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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon
- From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
- Subject: The Reactionary Shining Path (overview)
- Message-ID: <1993Jan3.052152.7390@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Sender: news@mont.cs.missouri.edu
- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: ?
- Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 05:21:52 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 103
-
-
- ********************************************
- Topic 241 THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Artic 2 responses
- harelb reg.andes 8:29 pm Jan 2, 1993
- ********************************************
-
- From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
- Subject: THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Article)
-
- <*> Date: Mon, 8 Jun 92 19:21:08 EDT
- <*> From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
- <*> To: misc.activism.progressive
- <*> Subject: THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Article)
-
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- Topic 128 The reactionary Shining Path
- ttomasko reg.samerica 8:35 pm May 6, 1992
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- ********************************************
- Peru's Shining Path uses terror to impose
- reactionary policies on working people.
- ********************************************
- =============
- S u m m a r y
- =============
- (full article follows)
- =============
-
- "Today 94 percent of workers in Lima are earning less than the
- 1970 minimum wage. More than half of the 22 million Peruvians
- suffer from hunger.
-
- [...]
-
- Meanwhile, the wealthy businessmen and bankers who
- control Peru's economy have further squeezed working people. In
- August 1990, just two weeks after his inauguration, President
- Alberto Fujimori decreed a series of brutal austerity measures to
- meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund for the
- repayment of Peru's $22 billion foreign debt.
-
- [...]
-
- Conditions are even worse for peasants, who are almost
- half the population and are exploited by wealthy landlords. Many
- peasants are forced to grow coca leaf, the raw material for
- producing cocaine, because they cannot survive on other crops.
-
- Right-wing death squads linked to the armed forces have targeted
- journalists, human rights activists, lawyers, and peasant and trade
- union leaders...The White House and U.S. Congress reached agreement
- last fall on a $24.9 million military aid package to the Peruvian
- regime...The U.S. government has stepped up its military
- intervention in Peru under the guise of fighting drugs.
-
- [...]
-
- Most of the parties in Peru that call themselves socialist and
- communist, grouped in the United Left and the Unified Mariateguist
- party (PUM), have also been seriously discredited. They supported
- Fujimori in the elections as a lesser-evil candidate...The United Left
- then broke up as some of its wings accepted ministerial posts in the
- new government. These parties have been further undermined politically
- by their support to the regime's "antiterrorist" campaign of
- repression....These are the conditions that have led to the growth of
- Shining Path.
-
- [...]
-
- Shining Path wraps itself in the Stalinist phraseology of what it
- calls "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and principally Maoism." The cult
- around Guzman, known as President Gonzalo, is called "Gonzalo
- Thought."...While using a lot of rhetoric about fighting on behalf of
- workers and peasants, Shining Path is thoroughly anti-working- class
- in its political perspective and its actions.
-
- [...]
-
- The guerrillas have assassinated 250 mayors and other local officials
- in the last three years. They have blown up schools, health clinics,
- and post offices.
- [Sounds a lot like the Nicaraguan contras --HB]
- [send 1-line message GET CONTRA TERROR ACTIV-L
- to: LISTSERV@UMCVMB.BITNET for more on that]
-
- [...]
-
- In fact, Shining Path uses its coercion and terror to prevent
- any independent effort by peasants to organize to defend their
- interests. The group imposes forced communal labor rather than
- voluntary cooperation among farmers. Its insistence on provincial
- "self-reliance" glorifies the isolation and backwardness facing
- many peasants that capitalists and landlords use to keep them
- divided.
-
- [...]
-
- Above all, Sendero Luminoso instills anti-working-class
- prejudices about the "corrupt" cities and labor unions and
- promotes a reactionary national socialist outlook to block an
- alliance of farmers and workers, both nationally and
- internationally.
-
-