participated directly in the genocides of 300 prisoners of war carried out in the prisons of El Fronton and Lurigancho in 1986. He also led the summary execution of six students (then reported by the press as `one student dead after clashes with the police',) he also burned the RENASA factory; and had participated in many tortures, disappearances, and other atrocities perpetrated against the people.
In 1990, Buffalo Pacheco, crony of Victor Polay, was ambushed and annihilated by a Maoist contingent of the People's Army of Liberation (EPL) led by the PCP. Furthermore, in a similar lightning attack other EPL fighters put Commander Rodriguez Rabanal out of service in Lima's Jesus Maria District, seriously wounding him and annihilating his bodyguard.
Polay Campos was a protegee of Haya de la Torre
In 1970, Polay Campos was promoted from the CUA to the APRA "Bureau of Conjunctions," the cadre school, the organism charged with "training" and "selecting" the future leaders of the party. The ones chosen by this organism were the favorite youth of Haya de la Torre. Only those militants who were most trustworthy to the party's high leadership, and above all, those who have been outstanding in anticommunist actions entered the "Bureau of Conjunctions." Out of this organism emerged Garcia Perez, who in 1985, became president of Perú. Polay Campos, now MRTA's "Commander Rolando" was indeed a fervent admirer of the "Jefe" Haya. He was the roommate and sang a duet with Alan Garcia Perez.
In 1972, Polay Campos was transferred from the "Bureau of Conjunctions" to become general secretary of APRA's Executive Committee in El Callao, the main port of Perú. That same year he was arrested by police, and accused of having taken part in the bloody events in Lima of February 1970 when more than 200 persons lost their lives in raids. APRA negotiated with the freedom of Polay with the Velasco Alvarado military regime and other suspects in jail. In 1973, Polay was awarded a golden exile and a full "student scholarship" to study in Europe by APRA. He traveled first to Madrid (Spain) and then to France, where he was roommate and drinking partner of Alan Garcia Perez.
After a lengthy stay in Europe, "Comrade Rolando" returned to Perú in 1978. It was the time of APRA's coexistence with the military dictatorship of General Morales Bermudez, whose son Remigio Morales Bermudez later became the agricultural minister in the APRA government. Supported by the military regime, APRA became the main prompter of the Constituent Assembly elections called by the military regime, and therefore it achieved a majority in that constituent Assembly, with Haya de la Torre as its president. At this time, Polay, Garcia Perez and other APRA hacks living abroad returned to Perú.
Sad Day: Polay lost his protector.
In late 1979, the chief of APRA, an elderly man over 84, was at the end of his life. Without any mental capacity left, he had lost control of the party. This event was a heavy blow to Polay Campos, who no longer had a protector, and as a result, was left to fend for the party on his own. Suddenly he was out of an APRA political career. Victor Polay Campos "officially" left APRA in late 1980. Beyond a doubt, the key factor prompting Polay to leave APRA was the political decline and death of Victor Paul Haya de la Torre. Polay was unable to confront the ascent of Garcia Perez, Carlos Roca, Barba Caballero, Abel Salinas, Luis Negreiros, Javier Valle Riestra, Negreiros, Mantilla Del Castillo and other reactionaries labeled as the "new APRA generation." The interim successor of Haya, Luis Alberto Sanchez, said of Polay: "the chinito (the little Chinaman) Polay is good for street agitation, but he lacks political talent and acumen." No one in Peru is aware of any document or statement in which the "Chief " of MRTA had divorced himself politically and ideologically from his old party. On the contrary, there is abundant proof that Polay never ceased being attracted to the party of Haya de la Torre.
Ideologically, Polay has never stopped being Aprista: "The history of APRA has been fulfilled as a history of consistency, of struggle, and of martyrdom . . . Apra has a historical opportunity, either it is consistent, or it becomes an APRA that ends up capitulating." (Victor Polay. "Interview in the Underground," August 1985.)
"I cannot disallow that in the struggle to change the country there have been hundreds and thousands of Apristas who have given the best part of their lives for the cause of freedom . . .We vindicated the `Buffalo Barreto' in the decade of the 30's. We believe that it is one continuous struggle. They were Apristas, and we are MRTA. But it is the same thing: The same ideals of justice, the same desires for change, and for democracy." (Victor Polay, La República, July 9, 1992.)
Polay's compliments to his former party put into question his "Marxist-Leninist" facade. APRA in the 1930's and APRA today are one and the same pro-imperialist, treacherous, anticommunist vicious anti-worker party that throughout its history has been allied to the rich and powerful. The APRA of Haya de la Torre is the same corrupt criminal and fascist party that Alan Garcia Perez led. For more than 70 years APRA has maintained unaltered the same "ideology" and the same reactionary program manufactured by Haya de la Torre.
G. The Origin and the Collapse. In 1978, Victor Polay got in touch with one of the many groups in Perú calling themselves "Movement of the Revolutionary Left" (MIR). He joined a small and marginal group named MIR "EL Militante" led by Hugo Avellaneda Valdes: a solitary character, virtually unknown in the political circles of the country. Avellaneda today lives in France as a political refugee.
Polay and Avellaneda unsuccessfully frequented the circles of the rotten legal "left" in Peru. Many in those circles, shunned and distrusted "chino" Polay who was still considered as a bully in the service of APRA. In 1980, they got in touch with Luis Varesse Scotto, leader of the Revolutionary Marxist Socialist Party (PSR-ML) and the president of an important NGO in Peru. Varesse had just returned from Nicaragua, where he witnessed the fall of Anastasio Somoza.
Together with other PSR-ML, a split of the "Socialist Revolutionary Party" (PSR) founded in 1977 by General Leonidas Rodriguez Figueroa, one of the chieftains of the Velasco Alvarado dictatorship was in charge of the sinister and corporative National System of Social Mobilization (SINAMOS) created in 1971 by the Velasco regime. SINAMOS pretended to become the dictatorship's "political party" and was meant to organize and control the workers and people's movement. Luis Varesse Scotto was an official of this organism and right hand of General Leonidas Rodriguez. Both Leonidas Rodriguez and Varesse left SINAMOS in 1975, when General Morales Bermudez deposed General Velasco Alvarado in a coup code named "El Tacnazo." In October 1982, the marriage of the PSR-ML and MIR-EL Militante give birth to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). At first, the partisan leadership fell upon the triad made up by Luis Varesse, Polay Campos and Hugo Avellaneda. Also, initially funds for the new organization came from Varesse's NGO.
In 1984, Varesse and Polay confronted each other for supremacy in the organization. Polay won, and thereon was recognized as the "Commander." Varesse was expelled, accused of cowardice and desertion and under death threat, opted for protection and gave himself up to the police. He was jailed for a short time, then pardoned by the Garcia regime, and traveled to Mexico. Later on he moved back to Nicaragua, where he is still living, working as an U.N. official. Varesse is a close friend of the old Nicaraguan revisionist Tomas Borge.
H. Other Capitulators in Latin America. We have seen several capitulations and betrayals in Latin America, where groups very similar to MRTA negotiated and surrendered to pro-imperialist regimes, and thus betrayed the people's aspirations for popular democracy and national liberation. In Ecuador, the nearly extinct "Alfaro Vive Carajo" is now just a useless adornment in the official political system. In Colombia the M-19 sold out its "armed struggle" to take part in elections and inserted its leaders in government posts. In El Salvador, some of the former FMLN guerrillas now are part of the national police, who represses the people, while the FMLN leaders grabbed a ticket to join the bourgeois parliament, and therefore, betrayed the people's interests in exchange for a plate of lentils. That is the "new concept of revolution" preached by petty traitors such as Joaquin Villalobos, praised to the skies by The New York Times as a "guerrilla military genius" in the late 1980's. Or look at the heroic struggle of the Nicaraguan people, who heroically defeated Somoza and the CIA-Contra war despite the fact of having had more than 60,000 casualties. The people were betrayed by the Ortega brothers and callous revisionists and exploiters like the "businessman" Tomas Borge (whose employees are now in hunger strike for lack of salary payments.) They proved to be spineless jellyfishes who fell on their knees before Uncle Sam (e.g., "Jimmy Carter's Peace Commission") in the wake of the Soviet Social Imperialist collapse returning power precisely to Somoza's heirs.
In Guatemala the URNG guerilla, after 36 years, signed a peace agreement with the pro- imperialist Alvaro Arzu regime. URNG gave up the armed struggle to become a "unity party," incorporated themselves into the imperialist version of a "democratic system," and thus, signed their own death certificate as a revolutionary alternative.
In Mexico, the zapatistas led by a priest known as sub-commander Marcos claim that the people's main demand is "democracy, liberty, justice and culture" and it can be achieved within the frame of bureaucratic capitalism of Mexican society. This is a reactionary position. The main demand of the Mexican people and the oppressed people anywhere is the conquest of Power. Only when the worker-peasant alliance seize Power through armed struggle led by the Party of the proletariat, the Communist Party, all people's rights will be achieved. If the zapatistas do not fight for power, they are blocking the road to a genuine emancipation of the Mexican people. Mao taught us a law, without power all is illusion!
In reality what the charlatan Marcos wishes is to replace the Party of the big bourgeoisie PRI by its clone the PRD, which will continue to maintain Mexico's semi-colonial status under the control of imperialism, mainly Yankee imperialism. If the struggle is not for the creation of a New State and the destruction of the old State, then the "zapatista revolution" is a fraud. A clear example is the November 1996 agreement signed with the Zedillo dictatorship on "Rights and Culture for Indians," which was never implemented because it was a scheme to prolong the exhausted political agenda of the zapatistas. Another example was the highly publicized "long march" of 1,111 zapatistas who arrived to Mexico City protected by the police. The imperialist outlet The New York Times reported on this event, "the rebels were given a farewell by other 14,000 in San Cristobal de Las Casas," but how many zapatistas are armed after these four years of comedy? Then, how can we explain that a handful of CNC mesnadas (paramilitary) of PRI is terrorizing people with impunity in Chiapas? What are the thousands of zapatistas armed to the teeth doing? An angry construction worker from Guerrero-Mexico commented about these opportunists as follows: "So, what the fuck those 1,000-plus EZLN troops are up in arms for? To masturbate themselves with the muzzels of their rifles? or for `subcommander Marcos' photo-ops, while the opportunity comes for him to insert himself in some parliamentary post and sell out the `EZLN revolution' and the so-called `indigenous rights' in exchange for a big enchillada."
EZLN confuses and manipulates the people by trafficking with indigenism and regionalism, to keep them passive and dormant in the face of the oppressive State, and essentially to become counterrevolutionary. Besides the Mexican big bourgeosie and its army, the other perpetrator of the murder of peasants taking place in Chiapas-Mexico are the cowardly demagogues who in 1994 deceived the Chiapas peasantry into taking up arms, but now can't even make up their minds on what to do next. "Please help us prevent another Vietnam in Chiapas" cried Marcos in the U.S. TV program "CBS 60 Minutes." What cowards! What foul-semelling opportunists! The oppressed in the world are more interested in creating something to imperialism a thousandfold worse than Vietnam, in Mexico, Peru and throughout the world. This charade known as EZLN must be crushed by the Mexican workers raised in People's War.
The EZLN is the type of "pure," "antiauthoritarian," and "good guerrilla" that reaction and imperialism use in the Americas as "pressure groups" or decoys to split the popular movement and maintain the status quo. But are these opportunists going to be tolerant enough and antiauthoritarian if some day a genuine M-L-M, GT Communist Party begins to organize and launch the People's War in Chiapas? Surely, they will join the Federal Mexican Army to fight the revolution. It is time to unmask the EZLN: a cardboard "guerrilla" promoted and praised to the skies by the imperialist media, anarchists, trotskites and revisionists.
The ideological analysis of the armed struggles in Colombia and Venezuela was masterfully analyzed by the PCP in the document "Latin America: People's War" (this document is available in English in this PCP web page.) Here, we will comment on recent documents published by the armed organizations FARC-EP. For example their latest joint National Conferences of FARC-EP call for a "Government of Reconstruction" and "National Reconciliation," based on "pluralism, patriotism and democracy." In other words, in the name of pluralism and national reconciliation they will keep the narcogoverment of Samper or Pastrana in Power as long as they reform the State. They frequently quote Bolivar: "the objective of the army is to protect the border. God help us if it turns against its citizens." FARC-EP explains this by saying that the armed forces and police should be reformed and educated to protect the "national sovereignty and human rights." But, they say nothing about the imperialist domination of Colombia and the presence of Yankee troops in its territory.
The position of FARC-EP is based on two revisionist thesis advanced by Gorbachov: 1)The New Thinking or Reestructuring of the State, and 2) National Reconciliation. It totally denies the class struggle, and the leading role of the Party of the proletariat in the revolution. It claims that imperialism has evolved and the new global economy had now place all countries in a state of mutual interdependence. The capital extended to the Third World by imperialism is not a set of chains to plunder and exploit the working people anylonger, but a life saver. As a matter of fact, imperialism, especially Yankee imperialism no longer exist, and because of "modernization," today all classes enjoy the fruit of a global economy. Therefore, under the principle of pluralism and other enlightened principles the warring parties could be brought together in a "process of "national reconciliation" leading to an amicable end of the conflict. The reality trashed these fallacious concepts everywhere it was applied such as in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Sout Africa, Northern Ireland, Palestine, etc. The case of the FMLN is illustrative. They agreed to lay down its arms in return for promises guaranted by the U.S. and its tool the U.N., thus placing the fate of the people of El Salvador in the hands of Yankee imperialism, which for decades financed and armed their murderers and torturers. The FMLN agreed to have Yankee imperialism be the "honest broker" of the peace agrement with the fascist dictatorhip of El Salvador. However, the regime has broken virtually every promise, violated virtually every provision of the traitorous "peace accords," while the people, now without arms, can only register indignant and impotent protests (harshly beaten by former FMLN former guerrillas now part of the police.) Those who seek capitulation via "peace talks" are frustrated petty-bourgeois elements (caudillejos) who have no faith in the capacity of the masses to conquer Power. The PCP emphaticaly states: "The masses make history, and the Communist Party the revolution."
Victory to the People's War in Perú!
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
By Prensa Proletaria Internacional
Published by The New Flag.