The women Prisoners of War in the Luminous Trenches of Combat (high security prisons in Lima and the interior of Perú) rising high the red and untainted flag of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo thought, greet the heroic women fighters of our people and of the people of the world, who with courage and determination, fight unyielding battles along with the proletariat and the people for their emancipation and for revolution.The women proletariat is an important part of the people's struggle, as the great Lenin taught us: "The success of the revolution depends on the degree in which women participate." Their importance is still greater because they intensify actions, which tend to the mobilization of women, that are necessary and fruitful from the viewpoint of the proletariat, and in the service and development of the People's War.
The reactionaries seek to impulse the mobilization of women for the benefit of the exploiting classes, to corporatively [in a fascist form] organize them so that they act as elements of divisiveness, to fetter the people's struggle and especially the People's War. President Gonzalo, upholding, defending and applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, has established the specific line on the women question and teaches us the following: "With the appearance of classes, which demarcates the beginning of exploitation, the crushing burden placed upon women; from slave to serf, from serf to wage-slave also began. Up to now, wherever one finds exploitation, women are being slaved and this situation can only come to an end, when this exploitative and oppressive system is overthrown and uprooted."
From yesterday's feminine slavery to today's formal equality, centuries of silent but relentless struggles elapsed, and violence of the masses wrested away conquests in all our battles. The advancement of women has been the advancement of the people, but they have not been passive nor beneficiaries, but fighters who struggled decisively for the cause of the oppressed; and militants at the forefront; everywhere the trenches of the people are embedded with their blood. The woman is neither apolitical nor indifferent, especially the woman of the people, who is a revolutionary fighter and a decisive militant.
The daughters of the oppressed classes, women workers, peasants and wage earners, have provided many glorious names that enrich the emancipator chapters of the masses: Chiang Ching, Rosa Luxemburg, and Leu J. Jan are examples of this international struggle. The Peruvian women in our history have also provided many such examples of revolutionary fighters, such as Micaela Bastidas, and with the vibrant and victorious development of the People's War, innumerable heroic militants and fighting daughters of the people, such as Comrade Norah, who came to irrigate the field with their blood, so that the revolution may harvest fruit, conquer Power throughout the country, and thus, serve the World Revolution.
Today's women suffer oppression and exploitation from the semi-feudal and semi-colonial situation of our country. This is a situation which weighs over our people as heavy as a mountain, and redoubles the burden over the women masses of Peru. Marxism conceives the struggle for the emancipation of women as a long and victorious struggle. This is a protracted struggle which demands a real social transformation ending with the full victory of communism.
Only the victorious revolutionary struggle, under the leadership of the proletariat through its Communist Party, is capable of setting and fulfilling a legal equality between men and women, and as Lenin said, "it will be developed in the measure that large scale socialist production is developed." The thesis on the emancipation of women is conceived as part of the liberation of the proletariat. While the thesis of women's liberation historically appears as a bourgeois thesis. At the bottom, it hides the counterpoising of men to women due to sex, and the roots of the oppression of women is camouflaged. We are able to see today how feminine liberation is exposed more and more as bourgeois feminism that aims to divide the popular movement. This separates the women masses from it, and seeks to oppose the development of the women's movement under the guidance and leadership of the Party. Only with the construction of a new society, will the new women emerge in parallel and will be substantially different from the ones conformed by the society which is now declining. This new type of woman is being forged with the invincible and almighty ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, in the revolutionary forge of the People's War, relegating to history, the old type of woman deformed by the old system of exploitation, which is already sinking in favor of the true emancipation of women.
Almost eighteen years of hard-fought battles and heroic peoples' blood has been spilled so that the Support Bases could develop, which tomorrow will blossom as the "People's Republic of Peru," the fruit of years of intense People's War, led by the Communist Party of Peru. This is sustained by the masses with their meager crumbs, and even with their own lives. All of this is being done for the purpose of the liberation of our people, the emancipation of the proletariat, and the World Proletarian Revolution.
Amidst the People's War, are the women of the people, who are half of the world. They are developing the women's movement for the emancipation of women, a task which is fulfilled by the women themselves, are taking over their battle posts and launching the clear and piercing cry of the war of the masses rising arms, under the leadership of the vanguard, the Communist Party of Perú.
Faced with the development of the People's War, the reactionary Peruvian State launches counterrevolutionary warfare, unleashing white terror in the city and countryside (mainly in the countryside), applying its plans of masses against masses, and confronted by their failure, they have been resorting to genocide and as a part of it, to disappearances, murdering more than 30,000 children of the poorest and most exploited masses, mainly peasants, and residents of the poorest urban neighborhoods, and shanty towns. Besides continuing with their persecutions, arrests, tortures and imprisonment of the prisoners of war in their sinister concentration camps, they have even resorted to the extermination and genocide that took place in June of 1986 and May 1992 [TNF: 400 POWs murdered in El Fronton and 100 murdered in Cantogrande .]
From the onset reaction, unable to defeat the Revolution in the battlefield, satiated itself with those already in their grips, such as the women prisoners of war. In that way, from the moment we were captured, we were confined to filthy cells, denying us all the rights contemplated by their own laws, and savagely tortured in the police dependencies, mainly DINCOTE, as well as in the Armed Forces barracks. We went through psychological and physical torture, going through the drowning in dirty water pools, electrical shocks in the most sensible parts of our bodies, burnings, blow to the head, liver, even rape. They were trying in vain to break our revolutionary morale. Then we were transferred to jails which are veritable fascist concentration camps, where they systematically sought our annihilation by the subhuman conditions in which were are confined. There we are subjected to a totally deficient nutrition regime, and in many cases the food is in a state of decomposition. We are also being prevented from getting foodstuff from our relatives. All sorts of restriction are being placed to limit visits by close relatives, who are being subjected to humiliating and abusive searches. In that way a triple police jacket was opened on them. Later on they were persecuted, arrested and even disappeared, as part of the plan of isolation, annihilation and genocide which the Fujimori regime over our head. We have been fighting, resisting and defeating the reactionaries, and therefore, helping our Party, the people, and the People's War.
As prisoners of war, fighters in the People's Army of Liberation, led by the Communist Party of Perú, and confined to Prison, we maintain our condition of combatants and thus, fulfill the three tasks of the people's army: We fight, by developing successive struggles to conquer and defend our rights. A part of this aspect is the struggle to conquer and defend our rights. A leap in this aspect was the joint struggle of the three Luminous Trenches of Combat, where we wrested away from reaction, our conditions as political prisoners and as prisoners of war. Applying the just and correct Party line, we have transformed the fascist prison into a Shining Trench of combats. Today, the Fujimori dictatorship headed by the murderer and lackey of Yankee imperialism Fujimori, has placed us in isolation in fascist concentration camps to subject us to a ferocious and monstrous system of incarceration, a nefarious and sinister plan, which we will break with the heroic resistance of the best children of the people.
The women prisoners of war produce several types of art work, as a source of income to meet their basic needs inside the prison, applying our policy of self-sufficiency and independence so as not to be one more burden for the people whom we serve. In that way, we also develop the mobilization of the masses, politicizing them, mobilizing and organizing them in the function of the People's War.
Life in the Shining Trench of combat is exemplary, disciplined, joyful, and organized. We fulfill collective tasks of cleaning, cooking and we study Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, upholding Gonzalo Thought, the guarantee of triumph, and learning from President Gonzalo that we must serve the people with all our hearts. We also celebrate with utmost joy, the dates that are historical and important to the Party and the People's Army.
In this International Women's Day, women fighters, the Prisoners of War, call to all women of our people, workers, intellectuals, laborers, women of the neighborhoods and shanty towns to incorporate themselves into the revolutionary storm that victoriously advances in the country. We are living through historic moments in our lives, in which a new phase in the contention between Revolution and counterrevolution is taking place. It is entering higher, crueler and more earthshattering chapters, but at the end, they will enable the Revolution to advance, and the People's War to develop and conquer Power throughout the country. This epic of the people is today masterfully led by the leadership of the Communist Party of Perú following the teachings of President Gonzalo, who is the greatest living Marxist-Leninist-Maoist in today's world, and a great political and military strategist, whose leadership and thought has given us the guarantee of triumph of the Revolution that will take us to Communism.
Long Live President Gonzalo!
Uphold, Defend and Apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought!
Long live the Women's Struggle of the World for their Emancipation!
Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!
Women Prisoners of War of Perú. Translated and distributed by MPP and The New Flag. March 1998.