NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/10290

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From: Hank Roth <[e-mail]>
Subject: PLP on SANDERO (1)
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/* Written 10:09 pm  Jan 23, 1993 by [e-mail] in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "PLP on SANDERO (1)" ---------- */
<<< via P_news/p.nes >>>
{From THE COMMUNIST, the political journal of the Progressive
Labor Party, Number 6/Fall/1992}

[I am presenting this article, by the PLP, on Sandero Luminoso,
for informational purposes. It contains an accurate picture of
life in Peru and provides, in my opinion, a better understanding
of how different politics happens in the Third World. Be aware
also that theory and practice tend to converge at first, but
then they diverge from orthodox analysis and practice due to those
exigencies that are caused by circumstance which are particularly
peculiar to Latin America and specifically to Peru.

The article is naturally critical of Sandero because of a
difference in political analysis and process between the PLP and
the SL, and anyone reading this material should bare that in
mind. This article should thus be read with a certain objective
`truth seeking' detachment and a degree of skepticism, no less so
than reports coming in from various amnesty groups and other
tendencies with a possible ax to grind, and in that respect this
reading and further reading from other sources should [can]
present a totality that will be closer to the truth.---Hank Roth]

                            Part 1 (of 4)

PERU'S TARNISHED PATH

"How's business?"
"It's dead."

Since 1980 this has perfectly described all of Latin America's
traditional export-based capitalist economics. It is why Latin
American economists call this the "dead time."

Nowhere is it deader than in Peru. Between 1988 and 1991 total
Peruvian economic output shrank 30%. By 1991 traditional exports
had fallen to one third what they were worth in 1975. Workers'
living conditions were cut in half. The political system
shriveled with the economy, as the main parties, each
representing a different faction of property, failed to figure
out how to get the world market to accept its commodities. Even
the traditinal "Left" tried. Bankrupt ideas, bankrupt economy--
they go hand in hand.

But it is not true that capitalism doesn't work at all in Peru.
Only traditional capitalism is in crisis. The capitalists are
able to make one part of their system work--the cocaine business.
They just don't like to talk about it. But cocaine is Peru's
largest industry. Roughly 15% of the entire Peruvian workforce is
employed in the coca trade. [Andreas and Sharpe, COCAINE POLITICS
IN THE ANDES, in CURRENT HISTORY mag., February 1992, pg 77] Coca
paste accounts for anywhere from 33% to 70% of the country's total
exports (extimates of the value of this illegal export naturally
vary.) [Phillip Smith, GRAPPLING WITH SHINING PATH, in NEW
POLITICS, Dec. 1991, pg 95] Drug trade dollars finance Peru's
imports. [U.S. Department of Commerce, PERU, U.S. Government
Document 1234C, 1991, pg 12] Drug trade dollars are soaked up by
the Peruvian Central Bank and the rest of the government owned
banking system to the tune of up to US$4.7 billion per year, and
are used by the government to service the country's US$21 billion
foreign debt (principally to pay USA banks) [Andreas and Sharpe,
IBID, page 78].

Imagine what it must be like to be a worker forced to earn a
living in Peru. If you are not a farm worker or a miner you have
to live in Lima. That is where the capitalists have put the jobs.
Nearly everything manufactured in Peru is produced in Lima. Lima
is also the national capital and most of the white collar jobs
are located there as well. So Lima is bursting at the seams. From
a population of just under 230,000 in 1920, Lima mushroomed to
2.4 million by 1964. But that is nothing. In the next 25 years
the business system forced another nearly 5.5 million working
people to move to Lima to try to earn a living.

Today nearly EIGHT MILLION (almost all desperately poor workers)
are jammed into Lima and more keep arriving every day in a search
for paid work. They are forced to live in a series of
shantytowns, each of several hundred thousand population, thrown
up on garbage dumps, or on any bit of vacant land they can seize.
There is no housing, no schools, no sewers, no public transport,
no garbage collection, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and --
- because Lima is in the middle of a desert --- no water. And, of
course, despite the workers' needs and hopes, there are no jobs.
Unemployment and underemployment for Peru as a whole is over 90%

Lima's poor cannot even afford charity. A typical network of soup
kitchens in one shantytown (called Villa El Salvador) gets its
food from U.S., Spanish, Canadian and Italian "aid" agencies.
Despite the fact that it gets free food, the soup kitchen network
scandalously and outrageously charges 30 cents a meal. This may
seem cheap, but it isn't. The network's manager told the NEW YORK
TIMES, "Eating in a soup kitchen is becoming a luxury. About 65
percent of Villa's population [which is 320,000] eat in soup
kitchens. A lot of the rest can't afford it." [NEW YORK TIMES,
April 15, 1992, pg 12]

Still, all things considered, living in Lima is better than
living anywhere else in Peru. That is why, outside of Lima, Peru
is pretty sparsely populated. Eight million are crammed into
Lima. Thirteen million are spread throughout the rest of this
immense area. [Peru is pretty big. It is as big as all of Mexico
from the Rio Grande to below Mexico City (an area in which 52
million people live). It is as big as Belgium, the Netherlands,
France, Italy and Germany combined (where 213 million people
live.) It is as big as all the eastern states of the USA from
Maine to Florida put together, with West Virgina and Tennessee
thrown in (where 96 million live). It is as big as the West Coast
of the USA---Washington, Oregon and California, with half of
Arizona added (an area where 35 million live.)

Living on the coast (where Spanish-speaking, mostly mestizo
workers live, as do black and Chinese workers) is easier than
living in the Andean highlands (where mostly Quechua-speaking
Indian workers live.) The coastal metizo workers are paid seven
times more than the highland Indian workers. The Indian workers
can expect to be dead by the time they are 45; the mestizo
workers live a little longer.

If you were forced to earn a living in Peru, you would be trapped
in a racist capitalist system which over the years has been
dominated by one social class---spanish speaking, European-
cultured, white, Lima-based owners of huge country estates,
descendants of the 16th-century Spanish conquerors. This class
was dominated first by Spain's rulers, then by English bankers
and finally by U.S. bankers (Italian and Japnese bankers playing
a smaller part up to now.)

The Peruvian ruling class made its money by enslaving workers in
a racist system and playing ball with the international bankers.
If the bankers wanted to lend money to develop phosphate, rubber,
cotton or copper exports, the Peruvian rulers obligingly borrowed
the money and had their workers expand phosphate, rubber, cotton
or copper production until the bottom fell out of these markets.
(This had no connection with the needs of Peru's working people.
For example, these huge farm-owners always imported food since it
was more profitable for them to grow cotton for export than to
grow food to eat. This raised the price of food sky high, but
that didn't bother the land-owners---they could afford it. Only
the farm workers starved.) When the bankers wanted to lend money
tou build unnecessary railroads, the Peruvian rulers borrowed the
money and their workers built railroads to nowhere. (But no road
or rail system adequate for the Peruvian working people's needs
for transport and communications was ever built.) It was in this
way, by borrowing for projects whose only benefit was the profits
they produced for the elite, that the government built up a US$21
billion foreign debt.

In view of the U.S. government, "It is a fact of life that...the
country is on the edge of disaster." [U.S. Department of
Commerce, IBID, pg 11] Are they kidding? The Peruvian working
people have long been buried in disaster. But it is the business
class, not the working class, that is the U.S. government's
concern. The "disaster" the U.S. government is worried about is
communism. What the U.S. officials mean is that if the breakdown
of traditional capitalism alone could produce a communist
revolution, there would be one in Peru.

But as it happens, a communist revolution requires communists.
That doesn't mean anyone who chooses to call himself or herself a
communist. It means Marxist-Leninists organized in a party with
correct ideas of what communism is and of how working people can
transform their ideiology and take steps to reorganze their
society from capitalist to communist. Is there such a party, with
such a line, in Peru? (Communists are not like Christian
evangelists, who can promise anything they want in heaven. The
evangelists will never be tested. No one will ever be able to
prove they are wrong. But communists who win power have about
twenty years to make good on their plans. If you do the worng
things, a new exploitative class structure emerges, and you are
back to square one.)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SHINING PATH

Now, since May 17, 1980 there has been an armed revolt in Peru led
by an organization calling itself the Communist Party of Peru,
but knwn more popularly as the Sandero Luminoso, or SHINING PATH.
[SANDERO LUMINOSO--Spanish for SHINING PATH---is the name the
bourgeois press hung on the Communist Party of Peru (CPP) to
distinguish it from other Peruvian organizations also using the
name "Communist Party." The name's origin is from a CPP slogan:
"Follow the SHINING PATH of Mariategui." This is to honor Jose
Carlos Mariategui for being the founder of Peru's communist
movement. He died in 1930.] SHINING PATH claims it now rules
"liberated areas" in which 30% of the Peruvian people live.
[Comments by representatives fo the CPP leadership at a meeting
with a PLP delegation in February, 1992] This achievement cost
some 24,000 lives (most murdered in cold blood by the reactionary
government army and its death squads.)

The SHINING PATH originated in 1959, when a group of young
professors teaching at the university in the southern mountain
city of Ayacucho joined the Peruvian Communist Party's regional
committee. One of them, Abimael Guzman Reynoso (SHINING PATH's
future "President Gonzalo"), a philosophy professor, and later
Dean of the Faculty, became chairman of the Party regional
committee. Guzman soon formed a secret group within the Party,
which called itself the "Red Faction."

In 1964 the Peruvaian party split, with a smaller group
(including the leadership, which historically had close ties with
the Communist Party of the U.S.) supporting the Soviet party, and
the larger part supporting the Chinese. The "Red Faction" allied
with the pro-China party.

Guzman spent most of 1965 in China studying the Chinese Communist
Party's then current political line and military tactics,
returning to Peru determined to carry out this strategy.

Within a few years the "Red Faction" had secured a base in the
student federation and among the faculty in Ayacucho. It helped
organzie an Ayacucho municipal federation of communtity
organizations and helped lead a massive regional movement against
government plans to eliminate free education.

In 1970 (Guzman was in jail at the time) the pro-China party was
convulsed by an inner-party struggle (in part over the qustion of
whether or not a "revolutionary situation" existed in Peru), and
as part of this struggle, Guzman and his "Red Faction" were
expelled. When Guzman got out of jail later in 1970, the "Red
Faction," which held that there was a "revolutionary situation,"
decided to transform itself into the "Communist Party of Peru."
The membership (which was, and remains, secret) was made up
mainly of professors and students at the Ayacucho university.

The new party spent its first five years working out a systematic
ideological and political line (a line identical to what Guzman
was taught in China in 1965), training its members in this line,
and trying to develop a base of support. Guzman's plan was to
hold a party congress in 1978, at which the call to start the
"people's war" would be issued. But despite everything, a
significant part of the party's members and leaders---apparently
the majority---disagreed with the idea of armed struggle. A
congress to initiate armed struggle could not be organized. So
Guzman decided to start the armed struggle first, and then hold
the congress (finally held ten years later.)

    "This [situation] let us in 1978 to postpone the congress
    in order to carry it out when we would be amidst the people's
    war. Our reasoning was plain and simple: being in war, who could
    oppose the people's war? A congress and a party with arms in
    hand, with a vigorous people's war, how could there be anyone who
    would oppose the development of the people's war? They would not
    be able to generate any harm for us any more." [Abimael Guzman,
    "President Gonzolo Breaks the Silence: An Interview From the
    Underground," EL DIARIO, Lima, July 24, 1988, reprinted by Red
    Banner Editorial House, pg 39. This document was given to a PLP
    delegation in February, 1992 by representatives of the CPP
    leadership as an authoritative document of the CPP. The account
    of SHINING PATH's history given here is based on this interveiw.]

For the next two years the small party fought over the question
of armed struggle. At a Central Committee meeting late in 1979
Guzman was able to expel from the party most of those who opposed
starting the armed struggle. At a followup meeting in February,
1980 the remainder of the opposition was expelled. "We had to
prune the Central Committee itself strongly." [Guzman, IBID, pg 66]

That done, concrete plans were made for the first actions. On May
17, 1980, the day before the first national presidential
elections in 17 years, a group of young people broke into the
town hall in the mountain town of Chuschi, about thirty miles
southwest of Ayachuchco, took the ballots and voting lists to the
town plaza, and publicly burned them. This was the first "armed
action" by the first of the party's "armed detachment." Dynamite
bombs were set off in the following weeks in other palces. The
"people's war" had begun.

In Peru in 1980 the civilian government did not trust the army.
(A 12 year military dictatorship had just ended.) For its part,
the army command was completely demoralized. As a result, the
army could not be called out against the SHINING PATH. The
SHINING PATH was left alone by the army from May, 1980 until the
end of 1982. Militarily the SHINING PATH had only the local
police forces to contend with. For more than two years SHINING
PATH armed detachments were relatively free to spread north and
south to villages throughout the southern mountains to destroy
police outposts and chase away the police and the local political
bosses, replace them with secret "People's Committees," capture
weapons, and recruit.

   "We generated a void in the countryside and we had to
    establish a New Power without having defeated larger armed forces
    because they had not taken part, and if they did, if they
    participated, it was because we had established the People's
    Power. [Guzman, IBID, pg 55]

By December, 1982 the national government's fear of the rebels
was finally greater than its fear of its own army, and the army
was sent in.

The army's plan was simple: kill the SHINING PATH and reestablish
the old structures of power by terrorizing the local populations,
killing indiscriminately, expelling people from their villages
(to make it impossible for SHINING PATH to organize) and forcing
peasants into anti-SHINING PATH paramilitary groups (called, in
Peru, "rondos.")

SHINING PATH's leadership met in early 1983 and decided to defend
their "New Power" against the army's campaign in two ways. First,
by reorganizing their armed detachements into a centrally-led
"People's Guerrilla Army." Second, by organizationally grouping
the secret village "People's Committees" in each area to form
"base areas."

Revolutionaries need base areas to rest in, grow their food,
train and recruit. They need places that are secure and stable.
Otherwise these places are not base areas. A base area can be
secure only if and when the local population supports the
revolution and enters into it. It can be stable only if and when
the government army is unable to enter and occupy the territory
of the base area. This means the revolutionary armed forces are
big enough, experienced enough and powerful enough to fight and
win in positional warfare. (Hit-and-run sneak attacks are not
good enough; it is the enemy who has to run away.) A base area
therefore starts out insecure and unstable, and gets transformed
over time, through political work and fighting. But the whole
process is impossible unless the revolutionaries have already
achieved a certain military strength.

Whether or not the SHINING PATH leadership felt it was militarily
strong enough to take on the army (their forces had no actual
combat experience), they were convinced they had no other choice.
They had already "created the void," and filled it with their
organization. They had crated embryonic base areas. What choice
but to try to defend them? And if they were defended
successfully, then they had to be developed.

   "A highly bloody and merciless genocide took place. We
   responded by fighting fiercely. The reaction, and concretely, the
   armed forces, believed that by 1984 they had already defeated us.
   I refer to [their] documents...where it even said we were not a
   danger anymore...But what was the result? That the People's
   Committees and the base areas multiplied themselves, and that led
   us. Later on, to develop the base areas." [Guzman, IBID, pg 57]

By the end of 1984 the SHINING PATH claimed to have a larger
army, more "People's Commitees," more base areas and a larger
party. For its part, the army extended military rule over 40% of
the country and continued a merciless reign of terror, torture
and assassination against any suspects it could get its hands on.

<continued in Part 2>