Socrates taught us that if we wanted to learn something, we first had to know our ignorance. If we are to understand the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), we must first clear out all the nonsense; then after we understand, we can debate and criticize.The PCP is portrayed by the outlets of imperialism as "the most blood thirsty group in the Americas." The U.S. State Department maliciously compares the PCP to Pol Pot and call it "terrorist." Anti- Communist pamphlets such as NACLA and the reactionary Trostkyte group Socialist Workers Party repeat verbatim the slander of their Yankee masters. By reading the misinformation of the mainstream press, honest people in the world may wonder why there is such a deep hatred of the imperialists and its puppets against the Peruvian revolutionaries. It is because of the unstoppable People's War that is advancing in Peru which is an example for the proletariat and the oppressed worldwide . It is because of the strategic equilibrium that has been reached. It is because of the brilliant perspective of the people of Peru led by the PCP to seize power throughout the entire country.
Let us recall that the State Department used to say the same slanders about the FMLN in El Salvador. I will compare the use of revolutionary violence by the FMLN in El Salvador and the PCP in Peru. This comparison is important to force the debate about the PCP out of the good guy/bad guy problematic and into the more general but infinitely more concrete question of whether radical change through revolutionary violence is desirable or not.
To this end, I will begin with the description of Americas Watch's (AW) book "El Salvador's Decade of Terror, 1991" in which the FMLN is criticized for:
1) conducting selective assassinations and group killings,
2) the use of land mines which killed about 20 civilians a year.Thus, according to AW, in 1985, the FMLN killed 97 "non- combatants," including members of civil patrols, "leftists," mayors and other elected officials, and informers.
KILLING MAYORS: On January 9, 1989, Calvin Sims (Note. He is in Peru now) of The New York Times reported that "at least 35 mayors resigned in the last month after eight others were killed in a nationwide offensive against civilian authority." The article goes on to point out that the Church and "even many leftists who have been sympathetic to the rebels in the past, have denounced it the killing and intimidation of mayors as nothing more than terrorism."
Americas Watch stated that "the number of civilians killed by the FMLN continued to rise before its November 1989 offensive, and because the number committed by the armed forces and their allied paramilitary forces decreased, the disparity in the number of killings on each side was not very great." [page 70]
Now on Peru. My information comes from the following Americas Watch reports: 1) October 1984, 2) September 1985, 3) September 1986, 4) October 1988; and 5) their book "Peru Under Fire 1992."
Although the PCP targets people who function as part of state apparatuses directly involved in counterinsurgency activities such as governors, mayors, etc., Americas Watch criticized the PCP for selective assassinations, group killings, and bombings. For example, AW said, "in 1989 Sendero assassinated 10 governors and lieutenant-governors, six engineers and officials of development projects, ["Agricultural technicians and development workers are not bothered by Sendero as long as none of them is installed as an authority or attempts to represent the government." --page 33, Sept. 1986] Seven judicial officials, and nineteen other public officials.... From January through October 46 mayors were killed by Sendero, and a further 263, facing death threats, resigned."[page 65. 1992]
Peru is a much larger country than El Salvador with more than four times the population, so if we multiply the 8 mayors killed by the FMLN in the last part of 1988 by four, we get 32, which we can compare to the 46 mayors that the PCP has executed in the first 9 months of 1989.
In Peru as it was done in El Salvador, the insurgents do everything they can to destroy civil defense patrols. These patrols -from the fascists in rural Italy in the 1920's through the Chinese revolution in the 30's and 40's, Vietnam in the 50's and 60's and Guatemala in the 70's and 80's - are the back bone of the military's counterinsurgency program. Thus, it is not surprising that the majority of rural "civilian" dead attributed to the PCP by the "reputable" right groups are members of these civil patrols or paramilitary Rondas organized and controlled by the Army.
Like in El Salvador in the early stages of the war the "forces of order" killed much more than the insurgents did but as the war progressed the killing tended to even out. According to the Peruvian government, by 1989 the PCP was responsible for 1,526 deaths and the "forces of order" 1,598. [see pp. 14,15, and 19, 1992]
Although the PCP is arguable much stronger and very different politically, ideologically and militarily from the FMLN, Sandinistas, et al., there is no difference in substance in the use of revolutionary violence by the FMLN and the PCP. So why does the PCP get such heat for their use of violence?
To solve this mystery, let us look at the first four Americas Watch reports on Peru listed above to see if there is any evidence to back up the assertion, which appears on the first page of AW first report [October 1984.] It stated that: "In Sendero Luminoso the country faces the most brutal and vicious guerrilla organization that has yet appeared in the Western hemisphere." Before quoting at length the "proof" of the above statement, we must note that on page 42, this report informs us that the Peruvian military "Announced that the only source of information on military operations will be the armed forces themselves." If we couple this statement with the one from the New York Times (September 2, 1984): "Disinformation is part of the military's strategy," the allegations of AW against the PCP go down the drain.
Further, AW stated: "Sendero began to target [1982] certain local groups -policeman, landowners, government officials, loan sharks, merchants, and informants- in Ayacucho. Senderistas staged `popular trials' and executions. This initially strengthened their popularity among the Indians, many of whom held officials in contempt. In September 1982, over 10,000 people crowded the streets of Ayacucho to mourn Edith Lagos, a `fallen comrade,' allegedly tortured and murdered by the police. The rally was indicative of the popular support Sendero enjoyed at that time..."
"Yet as Sendero began to control `liberated Zones' of Ayacucho in late 1982, it imposed its anti-technology, subsistence peasant model that, along with its brutality, has led the group to be compared to Pol Pot's reign of terror in Cambodia. Sendero closed regional markets; forced peasants to plant only enough for their own subsistence; and brutally killed those who opposed them. Sendero has destroyed tractors, and an experimental farm in the University of Huamanga which developed livestock and grains for local production. The group has also destroyed factories, apparently without considering how this might affect urban workers, who hardly seem to exist in Sendero's scheme of things. As Sendero has implemented its own kind of terror, some of its support has waned, yet its strength apparently has not." [pp. 67- 68, October 1984 Report.]
This is all AW has to say on the PCP in the first report. We will have some comments on these very revealing paragraphs after we look at what the three other reports have to say.
"Sendero has persisted in its tactic of conducting exemplary executions of civilians considered to be representatives of the bourgeoisie or of the government. In addition, Sendero has continued to force civilians to join it or contribute to its efforts. It remains difficult, however, to determine the scope and extent of these practices." [page 27, Sept. 1985] That's it for the second report. Please note that the word "Sendero" could be changed to the FMLN and thus prove our point.
The third report stated that PCP killed police informers and collaborators as well as publicly punishing cattle rustlers, drunkards adulterers, etc., and also that in 1986 the PCP started killing higher up military and civilian officials in Lima.
The fourth report tells us: "Sendero Luminoso... has continued to commit murder and other violations of the laws of war as a deliberate part of its strategy. This self-styled Maoist group uses terror tactics to radicalize social conflict and to pitch rural communities against each other. It murders elected or appointed local officials as well as anyone it believes to be cooperating with the security forces." [page 4, 1988]
Lastly "Sendero Luminoso, engages in a pattern of violations of the laws of war.... The resort to such methods, particularly when alternative democratic avenues are open, is an act of provocation, designed to elicit a violent response on the part of the state." [pp. 80-81, 1988 Report.]
This is the evidence, and it shows how the PCP just like Che Guevara in Bolivia or Castro and his rag tag band in Cuba or Lenin in Petrograd, all armed movements used terror as part of the struggle. But the facts in these reports, and in the works of the Senderologists too, are often at odds with their much quoted but rarely substantiated assertions.
The first interesting point to notice is that there is absolutely no documentation given for any of these assertions. At least AW should have cited an article written by U.S. Senderologist Cynthia McClintock's Published in "Problems of Communism" in Oct. 1983. She stated: "It is virtually certain that many peasants did become disillusioned with Sendero. Apparently, once the guerrillas gained control of large areas in 1982, they began to show their fanatical colors. They imposed planting quotas on local communities so that there would be nothing to sell to the cities. They closed down weekly markets as forms of capitalist exchange. They became more random and more ruthless in their assassinations of 'traitors' and 'informants.' [page 32]
But AW claims as well as Senderologist MsClintock's are soon debunked by Colin Harding's "Notes on Sendero Luminoso" who published in "Communist Affairs, Jan. 1984," as a counter point. Harding states: "There is, nevertheless, little evidence that the rural population turned against Sendero in large numbers. Reports of large-scale confrontations between villagers and guerrillas, and massacres by Sendero in revenge for betrayals, are largely unverifiable. Few bodies, names or photographs of supposed victims have been produced, and visits by independent observers are not allowed [by the Peruvian armed forces.] The guerrillas' response to the formation of peasant patrols or Army run militias has been to assassinate their leaders, and to make it known to the villagers that soplones (informers) will be dealt with summarily. But accounts of pillage, rape and murder by Sendero do not ring true; their executions have been highly selective as a matter of policy, and terrorizing the peasants would be counter- productive."
Further, Harding refute the Senderologists: "Reports that Sendero has lost much of the support it initially gained among the campesinos by such tactics as closing down local markets and forcing villagers to adopt an autarkic 'war economy' or forcibly recruiting young men, should be treated cautiously." [page 48]
What is the PCP's "anti-technology, subsistence peasant model?" This point is essential. The PCP does not worship capitalist technology but neither does it dream of going back to the non- existent paradise. Its views on technology, self-reliance, and breaking from the capitalist as well as the state bureaucratic type of development are interesting and exploring and debating these ideas would be more fruitful than the uninformed denouncing of its alleged dogmatism.
And what about Pol Pot? Another U.S. scholar David Scott Palmer, who advises the US government on Peru, stated in a book that he edited, "The Shining Path of Peru 1992," that: "Shining Path uses terror to further its revolutionary ends but is not a terrorist movement. The insurgency has rarely engaged in indiscriminate violence and should not be compared with Pol Pot." [page 244]
A little anecdote will help put the terror in perspective. It is a story about street kills in Lima which appeared in the Washington Post on Jan. 9, 1993. The reporter quotes one of these kids, as saying that he would like to kill rich people. One of our friends named Tomas, before he joined the Party he would go out of his way to cause problems for rich people. "He was born and raised in Lima's slums and saw no way out of his horrid life, he hated the rich. He became Party member and was captured in combat. Few years later, we visited this PCP member in prison and were quite surprised to see that he no longer hated rich people but hated and understood the social relations that produced the injustice that was his existence. He had learned all of this from the PCP. This person was murdered along with three hundred of his comrades by the Forces of Order in the 1986 prison massacre of El Fronton. The point is that the PCP does not ferment the violence, it just channels it.
On 01/29/93 Robin Kirk, a former paralegal, a pseudo-journalist who has worked with Salvadorean political refugees in the past, and who for years have professed an open biased against the PCP, became Americas Watch's Consultant on Peru. She wrote a paper: "The Shining Path on Violence and Human Rights."
To start with, Ms. Kirk is very loose with her facts. She stated: "Since 1982, the Shining Path has murdered over 800 local mayors." She cited no source. From 1980 through and including 1989, 6,386 civilians were killed according to the Peruvian government and cited in Americas Watch 1992 (page 14). The large majority were killed by the Forces of Order. But for purposes of argument, let's say that the Shining Path killed 5,000 people during the decade of war.
The year 1989 was the only year that we have numbers on killings of mayors, and also according to Americas Watch it was PCP's most violent year. It was a municipal elections year throughout Peru and PCP led a very successful campaign to get mayors to resign and to leave their posts vacant. In many municipalities there were not candidates participating in the elections. During this battle, the PCP killed 52 mayors. The Peruvian Government claims that PCP killed 1,500 people that year. Thus, less than 4% of the deaths attributed to the PCP in 1989 were mayors and this was a year that the insurgency targeted mayors.
If we take 5,000 as the total number of people killed by the PCP during the war, 4% of 5,000 is only 200, well short of Ms. Kirk's 800 number. My point is that these people, like Kirk, say all sorts of unsubstantiated things, make up numbers and give only one or two examples, one of them always being Moyano, the "Mother Courage", the patron saint of the Peruvian bourgeoisie, and because everyone says it -it must be true. Those of us who question the official story are dismissed with great contempt, for everyone Knows...[Of course, "everyone" is the misinformation of the government."
Ms. Kirk eulogizes Moyano (she has a huge portrait of her along Bill Clinton's in her office): "Born in poverty, Moyano fought to get an education and help her community, the people of Villa El Salvador. She was a radical feminist, a brilliant, articulate woman who believed in peace. Yes, she supported the formation of local self-defense groups (urban paramilitary), [though never] at the behest of the Armed Forces." The PCP is full of women who were born in poverty that fought and struggled to get an education and used that education in the service of the people. On self-defense groups, Kirk demonstrated a profound cynicism: It is the part of the regime's pacification program to organize paramilitary or self-defense groups, that's what right now Michel Azcueta (crony of Moyano) is doing right now with the aid of the military in Villa El salvador.
There are countless proletarian feminists, who are brilliant and articulate in the PCP. But unlike Moyano they chose to destroy the old rotten Peruvian society which is responsible for their oppression and the oppression of the vast majority of Peruvians. Moyano supported the forces of order in their attempt to form urban civil patrols in the slums of Lima to defend the old reactionary state from the People's War.
Lastly, Ms. Kirk quotes several PCP sources on the topics of armed struggle and bourgeois right. AW quotes Luis Arce, editor of El Diario Internacional as the direct source of the PCP. However, he is not, nor has he ever claimed to be, the spokesperson for the PCP. He, like many Committees worldwide support the People's War in Peru. The PCP has its own generated organisms abroad, the Peru People's Movement (MPP.)
On bourgeois rights she quotes Chairman Gonzalo as saying human rights=bourgeois rights, and thus, they are reactionary, etc.. The fact is that Chairman Gonzalo leader of the PCP -strictly speaking- is correct, does not seem to trouble her. For both Marxist [e.g.., Lukcas and Della Volpe] and non-Marxist [e.g., Cassirer] scholars know that the Rights of Man was an ideological position used by the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the ancient regime. Kant [remember Gonzalo is a Kant scholar] and Rousseau were the most militant promoters of the Rights of Man. The debate is not about whether or not human rights are "bourgeois," but about how do those of us who want to do away with bourgeois society deal with bourgeois rights. Sartre, for example, spent a great deal of his death bed interview on this very question. [an English translation can be found in Telos # 44]
The quotations on armed struggle that Ms. Kirk selected could have come from Mao Tse-Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Lenin or anyone who supports revolutionary violence. We came of age chanting, "create two, three, many Vietnams" and could never stomach that horrid chant of the 80's, "No more Vietnams." Like it or not, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. We challenge anyone to prove Mao wrong on this point.
The real issue is not the number of landlords, thugs, and representatives of the old state that bite the dust -- but the idea and reality of revolution. Americas Watch stated that Sendero's violence is wrong because "alternative democratic avenues are open." [Oct. 1988, page 81] Here, the genocidal dictatorship is acknowledged as "democratic." But even assuming that's the case, where do those paths lead? To reform or to revolution? This is the real question. What is revolution and what is reform? What is possible, what is desirable, and for whom?
What we tried to accomplish in this paper was to reveal the fact that if you read the Americas Watch Reports on Peru (record the quantitative data and cut out the adjectives and gratuitous comments in the reports) and compare them with Americas Watch Reports on El Salvador, you will find that there is no substantial difference in the use of violence by the PCP or the FMLN. Americas Watch and Kirk give the real reason for the hostility toward the PCP. First, Kirk and Americas Watch do not believe that armed struggle is justified in Peru. They believe in the State Department assertion that Peru is "democratic" and that Fujimori is "pacifying Peru." Our point is this: It is true that the PCP uses violence, but it is within revolutionary norms. Then the real debate should be between the peaceful vs. the violent road to revolution. We have not seen one convincing argument to disprove Mao's assertion that "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
It is curious to read the writings of many apprentices of Senderology. The first one is Mr. Martinez' comment that the PCP changed its policy in 1988 from only killing development workers who represented the state to "the systematic killing of development workers in all positions." Our only comment is that Americas Watch, or any other source that we have seen, does not mention that the PCP had changed its policy vis-a-vis development workers . If Mr Martinez, or anyone else, cannot show any documentation or evidence to prove that: 1) that there was a change in PCP strategy in 1988 and, 2) that the PCP now systematically kills all development workers.
There is another outrageous second point, which was raised by both Martinez and Newman: they believe there was a real war in El Salvador, while in Peru they believe the armed struggle with hundreds of thousands of guerrilla actions in almost 16 years, is just "terrorism." It should be recalled that the armed struggle in El Salvador started in 1972. The so-called "real" war did not start until 1981 with the ill fated final offensive (nine years of just terrorism?). You will also remember that with the fall of Somoza in 1979 in Nicaragua and the apparent paralyses of the Carter administration toward the crisis in Central America, the Salvadorean Government collapsed. A coup by so called progressive military men and some leftist civilians filled the formal vacuum of government. The Junta kept moving to the right while the military was killing thousands of Salvadoreans a month. All of this led to insurrections in a number of slums around San Salvador. At the same time a great deal of support for the leftist forces was coming from Cuba and Nicaragua. This aid, both material and political, played an essential role in the formation of the FMLN and in preparation the offensive which while it failing to win victory, left the FMLN with an army of 5,000 to 10,000. The Salvadorean armed forces numbered about 50,000.
In Peru, the PCP started the Armed Struggle in 1980 with a few weapons and no army. By 1982, the PCP brought together 150 fighters to take over the city of Ayacucho for a night to free over 100 prisoners from jail. And many political and military victories. The PCP's People's Army of Liberation continues to grow and expand nationwide. The number of PCP combatants is secret. The Forces of Order in Peru number about 400,000 and an additional 600,000 paramilitary.
There have been several battles with over 100 combatants on each side. The People's Army does not court disaster by fighting a conventional war against a vastly superior force. They have after all studied their Mao.
Gordon McCormick in a study for the US Defense Dept. titled: From the Sierra to the Cities [RAND 1992] states:
"By the mid-1980's it was apparent that the nature of Sendero's objectives in the city had begun to change from simple interest in armed propaganda to a more long-range interest in building an enduring base of popular support, backed by a developed, grass roots organization....
"The new attention given to organization building in Lima and a handful of other coastal cities was evident in many of the major towns of the Sierra, most notably in Ayacucho city and the department capitals of the central highlands. Sendero's regional strategy, in each case, was now based on a dual program to close the local center of government from the interior while extending the movement's scope of organization and operations within and around the city limits. While elements of this program were to be operationally independent, each was believed to support the other. By keeping the army and police occupied in the cities, the urban underground would relieve government pressure on the primary locus of the movement's advance, which was in the countryside. Similarly, as Sendero consolidated its rural position and began to disrupt urban access to the hinterland, the regime's political and military position within the cities could be expected to deteriorate....
"The end game of this plan is likely to involve an attempt to sever the capital's lines of communication with the interior and physically isolate the regime. ... The first part of this plan is already well advanced. Large portions of the central and southern Sierra have fallen under effective SL control."
The whole report is well worth reading and it shows that the PCP is fighting a real People's War.
Both Martinez and Newman brought up without success the Khmer Rouge issue without answering the point on the subject or even mentioning it why. First, Pol Pot was not even a Maoist. Second, Pol Pot was a proxy from the Chinese and from Yankee imperialism during the cold war, whereas the PCP is self-reliant and politcally independent from powers and superpowers. Third, Pol Pot's "agrarian route" is very different from the one applied by the PCP's in the liberated territories. Fourth, Peru's People's War takes place inside the country whereas Pol Pot was based in Thailand's border. Fifth, Pol Pot is trying to recapture state Power, whereas the PCP is constructing the new Power. Where is the similarity? It is pure speculation.
Newman says he would rather support Father Aristide in Haiti, the ANC in South Africa, and the Workers Party in Brazil, Bosnia, than the PCP in Peru. But we say that Aristide had to rely on US Imperialism to restore him to power and that after the ANC won the elections in South Africa, who owns and controls the mines and factories? The Workers Party in Brazil has no solution to the Allende dilemma -- that is, how do you radically transform the structures of society to benefit the masses, without being crushed by the armed power of the bourgeoisie? Like it or not, "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
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