Date: 14 Feb 96 04:01:15 EST
From: "Chris, London" <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: Carlos on Peru 2/2


[Please read part 1/2 first]

Comments:

If I was prudent or fortunate, I might be re-educated and
work on a Peruvian hillside growing vegetables, or helping in a health 
clinic to reduce the endemic level of iodine-deficient mental disability.

But I am concentrating
on how to respond to this dispute as a (privileged) working person in
a metropolitan imperialist country, one of the main centres of finance 
capital in the world, which is behind the Fujimori regime.

I will concentrate on your criticisms of the PCP killing leftists, and 
leave aside their political line which you say is reformist. (You say most 
of the Peruvian left is reformist.)

Thank you also for your comments about Argentina. I note in the
course of these you also say "ERP and Montoneros *never* had a conscious
    policy of killing political opponents from the left systematically."

It is clearly agreed by all sides that the PCP killed a number of people
publically identified as leftists, on the allegation that they 
collaborated with the regime.

What is not clear is that the PCP killed political opponents of the left
"systematically". I would expect the reports to be very different if that 
was the case.

I accept your implication that even though the regime's legal
procedures are appallingly unjust, it is in the interests of unity of
working people that the justice of revolutionaries should be more
just, and should be seen to be more just. 

The figure of 500 reported in books has to be interpreted in the light of
the severe selection bias in the sources of news, which operates at many
levels. I don't think it automatically makes Degregori a tool of imperialism
but no one has denied the charge by the PCP that his institute
received some funding from AID. Do you not think that might be a source
of bias?

Therefore I would say, can you give one example of  the fifteen cases 
known to you of good leftists who were killed even though they had not 
compromised with the regime? Preferably one case from each of the leftist 
organisations you mentioned? I do not know how closely they were known to 
you and I apologise if this request in inappropriate. 

It has been claimed on this list that the PCP has posted self criticisms
in Lima for killing innocent people. Do you have evidence that
despite this claim, killings of the sort you report are continuing?

One other question in view of your remarks about terrorism. Do you think
the conditions existed in Peru in the 1980's that with a better political 
organisation there could have been in your opinion a just and viable 
people's war? I do not doubt that members of the PCP committed atrocities. 
I do not really doubt that they allowed themselves to commit more atrocities 
than necessary even given the great brutality of the Peruvian political 
situation.

The point is, as Lenin observed, atrocities accompany all wars. 
We cannot object to all and every atrocity 
committed by revolutionaries without ruling out the very possibility of
armed resistance. Do you accept there is a question of degree here?


Chris
London.




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