Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 23:40:28 -0500 (EST)
From: Siddharth Chatterjee <siddhart-AT-mailbox.syr.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Tupac Amaru




On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Hariette Spierings wrote:

> Yes the story of the rebellion of Tupac Amaru (the Inca) is very moving and
> part of the history of rebellion and resistance of the Peruvian people.
> However, the name of Tupac Amaru has been trafficked with not only by his
> putative followers now hidding behind this patriotic figure to continue
> their anti-communist propaganda and anti-People's war actions.  Also, what
> Galeano says about the Velasco Alvarado regime is not quite kosher! 
> 
> Velasco used and abused the name of the Inca Tupac Amaru to impose a
> gross-bauern agricultural policy of agrarian reform which was geared to the
> very opossite aims of that of the Tupac Amaru rebellion (1781).
> 
> Far from applying Tupac Amaru's words "about the master no longer eating out
> of the poverty of the peasant", abolishing forced labour (the mita) or
> taxes, the agrarian policy of Velasco was similar to that of the agrarian
> reforms under the Russian Czars.  The slogan of Velasco should have really
> been: "Peasant, the master will no longer eat from your poverty.  Now is the
> turn of the banker, the usurer, the tax collector, the military officer, and
> the official administrator".   
> 
> I am going to deal with this theme precisely in my talk in Liverpool - it is
> a key theme to debunk revisionist policies mascarading as social
> transformation - and I will then post it here.
> 

Adolfo, thanks for the clarification. Besides Velasco, would also like
to know your opinion about Galeano and his book "Open Veins".





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