THE CONFESSIONS OF A BRITISH SENDEROLOGIST

Table of Contents The Senderologists The Contradictions of Simon The Community of Raucana

The Senderologists

Simon Strong, a reactionary writer at Financial Times of London purports to know much about the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) in the yarns he writes against the Peruvian revolution. But in reality all he does is to repeat the idiocies alleged by the CIA and the genocidal Peruvian regimes in place, including second-hand information provided by Javier Esparza and the egotists Arce (LAB) and Olaechea (AO). Furthermore, in order to appear "objective," he has no choice but to acknowledge some undeniable facts about the successes of the People's War, which muddle his contradictions to the point that every time Strong throws a rock, it hits his own feet.

What are the charges senderologists bring upon the much touted "Shining Pathway" (sobriquet used by world reaction to demonize the COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU)? The same worn out slander that the Peruvian revolutionaries are "terrorists," "murderers" and "drug traffickers." And whom do these mercenaries, who claim to respect truth, quote? The anticommunist and counter subversive theses of imperialist intelligence apparatuses (mainly the CIA) and Peru's National Intelligence Service (SIN). Thus, their presumed objectivity "se cae de culo" (falls on its ass) as we say, in our country.

In general, senderologists are pseudo scientists who traffic with the most disparate assertions and are not, in the best of cases, careful with the truth. In reality, senderology is an entire industry devoted to distort and defame the democratic character of the Peruvian revolution. Simon Strong, and counterparts such as the sleazy Peruvian and Yankee senderologists (Raul Gonzalez, Ivan Degregori, Tapia, Obando, Bernales, Gorriti, McClintock, Starn, Scott Palmer, etc.) use the "journalistic" or "academic" label, as a cover for their intelligence work.

Let's begin by disemboweling the speculations as well as the admissions in Strong's book, "The Shining Path of Peru: The World's Deadliest Revolutionary Force." The author starts his book by writing weird metaphysical theories to explain the origin and the nature of the PCP, at first not wanting to reveal his real source to us, but at the end of the book he unmasks himself by saying that he had access to confidential "police records" and had first-hand experience with the PCP. No one questions his contacts with SIN or the British foreign service, however, his alleged contacts with the PCP were just coffee talks he had in Europe with the "individual in Sweden" Javier Esparza and the twins LAB and AO. Esparza is a mercenary who got buried when he tried to sneak on the genocidal Fujimori's "peace agreement," and the other two with Strong's support collapsed, while dreaming about becoming leaders of a purported "world commission of opportunism." None of them have anything to do with the PCP.

The Contradictions of Strong

He states: "The guerilla war got on its way and the weapons were obtained in the course of political and military actions, which from May to December 1980, according to official government sources, meant 220 acts of violence. Sabotage, the "redistribution" of lands and crops, and intense political mobilization took place in nearly all departments but mainly in Ayacucho, Lima, and Junin," and "by the end of the year . . . the revolution had surreptitiously caused the death of three persons, a policeman, a mining company employee and a landlord." [pp. 102-104]

Therefore, the PCP did not start any blood bath, as Strong and other reactionaries allege in their conclusions. On the contrary, its transforming work of mobilizing the peasantry and implementing the teachings of the founder of the PCP, Mariategui, which is summarized in the slogan "the land to the tiller" (La tierra para quien la trabaja), was being made a reality. From the beginning of the People's War, land confiscations were carried out, the struggle committees were established (the seed of today's people's committees), which in essence is the transformation our country needs. All these actions, from the Initiation of the Armed Struggle (ILA-80), are being implemented without resorting to the "indiscriminate slaughter" that senderologists, these "lovers of truth," allege. The ones employing indiscriminate violence throughout our republican history, are the big landowners and big bourgeoisie (authorities of the old state), using their genocidal armed forces for that purpose.

The revolution has succeeded in arising a considerable part of the Peruvian sierra from its centuries old oppression, and as Strong himself recognizes, in the first seven months of the People's War in all that time, the PCP annihilated no more than three, which is less than the number of dead among the people who are murdered and dumped like dogs every day in the shanty towns of Lima, by the police and armed forces of the genocidal Fujimori. Not to speak of the multitude of children who wander around the streets begging for alms and dying of hunger while searching through garbage heaps, looking for something to eat. That is the reality that no one with a grain of honesty can deny. These are the conditions that make the revolution not only a necessity but inevitable, since neither the old Peruvian state, nor any of the governments of the big bourgeoisie, landlords and imperialism, are capable of solving these basic problems the country has. This is a revolution, which only the PCP can lead. This has been proven in deeds. Let us see this in more detail:

1. Who was the famous landlord whose death Strong and Amnesty International so much lamented? His story is well known, and the great Peruvian writer Manuel Scorza narrates it in his book, "The Silent War." This big landowner was the most hated man in all the Andes, responsible for the deaths and repression of thousands of peasants.

Here is the true story of the famous landlord: the people judged him for the crimes against humble peasants he had been committing since his feudal and arrogant youth. No body shed a single tear on his tomb.

2. Who was the policeman annihilated? In trying to condemn the people's trial and execution, Strong himself reluctantly provides the answer: "Peruvian police have predilection for drunkenness and prostitution, they are despised by the population....it is an increasingly demoralized police." But this is only part of the answer. In addition, it is a murderous and corrupt police. Whoever has lived in or just visited the Peruvian countryside, and has seen how police and the armed forces mistreat the peasants and the people, while protecting the rich, stealing the little things they have, slaughtering their animals, raping women and girls, killing children, burning their "chozas" (small shacks) and disappearing people as presumed "terrorists," and later dumping their bodies in mass graves dug by the same victims. On the other hand, only one of those myrmidons was killed by the PCP in seven months of the People's War while accomplishing some many benefits for the people. Such things are the work of a well-planned people's revolution, a revolution with established political and military plans, which does not kill for the sake of killing.

In Chiapas (Mexico), in the first month of the uprising, of the famous "cartoon guerrilla" EZLN, there were many more dead among large state farmers, peasants, policeman, guerrillas and soldiers. So, the Communist Party of Peru cannot be considered "blood thirsty" for having killed one policeman in the first seven months of People's War.

3. With respect to the mining company employee executed. In addressing this issue, we must ask: how many workers have been massacred by the bullets of oil and mining corporations? Thousands. The foremen, personnel and security chiefs, and big executives are the henchmen of the big imperialist conglomerates and play an important role in those crimes. The richest and most oppressive employees always seek to please their masters by exploiting the workers with fire and blood. Thus, they ensure the profits and defend the property of their employers earning the just hatred of the workers. So, if one of these lackeys fell in combat with the guerrilla, that is good, which cannot be considered an act "against the civilian population" as the Yankee government and its "human rights" organizations continuously claim.

Simon Strong insinuates further: "a revolution that in its first three years had cost less than 200 lives, took 7,100 in the following two years according to calculations by the [Peruvian] Senate. Official figures said that about 35% were civilians and about 62% subversives, the rest being members of the armed and police forces. Most of the victims described as civilian were attributable to Shining Path, and many of those described as subversive were in reality civilians. The grand total of victims, it is believed to be at least 10 percent more, but the data are restricted and manipulated by the military and police." Responding to his allegation that "civilians are killed by the PCP" we ask a simple question: According to whom? The same genocidal government and its armed forces, that is, one of the parties fighting the internal war. We further ask, who massacres unarmed students, workers and peasants who fight for their rights against the law decrees enacted by the regimes of turn, civilian or military regime? The reactionary armed forces. Since the Spanish colonial times to the present, the dead of the working class, peasants and people pile up in colossal heaps. This reactionary violence has been going through during the entire Republic life of the country such as the dictatorships of Leguia, the Prados, Odria, Belaunde, Velasco, Morales-Bermudez, Garcia, and the current one, the killer of children Fujimori: the most genocidal and faithful lackey of imperialism in Peruvian history.

Why the increase in the human cost of the war? Lenin teaches us: "a powerful revolution generates a powerful counterrevolution." In January of 1981, at the end of the first seven months of the war, the Belaunde government sent the feared "sinchis" [a highly specialized counterinsurgency police battalion trained by U.S. imperialism] to the war zone. Those sinchis have already acquired a reputation of being brutal and blood thirsty during the repression and murder of the MIR guerrillas led by the petty bourgeoisie in 1965 (a Castroit movement led by De La Puente Uceda and Lobaton), who were wiped out in less than three months during the first presidential term of Belaunde. But in the 1980's, the sinchis were sent to repress and put down a revolution ingrained in the masses, and exceptionally respectful of human life, having carried out, according to the government, 220 "terrorist" actions. In fact, there were 1342 political- military actions, most of them land occupations and massive armed mobilizations of the peasantry (especially poor landless peasants). This fact explains what Simon Strong says next:

"In the following years, Shining Path carried out 5,350 actions . . . of which the Ministry of the Interior [in charge of the police] reported 1,100. These acts of violence had all remnants of government, `bureaucratic capitalism', the landlords and `imperialism domination', as targets."

Strong continues: "In 1982, Shining Path took over the city of Ayacucho and occupied it for over one hour, freeing 247 prisoners from police cells, of which at least 78 were accused of being Shining Path militants." Despite the brutal repression, massive arrests, tortures and the razing of entire villages by the sinchis, the PCP clearly defeated these commandos.

"By Christmas the guerrillas had expelled most police and civilian authorities from the towns surrounding Ayacucho . . . the death toll had reached 180. According to official data, half were civilians, one fourth police and one fourth guerrillas. The [Sendero's] `New Government' had emerged." p. 144. So, in just two years of the victorious People's War, the Sinchi Commandos were expelled from the Ayacuchan countryside, and in retaliation, the government ordered massive aerial bombings of the civilian population.

It is interesting to see that during the first two years of the People's War, the armed forces only provided logistical and intelligence information to the police in fighting the PCP. This was because fascist Dictator General Velasco Alvarado overthrew Belaunde in a coup d'etat during his first term, and just three years after the 1965 guerrillas. Velasco attempted to deceive the people (to put down the emerging struggle) by presenting himself as "defender of the poor," and "revolutionary," coopting the language of the reformist left, while he tried to expand and modernize bureaucratic capitalism. He aimed at organizing and controlling the masses in a corporative form by way of the political police "Sinamos" [National System for Mobilization] engendered by the dictatorship. Don't we see something similar today when the armed forces organize the masses in paramilitary forces [Rondas, Serenazgos, Committees of Civil Defense, etc.] and the genocidal Fujimori, in bizarre form, employs terms such as "New State," the "obsolescence of traditional political parties," "modernization," "reinsertion," etc.?

Going back to the senderologists, how about the responsibility for the 27,000 dead (which are much more in reality)? Strong says the following: "...by the end of 1982 the armed forces joined the war. At the initiative of President Belaunde [second term], five provinces in the departments of Ayacucho and Apurimac were declared a state of emergency, in which supreme political control was given to the military." Page 125. Yes, but what followed in the country next was genocide. First, the armed forces entered the war following and applying the Argentinean military doctrine of "ten by one" [if one out of ten civilians killed is a communist, that's satisfactory]. Thus, they carried out a series of massacres of peasants, students, teachers and workers (mostly peasants). For the following years (1982-1984) at least 7,126 people were murdered, mass graves and disappearances began to proliferate, while Belaunde was being praised by Reagan's White House as a "champion in human rights" and the U.S. military and economic aid increased.

Strong continues: "...According to official statistics, 200 of them were members of the security forces, 2,507 were registered as civilian victims, while it was reported that 4,428 were guerrillas.' p. 125. Then, who killed whom? If the government says that most of the fallen in combat were combatants of the PCP and civilians (unless they killed themselves), there is only one responsible: the genocidal armed forces. Thereafter, these massacres multiplied. With Alan Garcia Perez, the world witnessed the massacres of 300 political prisoners in the concentration camp of El Fronton and 45 in the jail of Lurigancho (turned by the communist combatants into luminous trenches of combat). They were murdered before the eyes and patience of the self- proclaimed "defenders of human rights," the Red Cross, U.N., O.A.S., etc.

Fujimori murdered 100 political prisoners during the genocide of Cantogrande in 1992. Don't we see frequently on TV and the bourgeois press itself how the regime blatantly murders children and students, how it carries out massive seize and search operations of humble homes in the poor neighborhoods, breaking the doors by force, and pulling people from their beds during late hours of the night, and disappearing them. Didn't this happen in the dormitory at La Cantuta University when nine students and a professor were kidnaped at gun point, tortured to death, and their bodies dismembered, doused with gasoline, burned and dumped in a mass grave? How about the genocide of Barrios Altos in midtown Lima (few block from Congress and Fujimori's palace) when 17 members of two families, including children, were murdered? How about the genocide of Accomarca and many thousands more ...? All these crimes against humanity have been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be actions of the armed forces today headed by three criminals: the "supreme commander" Fujimori, the "presidential advisor" Montesinos and the perennial "general commander" Nicolas Hermoza. All of them have their hands soaked in blood of the people.

About the accusations that Peruvian guerrilla fighters have a relationship with drug traffickers (which the CIA, DEA, etc. have never been able to present a shred of evidence), Strong says: "...despite all the assertions and all attempts to prove the opposite, it has never been possible to show that there is any kind of link between them." p. 125.

¡ RAUCANA EN SU TIERRA, SOLDADOS A SUS CUARTELES! (GENOCIDAL ARMY GET OUT FROM RAUCANA!)

As can be seen, this is not the only time in which the well-paid senderologists of imperialism, while using and processing the massive disinformation campaign by the intelligence services, and despite their wishes, fall into clear contradictions. Let us se then, how after lashing at the PCP through most of his book, Strong falls in the end, choking on a bone he had forgotten in his ceviche (a typical fish plate). He says:

"...It was a Sunday morning in the first days of April while the dogs swirled upside down on the dusty land and the cows crowed intermittently in the well aligned humble adobe homes. Every 80 meters (260 feet) in the enclave there were men, women and children diligently digging holes. In some, they had already installed electrical posts with their bases full of concrete. The Raucana community, a settlement of 1200 people on the eastern boundary of Lima, was conducting an ayni, the ancient communal work of indigenous tradition. At the same time with similar good humor and shared purpose, the families used buckets to draw water from 20 meter wells they had dug in each of the seven sectors of the community. They showed it proudly in the center of the square paved with decorative rocks of each of the seven sectors. As usual on Sundays, they were sweeping and cleaning every thing, including the public restrooms they had built and irrigated their communal gardens, plantains, onions, lima beans and flowers. Meanwhile, the men who lacked their own income were working hard on their own in the Raucana quarries. Drying in the sun were hundreds of bricks molded in wooden boxes. For just $35 one could buy about 4000 bricks, enough for a typical 90 square meters (900 square feet) lot. This was something strange for a neighborhood, whose inhabitants invaded this land on Independence Day, July 28, 1989.

There was no land reserved for a chapel, and although there was flag hole in the main square, it bore no flag. The residents proudly spoke of how the discipline and organization of Raucana, not comparable to that in other shanty towns, were the key to its success. The adjunct General Secretary Rene Subia, explained that the thieves, the wife beaters, child abusers, prostitutes, drunkards and drug addicts were tried before people's courts, in which they were criticized, offered opportunities to correct themselves, and practice self-criticism."

"Before punishing them as an example to others, we make them aware of their errors, said Subia. With a chicha glass in one hand, he explained the laws against thieves, liars and lazy and told us: The first time the offenders may be sanctioned to force work or the serious matters to flogging, to four lashes in each sector. If the offenses continue, we expel them. Raucana, before known as `little Chicago' due to its crime rate, is today crime free.

"Later on, sitting on the adobe bench inside the communal kitchen, still half finished and still without a roof, Interim Secretary General Felix Condor described to us how each sector had between 70 and 80 dwellings and was organized by way of elected committees, not by vote, but by the people's will in the General Assembly. According to Condor, elections would be "to traffick with reality." The sectorial committees are made up of five members: the secretaries or delegates of organization and discipline, of work and economy, as well as the substitute delegate, and the delegate to the Raucana Central Committee. The latter committee is made up of all the delegates in each sector and five secretaries that include one of defense, as well as a General Secretary and its substitute. "When soccer players began to arrive at the court adjacent to the outside wall, which existed before the residents came, the cocking of weapons was heard. Moments later the soldiers walked around marching and shouting antiterrorist slogans. They came from the military garrison established three months earlier in Raucana. The army presence came after a series of clashes with police and hired goons, who had tried unsuccessfully to expel the residents from the lands that Italian-born landlord Tealdo Isola was trying to recuperate. Condor said: `This big landlord came after War World II, and fraudulently appropriated the land for himself...The people had only recovered what belongs to them by right.'

"To protect their land from any attack, the community has built watch towers, dug outside trenches and fought the attackers using slings (huaracas), burning tires and throwing Molotov cocktails while the armed forces used live ammunition against them. Dozens were wounded and one resident, Felix Raucana, died from bullet wounds, providing the town with a martyr and a name for itself. With the arrival of the army, three people were jailed and five more are said to have disappeared after their arrest. Meanwhile, the communists [the PCP] retaliated with a powerful bomb that trashed Tealdo Isola's factory in an industrial zone of Lima. After that clear warning, the Italian landlord complied with the request made by the `terrorists' to withdraw with prejudice his eviction petition. Thus, the leaders of Raucana were finally and officially recognized by the district council of Vitarte. Subia says: `Isola was bribing the corrupt authorities and the heads of the armed forces...We are ready to do anything to defend these lands and the community we have built. We have no other alternative but to win by military means, and if we are forced to do it, we will defend ourselves that way again.'

"With the occupation of Raucana by the armed forces and many of its leaders killed or imprisoned, prostitution, theft and destruction appeared. By night they brought girls and paid their services in a hut near the soccer field. The soldiers stole window frames and doors for firewood, steeped upon the communal gardens. Once in a much publicized occasion, to gain the `minds and hearts' of the residents through `civic action,' they distributed rice, which was said to be rotten. Meanwhile, General Secretary Valentin Cachas, a fruit vendor, had been arrested by the army under the trumped charge that he was `carrying dynamite and a walkie talkie.' He said that he had found them near his hut, and was trying to get away from them before he can be labeled as a `terrorist' [an obvious plant by army intelligence -SIE.]

"Later on, that same Sunday, a 15-year-old boy, the brother of one of the arrested, was forcibly invited by soldiers to have a drink with them. After his release he told one of his friends that the soldiers suspected him as being a terrorist, and were pressing him to finger others but he refused. A few days later, the soldiers returned to arrest him. His corpse was found in a garbage dump 1.5 miles away with three bullets in the head and the finger nails pulled out [he was murdered by army intelligence.] To repress the ensuing protest, the soldiers fired in the air, when angry residents threw rocks to army trucks and tanks.

"At Johnny Rafael's funeral [another Raucana community leader] there were neither readings from bible nor blessings. Instead, after heading a funeral procession of several hundred people on the way to the municipal cemetery, Felix Condor said in a loud voice before the casket covered with flowers: `They say we are terrorists because, in this country, the ones having money rule, and those having nothing are worth nothing. The laws and the state constitution only help those with money, but not those without it, justice is not justice, but a big injustice. The real terrorists are those killing us from hunger every day. Terrorists are those paying us a meager salary (if we find them), which is not enough to even buy our niche, not enough for a miserable meal. Those who cause all this injustice are the real terrorists!

"Raising his voice even louder, Condor shouted: 'Johnny Rafael Veliz, who killed him? The answered, the genocidal army!. Who killed him? The genocidal armed forces! Who will do justice to him? The people of Peru! Who will do justice to him? The people of Peru!"

"A flyer written by the leaders of Raucana was distributed, which in conclusion said: `This is the so-called `civic action,' more repression and genocide against the people. Responsible is the Fujimori government and its armed and police forces, who in collusion with reaction are fulfilling the plans of Yankee imperialism, and are trying to stop the uncontrollable revolutionary advance of our people, which is shining in daylight."

Organized very subtly and even anonymously, Raucana is one of those PCP "liberated zones" in the Peruvian capital. The Party has been leading the community's struggle for land, just as in all of Lima's surrounding areas, and has erected a model community, self-sufficient and self-reliant which exists under the army's very noses. Raucana is an embryo of the People's Republic of New Democracy." p. 259-262.

Let us remember that even the rotten old state jails were converted by captured PCP militants into luminous trenches of combat, clean and impeccable areas for study and work, and the same way are the hundreds of People's Committees, genuine laboratories of the New Power existing throughout the country.

Prensa Proletaria Internacional.
Movimiento Popular Perú de Norte América y The New Flag

E-Mail:lquispe@nyxfer.blythe.org