By A.L. Gelabert, Political Prisoner, Texas, USA.
REPLY TO GAY AND LESBIAN PUBLICATION
LAGAI/Ultra Violet
San Francisco, CA
Dear LAGAI Collective:This is a communist reply to your anonymous piece "Party Crashers in Peru," published in your latest issue. That a year ago most people in the US had not heard of MRTA is not surprising. Most people in the US have not heard of Peru, period. But you should not blame that on us Latin American Revolutionaries, but on the grossly deficient US educational system, interested not in imparting scientific knowledge, but in stupefying the masses so they quickly accept fascism and its propaganda.
MRTA is not just "Peru's second guerrillas," but an important decoy devise by "leftist" groups in Peru, for the sole purpose of countering the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) and the heroic and invincible People's War so as to save the old Peruvian State. By revisionist pro-electoral groups such as United Left (IU) or Unified Mariateguista Party (PUM), in whose wings MRTA leaders are comfortable at home. Those revisionist cliques, and their bureaucratic "union leaders" endorsed the U.S. lackey Fujimori, and colluded with the corrupt and genocidal regime of Alan Garcia: the butcher of 300 political prisoners in 1986. Not surprisingly as with all revisionists, one of the MRTA's trademarks is profound homophobia, or profound enough as too ruthlessly murder gay men just for being gay, of publicly flogging prostitutes for their "sin."
Recently, MRTA commandos at the Japanese embassy attended a mass celebrated by bishop Juan Luis Cipriani, a notorious counterrevolutionary clergyman. Cipriani is a member of the anticommunism group "Opus Dei" who "blesses" the Army's genocidal missions in the countryside and openly supported that the military death squads be given immunity for their crimes by Fujimori's parliament. He advises army-run paramilitary "Civil Defense Units or ronderos" in Ayacucho, and shout profane language on Peruvian TV to slander, not only to us communists, but even to honest military (such as general Rodolfo Robles) who had the courage to denounce the crimes of Fujimori's death squad "Grupo Colina" who has murdered nine (9) students and a professor at La Cantuta University. While the masses resist and fight against the bloody dictatorship in the streets, MRTA is holding hands and common prayers "for peace talks" with Bishop Cipriani!
Raul Gonzales, the source quoted as interviewed for the reactionary magazine "Report on the Americas" (a.k.a. NACLA), is a notorious "senderologist" completely discredited in Peru; that term meaning a fabricator of crude lies, which the same "source" will deny and modify next week, if not next day, all ultimately paid by the CIA. There is no proof whatsoever that the PCP ever killed any gays or lesbians, or not as such. The PCP, however, does execute government agents and snitches, very selectively so, regardless of color, religion, sex or sexual orientation. Being gay, or being straight, is no license to help murder revolutionaries: people's justice follows swiftly. In line with other "senderologists," Raul Gonzales uses MRTA's screw ups, to slander the PCP. Which the same US public, who doesn't even know where Peru is, may buy it. But it cannot fool the Peruvian people.
The Peruvian old State has murdered or "disappeared" at least 30,000 unarmed civilians since the People's War began in 1980. It is the paid role of senderologists, as part of the regime's psychological operations against the people, to report the army and police massacres -whether in the Ayacucho countryside or in the shanty towns of Lima, as "crimes of sendero." Often, the people themselves expose the lie enough for the senderologists to have to retract and keep out from the public sight from a while. But do they accuse the army or even hint it's being the perpetrator behind those crimes? Not on your life. If it is so obvious, their role is to cover them up by saying that the crime was committed by "unidentified individuals," "disgruntled military acting on his own," etc.
The same happens with drug trafficking. Tons of cocaine have been discovered in Peruvian naval vessels and military planes (including Fujimori's plane): US bound. Army and police officers even volunteer to serve in the Upper Huallaga (a very active war zone) not to engage the People's Army that is bold in the People's Committees, but because of the payoffs they receive from drug traders in exchange for their "protection," "intelligence" or just for their "looking the other way." Peru has officially been being found to be a "narco State" drawing at least US$1 billion a year from the drug trade. However, senderologists are paid to spread the lie without showing a shred of evidence, with the complicity of the US and European media, about the PCP trafficking in drugs. Books by authors not at all sympathetic to the PCP, for example "The War in the Andes," by Coletta Young, amply prove that the PCP has nothing to do with the drug trade, but the Peruvian military sure does. Yet, the well-paid senderologists insist in their tale.
Senderologists also spread the lie about the PCP being "blood thirsty" or "authoritarian," but the PCP invariable bases its actions on the masses and their organizations. The New Power is being forged in deeds: from people's assemblies and People's Committees in the countryside to struggle committees' and People's Defense Revolutionary Movement (MRDP) in the cities. At least 30% of the national territory is under virtual control of the revolution and PCP generated organizations are active in all 24 Departments of the country. That fact has not been being denied even by the most cunning reactionary in Peru. It is the armed revisionist gang MRTA who, like in the Japanese Embassy soap opera, cavalierly disregards the masses, or its revisionist counterparts in the legal "left" who hardly obtained 0.005% of the eligible voters in the 1995 election.
The anonymous writer referred to an alleged protest march of gays and lesbians in Lima. How does the author know if the PCP was not present in such a march? He/s may claim, "at the rally no one spoke publicly in the name of the PCP." Well, does the author know that in Peru there is a fascist law called "apology of terrorism" that condemns to prison anyone praising the PCP in public? Does the writer know about the hooded judge courts? Even in the "democratic" USA, any unsupported allegation referred to the U.S. authorities by the puppet Fujimori regime of "collaborating with the PCP" subjects' anyone to arbitrary detention, psychological torture and deportation to Peru to be murdered at the hands of the military henchmen: Witness the case of Julian Calero, a longtime lawful US-resident Peruvian national held at the NYC Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), a high security prison, on SUSPICION (unproven by the same US courts) of being sympathetic to the PCP. So, how does the anticommunism writer know the PCP was not present in such a rally? The fact is that in Peru you cannot gather people without the eyes and the ears of the PCP being present. You bet your bops the PCP was there!
Moreover, since the PCP leadership and People's Army are largely women, unlike the US Army where women are kept as sex play toys, and gays are who are being brutalized as ever under Clinton's ploy of "don't ask, don't tell policy," how does the anonymous writer know there are no lesbians, or gays, in the PCP-generated mass organizations? If the anonymous writer is on the level why did he or she not sign her/his slanderous articles on the PCP (e.g., like all other articles in UV)? Smell a fish? Or a rat?
So far, the regime has not proven by any evidence that Lori Berenson had anything to do with MRTA. Berenson denies it. The government and the yellow press assert it. Obviously, the writer took the government's word over Berenson's. Perhaps he/she is convinced by the verdict of the court with hooded judges and prosecutor, where "defense" lawyers cannot speak? If not, why anyone can be so sure that Berenson had any part in MRTA? Or is the anonymous writer parroting the forthcoming CIA Fact Sheet on Peru?
Those "labor leaders" killed by the PCP were in reality paramilitary hacks in collusion with employers to oppress the workers, who were caught openly collaborating with police to murder genuine proletarian leaders on the revolutionary camp, or to sell out militant strikes, then using police to violently suppress the strike and "disappear" true leaders generated by the masses, or to close down plants when workers attempted to unionize: those "labor leaders" the PCP does indeed execute and will continue to do so. There were cases, of course, that the military itself commit horrible crimes against the workers (e.g., cases of miner leader Saul Cantoral, Castilla, etc.) and blame them on the PCP seeking to isolate it from the masses.
Ultimately, as in any country, including the US the litmus test is: does the movement favor a true revolution and workers in power, meaning the total uprooting of capitalism and imperialism? Or does the movement merely want to reform the existing capitalist State? MRTA obviously wants the latter: In its entire existence, MRTA calls for "dialogue" with the genocidal old State, if the old State mends its ways a little (or giving MRTA leaders some crumbs), then all is peachy king. While the PCP, even "senderologists" must admit, accepts no compromise at all with the murderous regime, other than to negotiate the old State's defeat, and heroically wages a People's War until the conquest of power countrywide.
The so-called "peace letters" and "videos" allegedly signed by Chairman Gonzalo (Dr. Abimael Guzman) in prison -which no one but the trusted guards of the intelligence services in the underground cell at the El Callao Naval Base, has seen him in more than two years, has been denounced by the PCP Central Committee's as "a counterrevolutionary hoax." If those allegations are "true," why not show President Gonzalo on live national and international TV and forever dispel all doubts? The answer is simple: These are psych social operations designed by Yankee imperialism and implemented by the regime trying to undermine the unshaken revolutionary morale of the Maoist combatants in Peru and worldwide supporters of the Peruvian revolution.
The purported "split of sendero" is a product of the feverish minds of mercenaries or senderologists like Gonzales, or Carlos Tapia, or Ivan Degregori, or dozens more: all paid by your tax money! Which was echoed by those, who advertise a so-called "two line struggle on peace talks" in the PCP promoted by the opportunist leader of the RCP-USA Bob Avakian. But the reality shows that the PCP is united as a steel, the People's War continues its inexorable advance to the Conquest of Power, and even Raul Gonzales -for the zillionth time that month had to swallow his earlier issued "PCP death certificate" and publicly admit: "sendero is not yet dead!" after recent stunning PCP offensives. The reality is that the People's War is completing the stage of Strategic Equilibrium, in anticipation of its third and final stage, the Strategic Offensive. To that end, People's Committees, the embryo of the New Power, have been set up everywhere in Peru: Open in red areas, clandestine in white areas. They are truly democratic bodies, where the full community decides everything. Unlike the corrupt San Francisco City Hall or the racist California legislature.
It is by no means a "coincidence" that MRTA "resurrects" every time that the obsolete and rotten old Peruvian State begins to tumble. And MRTA's goal is invariable the same: "dialogue, please, dialogue!" One more futile attempt to derail the victorious People's War, in favor of what the great Lenin called "parliamentary cretinism."
Those willing to learn the truth about the glorious People's War in Peru should write to: The New Flag/ Nueva Bandera, 30-08 Broadway, Suite 159, Queens, NY 11106 (E-Mail: lquispe@nyxfer.blythe.org, http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp) the publication of the Peru People's Movement (MPP.)
Gatesville, Texas