THE FACTS ABOUT THE POLISH PRIESTS
In the preparatory session of the Second Plenum, page 187, we certainly stated:"The church also proposes its demand for an counterinsurgency strategy to the government. Upon his return from Rome, Archbishop Vargas Alzamora condemned the criminal attitude of the subversive groups' and said 'pacification is a task, which cannot be postponed for all Peruvians.' The church launched the campaign SHARE 'Compartir 1990', under the cover of helping the 50,000 displaced from the emergency zones. In the month of October we saw how the church has been developing its organizations to combat us, and how they had organized contingents to confront us for years. In his visit to Peru the Pope said: `Pay attention again to Ayacucho . . . there is still time.' And gave birth to the Commission of Missions in the Emergency Zones as part of the Religious Conference of Peru. It is formed in part by forty congregations, and was created five years ago (1985), as a result of the first papal visit.They carry out work in the Andes, in the emergency zones, and they offer instruction and literacy courses in the local and communal schools. They are an instrument for ideological penetration, for undermining the People's War and for taking advantage of the condition of nuns and women. It is womens' counterrevolutionary battalion to better protect themselves and to generate a scandal if they are attacked. The church carries out an ideological, political and organizational role, and this should be exposed and made known to the people so that they can see that the class struggle confronts those who would 'put themselves on top, dreaming about the kingdom of the heavens' as a cover for hot-headed crusaders, frenetic counter revolutionaries here on Earth."
We differentiate between the church as a reactionary institution, the defender of the order of exploitation, and the religiosity of the people which is nothing more than a social product through which they seek refuge to explain their situation of hunger and poverty. We also distinguish the religious function of the church, which is the exercise of its cult, that is, the prayers and masses, from its counterrevolutionary action. We base ourselves on the Party's program which upholds full liberty on believing or not believing. And within the church, we differentiate between the hierarchy and the base elements. As to the separation of church and state, that claim is a farce today, because that will only be achieved when socialism is developed. In fact, the church is part of the institutions that sustain the old reactionary states regardless of how far from the margins it may be from the other institutions.
During the present III Campaign, the deaths of two Polish priests have occurred in Ancash, and that of the layperson McCormick in Junin, and the Italian parish priest of Santa, Chimbote. All of these cases deserved to be investigated and objectively analyzed. Furthermore, intense propaganda cries were generated about the Poles and Italians, but that wasn't the first time that similar cases had occurred. There was the case of the two Peruvian Sisters of the Good Pastor, and of the Australian from the Sisters of San Jose of the Sacred Heart, in September 1990, and May 1991, in the jungle of Junin and the sierra of Huasahuasi. On these occasions they limited themselves to accusing us of these acts, but the causes were their active participation in the subsistence plans and actively opposing the bringing to justice of black heads. They did not go beyond two newspaper pronouncements.
We start from the fact that in Peru the majority of the clergy are foreigners. The Italian and the Poles belonged to the parishes in the Northern zone of Peru where the active counterrevolutionary role of the Catholic church there is well proven. Of the Poles, it was clear that being Franciscans, they depended on the Papacy directly, and not on any of the two Provinces of the Territorial Organization of the Franciscans of Peru. It was the Bishop of Basque origin of Huaraz, Gurruchaga, the same promoter of patrols (rondas) for peace, who expressly requested their presence [of the Polish priests] three years ago. They departed from Krakow, Poland to Chimbote. From Chimbote Bishop Bambar‚n sent the "volunteers" to a red zone from which the police had withdrawn. They worked actively in the zone and bought vehicles with the money from the Italian parish, then they built a church; they learned the Quechua language and directed the subsistence nutrition program. They received an invitation from the PCP to leave the zone and leave the masses to organize themselves in those areas. On August 9, 1991, in the second incursion, the execution of the mayor and vice mayor occured.
The two priests and sister Bertha Hernandez Guerra were taken in the parish's car. Later on the woman returned alive, but not the men. The men's bodies were found with a bullet in the neck, and a sign that read: "Death to the faithful agents of imperialism." According to the nun's testimony, during the forty-five minutes ride, they spoke on the political content of the so-called social programs of the church.
Before these events, and before the death of the rector (parish) priest, the news and repercussions reached the Vatican. The Pope celebrated a special mass there, sent a condolence telegram, and the Poles went to the Peruvian chancellery demanding security for their nationals. Expreso (Peru's big bourgeois paper) challenged the church's will to lead a crusade to gather prayers, and processions against terrorism, but he received silence as a response. We know that the church has its own plan and does not want to be used by anyone. Bishop Dammert advised all foreign priests to leave the emergency zones, and in general, recommended prudence and caution to all the priests, which was harshly criticized. During a series of interviews that he granted to the press, he expressed that the assassination of the priests by senderistas could be a new strategy, considering that the Catholic church, because of its position in the nation, was the entity which can detain the revolution's advance. These declarations conflicted with the publication of the pastoral letter of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference signed by the same bishop, in which they claim that God has ordered them to be in these zones, and that God has also demanded their blood. It is necessary to say that statement has nothing on religious fervor. Later, the same bishop declared that it was a war crime just like others. Here one can see the divergences that the church's high priests have, and that not even one of them has a firm idea, but rather they change their minds like the wind, in accordance to the interests in play.
Bishop Bambaren on his part said that there "was diabolic blackmail," and that "the PCP has placed its sights on the church," at least on his diocese. He said that we [the PCP] see in them a great impediment because of the evangelical message that they preach. What message is he talking about? It must be their counterrevolutionary action that we are going to unmask and definitively defeat. The Bishop of Callao, Durand, contradicted Bambaren: "They don't go against the church" he said by national radio. He added that he was notified by the direct testimony from a witness that they [the Polish priests] were annihilated for putting the people to sleep by talking so much about peace and for paralyzing the masses with imperialist foodstuff. He said, "they have been accused of impeding the revolution's advance." Archbishop Richter Prada asked that those crimes of the foreign religious people be clarified. The acolyte, that layman administrator of the sacraments, Henry Pease, said: "It was for propagating peace, which is the option of Christ." There were also some who said that the motives were the PCP's xenophobia towards all foreigners. To conclude, in this concrete problem we take a paragraph from the aforementioned Pastoral Letter, which expresses the profound shake up that these actions have caused in the institution: "The new situation of violence against the church invites us to reflect and to revise our work, above all, toward the evangelical authenticity in our missionary labor."
To synthesize, we have unmasked them and the repercussion has been global. This action of the Party has reached the den of the ecclesiastical papal hierarchy. In the Peruvian church, they are reflecting on the role of their so-called works of well being that are nothing more than counterrevolutionary political plans and campaigns.
Another situation of similar repercussion, which has been used a great deal by Peruvian reaction as part of the psychological operations of the low intensity war that they are applying, is the propaganda campaign on the action of the priest in the Mission of Cutivireni, the Franciscan Magnon (trans. Alias father Mariano). He was based in the Ene valley, with the Ashaninka natives. He has worked in that region since the 1970's, but since the People's War began in 1980, he adopted a position opposed to it, especially since 1985 when the party installed one of its support bases in that place. His parishioners began entering our ranks. He went on to ask, in writing, for the presence of the reactionary army. The army arrived to install a counter subversive base. The policy of our party was to invite him through many forms and requests that he submit himself to the New Power and to limit himself to strictly religious tasks, and that he abstain from counterrevolutionary actions. Several incursions and sabotage were carried out until we forced him to leave the place. The truth is that he never confronted the guerrilla. Today, in what yesterday was a "religious mission" there is now a counter subversive military base from which they plan, direct and carry out the bloodiest campaigns of annihilation against the combatants and masses of the Departments of Junin and Ayacucho.
Here we have a difference. Some of them were counterrevolutionary cadres formed by the Pope to act as crusaders against the People's War in Peru and others in the course of their functions to adopt an active counterrevolutionary position.
What is propagated in the United States is that the church has returned to the catacombs and is acting clandestinely. That seems to be an admission of their guilty conscience for their continuous and grave sins of systematically supporting imperialism, revisionism and Peruvian reaction, against the proletariat and Peruvian people, and against the powerful Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought. It is part of the ridiculous psychological warfare campaigns.
Finally, we want to say something about the vile trafficking of the religiosity of the Peruvian people that Fujimori has been doing during his first year in government. For instance, the weeping virgins and the Brazilian Saint: "It is clear what interests are behind the weeping virgins and of Joao the God, as well as the perverse role of the paper Expreso. That's a monstrous, sinister, and demagogic handling of the backward beliefs of the people. It is the dirtiest manipulation of the religiosity of our people, as part of their trafficking with the misery, suffering and desperation of the people. They give incentives and exalt the most brutalizing superstition, which pretends to close the path to gain political consciousness so that the masses won't take their destiny into their own hands. This clumsy and cunning manipulation shows fascist methods of the so-called mass psychology, and also reveals actions by Yankee imperialism. These are plans and test trials on how to develop their psychological operations against the People's War, and for the management and control of the population for their three great tasks (reinvigorating bureaucratic capitalism, restructuring the old State and annihilating the People's War): We must examine seriously these issues." [Comments by President Gonzalo. May 4, 1991.]
[Note by The New Flag Magazine: This is a small extract of the PCP Document "The Two Hills" published in the Spanish language in 1991 (available at http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp), in which the Party analyzed in detail the role of the churches, mainly the Catholic church. Besides using undercover agents posing as "journalists" or "consultants," imperialism has used "priests" and "nuns" to conduct direct counterinsurgency activities. The PCP unmasked this plot, and the church acknowledged it by taking some of them out of the country.]
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