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By Luis Arce Borja January 28, 2006
[MIM is unable to confirm that Luis Arce Borja is the author of this document. It was 2002 that his neighbor the revisionist Workers Party of Belgium last reported on him in the news. Various reactionary Peruvian papers have reported on him more recently. We hope Luis Arce Borja is well.]
A guerrilla action, and similarly a whole process of armed struggle, does not by itself constitute a liberating political process in the sense of revolutionary change of society and the state.
The revolutionary content of a political or military action is determined by its strategic objective, whose essence is determined by a combination of ideological, political and organizational factors.
From May 1980 until almost the middles of the ‘90s the Maoist guerrilla was without any doubt a hope for revolutionary change in Peru. The poor masses took it as such and valiantly fought at its side. In that war the people gave their blood and sacrifice, and more than 60,000 peasants, workers, students, squatters, and others had died by the end of the armed conflict. A historical epoch that is an extraordinary legacy for the Peruvian people and their future revolution. What cut short that road? In October 1993 Abimael Guzmán and the greater part of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) changed political line while in prison and became collaborators with the regime of Fujimori and Montesinos. They called off the armed struggle. This betrayal, the fundamental cause of the defeat of the revolution, came wrapped up with the so-called "peace letters" written in the manner of applying "Gonzalo Thought," which in the words of Guzmán himself is the "creative expression of Marxism- Leninism-Maoism in the concrete conditions of Peruvian reality." In this way, what served to initiate and develop the revolution became useful in bankrupting this same process.
What remains of that historical epoch, and what is the current situation of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP)?
What remains after the defeat of the People’s War, is a supposed Communist Party that is nothing but a caricature of the party that initiated the armed struggle in May 1980. Its remnants do not behave like fragments of but rather like the remains of a political process broken by the disastrous defeat. Here there was no, like Lenin said, organized retreat in the defeat, only political dispersion without any perspective of reorganizing for the future struggle. Its representatives do not express themselves as a separate party with its own political aspirations and programs, but they subscribe to directives inherited from when Gonzalo hadn’t yet been captured. They don’t act as antagonistic groups, and their ideological points of reference spring from fidelity to Gonzalo thought, which they uphold without criticism or reservations. They continue to consider Guzmán the legitimate "head of the PCP and the revolution." They sustain that Gonzalo continues as the "strategic and decisive leadership of the PCP" and, as they say, "Doctor Abimael Guzmán Reynoso continues as our chief." Some take Guzmán as the holy spirit, without conceivable sins and outside the realm of human weaknesses, much less betrayal and capitulation.
The main group is constituted by those directly connected to the "peace letters." It groups together at its heart almost the entirety of high and medium level leaders, as well as base level militants who capitulated in prison (many of which collaborated with the National Intelligence Service [SIN]). The members of the Central Committee, with Gonzalo at the head, are part of this group and continue dictating party orders aimed at propitiating political repentance and insertion in the terrain of bourgeois legality. Their political course has not varied at all since the time of Fujimori, and continues based on the postulates of the document "Asumir y Combatir por la Nueva Gran Decisión y Definición" [Take Up and Fight for the New Great Decision and Definition] (written by Gonzalo in 1993) whose political line constitutes the negation of the revolutionary theses that gave shape to about 20 years of armed struggle in Peru. Its current work is urban and restricted to the capital. Its operations are legal and aimed at continuing to sell the snake oil of "looking for a peaceful and negotiated solution to the problems of the war." At the international level this group is part of the "parties" that make up what is known as the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement [RIM], with headquarters in the United States and London.
Another group is active in the Upper Huallaga region, and is led by the one called "rtemio," involved in some sort of vendetta on television, the radio and in the press. It carries our armed actions focused on the jungle region without any perspective of people’s power, and it declares itself the defender of the coca growers of the jungle. The political objective of this group is not revolution, but to reach a political settlement with the current representatives of the Peruvian state and army. Since before 2000, when Fujimori still governed, its guerrilla actions were suspected of being carried out in complicity with the military plans of Vladimiro Montesinos and the SIN. The goal of this group, which calls itself "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, principally Maoist" is to insert itself in Peru’s political system. Artemio, who now presents himself as the head of the Huallaga Regional Committee of the PCP, has not stopped publicly repeating that his armed struggle’s objective is to achieve a "political solution and all-sided negotiation to the problems derived from the civil war," which in other words means to serve the government of Toledo like they served Fujimori’s government before. The political demands of this personality are not different from those of the peace letters group. Artemio has told the magazine Caretas (August 2005) "we began the armed actions with the objective of demanding a negotiated political solution of the government and the state. Today we are carrying out the actions with this same purpose, demanding a political solution of the whole set of problems derived from the war."
A smaller group exists that the Peruvian press calls "proseguir" (in relation to their decision to keep on the road of armed actions). This group, according to official information, is led by comrade "Alipio," and its area of operations is in the central jungle region, mainly on the Ene River. The political position of the proseguir group differs from that of the "peace letters" group and that of "Artemio." They reject collaboration with the state and declare themselves against capitulation and betrayal, but strangely they continue to consider Gonzalo the "head of the Party and the revolution." They blindly deny that Abimael Guzmán is the author of the "peace letters" and the treason committed against the revolution. They have no known programmatic document or current analysis of Peruvian reality. Their communiqués are repetitive, delirious slogans, whose content is a textual reproduction of what Gonzalo spoke and wrote before 1992, and demonstrates that this group, perhaps sincere in its political activity, has not even come close to understanding the true problem in the Peruvian revolution.
The guerrilla actions, those of "Artemio" as well as those of the "proseguir" group, (without bearings or leadership), rather than serve as a stimulus for the people’s struggle, serve to confound the possibility of regrouping the people’s forces and in better conditions return to the true revolutionary struggle under the leadership of a solid political organization. The masses of people, betrayed by the Maoist leaders in 1993, with good reason distrust these guerrillas, and see in these actions not the possibility of liberation, but rather a trick of the secret services to continue militarily controlling the state in the guise of the senderization of society. By chance or by direct relation, the truth is that the supposed "guerrilla offensives" serve the reaction more than the revolution. For example, based on the actions of "Artemio" of past months, the Fujimorismo has renewed in grand form its old electoral campaigns expressed in Lima street paintings that say "Fujimori yes, terrorism no." But it is not only Fujimorismo that is looking to gain from this situation of fictitious people’s war. The military forces that for ten years of Fujimorismo were involved in brutal crimes and spectacular graft have not had to wait to win dividends from this situation. With this purpose, a congressman (Luis Iberico) just proposed in parliament "a selective amnesty" for 638 army officials legally accused of crimes and human rights violations. This amnesty, according to parliament, is aimed at "strengthening the morale of the Armed Forces so they can confront terrorism without fear." In the same vein, the Fujimorista daily La Razón (Lima), has become the most enthusiastic medium for publishing on the front page any murmur of a guerrilla bullet. Including, in order to give credibility to supposed propaganda about the "senderista advance" it has publicized "declarations" of nonexistent and phantasmal organizations that publish a marginal web page in Sweden.
The ideological basis of the betrayal
The defeat of the people’s war did not have its main causes in the superiority of the enemy, rather in the political ideological weakness of its top leaders. When the Central Committee of the PCP, including Chairman Gonzalo, passed over to the side of the enemies of the revolution, the Maoist guerrilla was carrying out about 400 military actions per month and maintained the repressive forces of the state in check, which including soldiers, police, paramilitaries and civil defense groups, rondas and other tools of the army, included over 500 thousand active members. In that stage of intense social struggle, the people’s committees (open and clandestine) expanded and multiplied across the country the support bases of the revolution. The armed process was the epicenter of the class struggle and determined the political life of the country.
This problem has its roots in the deep ideological problems whose elements should not be sought outside the party, but rather within it, and particularly in the Gonzalo thought that has served for war and for treason. The police repression factor could be an important ingredient, but not determinant in the form of behavior of the leaders of this party. The biblical cult of the leader and the one man management of the party organization are two of the road to follow to arrive at the origin of the problem. In no part of the world can a revolutionary party be conceived of that is operated by only one person and even less from prison as has been the case with the PCP. In revolutionary war parties have a structure that as a whole makes them invincible against reaction. Each militant, each cadre and each leader form an ensemble of leadership. No revolutionary party, even more so a Marxist party, can demand that its membership take an oath of total and unconditional subjection to the leader of that party, as has been the experience of the PCP. The militants, together with respecting the most distinguished cadre and leaders, express their revolutionary fidelity to the programme, political line and to each one of the organic instances of leadership. This excludes personal management and any type of great leader adoration characteristic of the political organizations of the bourgeoisie.
Any political group in Peru that intends to take the victorious years of people’s war (1980-1993) as a point of departure is obliged to be honest with the facts and explain with political coherence the causes and ideological- political factors involved in the conduct of Gonzalo and the Central Committee. It has to explain, beginning with ideology, what has been the phenomenon by which top leaders become clowns, turncoats, informers and poor devils. An example of this problem is "Feliciano." The highest responsible military figure in the party is now someone who renounces not only his old convictions but publicly begs the authorities to collaborate in the pacification of the country. In every social phenomenon there is cause and effect, and the most abominable problems don’t pop up and appear out of nothing. They are connected to class consciousness, the vision of socialism, political formation in general, experience, also material factors. The interest of this reflection can be presented in diverse aspects, but to deal with it substantially one must rigorously broach the ideological aspect of the PCP. The whole course that Gonzalo and the PCP ran from 1964 to 1993 must be scrutinized with a magnifying glass. Nothing can be left unanalyzed and it is preferable to submit to criticism the whole ideological, political and organizational scaffolding that preceded the "peace letters" of 1993.
To take things as if nothing had happened in the heart of the Communist Party nor in the armed process is a distortion of reality. It is a form of complicity in covering up betrayal and Marxist deviation. It is a style of conciliation with those responsible for the defeat of the armed process. The serious damage caused to the Peruvian social process, whose principal victims have been the true communists and the masses who fought at their side, was directly caused by people who can be given no concessions and cannot be conciliated with. The traitors are no longer part of the people and any revolutionary initiative has to struggle against them. On the other hand, to not search for the truth of things and say it as it has happened, is serious in that it takes the masses for idiots, and above all negates the political tasks of the current moment, principally that which has to do with the ideological aspect and the reconstitution of a revolutionary organization.
Before 2000, when Fujimori was still in power, there might have been good reason to maintain serious suspicions that the peace letters had nothing to do with Gonzalo. It was also correct to put out the hypotheses of video editing, lies and imposters of the leading Maoist prisoners. That situation changed substantially when Fujimori fled Peru in 2000. Secret documents, direct testimonies and other proofs came to light and cleared up a situation which had been managed since ’93 spectacularly based on lies and half-truths. The same Chairman Gonzalo, facing the judges who judges him and in front of 254 national and international journalists, confirmed on November 5, 2004 his protagonism in the capitulation and treason of the armed struggle. In said event, the first act of Gonzalo was not to call for the continuation of the armed struggle, as he did in 1992 (first public presentation) but to effusively hug each member of the Central Committee who like him were responsible for the "peace letters" and the text: "fight for the political solution to the problems derived from the war" and conclude the internal conflict without victors nor vanquished". [the original text is missing a "]
The fantasies regarding the "uncontainable advance" of the People’s War, or that the "reaction trembles" from the current armed actions, are nothing more than artificial flames that the reaction uses to camouflage the grave political crisis of the country, who most notorious expression is the electoral carnival on whose terrain the dispute is open between ruffians, delinquents and criminals. Even Fujimori’s political party is fighting again for the presidential chair. But these extravagant slogans also cover the opportunism of their mentors whose purpose is the cap with one finger the loss suffered by the PCP and the ideological drift this organization finds itself in. To not make a distinction between the political situation before 1993 and the current conjuncture, is not only an error, but in and of itself constitutes authentic proof that those who currently claim the legacy of the Peruvian revolution are merely remnants of a betrayed process which has been beaten into deafeat.
MIM International Minister responds:
MIM is probably to blame for the appearance of this article. I in particular have to make self-criticism for recently allowing the publication of some short and bland articles on Peru in MIM Notes. Although I knew there was an issue of the Peruvian reactionaries' inventing Maoist armed struggles for their own purposes, I allowed the articles to go forward without a thorough investigation.
This is also an example of how people mistakenly pressure leadership. Often as International Minister I come across superficially cheerful and optimistic news spread by bourgeois media blitz that I have to quash. This sort of pressure "from below" is wrong in many aspects in the West. 1) It caters to the labor aristocracy and ends up supporting Comintern-like thinking that we have to be involved in the concrete details of other struggles. 2) It gives the enemy a chance to probe our defenses and procedures. Then leaders must work overtime to compensate. At least in this case, we have an article now to try to set us straight.
With regard to Luis Arce Borja's article's contents, most are plausible. We do not undertake a concrete investigation throughout Peru as would be necessary. For all we know, there are real Maoists in Peru spreading great agitation and theory as they carry out armed struggle. MIM and activists generally know to what extent the media and self-interested political leaders misreport events. If we have omitted the activities of real Maoists in Peru in our reporting, we apologize and again, we mean no harm. We are not claiming to lead a Comintern reaching into Peru and excluding legitimate Maoist comrades.
In the article above, Luis Arce Borja concludes that Gonzalo was in fact behind the peace letters. From MIM's point of view, 250 journalists could claim to see Gonzalo in court, but most would not know what he looked like originally. Luis Arce Borja, on the other hand, does know what Gonzalo looks like, so his opinion has to be taken seriously. We also see no evidence of a huge campaign to undo the publicity that says that really was Gonzalo in the 2004 court appearance. For that reason, let us presume that the people of Peru have concluded that Gonzalo did collaborate with the Peruvian state once arrested.
If the people of Peru have concluded that Gonzalo and his central committee capitulated, the uphill nature of the fight in Peru has become more steep. It will be psychologically difficult to accept that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought guided the most successful revolutionary movement in Latin American history, prior to the arrest of Gonzalo. The CIA has won a great battle then.
Nonetheless, MIM maintains that Gonzalo the man and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought now belong to history and have to be treated objectively, regardless of feelings about the man supposedly still alive in a naval prison. In this regard, MIM has some experience as well. Huey Newton led the most successful scientific communist movement in North Amerikan history. Yet the last 15 years of his life are full of rumors of his being a horrible drug addict. He managed a book and a few statements before an alleged drug dealer took his life. The paths of Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seale were even worse. MIM has assessed that the white labor aristocracy bears the principal blame for the degeneration of Huey Newton, who was unparalled in his 1966 to 1970 activity. It's not that the labor aristocracy betrayed Newton. We cannot say the enemy betrays us. MIM popularized Huey Newton's work even while Huey Newton was still alive. One could even say MIM was too impersynal in not trying to take in Huey Newton directly. That might have been an error on our part.
If Gonzalo capitulated in prison, then his accomplishments leading People's War for so many years are what we must learn from. We have no materialist choice other than that, because no one in Latin America has done better. The only reason we know that it is wrong to try to direct the struggle from prison is that we have seen successful revolutionary movements elsewhere, not in Latin America. We have the example of Mao. The Communist Party of the Philippines also does not allow leadership from prison.
There is one condition under which we should allow leadership from prison. When all the masses are in prison, we should lead the party from inside the prison struggle. Such was not close to being true in Peru. In the united $tates, we are on course statistically for the oppressed nations to end up in prison. Yet even inside u.$. borders it is not appropriate to lead the vanguard party from inside prison yet. The prison struggle itself may be led inside prison.
With regard to saving the life of comrade Gonzalo, the best course is a well- developed People's War. That is of concern to the whole international communist movement. Nonetheless, saving the life of Gonzalo should not be the principal goal of armed struggle. It could be a tactical goal of one armed struggle. It cannot be the overall goal of People's War in Peru. The people must make the struggle for their own reasons.
The question of how reaction benefits from alleged People's War is only tactical. We cannot raise to a question of principle how the reaction frees Fujimorista military officers by pointing to People's War. There is never any armed struggle that does not polarize society. Hence, MIM cannot get involved in criticizing people for giving blood-thirsty military officers a chance to go free. That could be tactically correct, but MIM is not in a position to know.
As Luis Arce Borja pointed out, there are those connecting themselves to the Peruvian struggle who give us the sense of existing just before 1993. What we need though, is a leadership able to depart from Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought as it existed before 1993 but also integrate theory with conditions of 2006. Most of the major social and political conditions have not changed in Peru since 1993--comprador bureaucratic capitalism, semi-feudalism and imperialism--but some relatively minor conditions have changed and there is no way to get around having leadership outside prison. Marxism- Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought should be the basis of line in Peru, but those who continue to say that Gonzalo is still the "chief" of the revolution do it a disservice. Even if Gonzalo did not capitulate, he cannot lead the Peruvian revolution now from prison. Perhaps there should be Marxism-Leninism-Maoism- New Comrade Thought for Peru, but Gonzalo Thought prior to 1993 should still be the point of departure.
As for the question of one-man management, we must all admit that the reactionaries captured and killed many more than one man. There are weaknesses in the oppressed and exploited which enable one-man leadership in some conditions. MIM is surprised given the plentitude of revisionism and reformism in Peru that one man leadership might be a serious problem. It would seem natural that the political competition would alleviate the problem of monarchist-style thinking, but the revisionists and reformists do not go deep into the countryside among the indigenous peoples much, so MIM can draw no firm conclusion. It is natural that Luis Arce Borja would have firmer conclusions.
MIM has tried to develop ideologically lately that the bourgeois pluralism of the imperialist countries does have a secondary role to play in demolishing the conditions of semi-feudalism in the Third World. To the extent that our Peruvian comrades are forged in the furnace of the whole world's struggle, the whole international communist movement will be better off.