File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/97-01-12.050, message 12


Date: Tue, 7 Jan 1997 06:23:43 +0100 (MET)
From: rolf.martens-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se (Rolf Martens)
Subject: Re: M-G: The question of the MRTA


Adolfo,

You wrote, on 06.01, the below.

Thank you for your viewpoints! And for obvious reasons, I don't
want to involve you in a big debate over this thing, which we
both hold in essence is a counter-revolutionary action whose
true background none of us really know. But a few comments I'd
like to add anyway, with a view to continuing the search for
the culprit here.

(Rolf, earlier:)
.........
>>This still doesn't cover the obvious anti-Japanese-bourgeoisie
>>motive which exists, for two separate reasons, for a possible
>>such plot by the US imperialists. And how did you reach such a
>>definite conclusion as that expressed in your saying "are also
>>not correct"?
>>
>>Greetings,
>>
>>Rolf M.
>
>
>Hi there Rolf.  Good to hear from you too in this occassion.
>
>In the last analysis, everything could be possible......... however
>unlikely. Nevertheless, I for one believe that some comrades have too much
>of the "round up the usual suspects" approach when it comes to explaining
>away murky affairs.

But one very "usual" suspect in this case IMO must be a very big
suspect indeed, because he has such enormously strong motives,
in the first place, has the means necessary at his disposal, in
the second, and in the third place, there even was the interesting
fact that his ambassador left 30 minutes before the fun started,
which a historian pointed out and asked, did't others too think
that was a little fishy?

And this guy should *not* be put under 24-hours-a-day surveillance
in this context,as you so definitely thought in your first posting?
I think he should. Tap his phone, search his garbage can very
carefully, etc, etc, I suggest.

>My opinion is based on the impression that this action does not fit the
>pattern of the "intelligence" and psychological warfare approach to
>counter-insurgency which has been specifically and consistently promoted by
>the CIA in Peru. 

Well, I agree there, it doesn't really. But such an obsevation is
not so conclusive either, and would be of interest only in connection
with what I on my part *first* (on 19.12) thought might be a main
motive for a US imperialist manoeuvre of this kind: Somehow to
counter the people's war led by the PCP by deflecting attention on
to the "MRTA" as "the ones who're opposing Fujimori". Vladimir B.
didn't think much of such a possible motive, and in fact I didn't
think it could be a main one either, on some reflection. But one
more or less subordinate motive I still think it could be.

>And, more to the point, at present it seems to me that
>this affair does not look at all like making the 007 reputation of its
>pin-man in Peru, Vladimiro Montesinos, come up smelling of roses whatever
>its outcome. 

You mean the theory advanced by the Klasberries of a US-Montesinos
connection perhaps being an important link? I can say nothing on
this, for lack of knowledge. But Montesinos' unlikelyhood of
smelling-of-roses as a result doesn't really point to "no US here".

>Moreover, the MRTA, like the Apra party, has rather long standing links with
>European social-democracy and also with the Russian and East European
>security services.

Yes, so I've gathered. But Russia today, one guy whose files it
wuoldn't be wrong to study either in this connection of course, doesn't
have all that much of resources and therefore not that much of
motives either to meddle in Latin America, does it?

>However, one thing is "suspecting CIA involvement" -
>which is always a possibility in various ways when one speaks of murky
>affairs - and quite another to speak of a CIA plot, meaning the strategic
>planning and execution of a particular action from beginning to end.
> 
>Involvement could simply mean that funds, weapons, or other means - supplied
>by the CIA, the DEA, and/or other agencies of US imperialism - by reasons of
>their own convoluted affairs and internal contradictions - or, more likely,
>from sources linked to European social-democracy, or other similar
>social-imperialists, or the drug mafias, etc., could have found their way
>into helping finance some kind of "MRTA revival". 

Those forces are all pretty weak, I'd say. And can anybody really
imagine a "MRTA revival"?  My judgement would be: they're "good for"
one TV show such as this one, and not much more.

>That is not something beyond the imagination, specially in Peru where the
>revolutionary situation itself and the accompaniying break down of the old
>society, can and does give rise to very strange occurrences indeed.  
>
>In Peru many people say that the only thing that has not yet happened is
>that the rain starts to fall from the ground upwards, and that they would
>not be surprised at all if any good day it actually did so!. Not in vain is
>said that the revolution is the "world turned upside down".

Rain IMO will fall upwards much sooner than a Trot revival occurs.

>Some well known commentators in the international media who cannot be
>suspected af any sympathy for the People's War or the PCP, have revealed
>that the MRTA would have invested at least 300.000 dollars in this operation. 
>Whether such funds are exclusively the product of the MRTA's own line of
>"revolutionary" business (extorsion, kidnapping, and drug mafia protection
>money), or these have been supplemented out of the deep pockets of
>interested parties making "donations" to their favourite "revolutionary
>charities" - perhaps even military brass miffed by the arrest of General
>Robles or by the hogging of top military appointments by the
>Fujimori/Rios/Montesinos clique - cannot yet be known for sure at present.   
OK, some "big uncle" somewhere - several might be qualified for
*such* a role.

>However, the theory that the CIA would have - at its policy making level -
>planned in such a detailed way how to best shoot itself in the foot to this
>particular extent, at least at present, defies my simple sense logic.

What "shooting itself in the foot"? The US imperialists have nothing
to lose here, quite on the contrary.

>Moreover, the US government remains to this day the main advocate of the use
>of force in rescuing the hostages, showing that they feel themselves
>bound-up with the Fujimori/Montesinos/Hermoza Rios clique's interests, at
>least for the time being.

Such yap-yapping on the part of the US govt. would cost practically
nothing, may well be a show for the gallery. Whether they do feel
themselves bound up with the Fujimori clique, still today, or
whether that clique has become uncomfortable to them, as has
been asserted by the Klasberries, I cannot say.

But one big fact of this thing IMO undeniable is, that *the Japanese
bourgeoisie*, as the most direct target, has been put into an
incomfortable position.

>The extent of Japanese imperialist involvement in
>Peru is not really such that the US imperialist would at present - and,
>moreover, in the face of the much bigger threat to their position in Latin
>America that the People's War is positing - find Japan's "junior"
>involvement too uncomfortable, or even less that they would feel the need to
>take such immediate and drastic steps in this regard, having many and much
>simpler alternative means at their disposal before resorting to such a cork
>popper! 

On this, firstly: This action may well be intended to hit *both*  at
the people's war *and* at Japan. Secondly, as far back as in 1993
there according to one newpaper (Die Welt, Germany) was quite
considerable Japanese involvement in Peru's economy. The Klasberries
too, who even as today bourgeois probably are still quite good at finding
outt such things, maintain that it has become quite large in the last
few months. You're calling the involvement "junior" - here are two
different judgements and I cannot say I have enough facts to tell
which one is the more correct. But a certain factor of imperialist
rivalry does seem to me to exist here. Internationally too, there
is a conflict in the economic field between the USA and Japan that's
not unimportant at all. The whole thing, I mean, need not even
in the main be centred around the situation in Peru.

And - something that I eventually did point to during the earlier
discussion on this list and which the Klasberries, for instance,
didn't mention at all but which constitutes a *really big
international conflict* between the (main) rulers of the USA, on
the one hand, and those of Japan, on the other: The quite
different positions which those respective countries, both
economically quite powerful, are taking up on that at present so
important question of the counter-revolutionary "green" warfare
against the peoples.

Among the various international anti-industry etc campaigns of
which this warfare consists, one "flagship" is the anti-nuclear-
energy campaign. Precisely Japan, and in part also France, have
refused to go along with the quite fanatical, embittered strivings
of the US imperialist here to *kill* (peaceful) nuclear energy
internationally.

For instance, there has been a conflict over such a simple thing
as France's sending back some reprocessed nuclear fuel to Japan;
the US imperialists' instigating several small countries in the
Caribbean to oppose the passage of such ships through the Panama
canal etc. In the last issue of (revisionist) "Liberaci=F3n",
for instance (published weekly here in Malmoe with circulation appr.
50 000) there was, in addition to most massive "MRTA" propaganda,
also a scare story about the whole Panama Canal zone's population
"risking death"(!) etc, and blabla, if such ships passed through.
(Btw, that old superpower client Fidel Castro today has become
quite a dyed-in-the-wood "verde", I saw in one of his speeches -
very reactionary.)

In short, on this question and similar ones there's a quite
important US-Japan conflict internationally.

One guy has a masssive set of motives! A strong one too.

>In any case, I like to repeat what I said at the very beginning and at the
>very end of my answer to Doug on the question of the MRTA event in Lima:
>
>"As with all such events still unfolding in the present a full analysis is
>not immediately possible.

Yes, naturally. It would also be wrong of me to say I *know*
this or that at the present stage.

>However, I will try to synthesise some of my
>views in this regard".
>
>"As I said at the beginning, these are some preliminary thoughts and
>conclussions that I have derived and noted from this on-going affair.
>Surely, a more detailed article will appear in El Diario Internacional which
>will eventually be available in this list".
>
>I think that the principal thing to bear in mind is the fact that the MRTA
>event has no anti-imperialist or revolutionary content.  Fundamentally, that
>contrary to the New Flag impostors allegations, neither the PCP, nor
>Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, consider this event as "objectively
>anti-imperialist". 

On this we quite agree.

>If it had indeed that character, then one would be duty bound to support it,
>like genuine revolutionaries always do with every true anti-imperialist
>struggle, whether objective or subjective.  That is why, the latest news
>from Peru indicate that the PCP has already launched an armed mass campaign
>to expose and denounce the collusion of the MRTA with imperialism and the
>ruling classes of the old Peruvian state.  

Good news.

>Finally, I can now confirm that in the next 10 days, El Diario Internacional
>will be publishing an extense analysis of this event touching principally
>upon the following points:

>
>1.  What are the real aims hiding behind the MRTA's Japanese Embassy operation.
>2.  The murky history of the MRTA - The true history of the "MRTA leaders"
>Nestor Cerpa Cartolini and Victor Polay.
>3.  Chairman Gonzalo's views on the MRTA.
>
>Many regards
>
>Adolfo

That will interest me to read!

Greetings once more,

Rolf M.



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