Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
 
MIM Notes, Issue 69: October, 1992

                 You can jail the revolutionary,
                but you can't jail the revolution

                             by MC12

The imperialist media called it a "stunning blow" to the
revolution in Peru. Peruvian storm troopers arrested Comrade
Gonzalo, the chairperson of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) -- 
also know as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path -- and other party
leaders.(1) The PCP is the most powerful Maoist party in the world
today, controlling more than half of Peru, and closing in on Lima
and other cities in preparation for a final seizure of power by
the people.

A movement destroyed by the death or imprisonment of one person or
a small number of leaders is not yet a revolution. The people of
Peru have demonstrated that their revolution, under the leadership
of the PCP, has advanced well beyond this point. The revolution
has been, and remains, in the hands of the people themselves.
That's why it is called a People's War.

The same old lies

The occasion of Gonzalo's arrest was another opportunity to spread
the same old lies about the PCP and the Peruvian revolution.

UPI noted that the PCP has "been blamed for more than 27,000
deaths and property damage estimated at $21 billion, equal to the
foreign debt of this poor South American nation."(2) The bourgeois
press is not compelled to report that the vast majority of those
deaths were at the hands of the government and its "civilian
militias," whose desperate fight to stem the tide of the people
requires indiscriminate mass killing and the worst atrocities.
Likewise, these misleaders insist, if only the revolutionaries
would lay off the violence and destruction, Peru probably wouldn't
even have a foreign debt right now. One need only look at any
other underdeveloped Third World country to see the stupidity of
this equation. (For a more complete review, order MIM's hefty Peru
Study Pack for $15 post-paid).

While describing the course of the revolution as a "Path of
Terror," the New York Times does in the last paragraph of four
stories on the arrest note that "Among the human rights abuses
attributed to the Peruvian authorities in recent years are
sporadic mass killings in Indian communities and torture in
prisons."(3)

MIM has explained previously that the majority of PCP members are
from indigenous communities, who in this 500th year anniversary of
the invasion of these continents are leading the way in the
struggle out of the cesspool of imperialism.  The arrest of
Comrade Gonzalo and the other leaders, and their possible trial
and execution, are setbacks for the People's War in Peru. But the
revolution has survived many harder tests in its long growth and
development. The people of Peru have come too far to see their
movement destroyed by the arrest of even these important leaders.

Notes:

1. New York Times 9/14/92, p. A1.
2. UPI wire 9/13/92.
3. NYT 9/14/92 p. A8.
 
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