Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 11:53:07 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: A piece of work


Even near the end of his life, Perente-Ramos exerted a strange hold on 
those around him in Brooklyn. In January 1994, sitting in a 
wheelchair and alternately breathing oxygen from a machine and 
chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, he gave a lecture to a room packed with 
devotees, a person who was there recalled. He wore fringed black 
leather and sunglasses -- at 2 in the morning. Women stood around 
him, crushing out his cigarette stubs and wiping his brow and chin. 
Some listeners fell asleep.

In a tape recording of the lecture, Perente-Ramos' droning is 
interrupted by long pauses, disconnected asides and hacking, coughing 
and spitting.

"This is a continuance in the historical chronology of dislocations, 
phenomena that deals with the cracks in the floor," the field 
commander says. "Trotsky in his related writings gives Stalin a next-
to-invisible role in the process that was taking place there, saying he 
was a mere minister of minorities.

[It's too bad this guy wasn't on M1; he would have felt right at home.]

"During the civil war ... there was 24 other armed struggles going on 
inside what was the Soviet Union," he continues. "Socialism retreated 
>from a single state, single rule of socialism," he says, his coughing 
breaking the sentence.

"And when I think of war, I think of war again. Those who are for the 
revolution before ... from time to time ... none needed more space in 
order to actually go and set up administration or leadership in one 
place or another. They find themselves unrepentant ... they find 
themselves revealed and confused."

[A] t the end of the lecture, the person present     recalled, he declared 
"Patria o Muerte!" and his followers jumped to their feet, echoing the 
shout. Then his wheelchair was rolled away with military precision.

"Gino," said Janja A. Lalich, a California researcher who has studied 
Perente-Ramos' group and counseled former members, "was a piece of 
work."

(From 11/18 NY Times article on the "Provisional Communist Party" cult 
in Brooklyn, NY. Perente-Ramos was the cult founder and leader. The 
cult has "lived on" since his death.)


Louis Proyect



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