The dense Amazon jungle which stretches off for thousands of miles to the Atlantic Ocean occupies a large portion of Peru. The Spanish invaders who conquered most of the Inca highlands of Peru in the 1500s, did not have the same success with the eastern jungles. In fact, the last battles with the Spanish conquistadores were fought in jungle areas.Spanish invaders were killed and driven out by the Amazon people they demeaned as "the Campa tribe." Those were the people who proudly call themselves the Ashaninkas. The oppressors never gave up trying to enslave the people of the jungle, and the Native people never stopped their resistance. For over three centuries, the Ashaninkas killed more than 20 Franciscan Catholic missionaries. In 1742, a powerful uprising of the Ashaninkas expelled the Franciscan missionaries and Spanish soldiers. The rebels even climbed the steep cliffs in pursuit, and temporarily seized parts of the plateau around Andamarca. After that, no Catholic missionary or soldier dared enter the jungle for over a hundred years.
In the mid 1800s, feudal Peruvian ruling classes again tried to penetrate the jungle region. One historian says their Franciscan missionaries "found the Indians sullen and unwilling to cooperate." At this time, the Peruvian ruling class was joined by a new force: representatives of the North American capitalist power. The US Department of the Navy sent two agents to survey the Amazon looking for riches to rob. These agents wrote that the Ashaninka were "determined to dispute the passage of the rivers and any attempt at further conquest."
By the late 1800s, the rising power of world capitalism had created a powerful push into Peru's Amazon regions. In 1821, Peruvian "criollos" (mixed) won independence from Spain. In 1891 the Peruvian government gave much of the Perene River Valley to British capitalists called "The Peruvian Corporation LTD" for a massive coffee plantation. By 1938, this Perene coffee plantation alone exploited about 2,000 Ashaninkas. In other valleys, capitalists set rubber plantations and vast timbering operations.
Based on the coast, the Peruvian governments treated the people of the Amazon regions like animals: Besides encouraging capitalists of all kinds to rob and enslave the Native peoples, the government completely ignored them and their interests. The plantation owners used the "enganche" or "hook" to enslave the Ashaninka people: At trading posts, they were given goods like cloth, pots, machetes and hunting guns, and then told they had to work to pay off the debt. Prices and wages were set so that the Ashaninkas could never get out of debt. Thousands were exploited to death, and many died of diseases. Armed agents watched the rivers to capture and brutally punish any Ashaninka who tried to escape.
At the same time, traders gave guns, usually shotguns and rifles, to corrupt dealers to kidnap women and children and sell them into slavery. The capitalists appointed the ring leaders of such corrupt slave bands as curacas (chiefs under their control) and then they had these bribed curacas sign papers, officially giving Ashaninka jungle land to land speculators. One priest wrote in 1897: "The merchant who knows how to play with curacas grows like the foam on a whirlpool of dirty water." Even after the beginning of the 20th century, another priest said that he considered his "Campa" slaves as "a gift of God."
The Ashaninkas have always suffered extreme poverty and exploitation. Forced labor and the constant despoiling of their lands continued until the armed Ashaninkas in the People's War told the exploiters enough! In the 60's, the Summer Institute of Linguistics tried to penetrate ("research") these lands. One researcher, John Bodley, reported that 30 percent of the Ashaninka he interviewed in the 1960s said that they or members of their families had been captured by slave raiders. Outside the plantation settlements, many Ashaninka still live a social life characterized by primitive communism--finding food by hunting, gathering and some limited cultivation. Official statistics in the late 80's say that 70 percent of Ashaninka children suffer from malnutrition, and over 95 percent of Ashaninka adults are illiterate. That's the reason the PCP has implemented an aggressive literacy campaign in the open People's Committees.
In the jungle, the so-called "anthropology investigators", NGOs, "development projects" and religious missionaries pimp off the Native people. They go with the bible in one hand and a sharp knife on the other hand. They claim to be doing "humanitarian work," working in partnership with the armed forces and the paramilitary rondas. But they are really tied to imperialist interests, mainly Yankee imperialist interests, by a thousand threads. They try to convince the Ashaninkas to accept their misery with a "Christian" fatalism, or preach that the Ashaninka should seek "progress" and "modernity" by selling themselves and their land to capitalists. The missions and so-called development projects of the NGOs serve as covers for their open support of the old putrid Peruvian state, and the armed forces.
The People's War could not advance to victory if, in the course of the armed struggle, it did not resolve the historic demands of the Ashaninkas. Defense of the land, the forests and the rivers has been a demand of the Ashaninkas for over centuries. What's more, this Native community has justly demanded to be included as part of the Peruvian state and nation. The PCP advances along the road of class war, and along this path it is creating a New State that defends the rights of the oppressed classes and nationalities of Peru--rights which are not confined to questions of culture and language, but which also embrace the social issues of land, work, education, health care, nutrition, etc.
A deep unity grew between the Communist Party of Peru and the masses of Ashaninka in the midst of the armed struggle, and through building the beginning of a new society. The Communist Party of Peru organized the Ashaninka, linked them with the countrywide People's War, and trained them politically and militarily, to fight against all forms of exploitation. The first task of the guerrillas was to organize the people to defend themselves against the many abuses (like rape, land theft, unpaid labor, and robbery through unequal trade) that were carried out by "city folks" (like land speculators, slave traders, soldiers and civilian authorities). While organizing their defense, the PCP launched an intensive project of educational instruction, building schools, and establishing new forms of production and food distribution.
In 1986, the first established Open People's Committee among the Ashaninkas in the community of Selva de Oro, was organized in an extense area tha abuts the Mantaro River. By 1990, the People's War had reached out to all Ashaninka communities and to hundreds of people's committees. Democratic elections were held to elect civilian and military authorities for the New State. In the central jungle region, the government started organizing such rondas as early as 1985. As in other places in Peru, Catholic missionaries were often used as the first organizing nucleus of these paramilitary forces. Franciscan priest, Mariano Gagnon, based in Cutiverini-Ene River, was one of them. This villain is portrayed as a "great defender" of the Ashaninka people who has finally been forced to lead the counterinsurgency battle against the Maoist Guerrillas. In reality, Gagnon was just the latest of the many reactionary priests the Ashaninka had to confront for many centuries. In his own recent memoirs, Gagnon brags about his close relationship with the Green Berets and anti-subversive Peruvian police (called "Sinchis"). He describes how he gave spy reports to the U.S. embassy in Lima describing who was joining the Maoist guerrillas. Father Mariano used a mix of trade goods, anticommunist indoctrination and military training to gather a group of about 700 Ashaninka around his mission. But as the revolution grew in strength, his own "sheep" (as he called them) turned against him and his paramilitary hacks (rondas.)
Around the military bases and other missions, thousands of native people have been forced to be part of the state's counterinsurgency apparatus. A harsh order was laid down: whoever didn't go along with it or opposed the paramilitary groups would be considered a "senderista," and would be annihilated.
In 1991, according to the Minister of Defense of Fujimori, "in the Mantaro front alone, 192 communities had been turned into army controlled anti-subversive ronda bases. Of the 90,000 peasants in these communities around 10,000 were Ashaninka." The Mantaro front is the military region that covers large parts of the Ashaninka lands, abutting the Mantaro, river which runs between two Andean mountain ranges and connects with the Ene River.
This is the way the PCP handles the contradiction of confronting peasants or Ashaninkas organized by the reactionary armed forces in "paramilitary rondas" or "Civil Defense Committees."As President Gonzalo, leader of the PCP teaches: "Make a distinction between the diehards and the masses who have been forced into the rondas. Carry out a two-sided policy. Infiltrate them. Undermine them until we can overthrow them. Make the press-ganged masses see that they are being used against their own interests, that others are taking advantage of their joblessness, hunger, lack of basic needs--and are using them as cannon fodder to make up for the shortages of regular soldiers and cops..."(Central Committee of the PCP, document May Directives for Metropolitan Lima, 1991).
This was the approach taken along the Ene River. In Cutiverini, for example, the Ashaninkas reported the way Father Gagnon was enslaving the Ashaninka at his mission. His rape of Indian women became known. His paramilitary rondas deserted him to join the revolution. In 1989, the guerrillas burned the mission at Cutiverini. The killer priest Gagnon fled to the US in a Green Beret helicopter.
A string of military bases set up to pacify the Mantaro River valley were abandoned as 70 percent of the Army's 31st Division were out of action--either as casualties or deserters. In May, 1991 and May, 1994 the reactionary armed forces launched offensives against the Open People's Committees throughout the Ene River Basin. This offensive combined all the various armed forces the old state had built in this region: It included thousands of soldiers, airborne units, hundreds of "Sinchis" from Mazamari (Police counterinsurgency units), as well as 2,000 ronderos organized by the army. The operation was backed by Soviet-made military helicopters, Sukkoi sold by the Sandinistas to the genocidal dictator Fujimori. It was similar to the "Search and Destroy" missions launched by the U.S. and the troops of the pro-imperialist South Vietnamese government during the Vietnam War.
They failed. The Maoists broke the encirclement after fierce combat. After conducting many ambushes, large columns of Maoist combatants evacuated the villages being bombed by the enemy. They withdrew orderly, deeper into the jungle. As it is customary in its military operations, the reactionary army killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, whose bodies were then presented to the press as "Indians killed by Sendero." These "offensives" ended in a catastrophe. The open People's Committees are being multiplied along the Ene River. The government troops had to retreat and even abandon some of their bases.
The struggle between restoration and counter restoration has continued intensely. Every year on July 28th, a handful of Ashaninka ronderos march alongside soldiers in Lima's Independence Day Parade. A strip of villages around the main Peruvian military bases has been developed as a security zone of "strategic hamlets"--where peasants and native people are forced into armed camps (settlements or repopulation centers) where they can be closely watched.
Such "strategic hamlets" also serve as a home base for various rondas--their leaders terrorize, rape and rob the people who live there, and they are also used for raids on the Red villages throughout the surrounding river.
Fujimori's new Constitution specifically legalizes the privatization and sale of the Native peoples' communal lands. This "free" marketization of the jungle" supports land speculators and drug traffickers, who are actively trying to seize more Ashaninka lands for coca cultivation.
Finally, while the reactionary armed forces and U.S. imperialism firmly defend everything that oppresses the people, the Communist Party of Peru has launched a historic revolution to liberate the people. It has organized the Ashaninka people to take their place in the People's War and create a new society that can finally address the just demands of the oppressed people, including the demands of the Ashaninka themselves.
In August 1993, the imperialist world media unleashed a campaign of lies in a concerted effort to defame the People's War in Peru, led by the PCP. Without showing a shred of evidence, Reuters, UPI, CNN, EFE, NY Times, the liberals the Guardian, the Nation, etc. reported that "Maoist guerrillas killed up to 62 Indians in Peruvian jungle." Who was the source of this allegedly horrible crime? It was the genocidal armed forces of Fujimori as part of their ongoing psychological operations. They were in the midst of conducting a major military encirclement against the People's Committees, which was later crushed by the People's Army of Liberation. The story was planted to boost the propaganda efforts of the State Department (and the international rights groups) claiming that the PCP violates "human rights."
THE ASHANINKA WARRIORS UPHELD THE FLAGS OF THE REVOLUTION
Sworn enemies of the revolution such as the Church hierarchy and senderologists working in The Yankee Non Governmental Operations (NGOs) repeated the allegations of the military. Although they are not allowed in the combat zone, some of these reactionaries were quoted by the foreign press as their "independent source" as well: "Maoist subversives have entered up to fifteen villages along the banks of a jungle river valley, and brutally killed 62 villagers and wounded 34 others." Some said that 200 Ashaninka combatants of the PCP were involved, others stated that they were not Ashaninkas. The Reuters' and Financial Times' article by Mary Powers was more vicious: "The subversives pretended to be members of anti-guerrilla militias. They took people into a room and scolded them for not having done militia work, Morobeni Castro said in an interview with Radio Programas del Peru." This contention is easily refuted: Who controls and owns Radio Programas del Peru? Answer: The Peruvian military.
Thus, the counterinsurgency advisors of the regime launched their propaganda campaign on the Ashaninka only a day after it was reported that gold miners in Brazil killed more than 200 Yanomani Indians. Thus, the world attention was on the indigenous lands. The time was ripe to discredit the PCP as being involved in a bloody war against the Army in the Peruvian jungle. These unrelated stories were consistently linked to press accounts. The world media used the public opinion created by the Yanomani story, to imply that the PCP was against the native people when in fact, the combatants of the People's Army of Liberation and the PCP in the region are made up mainly of Ashaninka peasants.
It was said that survivors of the PCP attacks were being protected in the counterinsurgency "Settlement" of Mazamari, a base of the National Peruvian Police's "Sinchi" units and their Green Beret advisers. UPI announced that the Peruvian military was sending helicopters and speedboats on a major offensive in the central jungle region to track down "a column of Shining Path guerrillas accused of massacring 63 Ashaninka Indians who escaped from forced rebel recruitment." The same genocidal Army that has strafed Ashaninka villages a few days before was transformed by the imperialist "free press" into a savior of their victims. On August 24, even Pope Carol Wojtila said that these massacres were "new acts of terrorism by the Maoist guerrillas."
Mary Powers of Reuters said again in August 25 that "Peruvian Troops Free 78 Indians from Guerrillas." The number is suddenly dropped to 15! (this Mary Powers is the same "journalist" who was inside of the Japanese Embassy during the MRTA hostage crisis. This "independent" reporter apparently gets her news from parties and bedrooms of government and embassy officials.)
Her article claimed that as government troops pursued guerrillas through the jungle, they had discovered and "rescued" 23 women, 19 men and 29 Ashaninka children "held captives by the guerrillas." This is what actually happened: first, the reactionary Army of Fujimori bombed from helicopters the liberated areas controlled by the PCP (People's Committees run by the same Ashaninkas.) Second, there was an orderly withdrawal of the Ashaninka Maoist combatants into the forest. Third, the Army along with its paramilitary rondas (some of them Ashaninkas themselves) invaded the village, captured the elderly, women and children, burned the village, and relocated the captured to the military base of Mazamari. This was not a rescue operation, but an outright invasion by the criminal armed forces of Fujimori.
The reactionary press, the U.S. European funded "human rights" NGOs, and foreign correspondents promoting imperialist investment, all in a chorus repeated the regime's version of events. The murderous military that strafed the village and killed 63 people is converted into a savior of "people kidnaped by Sendero." Mary Powers also said: "pretended to be members of anti-guerrilla Army militias known as rondas, Shining Path scolded people for not supporting the militias right before hacking them up!" She must have gotten this information from some of the wealthy cocktail parties she attends.
Why do Ms. Powers and Reuters claim that the "subversives" of the Communist Party of Peru killed the villagers and not "members of anti-guerrilla militias" as stated by the victims? Why did they give more credibility to the military and its hacks (rondas) or the victims? Why would Maoist guerrillas march into a series of villages, accuse the inhabitants of not forming guerrilla militia and then kill people for not being active enough in the counterinsurgency? total nonsense. That's not within the theory nor the practice of the People's War rigorously implemented by the PCP.
Even `counterinsurgency experts' admit that the PCP always takes responsibility for its actions, and its own mistakes, in the face of more than 500,000 political and military actions in the 17 years of the successful People's War. All the communities attacked by the military then claimed that the PCP was located within 10 and 20 kilometers of the army base at Mazamari, where there were 400 police commando units (Sinchis) and their Green Berets "trainers." In addition, the villages involved, including Santa Isabel, Santa Rosa, Sol de Oro, Monterrico, Tawantinsuyo and Chiriati, are along a 10-mile stretch of road surrounded by three other military bases in Satipo, San Martin de Pangoa and Puerto Ocopa, which altogether include 500 soldiers. In other words, these events happened in villages directly around this region's main concentration of counterinsurgency troops.
Even the Peruvian bourgeois magazine Caretas (September 26, 1993)--which repeated the story blaming the PCP said that they could not understand why the government troops "did not act promptly." So it is clear: These killings were carried out by the continuous strife from helicopters by the military, and the wild attacks of its paramilitary rondas. It is a routine practice of the armed forces to invade a community, relocate the surviving people in a military settlement and "elect" their new leaders, who under the coaching of the Army slander the PCP by stating that they're committing crimes. What can people under their control say to save their lives?
Caretas reports that a unit of 100 soldiers and allies from some ronda militias entered the town of Mazamari at 5 a.m.. on Sunday, August 15. People were rudely awakened and rounded up. Caretas writes: "Many of the residents were dragged out of their homes, their doors kicked open. Terrified, some . . . ran for to ask help from the 48th counterinsurgency command of the National Police (the "Sinchis" of Mazamari). The police guards on duty said that there was nothing they could do since these were the actions of army soldiers. From the balcony of the city hall, the military officer who identified himself as Lieutenant `Poison', called on the people to organize themselves into rondas to wipe out the subversives. According to this officer, self-defense committees were urgently needed because he had word that the "terrorists" had infiltrated the community. City officials, among them Father Joaquin Ferrer Beniel, argued that such measures were unnecessary because the town was very close to the police base. Nevertheless, Lieutenant `Poison' gave the city officials 15 days to create those organizations, and before leaving, he warned: "As of today, I want you to tie up your mares, because my studs are on the loose. A curfew has also been ordered and everybody must be in their homes after 10 p.m."
Even after telling this story about Lieutenant Poison, Caretas still repeats the official story that the killings were the work of "Maoist guerrillas", which is not surprising, since Caretas is a "reactionary magazine".
The military have launched a series of "search and destroy" missions up and down the nearby jungle valleys--using helicopters and gunboats to search for revolutionaries and perhaps, to hunt down the Ashaninkas fleeing from the massacres. The Sinchi counter subversive police then brought some survivors of the army's massacre into their Mazamari base to cut them off from contact with the revolutionary movement--and told the world that they were "saving the lives" of the Ashaninkas. Mao taughts that revolutionaries must swim among the masses like fish swim in the sea--and it is a classic U.S. tactic to try to "dry up the sea" by forcing peasants into armed "strategic hamlets" surrounded by guards.
And finally, to confuse people throughout the world about these events, the Peruvian military appointed some local collaborators as local authorities. They were taken to the capital to be used in the progandanda against the revolution. On September 5,1993, for example, the reactionary Lima daily newspaper "La Republica" printed interviews with pro-government Ashaninka "leaders". The article included one revealing passage: "The Ashaninka leaders said...that during the last census, the Ashaninka community of the Tambo River had 24,000 inhabitants; now it was reduced to 8,300 according to the last census. "Where are the rest?" we asked. "We suppose they are with Sendero. We have lost contact with them. Our territory has 2,231.49 square kilometers; and about 70 percent of this territory has been taken by the terrorist organization. The rest of the territory has been pacified."
In other words, the majority of the Ashaninkas have joined the revolution, and the majority of the jungle region is now ruled by the "New Power", the seeds of the People's Republic of Peru.