On May 17, 1980, in the very bowels of your unjust poverty and burning rebellion, you have risen up in storming fire launching the armed struggle. The fists of your children, flesh of your own flesh, dared to take up arms to overthrow the old order of exploitation and create a new world that truly serves the people, since the existing one is only one of misery and growing oppression.
These 15 years, rich in struggles through its weaving path, have given you decisive victories. They have been shortcomings full of lessons; in the end, the positive is what definitely counts: thousands of armed actions, starting with simple armed agitations to excellent and strongly developed mobile warfare; the PCP has multiplied its forces many times; the Peoples Liberation Army (EPL) is formed by thousands of men and women, mainly poor peasants, forged in years of struggle against the genocidal government and its armed forces; and what is most important, the New Power is materialized in hundreds of Peoples Committees exercising State functions, leading the support Base Areas in the formation of the Peoples Republic of Peru.
As Maoists, we believe that power surges from the barrel of the gun, this is an objective law, it means Power, the new emerges from the armed struggle, it comes from the masses of poor and oppressed people, it belongs to the people, and destroys what is old and reactionary. It is a fact that the major advances of the revolution have been conquered precisely in the years when the reactionary armed forces and the putrefied Peruvian State have intervene directly against our people. Because of its class nature, the landlord-bureaucratic dictatorship serving the imperialists, especially the Yankee imperialists, respond to the armed struggle with persecutions and total repression, following the dark policy of "steal everything, burn everything and kill everbody". Complementing this, the detentions, tortures, annihilations and mass killings are applied on the people, especially in the concentration camps filled with your best sons and daughters, the ground is being covered with their blood. But such genocides can never defeat you. The concentration camps have become shining trenches of combat, and for each one that falls, one hundred rise up and carry out the struggle to create and develop the Peoples Committees,the very basis of the New Power and the Peoples Republic of Peru.
An armed force has a class character and the strength of the State it defends; such fact is clearly expressed by the genocidal forces of the old State: first they manipulate paramilitary patrols (bands of landowners and their lackeys) protected and directed by the reactionary State, and, using death threats, press the masses to kill anyone called "terrorist", resulting in bloody slaughters, including the killing of journalists. Unable to follow their own plan, the reactionaries apply genocides, before and after the "democratic" elections, increasing the "disappearances" that are nothing more than murders committed by the reactionary armed forces.
However, since their "new plans" cannot separate the PCP from the masses, the reactionaries carry out the destruction of whole towns and agricultural areas, shamelessly stealing land from the peasantry to form sinister "strategic villages", in a vain attempt to restore the corrupted Power of landlords, supported by the reactionary armed forces, wanting to submit part of the population into militarized government camps.
The genocides, the bloody massacres are repeated over and over again in systematic attacks causing thousands of deaths. But in despite of all such crimes, Peruvian people! you continue to resist, because historically you are forged as steel, and you know the armed struggle that you sustain, you with your bread, your clothing, your work, and your blood, you know it is the struggle for your definitive emancipation, for the victory of the poor and the oppressed led by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), the Peoples War is invincible! Not even destruction, persecution, nor genocides can force you to give in and surrender, you Peruvian people! Heroic people of heroic masses! Warrior people for just causes! Your revolutionary storm has blown away oppressors, including the representative of the Vatican State, the Pope, in Ayacucho; he has nothing to do with the religious feelings of the people, except to rule over the masses to benefit his own Power and lubricate a theocracy defending the old order. An what did the Pope do in Ayacucho? He placed holy water over the rifles of the murderers, consecrated the sinister graves, blessed the rich and justified torture, and above all gave blessings to the mass murderers starting with the political-military chief Hermoza Rios and his mercenaries, calling on the reactionary government to crush the Peoples War with efficiency as soon as possible.
Now, with the Popes offensive--and all others that followed--completely defeated, the circus for presidential elections starts unfolding. The old order of blood and misery needs the people to select who should carry out oppression under the name of "representative democracy";this is the holy order of the capitalists and the landlord-bureaucratic dictatorship centered in the executive branch whose only support base is the reactionary armed forces.
People should ask: What has been achieved in five years of so-called "democracy" with the tyrant Fujimori? In synthesis, what have the people received from such farce? Nothing! there is only more hunger, misery and blood; the national industries have been sold out to foreign imperialists, increased unemployment, widespread corruption and partnerships of drug dealers and militaries, war against Ecuador to benefit U.S. mining companies, etc. Then, why vote? Why return to a government of misery and covered with blood? NO! The Peruvian people cannot vote because to do so is to validate a regime of misery and exploitation. Further, to vote is to defend and maintain a regime only to generate more corruption, genocides, oppression, and hunger. It will not be any different until the masses take up arms and destroy such old and dark history maintained by the criminal armed forces; it is a history of a putrefied system at the service of imperialist oppressors.
The armed struggle storms the country with illuminating fire, defying death, it defends the poor and the oppressed, it defeats exploitation and oppression, it ends hunger and misery. The Peoples War grows in Peru: in the North and the South, in the East and the West, in the valleys and the mountains, in the cities and the countryside. The Peoples War is invincible; the PCP, with its all- powerful ideology: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, leads the masses to serve the peoples interests, to serve their own interests in all aspects of life.
Peruvian people! Peasant, worker, proletariat, student, woman, youth! Remember, there are only two powers on the face of the Earth: the reactionary armed forces and the disorganized masses of people. But, the Peruvian people is no longer so, and today it is being organized and armed through the revolutionary Peoples War, invincible and just, because it follows Marxism- Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought, the only true science for transforming reality; because the PCP leads it; because the masses of oppressed people, mainly the poor peasants, support it; and because there is growing international support.
Comrades, Combatants! Peruvians! you already know all this! Because you have seen it and see it everyday right before your eyes, and you live it with your own participation. You are witnesses before the world! You, like no other, in Peru everyday, you give your generous work, your food, your sacrifice, your very blood; because your minds, your feelings, roar in Peru and tell the whole world: Without Power all is illusion!