Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 22:47:52 +0000
Subject: M-G: PERU: Revolution Proven in Deeds.


PERU  PEOPLE'S  WAR: A  REVOLUTION PROVEN IN DEEDS

Based on Chairman Mao's development of the Law of Contradiction as
applied to the theory of People's War, President Gonzalo teaches that
it contains two aspects; one weak and another intermittently strong,
and it has to undergo the following three stages: first the strategic
defensive, second the strategic equilibrium and third, strategic
offensive. Within the period of strategic defensive, guerrilla warfare
is the main form of struggle, this is a generalized and broad- based
guerrilla warfare in the countryside as well as in the cities of the
entire country, with the countryside as the principal field of battle,
and the city its complement.

>FROM  GUERRILLA  WARFARE  TO  MOBILE  WARFARE. President Gonzalo lays
out that mobile warfare, in Mao's terms, will develop further in
accordance with how reaction has to carry out the counter subversive
war. Although at the present moment guerrilla warfare is still the
principal form and mobile warfare a complement, in the latter there
are some modalities specific to a protracted war.

As the People's War intensifies, they will have to intensify the
counter subversive war, carrying out more genocides, therefore, it is
important to maintain a correct and just political and ideological
line of the Party.

PLANS  OF  THE  REVOLUTIONARY  WAR. We have learned to conduct the
People's War with a unique strategic plan, applying the principle of
strategic centralization and tactical decentralization. The People's
War is conducted in accordance with a single plan that contains
several sections, strategic-operational plans, tactical and concrete
plans for each action.  The key is the single strategic plan: that's
what allows us to maintain the war as a unity, and that's the key in
the direction of the People's War.

The plans are strategically centralized and tactically decentralized;
they are strategic plans that encompass both actions and construction,
which are carried out through campaigns; and when the plans became
more complex and of longer duration, sub-plans are developed, or more
limited plans within more general plans. When we began the Great Plan
of Developing Bases, it was applied first as a Pilot Plan. Each one
has a political and military strategy. They are approved, and applied
in the struggle.

The Central Committee approves strategic-operational plans, as agreed
at the Expanded National Conference of 1979. The strategically
centralized plans also consider the operational situation and
establish the forms of struggle: agitation and propaganda, sabotage,
selective annihilations, and guerrilla combat.  The plans also set
forth the priorities, stages and chronology.

The People's War always pays close attention to strategic
centralization, because it allows that all act within a plan are
carried out in waves of attacks in a systematic and simultaneous
manner, hitting and defeating the enemy in large and diverse zones,
with all methods and means possible, to deliver hard and grievous
defeats to the enemy.  Whoever has studied the principles and the
military theory of Chairman Mao Tsetung, always reemphasizes that he
establishes a strategically centralized plan, the key that permits the
action to develop.  Applying this plan has permitted us to deliver
hard strikes to the enemy in the whole country; in this manner we
confront more difficulties.

Persist in the strategically centralized plans without forgetting that
they are tactically decentralized; apply strategic-operational plans
because these establish the connection between the strategic and the
tactical.  Stalin outlined looking at the connection between the
strategic and the concrete actions.

                      FORMS  OF STRUGGLE  IN  THE  PEOPLE'S  WAR

1. AGITATION AND PROPAGANDA: This develops as the most profound
campaign of agitation and propaganda which any Party has ever carried
out. To wage propaganda means to disseminate ideas focusing on the
objectives, and agitation focuses on specific problems for which the
masses struggle. Their great importance is linked to winning and
shaping public opinion.

2. SABOTAGE: This inflicts heavy blows to the Peruvian economy, which
finds itself in one of the worst crises in the history of the country.
Besides striking the public administration and the information systems
of the banks and industry, it greatly reverberates among the masses,
because they look at the power outages and know who causes them.  The
masses see how the Peruvian state expresses its class character by
attending first to the needs of the big bourgeoisie and postponing the
needs of the people.  The principal factor is that the effects of the
sabotage are felt in the most important and advanced economic zone of
the country, the central economic zone, which at the same time is the
strategic zone for  restoring the old society.

3. SELECTIVE ANNIHILATION: This strikes the reactionary authorities,
it beheads and paralyzes the functioning of the state apparatus.  To
strike and behead the state and bureaucratic authorities at whatever
level, obstructs the functioning of the state and even more, it
generates a power vacuum.  That political vacuum remains to be filled
for exercising power.

4. GUERRILLA COMBAT: Its quantity is great and continues to increase. 
It has two fundamental forms of struggle: ambushes and assaults. 
Ambushes are being developed which evolve in more severe blows each
time, and are pounding the armed forces. To assault officials has much
more impact since the repercussions are seen at once: demands for
leave in the army have had to be prohibited. 

5.THE ARMED STRIKE: President Gonzalo has also developed a new
modality of struggle, the armed strike, which involves wielding the
four forms of struggle; i.e. agitation and propaganda, sabotage,
selective annihilations, and guerilla combat, and at the same time
mobilizing immense masses.

THE STRATEGY FOR BUILDING THE PEOPLE'S ARMY OF LIBERATION

The strategy for building the People's Army of Liberation originates
>from its political-ideological construction, based on Marxism, and on
the establishment of the political line. The reconstituted Party,
holding to this, already had the instrument, the heroic combatant, the
Communist Party of Peru of a new type, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, the
vanguard organized as a political organization (not the
political-military organization as is usually erroneously stated), the
Party necessary in order to launch the struggle for the conquest of
Power with arms in hand by means of People's War.

The first, the main thing based on our previous work, the People's
War, has helped us to understand Maoism as the new,  third and
superior stage of Marxism.  It has aided the development of the
militarization of the Party and its concentric construction.  The
People's War has served the purpose of forging the People's Guerilla
Army in 1983, which has come to be the People's Army of Liberation,
forged as this in 1993.

                  FORGING THE PEOPLE'S GUERILLA ARMY

Following his thesis on the formation and development of a People's
Army, the great Lenin established the Popular Militia, which is merged
into the army and fulfills the functions of army, police and
administration.  Nevertheless, Lenin was not able to develop this,
given the aggression of 14 countries. Chairman Mao did empower the
militia, and developed the construction of the revolutionary armed
forces with the tremendous participation of the masses. Marx
established that the proletariat needs its own army, and the thesis of
the general arming of the people.  In essence, he made the case for
Yenan to convert itself into a militarized base of support.  

President Gonzalo, developing this thesis, conceives of the army as
the principal form of organization, and that the left should lead it,
to prevent utilizing the army to carry out a restoration.  President
Gonzalo establishes the triple task of communists: to forge oneself as
a communist first and foremost, then as combatants and administrators
of the New State.  President Gonzalo, moulding the
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thesis, and taking into account the specific
situation of the People's War, established the formation of the
People's Guerilla Army (PGA) from its preparation to the People's War.
Thus, he concieved the necessity of constructing the principal form of
organization in order to carry on the People's War, defeat the enemy,
and build the New State.  

On December 3, 1979, it was agreed upon to constitute the first
company of the first division of the Red Army.  In 1980, with the
initiation of the People's War, the detatchments and fighters were
molded, which allowed passing over from the disorganized masses to the
organized masses. In 1983, President Gonzalo proposed the formation of
the PGA because this was a political necessity in order to confront
the enemy and develop the People's War.

Why the PGA?  Because it implements guerilla warfare.  It is not a
regular army but a guerilla army; and its characteristics permit if it
were necessary, to act as complement to a regular army. The PGA is
composed primarily of poor peasants, proletarians and petty
bourgeoisie. To arm itself, it expropriates arms from the enemy; under
the slogan "conquering arms" it confiscates  arms from the enemy,
paying the necessary cost.

                    THE  CHARACTER  OF  THE  PEOPLE'S  ARMY

It is a new type of army which executes the political tasks of the
revolution established by the Party.  The Party applies the Maoist
principle that the Party commands the gun and the gun never commands
the Party.  It is a People's Guerilla Army, an army of a new type,
which fulfills three tasks:

1. FIGHTING: This is principal, corresponding to the principal form of
organization .  It is a task well stated by President Gonzalo in the
first session of the Central Committee, "Our purpose is to fight."

2. MOBILIZATION: This is very important, for through it the work of
politicizing the masses and arming them with Marxist-Leninist-Maoist,
Gonzalo Thought Ideology is carried out.  It is the PGA that leads the
class struggle by fulfilling the political tasks of leading and
mobilizing the masses.This second task involves organizing,
mobilizing, politicizing and arming the masses.

3. PRODUCTION:This applies to self-sufficiency,seeking not to burden
the masses.  The army which does not fullfill these tasks is not a new
type of army but the old type of parasitic army.  The PGA is
fundamentally composed of peasants, led absolutley by the Party.  With
regards to their formation, President Gonzalo states: The iron legions
of the PGA are sustained by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought,
which is the basis of their invincibility.  They are forged in the
hard life, sacrifice, and defiance of death, which leads them to
revolutionary heroism.

THE PEOPLE'S GUERILLA ARMY, BACKBONE OF THE NEW POWER

It is the backbone of the New Democracy because it fulfills the role
of exercising power and defending it. It extends the prestige,
influence, direct control and strenghtening of the New State at the
national level.  It fulfills the role of  police, defending,
controlling, guiding and exercising justice.  The form of doing
justice is through people's trials, where the masses  give their
opinion, direct, judge and punish.

======================================Published by The New Flag
30-08 Broadway, Suite 159
Queens, NY 11106
E-Mail:lquispe-AT-nyxfer.blythe.org
PCP Web page: http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp


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