While the old State of the big bourgeoisie and large landowners crumbles into pieces through the actions of the People's War, and because of the sharp crisis confronting the world capitalist system (imperialism), its theoreticians, agents and puppets like Fujimori, have for years been promoting capitalist illusions among millions of unemployed and underemployed masses through their "modernization" programs.
The myths of "modernization" and "the informal sector," which imperialism promotes directly through the regime and indirectly through the non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is one of their last desperate efforts to fool the people and divert the struggle of the masses, thus trying to stop the march of the People's War towards the conquest of power.
For example, there is the trafficking of the masses of poor by imperialist profit making organizations such as the U.S. Tinker Foundation and its appendages in Peru "Accion Internacional," "Accion Communitaria," "Grupo Carsa," "Orion," the USAID and its Institute of Liberty and Democracy (ILD) among other poverty pimps, who with the complicity of the regime, pressure the poor to mortgage the little they have, to obtain loans with high interests rates and excessive fees. Many of the 1.4 million households in Lima, most of them in shanty towns, see their lands and homes seized by these imperialist organizations for lack of payment.
These NGOs began coming to Peru as part of the counterinsurgency strategy in the early 1990's, first disguised as "charitable" organizations to help the poor, later to show their true colors as blood suckers, especially of the thousands of underemployed who barely survive as street vendors, peddlers and small businesses. These are the "active entrepreneurs" that the imperialist media promotes (see Nancy S. Truitt, Director of the Tinker Foundation, The Wall Street Journal 10/20/96).
If capitalist "active entrepreneurship" of the poor was the real solution to poverty, as claimed by imperialism in their drive to "modernize" Peru, why has the number of poor increased by 2 million from 1990 to 1993 and by 660,000 per year thereafter? (O'Brian and Sierra, Forum Solidarity & Democracy, August, 1994)
As a result of the growing rate of unemployment and the uncontrollable Andean migration, a massive population has been generated in the belts around the cities, which has contributed even further to the breakdown of the obsolete structures of the existing system. The uncontainable growth of the "misery belts" of shantytowns has transformed "traditional" Lima into a "cornered" district. This situation results from the semi-feudal and semi-colonial nature of Peruvian society. The migratory overflow has surpassed the financial resources of the old State; the few large industries have been unable to absorb all the cheap labor produced by the decline of the existing system.
The migrants, workers and peasants, confront the obsolescence of the old state, which cannot meet even their most basic needs such as jobs, housing, drinking water, sewage, electricity and so on. The rural migrant, unemployed and without any prospects, enters into competition with thousands of others who seek to survive outside the "official" system of wage exploitation.
Unlike the economist Hernando de Soto and the CIA, who want to disguise the unemployed and underemployed by referring to them as "potential entrepreneurs," the informal workers are really just men and women who have no other choice than to seek their meager sustenance on a daily basis, going from transitory employment to a precarious occupation, never knowing exactly what will happen the next day. Charioteers at Jiron Huancavelica, stevedores at Jiron Huanuco today; tomorrow they will be at La Parada (flea market) or in Miraflores, as roving vendors of cigarettes or candy, thus procuring their immediate subsistence in the face of merciless exploitation.
Mainly the very oppressed, people from the provinces, artisans, professionals and others who, as a result of social decomposition, have been plunged into extreme poverty, and whom the old State no longer can manage adequately. So the economic system and the reactionary State, to manipulate and put to sleep the exploited masses, cynically label them "potential entrepreneurs" who, with some theoretical "bank loans", would be able to fulfill as a group their unsatisfied needs.
The real objective of the exploiters and the NGOs in Peru is to prevent the inevitable revolutionary explosion, expressed in our country by the People's War. Contrary to their wishes, the Maoist revolution has developed victoriously throughout the entire country, joining in combat that immense "reserve industrial army," crushing with facts the imperialist euphemism which attempts to reduce this problem to some sort of technical question.
It's worth commenting on the role of revisionism, whose elements have not hesitated to place themselves as part of the imperialist planning. These "socialists" and "leftists," financed by U.S. and European imperialism, today are the mercenaries who apply the imperialist deception known as "modernization".
They propose unsupported justification and reasoning to exempt the reactionary State from any and all of the responsibilities befitting it; in the case of the street vendors and migrating refugees, the revisionists have attempted to brainwash these impoverished masses by telling them that only through their own efforts at exploitation can they incorporate themselves as "great entrepreneurs." Those are the facts; the "Marxists" have abolished with a single pen-stroke the rights to a just salary, to unionization, to social services and the right to dignified and stable employment.
The reactionary thesis of "self-employment" seeks to reinvigorate bureaucratic capitalism, to provide "relief" to the old State, and to generate, through the hunger of the people, the resources to save this system of exploitation which the People's War is tearing down. This is one way the reactionary government replenishes the funds for their mercenaries and for the genocides against the armed rebellion.
Today there are at least 500,000 ambulatory vendors in metropolitan Lima, grouped together in various guilds. At a national level, the ambulatory workforce now reaches approximately 2 million persons, which confirms the searing reality of how the criminal economic measures of the various governments, especially Fujimori's, have plunged thousands of Peruvians into misery and poverty. The old State has abandoned any responsibility for serving the welfare of the people.
The growing pauperization of the population of our country has also forced hundreds of professionals to work as ambulatory merchants regardless of their skills and academic training. Thus, to the sellers of individual cigarettes, are added the empty bottle collectors, the ambulatory sellers of counterfeit manufactured goods, those who fill out applications, those who peddle stolen objects and/or second hand merchandise, children who beg for bread on the streets, and thousands of others.
As usual, the reactionaries have tried to enrich themselves at the expense of the ambulatory workers; each quack who acts as Mayor participated in this outrage; yesterday it was Barrantes and Belmont, now it's the reactionary Andrade and his cronies, who ceaselessly commit all sorts of abuses against the humble ambulatory workers. They suck dry the meager earnings of these workers who are barely able to survive, through arbitrary taxes, "standards," and "obligations."
So there can be no doubt about the reactionary core of these elements, they emphasize the need to "decongest the zones of high economic concentration"; in other words, they legalize the dislodgement and the "legal" massacre of the street worker. And, "forgetting" that an ambulatory worker cannot pay municipal tribute because his activity only enables him to barely subsist, these misers callously imposed a series of fiscal contributions for licenses, health benefits they don't receive, and so on.
While the big bourgeoisie lauds the "informal worker" for his "heroism," by means of their legal and repressive instruments they treat him like a criminal, and it is common to see the police vent their sadism against modest ambulatory workers.
Thus the imperialist plan of "promoting modernization and the informal sector" is but a cynical deception at the expense of the exploited so as to maintain their rule and political power. Confronted with the inadequacies and abuses camoflaged by this myth, the masses opt for the heroic struggle to win their just and necessary demands on the battlefield of the People's War.