PEOPLE'S WAR IN PERU
by Shafi
from the People's March (vol.1, #7, September 2000)
The armed struggle in Peru, led by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) has now
entered its twentieth year. It continues to advance, facing the three lakh Peruvian army,
backed, trained and supported by US advisors and officials. It continues to advance
inspite of the massive extermination of entire villages; butcheries of not only
revolutionaries, but also their relatives; bombardments; trials by hooded judges; prisons,
which resemble concentration camps .... and even after the arrest of its Chairman, Com.
Gonzalo and other CC members in 1992; and the CC general secretary, Com. Feliciano,
in July ’99. Even according to a US State Department report of 1995, 25% to 40% of
Peruvian territory was under the control of the Maoists. The people’s war developed in
the region of Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurimac, and was expanded to Pasco,
Huanuco and San Martin; covering an area from the department of Cajamarca, on the
border of Ecuador in the Northwest, to Puno on the border with Bolivia in the southeast
of the country, striking and shaking up even the cities, especially the capital, Lima. The
people’s war was not conceived in a single region and was developed simultaneously in
several regions, although in unequal form, with a principal area. All activities were
conceived within a strategically centralised and tactically decentralised plan.
Party Formation
The PCP was founded on October 7, 1928 by its brilliant ideologue, Jose Carlos
Mariategui. As the PCP states, "he became the political expression of the proletariat in
Peru..... in his 35 years of life, especially since 1918 (until his death in April 1930), and
on his return from Europe, he worked tirelessly propagating Marxism-Leninism,
organising the masses, and culminated his work by founding the Communist Party." It
was he who successfully applied Marxism-Leninism to the concrete practice of the
Peruvian revolution, in the spheres of Marxist philosophy, political economy and
scientific socialism. Though, at that time (1920s) Mao’s theories had not taken shape,
Mariategui’s understanding of the Peruvian revolution was similar to that developed by
Mao for China.
Mariategui characterised Peruvian society as semi-feudal, semi-colonial, with the
peasantry as the main force of the revolution, to be mobilised under the slogan ‘land to
the tiller’. He clearly established the uninterrupted two-stages of the Peruvian
revolution; and maintained that the bourgeois democratic revolution can no longer be
led by the bourgeoisie, but must be led by the proletariat. He focussed on the question
of the backward Indian (tribal) population. He stressed on the worker-peasant alliance,
led by the proletariat and its party, the Communist Party. Not only this, he laid down the
party’s political line towards trade union work, workers’ organisations, women, youth,
teachers and intellectuals and various other work fronts.
Most important, Mariategui, also stressed the need for revolutionary violence and
guerrilla warfare. He said "the red army is a new phenomenon in the military history of
the world. It does not forget that its aim is the defence of the revolution. From its elan
therefore, every specially martial or imperialist sentiment is excluded. Its discipline, its
organisation and its structure are revolutionary." He emphasised its development as a
peasant revolution which advances from the countryside and which develops
into "revolutionary partisan platoons" and into guerrilla armies. He added that, "the
guerrillas were simply the most active, most dynamic and most combative part of the
masses."
But, soon after his death, the clique led by Del Prado sought to negate Mariategui’s
great contributions. While calling themselves "Mariategui’s disciples" they turned him
into an "inoffensive icon", which they enveloped in incense, while renouncing his road.
Through the 1940s and 1950s revisionism dominated the PCP, influenced by
Browderite ideas. Browder, (the US representative of the third international, with
responsibility for Latin America) a predecessor of contemporary revisionism, advocated
a clear abandonment of revolutionary violence, and an electoral tactic which promoted a
so-called "National Democratic Front". This continued till the 1960s, when the great
struggle between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism, shook the International
Communist Movement. Specifically, the works of Mao Tsetung had a great impact on
Peru. The ideological offensive in Peru was led by Com. Abimael Guzman (Com.
Gonzalo).
Struggle against Revisionism and Reconstitution of the PCP
The 1960s witnessed a deepening crisis of bureaucrat capitalism in Peru. This was
reflected in a rising tide of the people’s movements, as also feverish battles within the
ruling classes.
The workers staged widespread strikes and increased the level of their unionisation.
The peasantry, in a massive upsurge, invaded landholdings in order to reclaim them.
This gigantic wave took place from one end of the country to the other. There were also
violent guerrilla outbursts of the Che Guevara type. Teachers and students also rose in
popular struggles.
It was in such a situation that an ideological offensive led by Com. Gonzalo
coalesced with the huge upsurge and mass movements.
Dr. Ruben Abimael Guzman Reinoso, was born on December 3, 1934 in the coastal
town of Arequipa. He joined the PCP at the age of 15. During his school and college
days, Peru was in the midst of a big upheaval, and Com. Guzman was witness to mass
upsurges against the state, with big strikes and confrontations even at the university. He
wrote his doctoral dissertation in Philosophy on "The Kantian Theory of Space" and in
Law on "The State in Bourgeois Democracy." After graduation he moved to Ayacucho
(from where the base areas were initiated) as a school teacher. Here he became one of
the leaders of the party’s regional committees. At the height of the GPCR, he visited
China. This had a profound influence on him.
In the 1950s itself, fierce debates were taking place in the PCP amidst the
repercussions of the Cuban revolution. These struggles were reflected at the decisions
of the IVth Congress of the party in 1962 which agreed to "two roads" : "The peaceful
road and the violent one." From 1963 to 1969 Com. Gonzalo led the red fraction within
the party, under the political strategy of following the "Road of surrounding the cities
from the countryside." From 1969 to 1976 he led the party with the political strategy
of "Reconstitution of the party for people’s war." From 1976 to 1979 there was the
political strategy to "Complete the Reconstitution and establish the Bases" for the
beginning of the armed struggle. The armed struggle was launched on May 17, 1980, a
day before holding of the country’s general elections.
During the first political strategy the task lay in establishing the path of revolution.
In 1964 the revisionist clique of Del Pardo and others were expelled from the PCP.
Com. Gonzalo began to consolidate the party in the Regional Committee of Ayacucho:
the centre of party work was focused in the countryside; in the cities the party organised
the poor masses in the Neighbourhood Federations; and reorganised the Revolutionary
Student Front. Also he launched the "Special Work", which was the military work of the
Regional Committees. In a sharp two-line struggle against the positions of the central
leadership he combated militarism and Focoism (‘Foco’ theory of Che Guevara). At the
4th Conference a further step was taken, by the party leadership declaring its adherence
to Marxism under the guidance of Mao Thought. A further step was taken at the 5th
Conference in November 1965, which centred its attention on the understanding of Peru
society and revolution, thus bringing the party closer to Mariategui’s revolutionary line.
At the September 1967 meeting of the Expanded Political Bureau, he outlined a
strategic plan, whose principal task was the formation of the armed forces — this
occurred, in the midst of a bitter factional struggle, where, most notably the factions of
Patria Roja and of the Right liquidationism of Paredes, contended for leadership of the
party.
During the second political strategy (1969-1976), Com. Gonzalo outlined the
underlying revisionism within the party and the need for its reconstitution, on the basis
of : party unity, upholding Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, and the Thought
of Mariategui and the general political line. These positions were opposed by the abovementioned factions. He established the Agrarian Programme of the party in 1969. In
1972, the Strategic Plan of the Regional Committee of Ayacucho was established. Right
liquidationism was defeated, and in the party two fractions remained : the red fraction,
fundamentally in Ayacucho, led by Gonzalo; and the "Bolshevik" fraction, acting
mainly in Lima. The latter developed a ‘left’ liquidationist line that isolated the party
from the masses. They had a military line that was opposed to people’s war. They were
defeated in 1975, and their leaders fled.
During the third Political Strategy (1976-1979) the problem was to complete the
Reconstitution of the party and to establish the bases to begin the armed struggle. The
7th Plenum of April ’77 called for "Construction, serving the armed struggle",
countering the right opportunist line (ROL), which negated the importance of seizure of
land and power in the countryside; and the importance of workers playing a leading role
in the revolution, instead of confining them to the trade unions. In June ’97 Gonzalo
launched the "National Plan for Construction" where dozens of cadres were sent to the
countryside in the interests of the strategic needs of the people’s war and to build
Regional Committees, taking into account the future Base Areas. In the 8th Plenum of
July 1978, the "Outline for the Armed Struggle" was established. In essence, this
outlined that the people’s war in Peru must be developed as a unified whole in both the
countryside, as well as the city, with the countryside being the principal theatre of
armed actions, following the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside.
Launching of People’s War
This had four important milestones : Definition, Preparation, Initiation and
Development of Guerrilla War.
(i) Definition : The decision of initiating the people’s war in Peru was taken at the
9th Expanded Plenum of June ’79. This agreement was achieved in the midst of three
intense struggles : the first was against the right opportunist line that was opposed to
beginning the armed struggle, denying the revolutionary situation. After the expulsion
of this line a new Right Line believed that the armed struggle was impossible, that it
was a "dream", and as it was a mere matter of principle, there was no need to take it up
immediately. The third struggle was with tendencies of the Left on how to develop
people’s war. Through this, Com. Gonzalo’s proletarian position was established and
the party made a commitment to be guided by the leadership and its chairman, Com.
Gonzalo. Concerning the organisation of the armed forces, it was agreed to form
military cadres, specific groups for action and to undermine the reactionary forces by
targeting the soldiers.
(ii) Preparation : During this period, the programme of the party is sanctioned,
along with the general political line of the Peruvian revolution and the party statutes.
Problems related to political strategy, revolutionary violence, the people’s war, the
party, the army and the united front are resolved. The party prepared for the launching
of the armed struggle by dealing with two problems : (1) The problems of Political
Strategy, that outlines both the content and the objectives of people’s war from a longterm perspective, as well as in the short term ... as well as the guidelines that the
people’s war should have, the military plans, their organisational structure and their ties
with the New Power; (2) The initiation of the armed struggle: First, the Political Tasks
of initiation — The political tasks that had to be fulfilled during the initiation of the
armed struggle were: to boycott the elections; to promote militarily the armed struggle
for land; and to establish the bases for the new conquests, especially the New Power.
Second, the forms of struggle — guerrilla warfare, sabotage, propaganda, armed
agitation and selective annihilation; Third, the Organisational and Military forms —
armed detachments, with or without modern weapons; And Fourth, a chronology —
date of the initiation and duration of the Plan, and simultaneous actions for specific
dates.
(iii) Initiation : On May 17, 1980, the people’s war in Peru began. It lasted from
May to December 1980. It resolved the problem of how to initiate the armed struggle,
of going from the times of peace to the times of war. In this context, the militarisation
of the party through actions and the Plan for Initiation, was a key factor. This was how a
party of a new type was born; where the principal form of struggle, was the armed
struggle; and the principal form of organisation were the detachments and squads. The
most outstanding actions were : guerrilla actions in two localities of Ayacucho; setting
fire to the municipal building in a district of Lima; and the boycott of elections by the
people of Chuschi.
(iv) Development of Guerrilla War : This was completed by a plan that lasted
from January 1981 to December 1982. The slogan was "Open guerrilla zones serving as
Base Areas". This resulted in the opening of guerrilla war throughout the country
seeking to "capture weapons, to stir up the countryside with armed actions, and go
forward towards the Base Areas." A multitude of assaults on police posts and selective
annihilation of landlords were carried out, generating a great mass mobilisation of
peasants, that volunteered themselves for the militia, giving rise to a power vacuum for
the reactionaries. The People’s Committees emerged, grew and multiplied ..... "Their
appearance defines the Base Areas." The guerrillas attacked Ayacucho prison and after
defeating 100 police, liberated the 200 prisoners; they attacked a number of police
posts; they sabotaged the power grid and communication lines; and support was given
to workers’ strikes by armed actions.
The Base Areas
At the Expanded meeting of the Central Committee from January to March 1983
four political tasks were defined : a general reorganisation of the party; the creation
of the People’s Guerrilla Army and the Revolutionary Defence Front of the
People; their consolidation as People’s Committees in the countryside and as the
Revolutionary Defence Movement of the People in the cities; and the Military Plan
for Conquering Bases. A call was given to "Defend, Develop and Build" the Base
Areas. A sharp armed conflict developed in which the reactionaries struggled to reestablish the Old Power and the revolution struggled to counter-establish the New
Power. The Peruvian government now called in the military (Army, Navy, Air Force).
The years 1983 and 1984 witnessed a struggle between restoration and counterrestoration.
White terror was unleashed in the countryside, especially in Ayacucho,
Huancavelica and Aparimac. The result of this genocide was 8,700 Peruvian dead. Of
these 4,700 were the poorest of the poor, mainly peasants and in the slums in the cities.
4,000 were ‘disappeared’. But the genocide did not produce the results intended; on the
contrary the people’s war grew stronger.
Amongst the salient actions seen were : blows to the anti-guerrilla bases in the
department of Ayacucho; the destruction of counter-subversive settlements; demolition
of the electrical grid and the destruction of the highway system; the destruction of the
agricultural ‘cooperatives’ set up by the government, with cattle redistribution and
appropriation of land; ambushes in the central region, such as at Michivilca; sabotage of
the sub station of the state mining corporation; the mobilisation of 1,60,000 peasants in
the North, in the department of La Liberated, for the confiscation of 3,20,000 hectares
of land (mostly pasture land) and 12,000 heads of livestock; land seizures in the south
involving 10,000 peasants; the sabotage of the oil pipeline "Norpernano" and of the
headquarters of the APRA in the city of Trujillo; destruction of the large company
Tealero; ambush of the Republican Guards in Lima; sabotage of the embassy of the
Russian social-imperialists; against dozens of local offices of the APRA party; against
banks and factories ..... All this resulted in the declaration of a state of emergency with a
military takeover in February 1986.
After the close of eight years of people’s war, there had been more than 45,000
actions; the militarised party had been tempered; the People’s Guerrilla Army had been
developed and had increased in belligerence; and hundreds of organisations of the New
Power had sprouted all over the countryside. The PCP document continues : "The Base
Areas are the strategic bases which the guerrilla forces rely on to fulfill their strategic
tasks and to achieve the objective of preserving and increasing their forces as well as
annihilating and throwing back the enemy..... Chairman Gonzalo has established a
system of Base Areas surrounded by guerrilla zones, zones of operations and points of
action taking into account the political and social conditions, the history of struggle, the
geographical characteristics and the development of the party, the army and of the
masses. It is fundamental to support the validity of the road of surrounding the cities
from the countryside and its heart, the Base Areas, because with only wandering
guerrillas of insurrection the People’s Guerrilla Army would not have the Base Area as
a rear guard that sustains it, neither would the New Power be built."
To sum up, the document adds that in the Eight years of People’s War upto 1988
there had been four plans : the Plan of Initiation; the Plan of Developing the People’s
War; the Plan of Conquering Bases; and the Plan of Developing Bases.
Revolution and Counter-Revolution
In 1988-89 the party’s First Congress was held. That meeting defined Maoism as a
third and higher stage of Marxism; and Gonzalo Thought as "a product of the
application of the universal ideology of the international proletariat to the concrete
conditions of the (Peruvian) revolution." In its third session, in 1989, the Congress
called for fighting revisionism as the main danger. In 1990 the party declared that the
level of armed struggle had shifted from the ‘strategic defence’ to the ‘strategic
equilibrium.’
Yet the PCP’s CC’s second plenum, held in early 1992, issued a warning to fight
capitulationism and called for learning from the campaign conducted during China’s
Cultural Revolution to criticise the classical novel ‘Water Margin’. The novel’s hero
leads the peasants in an uprising against the emperor’s corrupt officials, but finally turns
against those who want to go "too far" and oppose the system itself. Instead, he ends up
accepting the emperor’s call for amnesty and for enlisting the rebel troops in the
imperial army.
But as the revolution scaled new heights the counter-revolution prepared for a new
onslaught. After the 1990 elections the ‘United Left’ (IU) was used as a major prop of
the dictatorial rule. The IU received ministerial positions and important posts in public
institutions. They encouraged the militarisation of the country. Together with 15 rightwing organisations they prepared a"common front against terrorism" and were
instrumental in assisting Fujimori’s rise to power.
On April 5, 1992, Fujimori carried out a coup and installed his fascist dictatorship,
propped up by the US administration. Under the guise of fighting ‘drugs’ the Pentagon
had been deploying hundreds of Navy seal and Army Green Berets in Peru’s Andes and
Amazon regions. At the same time, more than 100 patrol gunboats, fitted with M-60
machine guns and special biological weapons were being deployed for combat
operations in Peru’s rivers.
In May ’92, just a month after Fujimori’s coup, 2000 troops of the army launched a
missile and gun attack on Canto Grande prison. The prisoners fought for four days, but
finally 100 were murdered and over 80 prisoners ‘disappeared.’
On September 12, 1992, the party chairman, Gonzalo and other top leaders were
arrested. The counter-revolution continued its offensive against the PCP, by combining
military attacks with ideological attacks. In early 1993, Fujimori released the socalled‘Peace Accord’ letters, purported to have been written by Gonzalo himself. This
document of capitulation was actively promoted by some ex-comrades from jail,
including leading members. Confusion was sought to be created in the ranks of the
PCP, with some ex-leaders even calling for the setting up of an alternative centre to the
central committee.
But the revolutionaries gave a fitting reply to the attacks and schemes of the counter
revolution.
A few days after his arrest, when the regime sought to humiliate Gonzalo, by
producing him on TV, in a cage before 200 heckling journalists, Gonzalo turned the
event into a revolutionary call. Addressing the public over the heads of the journalists,
he proclaimed that his imprisonment was merely a bend in the road.
Besides, while Fujimori boasted that with the arrests he had finished off the PCP, the
lie was proved by the fact that between the September arrests and the end of the year the
number of armed attacks were 644. And as for the ‘Peace Accords’ document, the
central committee openly declared that they were a fraud and demanded that Gonzalo
be produced publicly (even his lawyers had been debarred from meeting him).
Meanwhile, the guerrilla war continued. In a spectacular action in December 1992,
the city of Ayacucho was seized and held for 40 minutes by the revolutionary forces. In
1993, in the PCP’s boycott campaign, a main business hotel and airport were bombed,
together with simultaneous attacks on government targets in many areas of the
countryside. In the PCP’s campaign to celebrate the centennial of Mao the Lima
Prefecture, that served as the DINCOTE (intelligence) headquarters was destroyed in a
daring assault in December ’93. An armed shut-down in May 1994 involved thousands
of shanty-town dwellers and others in the city’s poor periphery and was combined with
guerrilla actions. To celebrate the PCP’s birthday in October ’94, Lima and many other
cities, were entirely blacked out. In April 1995 presidential elections, 28% refused to
vote, and 44% of all votes cast were either blank or spoiled ballots.
A 1995 report said "we advanced through Base Seven and Base 14, agitating and
mobilising the masses, developing the take-over of cars on the Ayacucho-San Francisco
highway, and annihilating the mesnadas (army-run para military) in the locality of
Ccano, and confiscations of cattle to supply the Revolutionary Support Base Areas,
‘Red Bastions’, and the forces of the People’s Army of Liberation. This was
complemented with ambushes and the scourging of enemy bases located in the vicinity
of Revolutionary Support Base 33 ......"
The people’s war in Peru is a shining star over Latin America. Though it may have
faced some difficulties, it stands in sharp contrast with the failed petti-bourgeois
revolutions of El Salvador and Nicaragua, the Tupamaros who have been destroyed; or
those in Columbia who are striking deals with the government. Because of its
uncompromising class content, it is systematically ignored by the international media,
while the others were glamourised. People’s March salutes the Maoist revolutionaries
of Peru, and calls for the unconditional and immediate release of Comrades Gonzalo,
Feliciano, and all other political prisoners languishing in the outrageous prisons of Peru.
ADDENDUM (by jmp)
Since the above document, which appeared in the journal of the Communist Party of
India (Maoist) was written in 2000, it is somewhat out of date. The somewhat
hopeful last paragraph is contradicted by the events that followed the 1999 capture
of Felciano (who was leading the PCP after Gonzalo's arrest). There is also the fact
that Gonzalo supposedly called for the end of the PPW and the beginning of a peace
process––he made this demand from prison, which should immediately be treated
as dubious (i.e. someone in prison should no longer lead the PPW, any statement
made by a political prisoner should be treated as suspect due to the possibility of
coercion).
What became clear after this arrest was that those who were in charge of the PCP's
military structure had a different plan for the party. The PCP splintered into
various factions––the VRAE faction of José (Victor Quispe Palomino), and the
Huallaga Valley faction of Artemio (Gabriel Macario), and various other factions
including those who were in exile in Europe and still devoted to Gonzalo.
There were reports shortly after Feliciano's arrest of Senderistas entering villages
and self-criticizing for what they deemed were excesses performed under Gonzalo's
leadership. It became clear that these activities, which were performed by the VRAE
faction, signaled the end of the PPW––that is, the end of actually attempting to seize
state power. Today, Jose's faction mainly engages in spectacular armed stunts but
does so without any clear strategy; in many ways it resembles a warlord rather than
a maoist organization. Artemio's faction, on the other hand, has fought for the
"peace accords" Gonzalo supposedly demanded. What these two main factions have
in common is that they protect drug peddlers and drug manufacturers which are
part of the landlord class.
Despite the degeneration of the PCP, its experience of revolution is significant for
the international communist movement because it is the first organization to
conceive of Maoism as a "third stage of revolutionary science", thus creating the
terminology Marxism-Leninism-Maoism instead of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong
Thought, and it was its influence in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
that led to the RIM also adopting Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as its ideology in 1993.
The transformation of maoism into a third stage of revolutionary science rather than
the rubric for a proper anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism would be significant for
many revolutionary organizations that launched PWs after the PCP (i.e. the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the Communist Party of India (Maoist) who
both accepted MLM instead of ML-MZT).
Regardless of its significant influence and the importance of its PW, there are still
aspects of the PCP's maoism that are worth critiquing. For one thing, it had a theory
of People's War that, while agreeing in the universality of PPW as the strategy for
making revolution, goes so far as to argue "People's War until communism"––that is,
that the People's War should continue, somehow, during the dictatorship of the
proletariat (the period of consolidating socialism).
Most importantly, however, is its endorsement of a doctrine of "the great
leadership" that led to claims about Gonzalo being "the fourth sword of
communism" and the addition to MLM of "Gonzalo Thought". Indeed, the faction of
the PCP that still maintains fidelity to the People's War (and seems to be based in
Europe on the part of exiled members) is still rather dogmatic about this point. (One
only needs to look at its statement in the first issue of the Maoist Road journal, from
2010, where it argues for the importance of the theory of "great leadership" and the
primacy of "Gonzalo Thought".) Other maoist organizations have criticized the
doctrine of "great leadership" as dogmatism, some even going so far as to suggest
that this doctrine was partially responsible for the degeneration of the PCP's
people's war––that is, although the PW continued after Gonzalo was arrested, the
moment that Gonzalo made a call for "peace accords" caused a certain level of
confusion to spread amongst cadre who had been taught to see Gonzalo as the
authoritative voice of the revolution. And though it is doubtful that the PCP's defeat
can be reduced to the problem of the personality cult, it might not be erroneous to
suggest that it contributed to the organization's collapse and splintering.
Its failure aside, the revolutionary experience of the PCP is still important for the
emergence of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, the establishment of
the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and a signal to a new round of revolution
following the collapse of the Soviet Union and China's move into state capitalism.
Most maoist organizations today, though critical of the PCP, still uphold its influence
and the importance of its People's War.