From: Luis Quispe <lquispe-AT-blythe.org>
Subject: PERU: AMERICAS WATCH (Part 1)
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 01:11:39 -0500 (EST)
Cc: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.virginia.edu


        PERU: AMERICAS WATCH, TOOL OF U.S. IMPERIALISM
                           Part 1 of 2

Socrates taught us that if we wanted to learn something, we first
had to know our ignorance. If we are to understand the Communist
Party of Peru (PCP), we must first clear out all the nonsense;
then after we understand, we can debate and criticize.

The PCP is portrayed by the outlets of imperialism as "the most
blood thirsty group in the Americas." The U.S. State Department
compares the PCP to Pol Pot and call it "terrorist." Anti-
Communist pamphlets  such as NACLA and the reactionary Trostkyte
group Socialist Workers Party repeat verbatim the slander of
their Yankee masters. By reading the misinformation of the
mainstream press, honest people in the world may wonder why there
is such a deep hatred of the imperialists and its puppets against
the Peruvian revolutionaries. It is because of the unstoppable
People's War that is advancing in Peru which is an  example for
the proletariat and the oppressed worldwide . It is because of
the strategic equilibrium that has been reached. It is because of
the brilliant perspective of the people of Peru led by the PCP to
seize power throughout the entire country. 

Let us recall that the State Department used to say the same
slanders about the FMLN in El Salvador. I will compare the use of
revolutionary violence by the FMLN in El Salvador and the PCP in
Peru. This comparison is important to force the debate about the
PCP out of the good guy/bad guy problematic and into the more
general but infinitely more concrete question of whether radical
change through revolutionary violence is desirable or not.

To this end, I will begin with the description of Americas
Watch's (AW) book "El Salvador's Decade of Terror, 1991" in which
the FMLN is criticized for:

1) conducting selective assassinations and group killings,
2) the use of land mines which killed about 20 civilians a year.

Thus, according to AW, in 1985, the FMLN killed 97 "non-
combatants,! including members of civil patrols, "leftists,"
mayors and other elected officials, and informers.

KILLING MAYORS: On January 9, 1989, Calvin Sims (Note. He is in
Peru now) of The New York Times reported that "at least 35 mayors
resigned in the last month after eight others were killed in a
nationwide offensive against civilian authority." The article
goes on to point out that the Church and "even many leftists who
have been sympathetic to the rebels in the past, have denounced
it the killing and intimidation of mayors as nothing more than
terrorism."

Americas Watch stated that "the number of civilians killed by the
FMLN continued to rise before its November 1989 offensive, and
because the number committed by the armed forces and their allied
paramilitary forces decreased, the disparity in the number of
killings on each side was not very great." [page 70]

Now on Peru. My information comes from the following Americas
Watch reports: 1)  October 1984, 2)  September 1985, 3) September
1986, 4)  October 1988; and 5) their book "Peru Under Fire 1992."

Although the PCP targets people who function as part of state
apparatuses directly involved in counterinsurgency activities
such as governors, mayors, etc., Americas Watch criticized the
PCP for selective assassinations, group killings, and bombings. 
For example, AW said, "in 1989 Sendero assassinated 10 governors
and lieutenant-governors, six engineers and officials of
development projects, ["Agricultural technicians and development
workers are not bothered by Sendero as long as none of them is
installed as an authority or attempts to represent the
government." --page 33, Sept. 1986] Seven judicial officials, and
nineteen other public officials.... From January through October
46 mayors were killed by Sendero, and a further 263, facing death
threats, resigned."[page 65. 1992]

Peru is a much larger country than El Salvador with more than
four times the population, so if we multiply the 8 mayors killed
by the FMLN in the last part of 1988 by four, we get 32, which we
can compare to the 46 mayors that the PCP has executed in the
first 9 months of 1989.

In Peru as it was done in El Salvador, the insurgents do
everything they can to destroy civil defense patrols. These
patrols -from the fascists in rural Italy in the 1920's through
the Chinese revolution in the 30's and 40's, Vietnam in the 50's
and 60's and Guatemala in the 70's and 80's - are the back bone
of the military's counterinsurgency program. Thus, it is not
surprising that the majority of rural "civilian" dead attributed
to the PCP by the "reputable" right groups are members of these
civil patrols or paramilitary Rondas organized and controlled by
The Army.

Like in El Salvador in the early stages of the war the "forces of
order" killed much more than the insurgents did but as the war
progressed the killing tended to even out. According to the
Peruvian government, by 1989 the PCP was responsible for 1,526
deaths and the "forces of order" 1,598. [see pp. 14,15, and 19,
1992]

Although the PCP is arguable much stronger and very different
politically, ideologically and militarily from the FMLN,
Sandinistas, et al., there is no difference in substance in the
use of revolutionary violence by the FMLN and the PCP. So why
does the PCP get such heat for their use of violence?

To solve this mystery, let us look at the first four Americas
Watch reports on Peru listed above to see if there is any
evidence to back up the assertion, which appears on the first
page of AW first report [October 1984.] It stated that: "In
Sendero Luminoso the country faces the most brutal and vicious
guerrilla organization that has yet appeared in the Western
hemisphere." Before quoting at length the "proof" of the above
statement, we must note that on page 42, this report informs us
that the Peruvian military "Announced that the only source of
information on military operations will be the armed forces
themselves." If we couple this statement with the one from the
New York Times (September 2, 1984): "Disinformation is part of
the military's strategy," the allegations of AW against the PCP
go down the drain. 

Further, AW stated: "Sendero began to target [1982] certain local
groups -policeman, landowners, government officials, loan sharks,
merchants, and informants- in Ayacucho. Senderistas staged
`popular trials' and executions. This initially strengthened
their popularity among the Indians, many of whom held officials
in contempt. In September 1982, over 10,000 people crowded the
streets of Ayacucho to mourn Edith Lagos, a `fallen comrade,'
allegedly tortured and murdered by the police. The rally was
indicative of the popular support Sendero enjoyed at that
time..."

"Yet as Sendero began to control `liberated Zones' of Ayacucho in
late 1982, it imposed its anti-technology, subsistence peasant
model that, along with its brutality, has led the group to be
compared to Pol Pot's reign of terror in Cambodia. Sendero closed
regional markets; forced peasants to plant only enough for their
own subsistence; and brutally killed those who opposed them.
Sendero has destroyed tractors, and an experimental farm in the
University of Huamanga which developed livestock and grains for
local production. The group has also destroyed factories,
apparently without considering how this might affect urban
workers, who hardly seem to exist in Sendero's scheme of things.
As Sendero has implemented its own kind of terror, some of its
support has waned, yet its strength apparently has not." [pp. 67-
68, October 1984 Report.]

This is all AW has to say on the PCP in the first report. We will
have some comments on these very revealing paragraphs after we
look at what the three other reports have to say.

"Sendero has persisted in its tactic of conducting exemplary
executions of civilians considered to be representatives of the
bourgeoisie or of the government. In addition, Sendero has
continued to force civilians to join it or contribute to its
efforts. It remains difficult, however, to determine the scope
and extent of these practices." [page 27, Sept. 1985] That's it
for the second report. Please note that the word "Sendero" could
be changed to the FMLN and thus prove our point.

The third report stated that PCP killed police informers and
collaborators as well as publicly punishing cattle rustlers,
drunkards adulterers, etc., and also that in 1986 the PCP started
killing higher up military and civilian officials in Lima.

The fourth report tells us: "Sendero Luminoso... has continued to
commit murder and other violations of the laws of war as a
deliberate part of its strategy. This self-styled Maoist group
uses terror tactics to radicalize social conflict and to pitch
rural communities against each other. It murders elected or
appointed local officials as well as anyone it believes to be
cooperating with the security forces." [page 4, 1988]

Lastly "Sendero Luminoso, engages in a pattern of violations of
the laws of war.... The resort to such methods, particularly when
alternative democratic avenues are open, is an act of
provocation, designed to elicit a violent response on the part of
the state." [pp. 80-81, 1988 Report.]

This is the evidence, and it shows how the PCP just like Che
Guevara in Bolivia or Castro and his rag tag band in Cuba or
Lenin in Petrograd, all armed movements used terror as part of
the struggle. But the facts in these reports, and in the works of
the  Senderologists too, are often at odds with their much quoted
but rarely substantiated assertions.

The first interesting point to notice is that there is absolutely
no documentation given for any of these assertions. At least AW
should have cited an article written by U.S. Senderologist 
Cynthia McClintock's Published in "Problems of Communism" in Oct.
1983. She stated: "It is virtually certain that many peasants did
become disillusioned with Sendero. Apparently, once the
guerrillas gained control of large areas in 1982, they began to
show their fanatical colors. They imposed planting quotas on
local communities so that there would be nothing to sell to the
cities. They closed down weekly markets as forms of capitalist
exchange. They became more random and more ruthless in their
assassinations of 'traitors' and 'informants.' [page 32]

But AW claims as well as Senderologist MsClintock's are soon
debunked by Colin Harding's "Notes on Sendero Luminoso" who
published in "Communist Affairs, Jan. 1984," as a counter point.
Harding states: "There is, nevertheless, little evidence that the
rural population turned against Sendero in large numbers. Reports
of large-scale confrontations between villagers and guerrillas,
and massacres by Sendero in revenge for betrayals, are largely
unverifiable. Few bodies, names or photographs of supposed
victims have been produced, and visits by independent observers
are not allowed [by the Peruvian armed forces.] The guerrillas'
response to the formation of peasant patrols or Army run militias
has been to assassinate their leaders, and to make it known to
the villagers that soplones (informers) will be dealt with
summarily. But accounts of pillage, rape and murder by Sendero do
not ring true; their executions have been highly selective as a
matter of policy, and terrorizing the peasants would be counter-
productive."

Further, Harding refute the Senderologists: "Reports that Sendero
has lost much of the support it initially gained among the
campesinos by such tactics as closing down local markets and
forcing villagers to adopt an autarkic 'war economy' or forcibly
recruiting young men, should be treated cautiously." [page 48]

What is the PCP's "anti-technology, subsistence peasant model?"
This point is essential. The PCP does not worship capitalist
technology but neither does it dream of going back to the non-
existent paradise. Its views on technology, self-reliance, and
breaking from the capitalist as well as the state bureaucratic
type of development are interesting and exploring and debating
these ideas would be more fruitful than the uninformed denouncing
of its alleged dogmatism.

And what about Pol Pot? Another U.S. scholar David Scott Palmer,
who advises the US government on Peru, stated in a book that he
edited, "The Shining Path of Peru 1992," that: "Shining Path uses
terror to further its revolutionary ends but is not a terrorist
movement. The insurgency has rarely engaged in indiscriminate
violence and should not be compared with Pol Pot." [page 244]

A little anecdote will help put the terror in perspective. It is
a story about street kills in Lima which appeared in the
Washington Post on Jan. 9, 1993. The reporter quotes one of these
kids, as saying that he would like to kill rich people. One of
our friends named Tomas, before he joined the Party he would go
out of his way to cause problems for rich people. "He was born
and raised in Lima's slums and saw no way out of his horrid life,
he hated the rich. He became Party member and was captured in
combat. Few years later, we visited this PCP member in prison and
were quite surprised to see that he no longer hated rich people 
but hated and understood the social relations that produced the
injustice that was his existence. He had learned all of this from
the PCP. This person was murdered along with three hundred of his
comrades by the Forces of Order in the 1986 prison massacre of El
Fronton. The point is that the PCP does not ferment the violence,
it just channels it.
                     
Continued Part 2...
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