Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) MIM Notes, Issue 70: November, 1992 Peruvian "President" Sentenced to Life in Prison by MC121 On October 7 a secret military court sentenced Abimael Guzman, or Chairperson Gonzalo, of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), to life imprisonment for treason. Also sentenced to life imprisonment were Elena Iparraguire, Walter Vargas and eight other PCP cadre who were captured with Gonzalo at a house in Lima on September 12.(1) Gonzalo's trial took place in a navy base on the coastal island of San Lorenzo. His lawyer, Alfredo Crespo, was not allowed to present a defense -- the verdict came as no surprise. Although Peruvian law does not contain a death penalty, the Peruvian state does have a practice of murdering captured revolutionaries. The capture of Chairperson Gonzalo has not stopped the advance of the people's war in Peru. At least two-thirds of the countryside has been self-liberated and turned into socialist base-areas by the masses and the PCP. Forty-seven percent of Peru's 22.6 million people, including the 6.4 million residents of capital city Lima, live under direct fascist military rule by a decrepit Amerikan-backed regime desperate to crush the most successful revolution in the world today.(2) Lima is on the brink of explosion. Imperialism bleeds too International finance capital is addicted to the narco-dollars -- gathered by the Peruvian state apparatus -- to service the never-ending interest on a growing debt of $20 billion.(3) Three days after Gonzalo's capture the transnational Southern Peru Copper Corporation announced cash dividends to its shareholders of $60 million for the previous six months.(4) Ten days after Gonzalo's capture the Inter-American Development Bank loaned Peru $221.83 million to "help" Peru pay interest due on the revolving door of debt-extortion.(5) Imperialism continues to prop up the Peruvian banking system in order to keep the cash flow of coca and copper dollars pumping into foreign accounts. But despite short-term profit-taking, the transnationals can never "stabilize" Peru -- or the rest of revolutionary Latin America. Bankers cannot buy off the revolution in Peru; nor can the incarceration of Comrade Gonzalo stem the development of the People's War. "Just two days after Guzman's arrest, Shining Path detachments were back strutting with rifles and painting graffiti -- no security forces in sight -- in shanty-towns just ten miles from [Peruvian President] Fujimori's government palace."(6) On the day of Gonzalo's sentencing a PCP communique stated, in part, "We will freeze your laughter. Death to the civilian and military judges and district attorneys, anonymous or not."(1) On this day five powerful bombs exploded in government buildings as police and soldiers were cut down by communists who then seized their weapons and escaped.(7) Armed PCP actions continue to paralyze capitalist institutions all over Peru (8) and even the bourgeois media is forced to admit that Gonzalo's capture is but one chapter in the People's War. "Some analysts now argue that with Guzman in jail, his movement is beheaded -- doomed to disintegrate. But others point to the highly compartmentalized and clandestine structure of [the PCP] organization, noting that probably not more than a few dozen guerilla fighters have ever met Guzman and that they can and will keep on fighting just fine without him."(6) The bourgeois media played up Gonzalo's capture and practically ignored the kangaroo trial. In this, the international bourgeoisie is simply abiding by its increasingly vital dictate to try and keep under wraps the most explosive secret of our times: Maoism works! Most of the capitalist media slanders the PCP as "narco-terrorists" and baby-butchers. These flacks claim, with no substantiation, that the PCP has murdered 25,000 Peruvians. The Peruvian government's own current figures for total deaths during the revolutionary war that began in 1980 are: presumed "subversives" 11,872 civilians 10,286 soldiers and police 2,095 narcotics traffickers 264 (9) This is a ratio of 10 peasants and PCP cadre killed for every well-equipped pig. Even Amnesty International admits that the Peruvian government slaughters the peasant population on a daily basis. And yet the people's revolution continues to triumph step by step in the face of organized state terrorism. The magazine _Covert Action_ (no particular friend to revolutionary Maoism) comments: "To characterize Sendero as narcoterrorist is to misread the movement. Sendero's involvement in the traffic is only a means to an end: the destruction of capitalism in Peru and its replacement with a Cultural Revolution-vintage Maoist state . [Actually, the PCP protects peasants from the narcotrafficking state regime, Amerikan Drug Enforcement Administration troops and drug-dealing Green Berets -- as well as from the Colombian drug warlords.] "To achieve its vision, Sendero has embarked on a patient, methodical, and ruthless 'prolonged people's war,' combining careful political work with extreme but calculated violence. The party possesses a chilling 'rationality' . With cold calculation, ideological coherence, superb organization, and fierce determination, Sendero has become the world's most effective revolutionary movement . [W]ithin the confines of its [Maoist] orthodoxy *the party displays a most undogmatic tactical acuity and flexibility, even brilliance.* "In 12 years of armed struggle, the insurgency has grown from making isolated attacks on remote Andean villages to a self-proclaimed, but undisputed 'strategic equilibrium' with the Peruvian military in large reaches of the country. At present, conservative analysts estimate that 25 to 40 percent of the country is under Sendero control. Sendero is equally adept at administering its 'New Power;' its structures are complex, extensive, and redundant. As [a U.S. government study] noted, 'targeting such a parallel political infrastructure, under ideal conditions, is a difficult task. In view of Shining Path's current level of institutional development . the task may now be impossible, with or without U.S. military assistance.'"(10) Thank you, _Covert Action_, for spelling out the situation so clearly. The Amerikan left has lagged far behind the imperialists in recognizing the effective power of a people's revolutionary movement guided by the scientific lessons of Maoism. The PCP has led the international communist movement by example in recognizing and acting upon the fact that the principal revolutionary movement in our world is that of the oppressed nations against imperialism. Maoists in Amerika know that the only real internationalism is to make revolution in your own country. Today, working with MIM's concrete analysis of the economic, political and cultural parasitism of the Amerikan white working-class, it has become possible for the people to create revolutionary organizations inside Amerika's oppressed nations. Through building independent power of the oppressed, our organizations will become capable of truly cementing the identity of the international proletariat. Notes: 1. Los Angeles Times 10/8/92. 2. UPI 9/24/92. 3. El Diario Internacional Oct/Nov 1991, p. 15-16. 4. Business Wire 9/15/92. 5. Xinhua 9/25/92. 6. Village Voice 9/29/92, p. 23 7. UPI 10/7/92. 8. UPI 9/12/92 -10/9/92 9. El Pais 9/20/92. 10. Covert Action Information Bulletin, Fall 1992, p. 60; emphasis added. Subscribe to MIM Notes: Individual: Institutional: 1 year domestic $12 1 year domestic $48 2 years domestic $20 2 years domestic $90 1 year overseas $36 1 year overseas $60 Make checks payable to "ABS" or send cash. MIM, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-3576 --- email: mim%nyxfer@igc.apc.org NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit Modem: 718-448-2358 * Internet: nytransfer@igc.apc.org