Date: 23 Jun 96 16:20:28 EDT
From: "Chris, London" <100423.2040-AT-compuserve.com>
Subject: Peru war flares


Although in the last six months this l'st has managed to 
take the question of Stalin to some extent in its stride, and 
thoughtful threads have re-emerged, the issues around the Peoples
War in Peru remain extremely hot. 

We can switch off from this and regard it just as a ghastly
sectarian personalised tangle, or we can try to learn some 
lessons from it.

It is not all mind games. Recent posts show Quispe and Olaechea
like a couple going through a particularly destructive divorce
trying to do as much damage to each other as possible. But 
there are real political communications networks they are 
trying to destroy. And people can get hurt in the process.

Quispe repeating the allegation that Olaechea mishandles money, and
even attempting to give a bank account, is presumably an attempt
to damage Olaechea's organisational connections. Inevitably
Olaechea has retaliated with a post making a wholely inadequate 
allegation that Quispe is an agent of Fujimori.

There is real intent to harm and to hurt. And it is more worrying
in that to some extent both sides seem convinced that 
enemies of the PCP can rightly be disposed of violently 
on summary one-sided appraisal of the facts.

The situation is ripe for real police agents to move in with
only a little more provocation and a game plan to smash half
if not all the Peru support networks in the West.

The right wing British Home Secretary is always on the look out
for some move that appears tough on law and order. And since
Olaechea contemptuously dismisses working with social-democrats
of the sort who prevented the deportation of Al Masari under
pressure from Saudi Arabian forces, and prefers to do united front
work with members of the Stalin society, I know little to protect
Olaechea from being shipped off. I hope he does, and I tend
to assume he does, and I hope that the fact that Peru has less oil
than Saudi Arabia, will count in his favour. But I am relieved that
after all the contemptuous insults and his political machismo,
I will not be top of his l'st to be asked for assistance. 

Which again raises the question of why he is spending so much time
on M1 with possibly so few supporters among us labour aristocrats,
when the chips are finally down?

It really has become rather urgent to find a way of cooling it.
I don't know if Quispe's and Olaechea's war can burn itself out
but they badly need an armistice. Could anyone help check their terms?
Rahul????

As in most divorces they want different things. 

Quispe mainly wanted to post solidarity news with the PCP, 
and only *implied* that the People's War in Peru was one of 
the most revolutionary activities going on in the world today.
Quispe explicitly will work with Trotskyists, and support a 
broad campaign around Lori Berenson or to stop the deportation of Calero.

Olaechea's purpose on this l'st is not just to support the people's
war in Peru, but to emphasise it as the most revolutionary activity in
the world today and *further* to use it to wage an ideological
war against revisionism.

These aims need not be incompatible, if they would accept their 
differences, but they seem to be in mutual destruction mode.

It reminds me of the period of time after the unbanning
of the ANC and PAC in South Africa when militants of the two
organisations were fighting each other and even started killing 
each other, much to the satisfaction of the apartheid 
regime, who probably encouraged it.

We seem to be still with the hottest Peru question of all, that
flared six months ago: how much solidarity and comradeship,
how much of a united front,
can leftists expect if they condone the killing of other leftists?

- for the most correct ideological motives of course.

Olaechea can smirk, or denounce as he chooses, but his problem is 
he does not know how to combine anti-revisionism with united front
work. Perhaps he should indeed write more on united fronts. 
Who would be prepared to join him on M3 for this task?


Chris B 


_____________

Quote from EDI courtesy of Olaechea
-----------------------------------
Police Agent and Supporter of the "Peace Agreement" Executed

May 2.  Villa El Salvador.  A guerilla special force attack and executed an
individual who was engaged in close colaboration with the police in
distributing propaganda in favour of the bogus "peace agreement" which is
being publicised by the National Intelligence Service (SIN) since October
1993.  Next to the executed person the rebels placed leaflets with slogans
hailing the working class and the peasants, proletarian internationalism and
Chairman Gonzalo.

Quote from IPS:
---------------

LIMA, May 16 (IPS) - On the eve of the 16th anniversary of its
armed struggle, the insurgent Shining Path in Peru finds itself in
the midst of an internal war, between those who accept the peace
proposed by imprisoned leader Abimael Guzman, and the followers of
rebel leader ''Feliciano''.


The followers of Oscar ''Feliciano'' Ramirez refuse to accept
Guzman's calls for peace. The ''Red Path'', as they call their
group, is seeking to recover political space, using traditional
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) tactics: the violent intimidation
of community leaders and the annihilation of opponents.

A majority of Shining Path members, who have deferred to
Guzman's peace proposal, recognised those methods as mistaken,
''because they isolated the party from the masses.''

<>

The May 4 killing of ''Black Jose'', a Shining Path member who
remains loyal to Guzman and was supposedly released from prison to
promote peace, was to serve as an example.

His bullet-ridden corpse was blown up with dynamite. And the
''Lima Base,'' the urban cell of the Red Path, left a note
announcing its aim to ''squash revisionists and
'capitulationists'.''



`	




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