NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/10395

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From: Hank Roth <[e-mail]>
Subject: BIDOM on SENDERO (1)
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/* Written  1:51 am  Jan 27, 1993 by [e-mail] in igc:p.news */
/* ---------- "BIDOM on SENDERO (1)" ---------- */
<<< via P_news/p.news >>>
{From IN DEFENSE OF MARXISM (BIDOM), #102, January 1993}
INTERVIEW WITH DAVID TRUJILLO:
THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN PERU AND THE ACTIVITY OF SENDERO
LUMINOSO

[There are several things happening here on the nets that have
been overly devisive. While there has been an attempt to carry on
a debate, one dealing with censorship and banning MIM from M.A.P,
there is also the intractable position taken by MIM that says
there can be no accomodation with others on the left. That simply
is not true. We often come together in coalitions to work for
peace and justice because individually as independents or as
members of separate organizations we are simply not strong enough
to be viable and only when we come together, as we do here on
Peacenet, to coalesce and work as a movement in this struggle,
only then can we be effective.

And when we lose our sense of humanity, when we lose sight of why
we fight the good fight, we lose the confidence and support of
those who would join us in that struggle and we no longer
hold the moral high ground.

And as Trujillo points out about SL, when we believe there is no
other path to socialism or economic and social justice except
that which we are on, we are also overly sectarian and that is
counter-productive and self-defeating. We need to learn and study
together and to be morally courageous. Put another way, though
perhaps not quite as strongly as Harel tends to make his point,
we should NOT retreat from condemning those who would perpetrate
dispictable, and heinous acts of cruelty even in revolution,
whether on the right or the left.----Hank Roth]
****************************************************************
(David Trujillo, a leader of the left in Peru and a member of the
PUM, was interviewed by Marty Goodman and wrote out his responses
in Spanish in November 1992. They were translated by F.Mailman.)

THE APRIL 6, 1992, MILITARY COUP LED BY PERU'S PRESIDENT ALBERTO
K. FUJIMORI HAS ACHIEVED AN ELUSIVE GOAL OF THE PERUVIAN RULING
CLASS---THE CAPTURE AND SUBSEQUENT LIFE PRISON TERM OF CHAIRMAN
ABIMAEL GUZMAN REYNOSO OF SENDERO LUMINOSO (SL). GUZMAN HAS BEEN
DESCRIBED BY HIS FOLLOWERS AS "THE RED SUN," WHOSE POLITICAL
THEORIES CONSTITUTE "THE FOURTH SWORD OF MARXISM," THAT IS
MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM, GONZALO THOUGHT. NEVER BEFORE HAS SUCH A
PERSONAL CULT EMBRACED A STALINIST POLTICAL FIGURE BEFORE SEIZURE
OF POWER. WHAT IMPACT WILL HIS IMPRISONMENT HAVE ON SL'S
GUERRILLA WAR?

In the first place, it must be pointed out that the social and
historical conditions in the Andean region, in which the city of
Ayacucho is located, have made it possible for a mediocre leftist
intellectual to become "the fourth sword of Marxism-Leninism-
Maoism," "the red sun of world revolution," the arrogant
"Chairman Gonzalo."

This cult of personality, which is sui generis [unique] even in
the history of Stalinism and which in an early phase signified an
acknowledgement of leadership based on a specific link between
Sendero Luminoso and a sector of the Quechua nation, also became
a factor in the decline of Guzman's leadership and his ultimate
capture.

AFTER GUZMAN'S CAPTURE

What happens with Sendero Luminoso after the capture of Gonzalo
will no doubt be another story. Without the vertical and
totalitarian authority of its leader and his chief lieutenants,
the main directors, this organization will have to go on to a new
process in which struggles for leadership will inevitably have
very violent features. Centrifugal forces will assert themselves,
going in different directions, including the utilization of SL's
military resources for other ends.

At the same time, Peru, militarized by Fujimori's "auto-coup" on
April 5, 1992, paradoxically is becoming more and more the model
pictured in the fantasy of "Gonzalo thought": a Third World
fascist regime, with or without Fijimori, backed exclusively by
the army and, alternately, by different factions of the
bourgeoisie, which will try to construct a "national unity" based
on the defeat of Andean and Aymara societies and on the defeat of
organized mass movements.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE REPRESSION UNDER THE COUP? HOW HAS FUJIMORI
USED MARTIAL LAW TO REPRESS NOT ONLY SL BUT THE ENTIRE LEFT?

In Peru those who determine the strategy for the antisubversive
struggle have for years been the armed forces. Only with
Fujimori's coup d'etat, for the first time the military and
repressive institutions are acting under a common leadership,
although this has not yet succeeded in becoming a definitive
leadership. Therefore, a sector of the repressive forces has
acted autonomously, prioritizing the intelligence services. That
and the support of the the CIA permitted them to find Guzman's
hideout and to capture him. According  to the magazine CARETAS it
was Bush, and not Fujimori, who first received the news of the
capture of "Gonzalo."

In regard to the left, and the people in general, they are caught
between two fires. This past year, to date, Sendero Luminoso has
killed more than 150 left-wing leaders, among them many women.
The most serious murder was that of Maria Elena Moyano, president
of the Peruvian Women's Federation and a popular leader in the
Villa El Salvador neighborhood. According to a recent report,
Guzman's capture has been followed by "the disappearance of more
than 500 people.

WHAT IS SL'S CURRENT STRENGTH IN THE RURAL AREAS? ALSO, WHAT HAS
BEEN ITS SUCCESS IN THE URBAN CENTERS IT HAS TURNED TO IN THE
LAST FEW YEARS?

The highly publicized success of SL in the Peruvian countryside
is in reality less than what has been made public. Its center of
origin, Ayacucho, represents only 4 percent of the total
population of Peru and contributes barely 0.8 percent to the
gross national product. Additionally, it is interesting that,
while this area is characterized by the Sendero Maaoists as
"semi-feudal," the Ayacucho peasants underscored in their 1969
rebellion not the struggle for the land, as happened more or less
in other regions in that epoch, but for free education!

That is why other left groups --- which have an even larger
foothold than SL among the peasants --- have not had the boom
which SL had, owing to the fact that then (at the end of the
'60s), Guzman's group was above all an exclusively student
organization at the university and in the high schools of the
city of Huamanaga.

It was the brutal repression provoked by SL that resulted in the
so-called self-defense "rounds" [government-organized anti-
Sendero peasant units], confrontations between villages, and the
subsequent de-population of the countryside. The Guzman
leadership then made the decision to move to Lima and initiate
the stage which they describe as "strategic balance," in which
they presumed themselves to be equal in military strength to the
army and the aim of which was to seize power.

This decision to move to Lima was not unanimous. It is known that
Guzman's wife, Augusta La Torre, who died (she was executed or
committed suicide), and the imprisoned Osman Morote formed the
"Grupo Negro (Black Group) opposed to this change of "line,"
denouncing those positions as "Hoxhist" (referring to Enver
Hoxha, former president of Albania). They fought to maintain the
Maoist strategy which prioritized the struggle in the
countryside. It must also be reiterated that other than the
relative success of achieving a foothold in some neighborhoods,
fundamentally SL has achieved no significant success in the labor
movements and the grassroots organizations. That is why they have
turned to the intimidation or killing of popular leaders, as was
the case with labor leader and Trotskyist militant Roberto
Chiara. They killed him in order to capture the shoemakers union,
which they ended up destroying with their ultra-left and
sectarian provocations.

TODAY PERU IS IN A STATE OF UTTER COLLAPSE. IN LATIN AMERICA,
ONLY BOLIVIA AND HAITI ARE IN WORSE CONDITION. IN ORDER TO PAY
THE COUNTRY'S ENORMOUS DEBT TO THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND
(IMF) FUJIMORI---REVERSING HIS CAMPAIGN STAND AGAINST IMF'S
"SHOCK THERAPY" --- SLASHED STATE SUPPORT TO PUBLIC PROGRAMS,
FIRED WORKERS, AND LOWERED CUSTOMS DUTIES ON IMPORTS, BRINGING
PERUVIAN PRODUCTS IN DIRECT COMPETITION WITH FOREIGN GOODS. AS A
RESULT INFLATION REACHED AN ALMOST INCOMPREHENSIBLE 7,650 PERCENT
IN 1990 UNDER FUJIMORI. MORE THAN HALF THE PEOPLE OF PERU ARE NOW
IN A CONDITION DESCRIBED AS "CRITICAL POVERTY." IN JANUARY 1991
AN OUTBREAK OF CHOLERA, A TREATABLE DISEASE LONG ASSOCIATED WITH
POVERTY, QUICKLY SPREAD THROUGH THE CONSUMPTION OF UNSANITARY
WATER. CAN YOU DESCRIBE IN YOUR OWN WORDS THE CONDTIION OF THE
WORKER AND PEASANT MASSES?

Peru is a country in a state of bankruptcy, in which the
recession is the main problem. In this country the productive
forces have not only stopped growing but those which survive
simply have become incompetent because of the mediocrity of the
Peruvian bourgeoisie as well as its backwardness in light of the
colossal development of contemporary technology.

The traditional raw materials for export have been devalued,
either because of the decline of prices in the world market, or
simply because of the disinterest, ineptitude, and perfidy of the
governing classes, as is the case with cotton, formerly a very
important source of income, whose quality, because of poor
control and exposure to differnt pests, has been significantly
reduced. Industry uses barely 30 percent of installed capacity,
and there is an agonizing situation because of the [price]
reduction and ancillary rates which favor importation of all
sorts of better-qualtiy and in some cases cheaper consumer
articles rather than national products.

Agriculture is in the process of extinction. Years ago Peru was
an eminently agricultural country and the population was made up
primarily of peasants. Today the percentage of the population is
reversed: almost 70 percent live in the cities and 30 percent of
thos elive in the capital city of Lima, surviving as street
vendors in the "informal market" (not integrated into the
official economy) and undergoing an extended "lumpenization."

A $25 BILLION FOREIGN DEBT

As for imperialism, if before it was seen as "the gringo who
carried away our wealth," today it is the usurer who is charging
us enormous interest rates on a foreign debt (more than $25
billion) that is impossible to pay off. The payments on this debt
dramatically increase the misery of the people when added to the
poverty that already exists. Under Fujimori the level of critical
poverty which, under Alan Garcia, had surpased 50 percent of the
population, has now reached almost 70 percent. At the same time,
it is also said that Peru no longer has strategic wealth and that
its only profitable business comes from drug-trafficking, in
which an important part of the ruling classes and the armed
forces are involved. Even if this is true, Peru is hardly more
than a producer of a cheap raw material, the coca leaf, used for
making cocaine, an alkaloid separated from the coca leaf by a
German chemist in 1860. Following the tradiitonal path of its
history since it was conquered by Spain, Peru barely receives a
few crumbs of this "illicit" business. Former president Alan
Garcia, currently accused of illicit self-aggrandizement and a
fugitive from Peruvian justice, mentions some figures which can
illustrate this situation. In round numbers he said that the
cocaine business produces an economic movement of $100 billion;
of this amount 5 percent reaches Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia (in
that order). Ninety-five percent of the business is in the hands
of North Americans and people in other First World countries.

SOME POLITICAL OBSERVERS SAW THE 1990 VICTORY OF FUJIMORI'S
FRAGILE ELECTORAL COALITION, "CAMBIO '90," NOT ONLY AS A BLOW TO
THE FAR RIGHT CANDIDACY OF WRITER MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, BUT ALSO A
REPUDIATION OF SL AND PERHAPS EVEN THE ENTIRE LEFT AS WELL (VOTES
FOR THE LEFT WERE VERY LOW IN STRONGHOLDS SUCH AS CUZCO, PUNO,
ETC.). WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS VIEW?

That's true. the Peruvian people are tired of traditional
political organizations as much of the right as of the left
because in the last 12 years of representative democracy, after
11 years of military dictatorship, following 170 years of being
an "independent republic" and 500 years under conquest, there is
no light at the end of the tunnel. We continue to see a conquered
people who have not been able to recover the standard of living
and autonomy we had before the European invasion, a people dying
of hunger, to whom even the right to their own culture has been
denied and who are obligated to pay a foreign debt of $25 billion
while nobody knows how, why, or for what it was spent.

But what is different from the past is that now we are not so
pessimistic, although it may seem so. In the course of the last
ten years and in the struggle against misery and daily hunger, as
well as illness, such as plague, which have come to dramatize our
tragedy even more, innumerable popular organizations have been
crated, many of them independent of political parties but
searching for the political means to put an end to this
situation. A little less than six years ago a call for the
formation of a Popular Assembly was enough to get delegations of
representatives of workers, peasants, women, young people, etc.,
from all corners of the country together, and although
unfortunatley this organization did not prosper because at that
time the left was more interested in its internal confrontation
with a view toward the elections and the choosing of a candidate,
nonetheless it was a demonstration of what could happen when some
organization has the will to put out a call based on an authentic
popular alternative.

SL'S POLITICAL GURU ABIMAEL GUZMAN HAS HAD A RATHER REMARKABLE
POLITICAL LIFE SINCE FOUNDING SL IN THE EARLY 70S, WHILE A
PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HUAMANGA IN THE RURAL
PROVINCE OF AYACAUCO. YET GUZMANS VIEWS REMIND ONE OF THE MIND-
NUMBING RHETORIC OF MAOIST SECTS THAT ARE HERE TODAY AND GONE
TOMORROW.

HOWEVER, SENDERO HAS NOT ONLY SURVIVED BUT SINCE INITIATING ARMED
STRUGGLE IN 1980 --- CURIOUSLY AT A TIME WHEN BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY
ENJOYED A REVIVAL --- IT NOW CONTROLS MUCH OF THE COUNTRY. HOW DO
YOU EXPLAIN GUZMAN'S AND SL'S SUCCESS?

Although Guzman, and with him the SL, describe themselves as
Maoists, it must be pointed out that the relative foothold
achieved by this organization in a sector of the masses of the
Ayacuchan people is due less to its Maoism than to the fact that
SL, at a given moment, represented the hope of the masses to rise
above the factor which they considered above all else the cause
of their misfortunes: the lack of education.

A BOOK UNDER HIS ARM

It is revealing that the idealized figure of Guzman is that of an
intellectual with a book under his arm, as opposed to the '60s in
which the partisans of the guerrillas attacked the "coffeeshop
revolutionaries," as the intellectuals of the left then tended to
be. In any case, SL has not achieved the explicit support of some
important sectors of the population and if it has had some
success in its "armed strikes," it has been because "persuasion
with dynamite" has been more than sufficient to neutralize the
chaotic and minimal public transportation system. Still, if we
consider the fact that the majority of those who use the public
transporation system are independent workers in the street
markets, we note that this only affects those who SL claims to
represent.

SL, on the other hand, is no longer what it was at the beginning.
Today it has become a bloodthirsty, provocative, antidemocratic,
authoritarian organization and, just like the fascism which it
says it struggles against, it also practices a special cult of
death. In 19890, when it declared its intention of achieving
"strategic balance," it began to speak of millions of dead and of
the convenience of "genocide" in order to achieve that balance.

IT HAS BEEN SAID (IN NACLA, VOL XXIV, pg34) THAT SL BELIEVES THE
CURRENT STAGE OF THE PERUVIAN REVOLUTION IS "DEMOCRATIC" AND
HENCE REFRAINS FROM SOCIALIST MEASURES IN RURAL AREAS. DOES SL
EMPOWER PEASANTS IN AREAS IT CONTROLS?

SL and the so-called "Gonzalo thought" have nothing new: it is
the same Stalinism as the "third period" in the early '30s [after
Stalin announced that world capitalism had entered its third and
final period,] when the Comintern launched the line of struggle of
"class against class" and when the spokesman for this line in
Peru was Eudocio Ravinez.

Ravinez headed a clandestine faction opposed to Jose Carlos
Mariategui, founder of Peruvian Marxism and the Socialist Party.
After Mariategui's death, Ravinez revised the ideas of the
Socialist Party in its early period, forced its submission to the
Stalinist-dominated Third International, changed the party's name
to Communist Party, and changed its program, twisting
Mariategui's analysis.