Revolutionary Worker #907, May 18, 1997
The RW has been able to obtain copies of two recent issues of the revolutionary underground newspaper El Diario, published in Lima, Peru. The issues are dated June and October 1996.
These issues of El Diario have come out in the face of repeated attacks on the paper by the reactionary regime. The June and October 1996 issues are the first issues of this revolutionary paper that we have seen in some time. The reappearance of El Diario is a victory for the people's struggle in Peru, a significant and welcome development.
Over the last two years, supporters of the Right Opportunist Line that arose from within the PCP, calling for negotiations with the government and an end to the people's war, have put out a paper under the El Diario name. The Central Committee of the PCP has condemned and repudiated this line. The June and October 1996 issues of El Diario strongly uphold the continuation of the people's war led by the Central Committee of the PCP.
The two issues contain editorial articles, brief reports of military actions by the PCP guerrillas, analysis of current affairs and the state of the economy in Peru and exposures of the regime. The front-page headline of the June issue reads: "From Andes to the Himalayas, People's War Blazes Victoriously!" An editorial with this headline says that the initiation of the people's war in Nepal is a welcome support and reinforcement strengthening the prospects for the future birth of the People's Republic in Peru. A centerfold article welcoming the initiation of the people's war in Nepal salutes the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). One of the pages contains two photos under the title "New Type of Culture." One is a guerrilla theater performance in a Peruvian prison. The other is a street graffiti from Colombia with the slogans "Rally to the Defense of Our Red Flag Flying in Peru!" and "Prepare the Initiation of the People's War in Colombia!"
The October issue has the front page headline: "PCP Resolute in its Plans to Develop the People's War!" The editorial in this issue strongly upholds RIM and calls on the Peruvian masses to "carry out the historic task of Developing People's War and Seizing Power."
This week, the Revolutionary Worker is making available to our readers excerpts from several articles which appear in the June and October 1996 issues of the El Diario. We have also compiled a list of PCP military actions from articles in the two issues.
From "From the Andes to the Himalayas, People's War Breaks Oppressions Chains"--June '96 issue of El Diario:
Our greetings to proletarian internationalism, to the initiation of the People's War in Nepal led by the Communist Party of Nepal, for taking up the invincible ideology of the proletariat, MLM. On February 13, 1996, they broke the dark night of oppression and lit the burning people's war that brightly extended from Rukum, Gorkha, Rolpa, Kathmandu, Sindhulpalanchok, Sindhuli...with three simultaneous attacks on police stations, confiscation of lands and goods from semifeudal forces, attacks on an Indian capitalist brewery, the destruction of capitalist banks and the transnational Pepsi-Cola corporation. In other words, the prairie fire has been set, the people's war expands from the Andes to the Himalayas as the only road towards liberation....
We are strengthened by the qualitative and quantitative leap taken by the CPN, by their deep grasp of Maoism as a third, new and higher stage of Marxism. Likewise, convinced of the ultimate victory of the World Proletarian Revolution we send our greetings to the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, and the International Communist Movement for their efforts to forge Communist Parties that dare to cross the inevitable river of blood in order to reach our goal, which will be reached by all of us or none of us: Communism.
From "Plan to Jump Start the Economy Creates More Hunger for Our People. Excellent Conditions for the People's War"--June '96 issue:
Empty stomachs for the Peruvian people, for the peasantry, since that Law of the Land only serves to promote gamonalismo (semi-feudal oppressors in the countryside--RW) and out-and-out monopolies....
Empty stomachs for the Peruvian people and for the petty bourgeoisie who are being squeezed by laws that aim to make the government more efficient. And especially for the street vendors who are tear gassed and clubbed...
Empty stomachs for the proletariat, who, with the collapse of the national industry, must now bargain for the sale of their labor power succumbing to feeble wages that have been frozen for six years. That's the only thing this reactionary system can offer the people, empty stomachs, and therefore, death and oppression....
[The oppressors] on the other hand, will line their pockets. The investors will take with them as gifts our industries. The comprador bourgeoisie will line its pockets. Through imports, and without regulations and with the help of the government, they are getting rich. The bureaucratic bourgeoisie will line its pockets. All the talk of moralization does not hide the fact that they are getting rich from state enterprises and from siphoning of the country's institutions....
That is the reality of this rotten state, not the moralization it talks so much about. There is no efficient government, no development, none of that, only lined pockets for themselves. What is the response of the people to these intolerable conditions? Organize base areas in the countryside and build the Revolutionary Movement in Defense of the People in the cities, and develop even more the people's war which will take us to the goal we long for, communism.
From "The Enemy Drowns in its Own Contradictions"--October '96 issue:
A few years after the people's war started, the government launched one of its first hoaxes against the PCP. The reactionary bourgeois government claimed that the PCP was allied with the drug-traffickers. They hoped to create a breach between the people and the PCP...
Now, after the reactionary press failed to get over with the big lie, it has come to light what everybody already knew: the alliance is between the drug-traffickers and the government. The government now doesn't know how to protect their partner in the struggle against the victorious People's Liberation Army.
Now the entire government has come out in defense of Montesinos [head of the Peruvian secret police and long-time CIA operative], wanting to hide the fact the he has been for years linked to drug-traffickers....
From this we draw big conclusions: the war on drugs is a farce and demagoguery. This government could never fight the drug trade since it is its main source of income. And the war on drugs is a hoax, in fact it is a war against the PLA and the peasantry. Above all it is a war against the PCP which, day after day, is destroying the old rotten Peruvian state.
From "Long live the PCP and the People's War!", October issue:
Upholding, defending and applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, from the dungeons of the reactionaries, Chairman Gonzalo on September 24 of 1992 gave a historic and far-reaching speech to the world's press.
At a time when the People's War was powerfully shaking the country, especially in the very heart of the reactionaries, Lima, the PCP was hit by the capture of a group of leaders, including Chairman Gonzalo himself. This unprecedented event led the reactionaries to believe that the PCP was finished.
At that moment Chairman Gonzalo reaffirmed: "We are here in circumstances which some think to be a great defeat. They are dreaming. Today we say to them this is only a bend in the road. Nothing more! A bend in the middle of the road"--speaking about revolutionary war and the fact that the People's War should continue until final victory, in the interests of the masses of Peru and serving the world proletarian revolution. He also spoke of the possibility to develop MLM parties throughout the world, particularly calling attention to the role of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, and he emphasized the strategic perspective and the necessity for Maoism to become the line and leadership of the coming wave of the world proletarian revolution.
The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement was founded on the basis of the Declaration of the RIM, adopted by the Second Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations in 1984. This declaration correctly emphasized "Mao Tsetung's qualitative development of the science of Marxism-Leninism" and said that he had raised it to "a new stage." Today the RIM declares that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism must be the line and leadership of the world revolution.
The RIM brings together the nuclei of Maoist revolutionaries from all over the world who are determined to carry forward the struggle for a world without exploitation, without oppression, without imperialism. A world where the division of society into classes will itself be overcome, the communist world of the future.
Chairman Mao elaborated many theses on a whole series of these questions of revolution. But Maoism is not just the sum total of Chairman Mao's great contributions. It is the comprehensive and all-round development of Marxism-Leninism to a new and higher stage. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is an integral whole: it is the ideology of the proletariat synthesized and developed to new stages. It is the invincible weapon which enables the proletariat to understand the world and transform it through revolution. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is a universally applicable, living and scientific ideology, constantly developing and being further enriched through its application in making revolution as well as through the advance of human knowledge generally. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the enemy of all forms of revisionism and dogmatism. It is all-powerful because it is true.
In 1984, the RIM pointed out, "The post World War II world is rapidly coming apart at the seams. The international economic and political relations--the `division of the world'--established through and in the aftermath of World War II no longer correspond to the needs of the various imperialist powers to `peacefully' extend and expand their profit empires.[...] The relative stability of the major imperialist powers is becoming unraveled... The revolutionary struggles of the oppressed nations and peoples is again on the rise and delivering new blows to the imperialist world order.... The heightening of contradictions is now drawing, and will do so even more dramatically in the future, all countries and regions of the world and sections of the masses previously lulled to sleep or oblivious to political life into the vortex of world history. And so the revolutionary communists must get prepared, and prepare the class conscious workers and revolutionary sections of the people and step up their revolutionary struggle."
The Declaration's analysis of the temporary character of the current world order and its call to make urgent preparations for rapid changes and leaps in events, has been borne out by world events, although it couldn't anticipate exactly how things would develop--the collapse of the Soviet social imperialist camp and the mitigation of the sharp dispute between the imperialist blocs led by the U.S. and the USSR, which had brought the world to the brink of world war.
Chairman Mao Tsetung has taught us that the imperialists always lift huge rocks to hurl at the oppressed, and end up dropping them on their own feet. All the hype about the "new world order" and the current developments only go to show beyond all doubt that nothing good can come from this system which feeds on human beings.
Some people were triumphalist, claiming that with this blow they had done away with the PCP once and for all. Four years have passed, and what they call "Sendero Luminoso" continues to exist in the country; and according to the reactionaries' own statements this past July, speaking of the offensive against the so-called "patriotic holidays", they are concerned that the PCP has been rebuilt and is once again operating along the Central Highway and in the "conos" [outskirts] of Lima....
At this time, the strategic equilibrium reveals the following: an old power on its death bed, and a People's Republic of Peru being born; the prospects are bright. Look how the blood gushes from our people daily. A society which cannot hide the disgrace of its poverty, which evidences itself in everything being turned upside down--three sexual rapes every hour; a multitude of youth gangs killing each other in the streets; a high and increasing rate of prostitution; corruption and drug-trafficking in the military command; generalized unemployment, malnutrition, tuberculosis and many other "benefits" of Pacification and of the "successes" achieved in controlling inflation.
The political response to this pandemonium is People's War; it is Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought. Without power all is illusion! Everyone needs to understand that this is true; don't fool yourself. Lessons need to be learned. The Peruvian revolution continues; the People's War continues, it advances and will keep on advancing. The old Peruvian state is a paper tiger that is rotten to the core!
The masses' only hope is to join and strengthen the People's Liberation Front. Their only hope is to organize themselves and build the People's Republic of Peru. What is called for is to obey the directives of our political vanguard, the PCP, and also to strengthen the ranks of the People's Liberation Army: what we are called on to do is to carry out the historic task of Developing the People's War and Seizing Power.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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