Thousands of combatants of the glorious People's Army of Liberation and the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) are members of the Ashaninka nationality as well as other ethnic groups that inhabit the immense jungle region of the country.Imperialism, the reactionary State and its class collaborators have targeted these lands in their plans for a bigger plunder of the natural resources, super-exploitation of the work force and grabbed the land of these native people of the jungle region. All these could not go on anymore.
The reactionary newspapers in Peru (La Republica, Expreso) and the Catholic Church hierarchy jumped to defend the interests of the landlords who stand out not only as prosperous "lumber dealers" or "cattle owners", or "exporters" and narcotraffickers but above all, as "bwanas in a safari" and are hunting down natives for prostitution, or for the enslavement of their free labor for their companies and households.
Along with these exploiters are the officers of the genocidal armed forces, who act like reptiles trying to perpetuate the ignominious phrase that has been quoted for decades: "I have a campita in my house"; "I have my servants campas" [trans. campas is the demeaning name for the Ashaninkas used by the Peruvian bourgeoisie.]
The reality is that the People's War has entered the scene to resolve the semi-feudal and even enslaving conditions of oppression and exploitation that for decades, the caciques (landowners), the imperialists, and the State have subjected the population of Ashaninkas and other people.
All the campaigns of the Peruvian press echoed abroad by the imperialist press deliberately hide, among others things, the following facts: encroachment, depriving the Ashaninkas and other populations of their forest lands by the State bodies, through the Ministry of Agriculture, granting the native lands to the lumber dealers, multinational oil companies, miners, or the credit banks to plunder their resources, without taking into account the wishes of the Ashaninka population.
The People's War has destroyed the power of the caciques and the system of exploitation in wide regions of the jungle. It has forged the New Power, and has promoted the development of the productive forces with the resulting social and political emancipation. The condition of the peasantry has improved and developed and there is no more serfdom or slavery. Furthermore, there is no more despoiling of land nor trafficking with their consciences by the ecclesiastic hierarchy and the evangelical groups.
The extremely undernourished children, the rags and misery, the plagues and diseases, the ignorance and death that today affect the so called "Ashaninkas" recovered by the armed forces from the hands of "Sendero", are direct consequences of the troops of the genocidal Fujimori who with the greatest cynicism exhibits before the world their concentration camps, the Vietnam-style "villages of civil defense" or bases of ronderos (the army run paramilitary.)
Forced military occupation is their plan, which they seek to prolong. Despite the state of siege the armed forces have had against the support bases of the PCP, they have not been able to break the power of the new State that is flourishing.
The landlord-bureaucratic State subjected the Ashaninkas for decades to an extreme condition of servitude, slavery and disregard. The People's War emancipated them, and finally the State, with greater and increased resources and its armed forces can't reestablish the old order in the region. Here is further prrof of the unconcealed strategic equilibrium that has shaped the Maoist revolution and that is a necessary step and guarantee for the masses and for the proletarian cause in the whole country.
The largest region of Peru is the jungle. Half of Peru completely is in the huge river valleys that feed eastward into the Amazon--and in this region, the 25,000 Ashaninka is the largest group of the many Native peoples. In this jungle area, modern-day slave traders and capitalists have been freto exploit and kill the indigenous people any way they wanted. The Ashaninkas are famous as warriors, and for more than a hundred years they successfully kept Catholic missionaries out of their areas.
ASHANINKAS PROTAGONISTS IN THE REVOLUTION Over the last century, the jungle has been increasingly invaded as various capitalist interests reached out for valuable raw materials, like rubber and gold. Thus, armed company guards took Ashaninka captives and forced them to work as slaves. Thousands were literally worked to death in mines and riverside plantations, by the forced labor system called "enganche" or "the hook." Peasants were repeatedly hunted down and killed. Native women and children were often forced into sexual slavery around settler camps and key trading posts.
In the late 60's, the PCP began an effective political maneuver amongst the Ashaninka people. At the same time, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (a purported CIA covert organization) also made attempts to penetrate the jungle area. Throughout the 1970s, various Peruvian governments relocated landless peasants into the eastern jungle lands where they may have started growing coca. Conflicts arose between the new settlers and the Ashaninka over land.
In upper class Peruvian society, it was said that the destruction of these forest people was "tragic but inevitable." In 1980 the Communist Party of Peru launched the People's War and proclaimed that "the people of the forest cannot and will not be destroyed". Since then, this revolution has intensified deep links with the Ashaninka people of the central jungle regions. The PCP created a new unity between the peasant migrants from the Andes, and the jungle Ashaninka -based on a common struggle against the system. As the armed Maoist influence spread, from one river camp to the next, slavery was abolished and the people ere freed. Even enemies of the revolution admitted that most of the youth of these great warriors known as Ashaninkas have became the military leaders of the People's Army and dedicated militants of the PCP. It did not take long to expel the merchants, slave traffickers and their evangelical and Catholic Church companions.
The central government inserted troops into the regions. The counterinsurgency police had its base in Mazamari, packed with U.S. Green Beret trainers and helicopters. Army bases were built and the U.S.-funded navy speedboats were used to patrol the rivers.
The Quechua speaking peasants were attacked under the cover of a U.S. inspired "war on drugs." At the same time, there was an attempt to recruit sections of the Ashaninkas to fight on the Government's side, by playing on hostilities between the Ashaninkas and the peasants who were encroaching on their land.
This is a classic U.S. counterinsurgency tactic: During the Vietnam War, Green Berets moved into the mountain villages of the Meo people and tried to inflame the contradictions between these tribal people and the agricultural peasants in the lowland Vietnam. In many parts of Vietnam's central highlands, the Meo rebelled against the Green Berets, and sided with the revolutionary forces. Another fresh example is Nicaragua where the CIA and an evangelical Church manipulated the Native Misquito community during the Reagan administration. (There is also a recent report from Peru, indicating that the Shell-Mobil Corporation that will exploit gas in Camisea-Cusco, and the Peruvian military, are planning to impose a paramilitary Civil Defense made up of some native people, to repress and terrorize the just outrage of the people against the imperialist plunder.)
In the Ene valley of Peru, a U.S. agent named Father Mariano Gagnon tried to use this Green Beret approach. In his memoirs, "Warriors in Eden," Mariano describes how support for the revolution grew between both the migrant peasants and Ashaninka in his congregation, and how revolutionaries visited him, asking for his support in liberating the people. Mariano described how he worked closely with the police special forces, "Sinchis" and Green Berets at Mazamari, and how he spied on the people for the U.S. embassy. Mariano reported who was joining the Maoist guerrillas and urged the military to attack a maze of caves near the Quimpiri river which he believed was an important revolutionary headquarters.
Between 1984 and 1987, the PCP led a series of revolutionary uprisings and military actions throughout these valleys. Six army bases were smashed. Police commanders were executed. Soldiers were freed at their choice. The government troops holed up in their four remaining camps. A contingent of PCP Ashaninkas attacked Mariano's military camp. It was burned to ashes and the killer priest was forced to flee on U.S. helicopters.
Since 1991 to this date the US/Peruvian armed forces attempt to retake this region. In the Ene River Valley there are intense battles waged between the People's Army of Liberation, which comprised of about 10,000 Ashaninka youth members, and about 20,000 troops of the Armed Forces, which are being supported by US military troops.
Washington Post (September 8, 1993) writes: "The fighting here is a classic guerrilla war, said an army captain at the Satipo base, drawing frequent analogies to the Vietnam War tactics. His troops are better armed than Shining Path, he said, but the guerrillas have the advantage of terrain, laying traps and ambushes for the army and civilian patrols with rudimentary weapons." True. The Ashaninka fighters know their land well. When government forces attack and seize revolutionary villages of the Ashaninkas, the pro-US media, (including reactionary liberal outlets who claimed that government soldiers were "freeing" Ashaninkas who have been "kidnaped by the Shining Path, and the Ashaninkas) are between two fires." This is completely baseless. The Ashaninka is a protagonist of the glorious People's War.
Repeatedly, Peruvian armed forces and U.S. green berets have tried to force the Ashaninkas to develop paramilitary rondas to fight alongside the army--accusing anyone who refuses, of being a "terrorist." The eastern river valleys have been filling up with displaced people, including Ashaninkas who had been forced out of nearby areas, like Ayacucho. This has increased contradictions among the people.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais (August 21, 1993) reported from eyewitness accounts, that most of the dead in the villages near Mazamari were displaced Ashaninka from the west, who had recently settled in these eastern valleys as peasant farmers.
The Peruvian military is forced to carry out massacres to pacify the villages directly around their own forts, however, their offensives have not brought them control of the region. Using mass murder to seize a contested region is completely consistent with the oppressive class nature, and the military methods as well as the history of both the Peruvian and US military.
The US ruling class uses disinformation to cause confusion especially from potential supporters of the Peruvian revolution among progressive organizations. They want to build support for US intervention and for the Fujimori dictatorship. They want to create a favorable public opinion for the assassination of President Gonzalo. Furthermore, they want to prevent oppressed people throughout the world from learning from the people of Peru and rising in an inspiring and just struggle as the People's War. They know very well that this revolution is rich in political, ideological and military lessons for oppressed of the world.
It is of main importance to expose the campaign of disinformation against the People's War as part of the class struggle within the US and the entire world, and it is one of the best ways to practice proletarian internationalism.
Published by The New Flag
30-08 Broadway, Suite 159
Queens, NY 11106, USA