Date: 04 Mar 96 03:17:54 EST
From: "Chris, London" <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: Peru - NACLA Evidence 2/3


Although the article introduced in 1/3 is an analysis of 
the prospects for self-help in Peru against the economic and 
political background, it is also about what is apparently one
of the suburbs bursting out around Lima which has brought the 
population of the conurbation to 7 million.

The suburb Villa El Salvador is said itself to be a quarter of a million
people. The article says that in 1990, the PCP "singled out
Villa as an ideal place to challenge the legal left". Yet although
the article is published in a book released in 1995, and presumably
is up to date in the eyes of the authors to about 1994, the total number 
of leftist leaders it reports as having been killed by the PCP is 
one.

Now there may very well be evidence of more frequent killing of 
leftist officials in smaller towns and villages, but as far as the 
evidence of this article is concerned, in a major suburb of Lima,
favourable to their strategy, the PCP were not executing leftist 
rivals as a central part of their strategy. 

It may be argued that they were for a time using the *threat* of 
execution as a central part of their strategy. If so, the evidence
from this article cuts both ways. If the PCP claim thousands of 
military and political actions in 1994-5, and if it was right to 
kill Moyano in 1992, why could not at least one or two more be
executed in Villa in 1994-5 "pour encourager les autres". 
But according to an unsympathetic source, none were.


My expectation is that there has been internal debate within the PCP
about the wisdom to say the least of this act, and that their
policy now of promoting what they call "the armed strike", to prevent
the army clearing public demonstrations so they claim, is a shift in 
policy, without a public self-criticism.


The passages about the PCP in the article are not impartial, and 
therefore more telling evidence if the most *recent* assassination 
of a leftist in Villa is 1992. 

IMO it is legitimate to question the authors on their academic
credibility in their handling of these aspect of their subject.
The term "Shining Path" is used no less than 11 times in one
page, when for stylistic reasons alone one would have expected
another synonym, less politically loaded.

The phrasing about the political violence "unleashed" by the PCP's
war against the Peruvian state, assumes that armed struggle was
out of order. Although I know of no evidence that the PCP decision
was wise or "correct", one would expect more neutral language
to attempt to describe scientifically the existence of armed conflict
not unknown in a number of Latin American countries, under different
leaderships.

" On three different occasions, Shining Path tried to assassinate
Mayor Michael Azcueta in a campaign to decapitate Villa of its
leadership and demoralize the rank and file." 

Now assuming that the authors are right that it was the PCP and
not another group in what appears to be an increasingly 
fractious  politics, that threatened to assassinate the 
Mayor, what is scientific about claiming that their purpose was
to "demoralize the rank and file"?  Clearly any revolutionary
movement that uses executions of leading opponents is far more
likely to do it to inspire the rank and file, whether they are 
right or wrong in their policy. To say without evidence that it is
to "demoralize" the rank and file, is to support the pattern of 
analysis the PCP condemns as the work of Senderologists - 
painting the PCP as shining lunatics whose only political credibility
is by terrifying the population.

It is clear that the authors' sources on the death of Moyano are 
the legal left:

" "In these times,"
one of Moyano's close friends told me, "people believe that 
everyone steals - everyone, even grassroots leaders like
Maria Elena".

The authors appear to accept this no doubt powerfully moving 
testimony at face value. Yet it seems highly possible that a 
voluntary self-help group could start with very amateur accounting
procedures and vetting of staff, and irregularities might well
be discovered once it had grown to a substantial institution 
receiving significant funding. Only in the previous paragraph of 
the same article the authors report that the newly elected
Mayor of Vills was arrested and impeached on corruption charges.

I delayed this installment to catch up on post as far as to 
read the comment from the PCP side about the death of Moyano

On Sat 2nd March Luis wrote

 The PCP always acknowledge
  responsability and it does so with a lenghty denunciation. For example to
  execute Moyano it took two years of public trials and condenation in El
  Diario and local papers --to finally give her just sanction for fingering
  out PCP supporters and organizing paramilitary thugs.  

<<<<


My opinion is that by close examination of sources, which takes into
account their potential bias, rather than assumes one side or another
is purely objective, the truth is even more complex, and muddled.

This particular report by NACLA (there may be other, better, ones)
does not support the claim by those who detest the PCP's presence
on this l'st on the grounds that they frequently kill leftist rivals.

IMO it is consistent that at one time they thought it legitimate to 
kill some, if they thought they had sufficient evidence against them.
The fact that they have killed no more in Villa, IMO amounts to 
a massive silent self-criticism in the face of the unwise consequences
of such action. 

One of which is that in the material world, 
(whether it should or not in the world of Mao Zedong-Gonzalo 
Thought) assassinated women tend to leave friends who grieve for them
and tell moving stories that influence the intelligentsia, as well
as other sections of the population.

That is why IMO Lenin was unwise to murder the Czar and his 
children, 
and Mao was wiser to let the last emperor take up gardening
and chat to novelists. 


Chris
London
________
In part 3/3 I will comment on the very interesting and I hope 
more objective perspectives of the NACLA article overall about
what it shows of the crisis of the the reformist left in Peru
and whether the PCP has anything to say on this.





     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------