MIM(Prisons) is a cell of revolutionaries serving the oppressed masses inside U.$. prisons, guided by the communist ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
Under Lock & Key is a news service written by and for prisoners with a focus on what is going on behind bars throughout the United States. Under Lock & Key is available to U.S. prisoners for free through MIM(Prisons)'s Free Political Literature to Prisoners Program, by writing:
MIM(Prisons) PO Box 40799 San Francisco, CA 94140.
Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising Second Edition
Staughton Lynd 2011, PM Press
Condemned Keith LaMar (Bomani Hondo Shakur) 2014,
www.keithlamar.org
In April 1993 there was an 11-day occupation of Southern Ohio
Correctional Facility, starting on Easter Sunday when the maximum
security prisoners overpowered correctional officers (COs) while
returning from recreation. During the occupation, eight COs were held as
hostages; one was killed and the rest were released. Nine prisoners were
also killed through the course of this uprising, all by other prisoners.
The 407 prisoners surrendered when the administration committed to a
21-point agreement. After the uprising, five prisoners were sentenced to
death for the murders, and they are the only people held on Ohio’s death
row.
Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising and
Condemned are good books to read together, and give two thorough
accounts of the events of the SOCF uprising, and even more thorough
detail of what happened afterward. Lucasville is written by
Staughton Lynd, a lawyer who plays a significant role in
Condemned, which was written by Keith LaMar (Bomani), one of the
people condemned to death for the events during the uprising. The
content in these books overlaps a lot, but not too much as to be
redundant. What content is repeated through the two books just
underlines lessons learned, and clarifies the authors’ political
orientations, some of which MIM(Prisons) does not agree with. Rather
than write a point-by-point criticism of these books which most of our
readers will never have the opportunity to read anyway, below we
summarize some of the lessons on prison organizing we gleaned from
studying them.
Condemned recounts Bomani’s first-hand experience before, during,
and after the uprising, especially focusing on the struggle of the five
prisoners who were scapegoated for the uprising (known as the Lucasville
5). Condemned is a good case study on many common aspects of
prison organizing. Lynd’s book describes all the work it took, and all
the obstacles the state put in place, to support the Lucasville 5’s
struggle from the outside.
The first theme addressed in Condemned is the author’s
ideological transformation. MIM(Prisons)‘s primary task at this point in
the struggle is building public opinion and institutions of the
oppressed for socialist revolution, so affecting others’ political
consciousness is something we work on a lot. On the first day of the
uprising, Bomani was hoping the state would come in to end the chaos.
But “standing there as dead bodies were dumped onto the yard (while
those in authority stood back and did nothing), and then experience the
shock of witnessing Dennis’ death [another prisoner who was murdered in
the same cell as the author], awakened something in me.” Bomani’s
persynal experiences, plus politicization on the pod and thru books, are
what led em to pick up the struggle against injustice.
At an event where Bomani was publicizing eir case and experience, a
MIM(Prisons) comrade was able to ask em what go-to books ey recommend
for new comrades who are just getting turned on to the struggle. Bomani
suggested Black Boy by Richard Wright, and also refers to Wright
in Condemned. MIM(Prisons) would second this recommendation.
Black Boy is an excellent study of New Afrikan life under Jim
Crow in the South, with many aspects of that struggle still continuing
in this country today.
In eir own book, Bomani also recounts acts of prisoner unity against
the administration shortly following the uprising, and how
politicization of fellow prisoners played out in real life. The
prisoners made a pact to trash the range each day, and not clean it up.
The guards cleaned the range themselves for a few days, but then brought
in a prisoner to clean it up. Simultaneously, the “old heads” on the pod
were leading speeches nightly about the need for unity and the
relationship between the prisoners and the administration, politicizing
everyone within earshot.
“Every night there was a variation of this same speech, and I listened
to it over and over again until something took root in me. I became
openly critical of the mistreatment we had all undergone and, for a few
months at least, was serious in my determination to persuade others not
to join the administration in the efforts to further divide and conquer
us.”(Condemned, p. 33)
A tactic that was mentioned in passing in Condemned was how the
prisoner who was cleaning the range for the pigs was dealt with. Ey was
struggled with for a period of time, and asked to not clean the range,
but ey came back day after day. Eventually this prisoner was stabbed by
the protesters for continuously undermining the action. Bomani doesn’t
mention how this act impacted the unity demo, whether it helped or not.
We aim to minimize physical violence as much as possible, although
sometimes it may be necessary. It is up to those who are on the ground
to make the call in their particular conditions, and this tactic should
not at all be taken lightly. If much physical force is necessary to
maintain a peace demo, then we should ask ourselves if the masses we’re
organizing are ready for that type of demo. Political education is
always our focus at this stage in the struggle.
Both books address how a protest with solid participants can fail or
succeed depending on the protest’s outside support. Several hunger
strikes were launched, and ended, without progress made on the demands.
It wasn’t until connections were made with outside advocates and media
that prison officials took any steps toward fixing them. Especially in
an instance where a lawyer met with the regional director of the Ohio
Department of Rehabilitation, which led to some property restrictions
being lifted.
Recalling a victory from a 12-day hunger strike which had a lot of
outside support,
“When the administration refused to follow their own rules, we
complained (verbally and informally) and then asked a district judge to
intervene on our behalf, all to no avail. It never occurred to us that
we were wasting our time by appealing to the very people who had placed
us in this predicament we were in.
“Indeed, the whole process of redressing our grievances was nothing more
than an exercise in futility designed to drain off our vital energy and
make us feel as though we had done all that we could do.
“It was only when we began to write and reach out to ‘the people’ that
things began to change. First, there was Staughton’s book and
accompanying play; then we began holding ‘talks’ around the state on
various college campuses, as well as writing articles in various
periodicals. In this way, we were able to generate some much-needed
support.”(Condemned, p. 179)
To combat the psychological warfare of the prison staff, Bomani strongly
recommends daily meditation and yoga as a method to protect oneself. “By
learning how to watch my thoughts [meditate using simple breathing
exercises], I was able to rise above the vicious cycle of cause and
effect, and thereby avoid the tricks and traps of my
environment.”(Condemned, p. 133)
MIM(Prisons) receives regular requests for information on
sovereign
citizenship. While we’ve written against this tactic at length
elsewhere, Lucasville underlines it with an anecdote about three
prisoners who cut off their fingers and mailed them to the United
Nations to show how serious they were in in their claim of sovereign
citizenship. The request was still denied.
A final lesson from these books, especially recounted in
Lucasville, is that in any attempt at solidarity and justice for
the oppressed, prison officials and other oppressors will do
everything they can to undermine it. Everything. We should
never expect that our enemies will act in good faith toward respecting
us and our needs. We should always expect pushback and always expect
that they will attempt to derail us at every step of the way. Studying
past struggles for clues on how we can protect our movement will only
make our job easier. The state is taking notes on our shortcomings and
we need to do the same of both our shortcomings and our strengths.
China’s Urban Villagers: Changing Life in a Beijing Suburb by Norman
Chance Thomson Custom Publishing, Second Edition 2002
“Thus it is not surprising that an important theme expressed by the
suburban Chinese described in the concluding chapter of this book is
resistance – not in direct opposition to socialism per se but against a
government and party that in recent times chose to put its own interest
ahead of those of the Chinese people. In the early years of the People’s
Republic, the Communist party was the major force leading the struggle
for economic improvement, enhanced social equality, and greater
political empowerment of its predominantly peasant population. But the
protest movement of May and June 1989, supported by thousands of Chinese
from all walks of life demonstrated to everyone that the party and
government no longer had a mandate of leadership. What the future holds
for China remains to be seen. But the lessons of the recent past, from
which much can be learned, are there for all to see.” - Norman Chance
China’s Urban Villagers is a book about peasants on the edge of
modernization. This book discusses in part how peasants made great
strides in the construction of socialism, attained a life free from
hunger, oppression and exploitation, and then lost it all. In particular
this book chronicles the story of Half Moon Village, a small peasant
village which used to be located on the outskirts of Beijing on land
which prior to liberation was known as a “vast wasteland” but which
following socialist revolution was transformed through the peoples
collective strength into Red Flag commune, one of China’s largest
communes.
The author wrote the first edition of this book based on data originally
gathered on his third trip to China in 1979. However, the author also
references material collected from earlier trips to China in 1972 and
78. He was also assisted in collecting information for the first edition
as well as the second edition to this book in 1984 and 1989 by his wife
Nancy Chance and by Fred Engst, the son of Joan Hinton, sister of
William Hinton. Within the preface to this book Norman Chance explains
his decision to publish the second edition (of which this review covers)
so as to put into perspective his previous experiences in China, both
during and after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) as
well as his time in Red Flag in light of the repression at Tiananmen
which followed capitalist restoration.
The preface to Urban Villagers began with the author discussing
how he was initially impressed with the Chinese success upon his first
visit to China during the GPCR commenting that: “Many people, including
myself, were impressed with Mao Zedong’s strategy of reducing economic
inequalities through the immense collective effort of the people.”
Yet he immediately follows up this statement by saying that in
retrospect this prior assessment was incorrect due to the fact that he
later came to believe that we was never really allowed to actually
observe socialist China’s failures in agriculture and industrialization,
only its successes. This is an erroneous analysis which effectively
amounts to a “Potemkin Village” thesis in which the author implied that
everything that was good about China was false and everything that was
bad about it was instantly authenticated. This is a contradictory stance
on behalf of the author, not because he changed his position after
leaving China, but because all throughout the book he finds it useful to
compare and contrast what he saw and wrote about China in 1972 and 1976
with the changes he observed in 1979, all the while claiming to uphold
the conditions of the Chinese people as being qualitatively better in
1972 and 76, while still stating that what he saw in those first two
trips wasn’t really real after all – either conditions were better in
1972 and 76 or they were not, you can’t have it both ways. Indeed, even
in Chapter 9, “A Decade of Change”, added to this second edition using
data from the years 1987-89, the author comes to the conclusion that
social conditions had drastically changed in China since 1979. In
particular he refers to “class polarization the breaking up of communal
peasant land into individual holdings and the rising rate of inflation
and exploitation.”
Norman Chance was one of the first cultural anthropologists to be
allowed into China between the years 1952-1972 as anthropology as a
branch of the social sciences was discredited in the Peoples Republic
following the socialist stage of the Chinese revolution (1). He was
invited to visit China in 1972 as part of an educational delegation
during the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Professor Chance was
asked to give a lecture at the Beijing Institute of Minorities titled
“Minority Life in America.” No doubt the communist party invited this
Western academic not only as part of a mutual exchange of ideas, but so
as to expose the Chinese people to reactionary ideologies so that they
may learn from them and be better prepared to combat them. Upon
reflecting on his visit to China, Mr. Chance commented on “how different
were our perspectives on the relationship between minority and majority
nationalities.” (p XV)
It would have been helpful if the author would’ve spoken more on this
last point so that we could’ve learned about the structural relationship
between the majority Han nationality and minority nationalities in
China. For example, the contradiction of nation (Amerikkkka vs the
oppressed nations) is principal here in the United $tates. How did
similar contradictions get resolved in the PRC? In particular how were
these contradictions further elaborated and worked on during the GPCR?
“Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about
China’s 600 million people is that they are ‘poor and blank’. This may
seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing. Poverty gives rise
to the desire for change, the desire for action and the desire for
revolution. On a blank sheet of paper free form any mark, the freshest
and most beautiful characters can be written the freshest and most
beautiful pictures can be painted.” - Mao Zedong, Introducing A
Cooperative, 1958
To understand how Red Flag commune and Half Moon Village came to be
developed we must first understand China’s need to raise the quality of
life for its majority peasant population. As in any other society
quality of life is first measured by the country’s ability to meet its
citizen’s basic needs. First among these needs being the government’s
ability to feed, clothe and house its citizens. After providing a
summary of China’s national liberation and socialist revolution
struggles the author dives right into some of the major social issues
facing the People’s Republic in the early 1950s’ primarily how does a
country of 600 million paupers who are stuck in medieval culture and a
feudal economy pull themselves into the 20th century? Chance
acknowledges the feat with which China was forced to contend at this
critical juncture in its hystory as nearly insurmountable.
Indeed, if China had remained a colony or neo-colony of this or that
imperialist empire as say a country like India was at the time and
continues as today, then it would have proved insurmountable. As hystory
has proven however the Chinese people, with the guidance of Chairman Mao
and the Communist Party, were able to lift the mountains of feudalism
and imperialism off their backs, and in doing so cleared the way for
socialism and communist development to begin.
When learning about socialist experiments of the past it is always
common to hear intellectuals and sophists alike speak of the
contradiction of a supposed “humyn nature” that will always prevent us
from building a society free of poverty, hunger, exploitation and war.
And as most academics writing on the subject, Chance does not miss the
opportunity of raising the specter of humyn nature. Where Chance departs
from this common bourgeois narrative is when he frames the issue of
greed and selfishness as originating in the culture prevalent at the
time:
“Underlying these conflicts is a fundamental problem in the building of
a socialist society – the issue of human nature. If greediness is at the
heart of human nature, then the whole idea of socialism is nothing more
than a utopia. If on the other hand, human nature involves a dialectical
tension between self-interest and social interests, then self-interest
can become secondary to the interests of the larger group.
Anthropological studies of various societies demonstrate that pure
greediness in human behavior is deviant indeed. Rather, individual
motivation is strongly shaped by the social and cultural environment. If
greed is encouraged and rewarded, it would be considered foolish not to
act in a similar fashion. By contrast, if friends and associates strive
to act in a helpful, cooperative manner, selfish actions on the part of
an individual would likely lead that person to feel ashamed. Even within
the competitive, individualistic orientation of Western society, one
regularly finds selfless actions by individuals who are willing to risk
their personal security for a given cause. Thus in discussing greed and
selfishness, the question is not human nature but rather the dominant
behavior expected in normal circumstances.” (p7-8)
What’s more the Chinese masses were able to transform their country from
the “sick man of Asia” into a strong socialist power in the span of only
twenty years. They were able to accomplish this not by force but by
persuasion. Compare this to India which started ahead of China, had a
higher life expectancy and had a higher per capita than China. It was
also 75% peasant like China. Yet China surpassed India in all these
areas within one generation – so much for the comparison between
socialism and capitalism.(2)
“Our task is to build islands of socialism in a vast sea of individual
farming. We are the ones who will have to show the way for the whole
country.”(3)
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was able to spearhead the
collectivization of agriculture thru their successful mobilization of
peasants first into mutual aid teams, then low level elementary
agricultural cooperatives.(p4-5) These APC’s were comprised of “20 or
more households which pooled their labor, land and small tools for the
common benefit.”(p4) These cooperatives not only helped peasants
survive, but begin to spurn on the economy in the countryside. With time
and success the APC’s began to grow as peasants eagerly joined.
According to Chance the only people who hesitated or refused were the
“well to do” peasants who saw an end to their standard of living come
with the rise of the APCs. At first the government let these rich and
middle peasants abstain from joining until of course their abstinence
became a hindrance to social development. It was at this time that the
Communist Party under the leadership of Chairman Mao “opted for a
acceleration of rural collectivization – a Socialist upsurge in the
countryside – in which mutual aid teams and low-level co-operatives were
to be combined into larger, more advanced units.”(p6) These APCs were
but preludes to the Great Leap Forward 1958-1960. The Great Leap Forward
was China’s attempt to catch up with the imperialist countries by
building up China’s ability to produce grain and steel. Experimentation
in farming, animal husbandry and other associated activity were in fact
the earliest models in innovation from which experience and rationale
knowledge were garnered for and summed up for further practice and
experimentation in the city environment. Once the Great Leap forward
began the APCs quickly ran their course and became outmoded. The APCs
then gave way to the commune movement in the countryside in which the
most advanced APCs were consolidated into 42,000 communes.(p8)
In it’s early developmental stages one of the fundamental political
lines in the Chinese countryside was to “rely on the poor peasants,
unite with the middle peasants, isolate the rich peasants and overthrow
the landlords and wipe out feudalism.”(p39) Having put this political
line into practice the land was re-distributed “according to the number
of persons in the family and the quality of the soil.”(p39) Landlords
were treated thusly: their house, animals and tools were divided among
everyone. As for the rich peasants the policy was to let them keep
whatever they were able to work themselves. Because most peasants were
not used to having so much land and were accustomed to only working on
small individual plots much land and crops went to waste. After having
had time to accumulate and process experience and practice from this the
peasants of Half Moon were well on their way to conquering this new
social environment. Half Moon as so many other villages within Red Flag
became responsible for growing rice, wheat, corn and a variety of
vegetables, as well as raising chickens and pigs.(p29-30) On the
question of forced collectivization, two old peasants known to have
lived in the area of Red Flag prior to redistribution had “nothing to
say.” The author insinuates the peasants were afraid to speak out
against land distribution and collectivization for fear of reprisals
from the government. However, this insinuation is unfounded due to the
fact that (1) the peasants interviewed clearly voiced their support for
Red Flag commune and the CCP remembering the “bitter years” before
revolution, and (2) this interview was conducted in 1979 at a time that
collectivization and other socialist policies originally began under Mao
were being dismantled throughout China in favor of for-profit
enterprise.
Education in the Peoples Republic
Education in the area of Half Moon Village lept from “fairly small”
between the decade of the 1950s to the early 1970s when it then spiked
to over 90 percent by 1979.(p91) These are surprising numbers for a
Third World country, yet it is only another impressive indicator that
only a country under socialist construction is truly serving the people.
In visiting some of Half Moon’s primary schools Professor Chance found
that even in 1979, three years after the capitalist roaders rise to
power, certain socialist values were still being upheld in China’s
education system even as others were being negated. One example of this
could be seen in how peasant children were imbued with a sense of
proletarian morality by being taken out of school and into the fields on
a daily basis so that they could watch their parents and neighbors work.
Children would also be put to work alongside the village engaging in
light duty. The children’s work consisted of “husking small ears of corn
left behind by their parents… Such activities not only instilled in the
student the value of hard work, but also emphasized the importance of
being thrifty with what one produced.”(p93)
In another example, the author describes how individualism was still
being struggled against at the basic level of education:
“Students continually learned proper behavior from teachers, parents,
textbooks, radio, newspapers and television. In all these instances they
were encouraged to help each other, care for each other and take each
other’s happiness as their own. In contrast activities that caused
embarrassment or remarks that emphasized a negative attribute were
discouraged. Envision for example, a Chinese child’s participation in a
game like musical chairs. In an American school such a game encourages
children to be competitive and to look out for themselves. But to young
Chinese, the negative aspect was much more noticeable. That is, losers
become objects of attention because they had lost their place – and
therefore ‘face.’ In China, winning was fun too. But it should not be
achieved at the expense of causing someone embarrassment. In all kinds
of daily activity, including study as well as games, Chinese children
were regularly reminded that they must work hard and be sensitive to the
needs of others for only through such effort would their own lives
become truly meaningful…”(p94)
Even groups like China’s Young Pioneers, a group similar to the Boy
Scouts, taught their members to engage in pro-social activities such as
cleaning streets, assisting the elderly and aiding teachers as opposed
to the leisure activities which the Boy Scout movement largely concerns
itself within the United $tates.
Of course, not everyone in Half Moon was of the same mind politically.
One school administrator spoke ill of education in China during the
Great Proletarian Revolution (GPCR):
“Education is improving now… Before (meaning during the decade of the
Cultural Revolution) the children had no discipline. They didn’t behave
properly and couldn’t learn anything. Now that is all changed. We have
ten rules and regulations for behavior, and they have settled down. Now
they are learning very well.”(p97)
As previously stated, it is logical that this school administrator would
consider educational policies a disaster during the GPCR quite simply
because his own power and prestige were challenged and negated by
revolutionary students. In addition the author also states:
“Both primary and secondary education had expanded significantly
throughout the commune by the early 1970s. Much of this activity,
closely linked to the educational policies of the Cultural Revolution,
emphasized the importance of utilizing local initiative. And indeed many
villages had established new primary (and junior middle) schools by
using local people and urban-trained”educated youth” to staff them.
Wages for these new teachers were largely paid by the villagers
themselves, through brigade-based work points. To obtain additional
teachers for the new facilities, villages had reduced the earlier system
of six-year primary schools to five years – justification for the step
being summed up in the slogan “less but better.”
“This dramatic educational effort put forward during the Cultural
Revolution brought the benefits of expanded primary and secondary
education to many commune youth – a real achievement, given the large
increase in population between 1950 and the 1970s. Yet it did so at the
expense of improving educational quality. The local primary school
director was obviously identifying with the quality side of this
equation.”(p98)
Indeed, no period in the hystory of revolutionary China is more despised
or has been more besmirched by the enemy classes as that of the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution. During the GPCR the bourgeoisie
witnessed how the masses armed with Maoist philosophy opened up a new
offensive against traitorous, revisionist and bureaucratic elements
within the CCP itself, and attempts at the restoration of capitalism.
This new offensive took the form of criticisms of bourgeois morals,
values and ideals. Though seemingly innocent from a first worldist
perspective such as our own, if left unchallenged within socialist
society these morals, values and ideals become like a virus or disease
in the body of socialism. When left untreated they will fester and wreak
havoc on their socialist host, interrupting normal function with the
very real potential to cause death.
Beginning in 1966 all established facets of life were forced to justify
their existence within the new society or risk being relegated to the
museum of antiquities. No more would an “experts in command” line be
tolerated, in Chinese society whether in enterprise or education. No
more would patriarchal rule be considered the natural order of things.
Confucianism outside the temple of worship would be forced to contend
with scientific method – all reactionary cultural products would be
grappled with, criticized and torn asunder. In their place proletarian
morality would be erected both as a guide and bulwark to the cause of
socialism and the masses.
Later, on pg99 Norman Chance talks about how middle school students
began to drop out and how most cases were related in one way or another
to economic problems in the countryside. Chance explains that although
“80% of all primary school graduates in the commune began middle school
less than 30% finished. Of those who did, almost none entered higher
education.” Both the “failing” grades and new economic downturn can
probably be linked to the restoration of capitalism.
Portrait of An Educated Youth
In socialist China education went beyond the enclosure of the classroom,
as society as a whole was treated as a laboratory where people could
discuss, debate, experiment and learn from others, not just experts in
command. An excellent example of this could be seen in the “sent down
educated youth” program which started in the mid 1950s but increased
from the early 1960s to 1966 and then “dramatically from 1968-1976
before finally being concluded in late 1979” (p101). During the Cultural
Revolution in times of intense political struggle in the country school
was suspended so that students could struggle over the issues of the day
and have a say in which direction China would go. This is more than can
be said of the Amerikan public school system where rote memorization is
popularized and children are expected to parrot what they heard and read
and punished for leaving school to challenge government policies.
In this section we are introduced to Zhang Yanzi, a young tractor driver
in Red Flag who chose to speak to Chance about her experience in the
“Going to the Countryside and Settling Down with the Peasants” campaign.
Zhang Yanzi recounted how after graduating from middle school she
volunteered to go live with the peasants working first at a state farm
as an agricultural worker then as a primary school teacher. She was only
16 years old when she took up a teaching position. She admitted to
having her reservations about teaching because her parents were school
teachers in Beijing and had been criticized by the masses during the
Cultural Revolution.(p103) After requesting to be transferred from her
teaching position, she ended up working with livestock and later
attained a position as a cook.(p103) Zhang finally became a tractor
driver in 1976 and was transferred to Red Flag in 1977.(p103)
She spoke about how initially there was great unity between the peasants
and the sent down educated youth. This unity however soon began to
dissolve after what Zhang describes as “political factionalism” began to
develop amongst the older cadre in the commune. Another problem Zhang
brought up was that there wasn’t enough concern given to the educated
youths’ political development.(p104) It seems that much of what Zhang
speaks about was happening in post-Mao China (1977) and it’s somewhat
hard to decipher what experiences happened when. For instance, on page
104 she speaks about how enthused at first she was about choosing to go
work and live with the peasants in 1966. She speaks about how it was all
done on a volunteer basis:
“In the beginning, no pressure was put on anyone to go. It was all on a
volunteer basis. Each individual had to pass the ‘Three OKs.’ One was
from the actual student, one from the family, and one from the school.
If there was any disagreement, then the person wouldn’t go. Even if you
hesitated just before climbing on the train you could stay. But we
didn’t do that. We were all very enthusiastic.”(p103-104)
In the next two paragraphs however Zhang speaks about how “later the
policy was changed” and that families with more than “three educated
children had to send two of them to the countryside” and if they didn’t
then the parents would be forced to attend study groups and if the
parents still didn’t agree then the “neighborhood committees would come
out to the street and beat big gongs, hang up ‘big character posters,’
and use other propaganda to persuade you to let your children go.”
Because the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was exactly that, a
revolution in culture, it meant that the masses for the first time
anywhere in hystory were given free reign to not only grapple and
struggle with ideas but to engage in open debate publicly and at the
grassroots level without government interference. This is the true
meaning of democracy – and so long as violence wasn’t used the masses
were left to reach their own conclusions and express themselves freely.
It is as Lin Bao correctly stated. “…the mass revolutionary movement is
naturally correct; for among the masses, right and left wing
deviationist groups may exist, but the main current of the mass movement
always corresponds to the development of that society involved and is
always correct.”(4)
Critics of the Cultural Revolution, in particular, intellectuals like to
portray the GPCR as some kind of punishment for the petty-bourgeois
classes in which they were made to endure mental and physical torture at
the hands of the Communist Party and hateful peasants. But Zhang who
originally lived in Beijing and whose parents were both teachers, paints
a much different picture. Admittedly enough, Zhang has her own
disagreements with various CCP policies during and after the Cultural
Revolution but commune living was not one of them:
“We all ate together in the public dining halls, with some of the older
workers. Even though conditions were bad (speaking of the living
conditions of the peasants and the weather) they took pretty good care
of us, giving us easier jobs and better housing.”(p104)
In that same paragraph Zhang also says that in fact it was the sent down
youth who, after a while, began to talk down to and abuse the peasants
calling them “country bumpkins,” “dirty” and “uncultured.” She also says
that in “units where there were few educated youth, the work was done
better, but where they were the majority, the problems became severe.”
The most severe problem to occur at Red Flag during the time Zhang
reflects on is an instance in which a corrupt high ranking cadre was
discovered to be molesting young girls. This official was said to be
virtually untouchable within Red Flag, until the People’s Liberation
Army caught wind of these abuses, entered the commune, began an
investigation, arrested the official and subsequently executed him.
Afterward the situation got better. (p104-105)
All in all, Zhang’s biggest criticism of the GPCR is that there could’ve
been more mechanization in Red Flag and that because of the lack thereof
much of the commune’s potential in agriculture went to waste. She
thought that the sent down educated youth program was sound because it
“enabled them (urban youth) to learn more about the good qualities of
the peasants and also some production skills.”(p105) Zhang also
addresses the bureaucracy. This will however be addressed in the
upcoming sections.
Family Relations
In this portion of the book the author focuses on how collectivization
and land reform affected the family structure and the patriarchy in Half
Moon Village. From control over the fields, tools and animals to
wimmin’s empowerment both in the home and the local and central
government.
According to the author the focus of this attack in Red Flag was on
“Feudal backward patriarchal thinking.”(p130) Although the GPCR was the
most progressive social event in world hystory we should not be mistaken
to think that the Cultural Revolution simply went on unimpeded.
From a mother-in-law’s perceived rule in the family to the bureaucratic
apparatus there were a variety of social forces opposed to true
revolutionary change, even in Red Flag.
The Changing Status of Women
Before the start of the GPCR wimmin’s existence in rural China was
largely devoted to serving the male’s side of the family according to
what was known as the “three obediences and four virtues.” These
required a woman to first follow the lead of her father, then her
husbands, and on her husband’s death, her son, and to be “virtuous in
morality, proper speech, modesty and diligent work.”(p134)
One peasant womyn recounts her experience to the author explaining how
prior to the revolution she was given away as a child bride, beaten,
starved and made to engage in forced labor at the hands of her husband
and her husband’s family. After 1949 however the Communist Party began
the arduous task of doing away with the old system thru the enactment of
wimmin’s rights in a country where wimmin were by and large still
considered property according to the old kinship system. Beginning with
the Marriage Law of 1950, which required free choice in marriage by both
partners, guaranteed monogamy, and establishing the right of women to
work, and obtain a divorce without necessarily losing their children.
This law when combined with the Land Reform Movement Act, which gave
women the right to own land in their own name, did much to challenge the
most repressive features of the old family system.(p137)
Social relations in Red Flag during the 1950s, 60s and 70s reveal a
complex effort by the CP to simultaneously transform China economically
and liberate wimmin. Because capitalism developed under congealed
patriarchal social conditions, and ideology arises out of the
superstructure, this means that even in a socialist society the ideology
of the oppressor does not dissipate overnight. Rather, a cultural
revolution must be set into effect so that the masses and society as a
whole can learn to struggle against backward, reactionary and oppressive
thinking. Therefore it should not be surprising to find out that when
wimmin first attempted to assert their rights in the new society there
were some who did not approve and attempted to put wimmin “back in their
place.” To some, especially idealists, this will seem difficult to
understand, but revolution is never easy and at root requires
scientifically guided struggle at all levels of society. And so to many
Western academics and so-called “observers” it would’ve seemed that
wimmin’s rights were being subsumed into the wider socialist (and male
dominated) framework. But before we get too discouraged with China’s
inability to meet our idealistic standards, we should remember that
revolutionary struggle always requires determining and working to
resolve the principal contradiction, to which all other contradictions
become temporarily relegated. This is different than subsuming which
requires the glossing over of contradictions or cooptation. It would
therefore seem that this is also how the Communist Party saw it.
Therefore they could enact land reform, marriage laws and divorce laws
which recognized wimmin’s democratic rights, but they also had to be
aware of the fact that land reform, agriculture and industry were of the
highest priority during this period. If China was unable to develop its
productive forces in conjunction with changing social relations then all
would be lost. Yes land reform was enacted, and yes wimmin were finally
given democratic and bourgeois liberal rights which in semi-feudalist
society were revolutionary. But socialist revolution proceeds in stages
and it is ultra-left to believe that the patriarchy would not put up a
fight and that some concessions would not have to temporarily be made.
Ultimately this is why cultural revolution is necessary, to criticize
and build public opinion against the old ruling class in preparation for
the following stage of revolution.
Even with such reactionary ideas still being propagated wimmin’s
conditions were elevated exponentially. Testament to this being the fact
that in 1978, 3,037 young wimmin students were enrolled in junior middle
school in Red Flag compared to 3,202 males, while 1,035 wimmin were
enrolled in senior middle school compared to 859 males in Red
Flag.(p101) “In 1977, there had been six women members, out of a village
total of fifteen members, of whom one had been the party
secretary.”(p44) In addition, let us not forget Jiang Qing, great
revolutionary leader who helped spark the GPCR, one of the most
influential and powerful people in China; neither should we forget the
countless other revolutionary wimmin of China who without their
participation in revolutionary struggle China’s liberation would not
have been possible. With the restoration of capitalism however, most of
the progress made in the arena of wimmin’s rights were reversed or
negated with the exception of some democratic rights which mostly the
petty-bourgeoisie and the bourgeois classes who reside in the urban
centers are still privy to. China’s countryside however has seen a
resurgence in female slavery since the restoration of capitalism.(5)
Among other reversals in socialism which the author documents is a
perversion of China’s barefoot doctor’s program which the social
fascists used to depopulate the masses. Here the author speaks about how
barefoot doctors and wimmin’s federations “introduced system of material
incentives to reduce births, pregnant Half Moon peasant women at that
time could receive five yuan in cash and have several days off from work
if they agreed to abort their unborn child. Counseling women on such
matters was the responsibility of the local women’s federation.
Technical medical questions were handled by barefoot doctors in
consultation with the federation.”(p142)
“Becoming Rich is Fine” and A Decade of Change
These are the concluding chapters in China’s Urban Villagers and
they are very interesting as well as disappointing in the fact that they
really document China’s about face in building socialism. Perhaps they
can be both summed up in Xiao Cai’s (a young wimmin in charge of foreign
affairs at Red Flag) statement to professor Chance: “you know, it’s all
right to become rich… I mean that individuals and families can work hard
for their own benefit. If they make money at it, that’s fine. They won’t
be criticized any more for being selfish.”(p151)
Emphasis on getting rich came thru the “Four Modernizations” campaign
which emphasized developing the productive forces while negating
production relations in the economy and social relations in society. In
popularizing this campaign the revisionists stated that “collective
effort must be linked to individual initiative” and that the GPCR “was
an appalling disaster.”(p152) These criticisms expressed the class
outlook of the bourgeoisie in the party and their attempts to convince
the broad masses that “the political extremism of the Cultural
Revolution” offered a “simplistic notion of capitalism” and “unfairly
labeled people as capitalist roaders.”(p152) The outcome being “a large
decrease in individual and household sideline activities, to the
detriment of China’s overall economic development.”(p152)
In reality however, nothing could be further from the truth. While the
Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were
not without their mistakes, both the GLF and GPCR marked profound shifts
in both the development of socialism as well as the overall development
of the humyn social relations not seen since the development of classes
themselves. Furthermore, the GLF and GPCR offered the masses insight
into the unraveling of contradictions on a hystoric level. Thru
participation in the Great Leap the masses learned what it was to engage
in industrial production as well as how to innovate traditional farming
techniques by utilizing collective effort in combination with
proletarian thinking.(3) By their participation in the GPCR the
revolutionary masses learned what it was to both gain unprecedented
insight into the advance towards communism and the unraveling of
contradictions prevalent in socialist society. Thru this experimentation
the masses contributed not only to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the
science of revolution, but to the development of rational knowledge as
well.
Other reversals in socialism in Red Flag were made apparent when
officials in Beijing issued an order to China’s commune to
“de-collectivize” the land and privatize most plots. Opposition to this
privatization was fairly strong in Red Flag even though its residents
weren’t as politically educated as others, they still clung to the
memory of the hardships common in the countryside before the revolution.
In particular they were well aware that it was only thru collective
strength and revolutionary leadership that they were able to overcome
such difficulties. Thus, they began to openly fear class polarization as
they rightly began to recognize that some peoples “rice bowls” had
gotten bigger than others. Especially when it came to party officials.
As time went on, many in Red Flag began to get a new understanding of
what Mao spoke about before his death concerning the revisionists and
the return to capitalism.
By the mid-1980s exploitation in China had returned full-force and
no-one could deny or claim ignorance to what was happening except for
perhaps the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. As a part of the
so-called “responsibility system” initiated under the traitor Deng
Xiaoping “separate households and even individuals, could contract with
production teams and brigades to produce their grain, vegetables, and
other agricultural goods on specific plots of brigade land divided up
for that purpose.”(p161) The inevitable result of all this was that
migrant peasant workers began to be sought out to work Half Moon’s
individually owned plots. The result? Deplorable oppressive conditions
for hundreds of thousands of peasants from poorer regions of China who
began arriving in Beijing’s agricultural suburbs:
“It looks like a prison labor camp to me” commented one visitor on
seeing Half Moon’s migrant worker dormitories “After spending all day in
the fields these poor peasants return to their dorms in the evening only
to be doled out a bare minimum of food – lots of grains but not many
vegetables. Once the harvest is over, they are paid a small wage by the
manager and then head back to Henan, Hebei, or whatever province they
came from. It’s highly exploitative.”(p166)
Due to a return to capitalism by 1985, China was again forced to import
grain, something unheard of since the natural catastrophes that occurred
towards the end of the Great Leap Forward. During this time corrupt
party officials’ greed reached new heights as they enriched themselves
at the expense of the masses thru their manipulation of the national
economy and exploitation of workers and peasants thru their access and
control of the means of production. Some of the frustration of the
people was captured in an interview of a party member by professor
Chance in 1988. Although the quote is much too lengthy to feature here
the party member was very critical of the capitalist roaders. This is
part of what he had to say:
“Some people feel the nature of the party and the state has changed. The
change first appeared in the late 1960s and 1970s when the power and
authority, rather than representing the interests of the people came to
represent those in power. This process took some time to unfold. But now
it is quite clear what Mao meant when he warned us about the danger of
capitalist roaders…. You don’t know how hard it was for us to figure out
what was going on. Mao tried time and time again to weed out the
capitalist roaders, but still he failed. Now people don’t know what to
do…. Since Mao came along many years ago and saved China from the mess
it was in, someone else will come along someday and save us from the
mess we are in today…”(p173)
In fact, contrary to what this “Communist” Party member has to say, many
of the problems with the bourgeoisie in the party first surfaced during
the Great Leap forward 1958-1961 and were illuminated for us by Mao and
his followers prior to the Cultural Revolution. In fact, during the
Great Leap Forward political struggles and factionalism were already
taking place in China’s factories and industrial centers between those
wishing to keep expert-in-command and those wanting the masses to take
the lead in production. Furthermore, this party member is in error when
he places Mao as a great individual whose responsibility it was to save
China. Yes Mao was a great revolutionary leader, but he would’ve been
the first to point out that the masses were responsible for controlling
their own destiny. Afterall this is why the GPCR was initiated.
The student movement at Tiananmen Square is also addressed in which the
author chronicles the events leading up to the political repression and
massacre of the students. The demands of the protesters ranged from a
return to socialism to freedom of the press and a desire to turn to
Western style capitalism and democracy. The revisionist CCP, fearing an
uprising by the masses, ordered the People’s Liberation Army to fire on
the protesters. On 3 June 1989, 8,000 troops, tanks and armored
personnel carriers entered the outskirts of Tienanmen and began firing
on protesters and city residents alike. Discussion in Half Moon over the
protests and political repression and Tiananmen brought mixed reviews.
“Based on their past knowledge and experience, most villagers found it
inconceivable that the PLA would fire on the protesters. Even during the
height of the Cultural Revolution, the army had gone unarmed into the
colleges and universities, where the worst fighting had occurred. But
when several factory workers reported that the army had fired on crowds
at street corners, the tenor of the conversation began to change.”(p182)
Close enough to Beijing to have participated in the rebellion (and
indeed some Red Flag students and other villagers did participate), Half
Moon residents were brought under investigation by authorities. Most
were eventually cleared.
In short, contradictions in China since the return of capitalism have
once again created the conditions for a new revolutionary upsurge. With
China’s economic emulation of the so-called “economic miracles” of the
South-East: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong (also knowns as
the “Four Tigers” or the “Four Dragons”) contradictions in China have
once again created the conditions for a new revolutionary upsurge. In
relation to this point the author ends this book with the following:
“Implicit in this proposal is the assumption that by emphasizing
privatization and a market driven economy, China too can achieve a
similar prosperity. However, those four nations that were able to break
out of Third World poverty were small, were on the Asian periphery, and
were the beneficiaries of two large Asian wars financed by America.
There is little reason to assume that a market-driven economic system
will enable China to repeat the process. Much more probable is a return
to a neo-colonial status with small islands of prosperity and corruption
on the coasts and with stagnation in the hinterland – a sure formula for
future revolutionary upheavals.”(p187)
This will be my full account of my evolvement with the organizing of
peace between all prisoners, be they independent citizens of this yard
or members of lumpen groups or organizations. Many prisoners have been
involved in the processes that will be disclosed, to ensure their safety
their names won’t be mentioned in this report. All circumstances are
well known by the prisoner population on this yard (C yard @ Tehachapi)
and can therefore be verified easily by asking and requesting anyone who
receives ULK on this yard. Before starting I want to give shouts
out to
United
Front for Peace in Prisons (UFPP), because I hold your principles
and am inspired by your scientific methods. As a 5%er I give all due
respects to the teachings of the
Nation of Gods and
Earths (NGE) for my Free dome and clear sight which allows me to
live in a non-fictional reality, being awakened to the True Self which
is righteousness without fear. Also I would like to thank ULK and
MIM(Prisons) for
providing revolutionary education for free, which has taught me how to
lead and helped me realize that I am a socialist with a revolutionary
conscience. Thank all the prisoners here at California Correctional
Institution (CCI) who’s assisted me [nicknames omitted], Tha Numbers,
Tha Old Black Vanguard and a huge part of the New Afrikans and Chican@s.
I arrived here at CCI in mid-2016. Upon my arrival I introduced myself
as a member of the NGE. I met several New Afrikans that were very
negative about the program here, C.O. culture, prisoner treatment and a
myriad of other complexities dealing with conflicts among prisoners. The
first persyn I came to know from a non-fictional reality is a member of
one of the largest street organizations in North America. Our first
conversations would become the foundation and conduit for many actions
that followed. His assessment of the yard has proven to be invaluable,
though bleak when he spoke of the mental deadness of our people; meaning
the Black prison population on the yard. Blind, deaf and dumb with no
concept of organization or unity. This comrade is indispensable to the
prosperity, growth, and development of this yard’s prisoner on just
about every level. His advice is most valuable now as ever.
To begin to address these conditions, I initiated the weekly services
for everyone on the yard who wants to attend as a place of unity,
education and true identity resurrection. From proposal to acceptance it
took one month, then from acceptance to being physically scheduled it
took three more weeks ending when we had the first NGE service in
November 2016.
At the same time this was being developed, most people were saying this
will never be accepted by the administration on this yard. Doubters
included prisoners, as well as Captains, Chaplains and Correctional
Officers. I persynally began circulating my verbal disapproval of
two-on-one violence or group violence against one person. Simply stating
these actions won’t be tolerated when acted out against New Afrikans by
other racial groups nor by other New Afrikans on New Afrikan prisoners
nor member of other races who are also prisoners regardless of charges
and convictions issued by the unlawful court system. By my understanding
this position is backed by the BPP’s 10 point program demand #8.(1) This
has become the new norm through actions I will now describe.
On a day at the ass end of September 2016, at the morning yard for the
lower tier, I noticed a dichotomy between a group of Aztlán known as the
Number and an elder from the New Afrikans. Three members of the Number
appeared to be attempting to jump physically this unknown elderly New
Afrikan when his cellie physically assisted him ending the exchange of
blows by walking away and descending to the bottom of the yard. All this
happened in the direct view of the yard Correction Officers without any
response. After my initial investigation of the occurrence turned little
to no information I migrated to the bottom of the yard to build and
better understand what I had just witnessed. Upon speaking to a New
Afrikan soldier who we shall call Ty, me and him decided to get to the
bottom of this matter. The elder explained that the Number owed him and
upon confrontation about the debt verbally refused to pay. That is when
the elderly New Afrikan swung his fist, hitting the debtor in the jaw,
causing 3 members of the Number lumpen group to engage him in physical
battle. After the knowledge, me and Ty decided to go and confront the
Numbers, to issue a formal notice that the jumping of any New Afrikan
would no longer be accepted and if we cannot have an agreement we would
go to war at that moment. However, due to the magnetic energy all the
New Afrikans on the yard mobilized with unity and harmoniously walked as
one to the Numbers table at which time the aforementioned decree was
stated to the Numbers. They decided peace was best for the yard at that
moment and minutes later came assuring the elderly New Afrikan he would
receive what he was owed. They apologized for the acts of aggression and
the miscommunication.
During this time the Correctional Officers stayed in their yard position
but many prisoners reported hearing them radio the tower to shoot Blacks
if violence was to occur. Many New Afrikans felt the power of unity that
day and began a positive dialogue due to being empowered by the unity of
that event. That day also respectful communication between New Afrikans
and Numbers were established including beginning dialogue between white
nationals of two different lumpen groups in days to follow, which opened
up the door for me to begin to share the
principles
of the UFPP with both major groups. The NGE membership grew to 23
prisoners of a racially diverse demographic, mostly New Afrikan but
Aztláns and YT’s joined too. I shared white national books out of my
collection with the white nation lumpen group member and believed we had
strong lines of communication.
Over a month later, in November 2016, an issue was made known to me
about an alleged thief of a radio supposedly by a New Afrikan who had a
history of mischief named KC. When word got to me I was told the Aztláns
were planning to jump the New Afrikan, after sharing this with my
comrade it was decided that we would investigate in order to keep the
peace. While playing basketball someone had taken the radio off of the
sidelines where items had been sat inside owners’ shirts. My comrade
believed KC to be the culprit, which he denied. Voluntarily, all the New
Afrikans stripped down to their boxers proving they didn’t have the
property in question, lastly and with little fuss KC stripped proving he
didn’t have it. Then all the Aztláns likewise stripped proving they
didn’t have it either. The victim still felt like KC was guilty and
wanted to fight. KC reluctantly obliged and whipped him and peace was
better established stating New Afrikans won’t turn down no battle if
requested but peace is desired.
Almost a month later a white national, who I believed to be solid used
our growing relationship to lure KC away from myself, then attacked him
with a huge stone in a pillow case when his back was turned. Needless to
say his instant karma manifested, KC was able to thwart this plot
against himself and turn the tide with a huge victory over this extreme
form of physical oppression and violent aggression. In days to follow
white national politics seemed to attempt to establish itself, with
whites telling Blacks they could not use pull up bars near their table.
On hearing this I spoke with their known leaders and we all decided to
end all attempts at making C yard a racialized environment and instead
work together on a proposal to help create this yard into an honor yard.
Vowing to do away with weapon usage and to better establish open lines
of communication in order to solve interracial issues without violence.
There was an issue which touched home that I must share with you now.
One of the persyns I most respect was accused of a savage crime against
his celly. At the time I was allowing him to use my TV and a few CDs as
was two other comrades. Upon his arrest people began circulating rumors
of his alleged guilt. Due to his conduct and our developed closeness I
persynally went to those prophecizing against him and told them to stop
and desist. While he was being investigated a white porter came into
blame for what was by then deemed missing property, that the porter had
access to and had allegedly stolen. This was based on the fact that
neither my TV nor all the CDs and a CD player made it to R&R. He was
blamed and pressured to pay for two of the missing CDs by someone of
influence. During this time I found out that the Building Officer had on
his own taken my TV out of this persyn’s property before it even left
the building along with the CD player. I was asked to protect the white
porter by one of the members of the original Black prisoners vanguard
party, which I agreed to. Then the Correctional Officer returned my TV
after keepin it almost two weeks, which is not just unfair but it is
unlawful and burglary by definition. I didn’t know if the white porter
was guilty so I didn’t charge him for my CDs knowing that the comrade
was innocent and would be returning. Under threat and fear the white
porter paid a 16oz jar of coffee to the owner of two missing CDs.
Well, I was right about the porter being innocent and the comrade
because when he came back the CDs were in his property which he returned
to their owners. The porter got his coffee back and all the false
prophets learned a valuable lesson and some even apologized for smutting
the comrade.
Now I have a monthly unity walk at yard with an all inclusive New
Afrikan peaceful unity movement and I will have my first banquet in
February 2017, of which all the leaders of the different lumpen
organizations have been invited to attend. I will read UFFP principles
at that time and speak on United Prisoners (UP) its benefits and how
important it is to take the initiative in the Change Movement.
Today we Raza and Natives/others kicked off the new year by exercising
unity here in C Yard by not going to work or education at work center
(head quarters) of this yard. Other factions decided not to participate
because they care too much about the 5-10¢ paying job they currently
have (Lumpen Aristocracy?).
This campaign we currently put into motion is to stop the form of
harassment these pigs use thru daily body searches, i.e. x-ray body
scan, strip search, etc. before we go to school/work and before we
leave. We know that we can stop at least the x-ray scan from taking
place for we will continue to refuse the x-ray scan and therefore
work/education. This is the recent flow here.
Persynally I believe that we should shut down all movement but still go
to Yard, programs and accept our food. Just make the pigs do all the
work. That is the only way to make these pigs fly. Even then, these
forms of campaigns are at a beginner step and might not be fully
successful. We should still engage and get a feel of the opposition. The
only way we know how to deal with an opposition is thru the motion of
our resistance. It is then that we’ll know what we’re up against and to
what extent they’ll go. Not only this but we learn on how to combat the
beast. New views and forms of tactics come from this. It is what we call
the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.
Rogue One is the backstory behind the very first episode of Star
Wars ever produced (which is now chronologically number 4 in the
unendingly profitable Star Wars series of movies). In this movie we
learn how the rebel alliance managed to get a copy of the blueprints for
the Death Star, a critical piece of information used to destroy that
weapon. This movie is an impressive example of how well-funded elements
of capitalist culture can spend millions of dollars in order to make a
profit off of entertainment: the estimated budget was $200,000,000.
Imagine what could have been done with those resources in a system
guided by peoples’ need instead of profit.
For this money we get a story that has some progressive elements but
also many questionable and reactionary messages. Rogue One is
about the rebel alliance’s fight against the Empire. This could be a
great anti-imperialist analogy. And there are some solid themes of
revolutionary sacrifice and the oppressed coming together to fight a
common enemy in a united front. But in the end it is individualism that
wins, as of course that makes for a more exciting story in our culture.
This episode is a fairly satisfactory effort to stitch together episode
3 and episode 4, and provides us with a better explanation for why the
Death Star could be completely destroyed with one good shot. The
saboteur behind this weakness gives us one of the many examples of
revolutionary sacrifice in this movie. It also offers an example of how
resistance is possible from someone who is forced into a situation where
there seems to be no resistance. While this character is depicted as
having unique skills, eir course of action serves as a good example of
the existentialist axiom that we always have a choice. This may serve as
inspiration for those in the imperialist countries surrounded by class
enemies, or those in isolation cells with no contact with the outside
world but occasional letters.
While revolutionary sacrifice is a strong theme with many characters in
the Rebellion, this message is not inherently anti-imperialist as it
will likely reinforce those fighting for U.$. empire who believe what
they are doing is good. The Empire in the movie, rather than being an
example of the evils of imperialism, continues to come across as a
caricature of what Amerika thinks of communism. Everyone wears the same
uniform and is forced to work for the military dominance of the world
under the leadership of one egotistical leader. But for those with a
revolutionary mindset, we can pretend this was meant to represent the
imperialist empire, and root for the Rebellion and honor their
sacrifices.
There is a group that resembles Arab militants who have taken up focoism
against the Empire, and who the Rebel Alliance grudgingly wants to work
with. In some ways this is better than the average portrayal of Arab
peoples in Hollywood movies, where they are often just the terrorists.
But in this case they come across as not smart enough to participate in
a united battle, just doing what their leader directs, in random focoist
attacks. Still a rather stereotypical picture.
The Alliance itself appears to be a united front of various species from
around the universe who are working together to defeat the Empire. This
could be seen to parallel the united front of oppressed nations that
will be necessary to take down U.$. imperialism. In humyn history we
have strong examples of united fronts within nations, such as China. But
the multinational united front and the joint dictatorship of the
proletariat that will likely be necessary after defeating U.$.
imperialism are things that we have little experience with. Fred
Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition in Chicago was an early form of such a
united front, but it was repressed before an anti-imperialist war could
emerge.
The movie uses this united front to promote ultra-leftism and
individualist acts of desperation. When they get bogged down in fighting
over whether or not they should take military action or run and hide, a
small group of fighters take independent action because they don’t know
anything but war. These are the brave heroes of the movie. The main
disagreement within the united front was over whether or not it was
possible to win in a fight against the Death Star. This debate over
tactics could have been a good lesson in struggle and unity, perhaps
greater gathering of information and a testing of various tactics to
learn from practice. Instead there was a short verbal fight and then a
decision that no action could be taken because of all the disagreement,
portraying the united front as futile.
Rogue One did feature more female characters than the average
Hollywood movie, but the main characters were born into their roles,
rather than rising up to take positions out of conviction and hard work.
While the lead male characters overcame great hardship, or fought
against persynal circumstances, to take up the rebel struggle. And still
the vast majority of the characters seen in the movie are male, an odd
feature for a society so far in the future. Clearly the patriarchy still
dominates in Star Wars.
Star Wars movies all feature reference to “The Force” to greater or
lesser degrees. In this storyline The Force is basically turned into a
religion, practiced only by one Asian man who blindly guards the temple
(literally, he is blind). This man’s blind faith (it’s not very subtle)
becomes an important part of the rebel fight. And at one point this
faith saves the day, again promoting a sort of ultra-leftism.
With all of these failings, MIM(Prisons) can’t recommend Rogue
One for anything more than critical analysis.
I’m once again checking in from California Correctional Institution
(CCI). In 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale planted the seeds of the
Black Liberation movement in Oakland. The seeds they planted rapidly
spread to the rest of the United States and now years later we’re
fighting for the same things as the Panthers.
We still follow the same theme of Black nationalism, armed militancy,
intercommunalism, and answering the call to join the revolutionary
struggle. Even today, I can still see and hear the voices of comrades
such as Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Gwen Fontaine,
Fredrika Newton and Lil Bobby Hutton; their teachings, thoughts,
practices. And they still resonate with significance and power through
the pages of books.
The spirit of the Panthers have been spread so deep into the roots of
Black life and into the fabric of every African Community in America,
that it’s just natural for us to want to stand up and fight when we hear
the call. In our homes, schools, hoods, jails, and prisons. That’s the
revolutionary legacy, and the spirit these comrades planted in us.
This yard we’re on is considered an Ad-Seg kick out yard. But in our
efforts to educate the people we’ve begun to create something better.
This yard is becoming a place where cadres are born. We have created
programmes that serve the people: we have political study groups, we
have a GED study group, in which we are helping comrades get their GEDs,
and we are helping individuals with their college classes as well.
I am very proud of the comrades on this facility of all nationalities.
Because we’re not just talking we’re doing, pushing hard for a truly
united front and serving the people. We have just submitted the
paperwork for a banquet. That will be used as a Unity Celebration, where
we will all meet and share our thoughts on the issues of today, and
share a little political knowledge with each other.
The only issue I see is that the room only holds fifty people, so not
all of the groups can fit in this room, so we’re planning to have
another on the yard the next day. We don’t want anyone left out. We are
here to serve the people, educate the people, and to help liberate the
people, all the people. My rules are if we focus on what we have in
common and less on our differences we’ll be able to learn better, who we
are, and what we’re about.
We all want the same things. We all have the same goals, and we all want
to create positive change in our world, and in our communities. A
community by way of definitions is a comprehensive collection of
institutions that serve the people who live there. CCI C-Facility is
where we are living right now. So this is the community we’re serving.
It is the duty of all revolutionaries to make the revolution. This is
obviously rule one. But this is a way of denouncing, in the context, all
the so-called revolutionaries who not only did not seek to make the
revolution, who managed secure income, talk the revolutionary shit, but
who torpedoed the efforts of the people to liberate themselves and that
must not be. As Huey said, revolutionary theory without practice ain’t
shit.
I randomly bumped into a homie who I had previously met a few years
back. We got to conversating and eventually got to swapping materials
(books, magazines) and we each offered to exchange a “political
newsletter.” It turned out that we were both referring to ULK;
each of us not knowing at the time that we were both corresponding with
MIM(Prisons) and we were talking about the exact same newsletter (ULK
52).
An interesting fact to note is that we were both able to overcome past
“beef” that we had against one another. Beef that had manifested in an
administrative segregation barracks during 2015 as a result of our
poor/squalid isolated living conditions. Our beef was evidence of the
negative side-effects that ramify into violence and verbal
insolence/disrespect/threats between captives, all being things
consequential of our long-term solitary confinement that is deliberately
facilitated by the pigs.
We both (me and this said comrade) peeped game and realized that the
police want us to have discord sown between us (captives in general, but
also specifically between me and this comrade) and I immediately took
personal measures to end the pettiness and hostilities –- for unity’s
sake. By squashing the trivial/frivolous “childsplay,” and setting aside
our pride (which has always been a real challenge for me), we wound up
developing a very strong unified bond and comradeship that is likely
going to carry on into the free world. We passed knowledge back and
forth, to fortify one another. I was stoked to be able to aid and assist
this comrade as much as possible.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Often Under Lock & Key is
censored by prison administrators for encouraging violence. We hope the
administrators are paying attention to this letter as it clearly
demonstrates what we’ve been saying all along: ULK actually
encourages peace!
…I plan to reach out to this girl I’m dating here in re politics. I will
start to feel her out on that topic tomorrow for the first time. She is
24 years old. I’m 31 years old, so I believe I can mold her. She is
naive and trusting. I will attempt to teach her once I feel her out.
Please write back and let me know what you think about this particular
matter.
MIM(Prisons) responds: Generally, we discourage recruiting
someone you’re dating. Particularly when this persyn has exhibited no
independent interest in anti-imperialism. We do agree with your
seemingly cautious approach of “feeling her out” first. It is a prudent
security tactic to not expose what political work you do to someone
you’re not sure about.
Next you say ey is younger, naive and trusting, and you imply that you
will take advantage of that. That is how you create resentment. And when
people resent people associated with the movement, the movement is put
at risk. This is very likely when romance is involved. That is the
number one reason not to mix dating with recruiting. People get confused
about motivations. Recruiting friends is a little less risky, but also
has this problem. It is true that the young are more open to
revolutionary politics, which might lead us to take up tactics like
leafleting at schools. Our approach should not be to take advantage of
the young, or wimmin in general, by using characteristics caused by the
gender oppression that they face. It should rather be to tap into the
righteous resentment they might have of that gender oppression so that
they throw off the negative characteristics that it has encouraged in
them, and become revolutionaries.
In more advanced situations it can go another way where comrades start
to question whether someone is hanging around because they’re dating a
comrade or because they’re down for the struggle themselves. So for the
individual and the collective it is better to be clear and scientific
about what one’s position is.
Recruiting should always be done based on a scientific explanation of
political line. Of course, subjectivity comes into play, and there’s
nothing wrong with packaging things so they will be more attractive to
the masses (i.e. form/language). However, there is something wrong with
manipulating people based on their subjectivity to take up politics for
reasons other than their support of those politics. This leads to
confusion, both politically and interpersynally. This is really a
strategic question when we say don’t use sex, flirtation or friendship
to recruit people. Our goal is to teach people to think scientifically
and create strong, scientific organizations.
This is not to say that most people in the mass movements will be
scientific thinkers won over by purely objective motivations. So there
are tactical questions of what language and images we use in order to
present our message to the masses in ways that they can relate to.
Wearing uniforms, having good music associated with our movement, or
having famous people recommend our work are all tactics that appeal to
peoples’ subjectivism in a way that is not manipulative of the
individual and therefore threatening the movement.
At least half of our readers are in prison. And even in university or
any smaller community, you will often find people you are already
friends with becoming interested in politics. Then it becomes a skill of
separating business from pleasure. Political disagreements should not
decide friendships and vice versa. A useful tactic to use in this
situation, if you feel there might be a conflict of interest or
confusion, is to pass a friend off to another comrade to be their
primary contact and recruiter. This gives the friend more independence
to explore politics on their own terms with less pressure from
implications that political agreement with you is a requirement for that
friendship.
One new comrade who was won over to our cause reported how another
prisoner dropped a ULK in eir lap on the way to a hearing and
said, “here, you’ll like this.” Many of our subscribers report finding
ULK in the dayroom. Both of these are examples of “free
dropping,” a technique to spread our ideas as far as possible to ensure
that all who are interested have the opportunity to be exposed to them.
Finding the right balance between casting a wide net, like free
dropping, and developing new cadre one-on-one is a tough tactical
question. MIM has always erred on the side of casting a wide net. This
is based in a strategic decision that building public opinion against
imperialism is more important in our conditions than building cadre
organizations. But we need people to do more than read ULK and
our website. Whether it’s supporting MIM(Prisons) projects or not, we
need people to step up for anti-imperialism to amplify that
anti-imperialist voice and to build independent institutions of the
oppressed. The oppressed are reaching out to us every day for help. We
need more comrades to step up and build the power necessary to provide
real solutions to their problems.
Tania La Guerrillera Y La Epopeya Suramericana Del Che (“Tania:
Undercover with Che Guevara in Bolivia” is the title of the English
translation) Ulises Estrada Ocean Press 2005
<P>Mention the name Che Guevara virtually anywhere in the world and images of Cuba, Fidel Castro and armed struggle come to mind. Travel to places like Cuba, Peru, Bolivia and Uruguay and say the name Che and another image comes to mind; that of Haydée Tamaia Bunke Bider, better known as "Tania the guerrilla", the only womyn to live, fight and die as part of Che Guevara's Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), National Liberation Army.</P><P>
The first time i came across the figure of Tania the guerrilla was in reading the book <I>Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life</I> by Jon Lee Anderson, which documents Che's extraordinary political life from childhood to his death. And while Jon Lee Anderson's book is unrivaled as far as political biographies goes, his emphasis was on Guevara, so his writing on Tania left much to be desired. In stark contrast, Ulises Estrada's present work casts much needed light on this figure little known here in the U.$.</P><P>
Tania the guerrilla was born Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider on 19 November 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Erich Bider, a German communist, and Nadia Bunke Bider, a Russian Jew (pg 157). The Bider's fled Nazi Germany in 1935 and settled in Buenos Aires, promptly joining the banned Argentine Communist Party (ACP) (pg 143). Nadia Bider recounts how Haydée was exposed to politics early on as the Biders hosted ACP meetings, hid weapons, stashed communist literature in their home and helped Jewish refugees (pg 162). Besides joining the ACP, Nadia and Erich also belonged to various anti-fascist organizations (pg 144).</P><P>
The Biders were to remain in Argentina for most of Haydée's young life and would not return to Germany until well after the Soviet Red Army smashed fascism there. Then in 1951, when Haydée was fourteen and after having spent two years in Uruguay, the Biders moved to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), also known as East Germany, part of the old Soviet bloc (pg 145). Haydée, having lived all her life in South America, did not want to leave her home and made her parents promise to let her return when she was older (pg 145).</P><P>
After arriving in the GDR, Haydée felt as if she'd experienced a "revelation" (pg 145). She immediately incorporated herself into political life. Having attended her first Free German Youth meeting, Haydée returned home with "great enthusiasm." According to Nadia, Haydée confirmed that the socialist system was superior to capitalism, because, among other things, she was allowed to speak freely and express herself politically (pg 145). No doubt that having lived in Argentina, a "democracy" where the communist party was banned and poverty and exploitation were rampant helped her make this materialist comparison.</P><P>
Apparently Haydée never forgot her beloved Argentina and, after having settled into German life, couldn't help but share with her new friends her preference for Argentinian folkloric music (pg 145). Like most girls raised in a capitalist democracy (Argentina, Uruguay), Haydée was socialized into dreaming of marriage and children. When she got older, however, even in adolescence, her priority was to one day join the revolutionary struggle in Latin America — this was to remain a focal point for Haydée (pg 145).</P><P>
At age 18, Haydée was admitted into the United German Socialist Party in the city of Stalinstadt. Due to Haydée's high level of political education and commitment, she was admitted into the UGSP after only a one-year waiting period instead of the mandatory two. This would be the only time in its hystory that this exception would be made (pg 258). Haydée first became familiar with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and the struggle in the Sierra Maestra while attending the 5th annual World Youth Festival in the Soviet Union in 1957 (pg 145). Shortly thereafter, she decided she had to go to Cuba and the next two years in Germany were spent organizing for the trip (pg 146). Haydée was confident that in Cuba she'd learn the revolutionary methods with which to liberate Argentina from the imperialist stranglehold (pg 146).</P><P>
Haydée's participation in Che Guevara's ELN started sometime after arriving in Cuba. She was chosen from among two other Argentinian wimmin living on the island to take part in "Operation Fantasm", which was the code name given to the mission to infiltrate the Bolivian government at the highest levels, as well as to initiate a guerrilla insurgency there (pg 20). At the time Haydée was interviewed for this position, she was working as a German translator for the Cuban Ministry of Education (pg 22). She was also involved with the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the World and the steering committee for the Woman's Federation (pg 22). In addition, Haydée also worked with the Rebel Youth Association, the Young Communist Union, she volunteered in various other serve-the-people type programs and was a member of Cuban Popular Defense Militia (pg 25). The author of this book, who was working in Cuba's Ministry of the Interior at the time and was vice-minister of "political intelligence" as well as one of the people to recruit Haydée for Operation Fantasm after Che himself recommended her, remembers how she swelled with pride whenever she wore her olive green uniform and service weapon (pg 25). Among other useful academic accomplishments of Haydée was her fluency in Spanish, English, German and French (pg 145). She'd also just received a Journalism Degree from Havan University and, at the time of her departure from the GDR, she'd just completed her first year as a philosophy major at Humboldt University in East Berlin (pg 25). It was also around this time Haydée met Carlos Fonseca, the founder and leader of the Nicaraguan Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN), to whom she'd confessed her wish to one day participate in the guerrilla struggle there (pg 25).</P><P>
After being vetted and being given the role in Operation Fantasm, Haydée began training for her position, which included cryptography and learning how to use various types of communications equipment (pg 27). Haydée was not given any specifics as to her mission other than the fact that she'd be functioning mostly as a technician, but under no circumstances should she rule out the possibility of actively participating in armed struggle (pg 28). At this point, Haydée asked that she'd be allowed to choose her own pseudonym for her mission. She chose the name "Tania" in honor of Zoja Kosmodemjanskaja, a Soviet womyn guerrilla who was killed after being captured and tortured by the Nazis during the German invasion of the USSR (pg 28). Days after her training was complete, she was taken to the Ministry of Industry, where she was met, much to her surprise, by Che himself (pg 28)! After congratulating her on her decision to take up this task, Che informed her that it was not too late to back out, as he understood the gravity of what they were asking her to do. Without hesitation, Tania stated that as a communist, it was her revolutionary duty to carry out whatever task necessary to liberate Latin America from imperialist exploitation (pg 29). Che then gave her his assessment of the political, economic, social and military situation in South America. He condemned Amerikan imperialism for siphoning the region's wealth and for its subordination of Latin American governments who they bought off with only a pittance of what they themselves stole. He then concluded his assessment by telling Tania that you couldn't be a revolutionary unless you were an anti-imperialist (pg 30). </P><P>
In preparing Tania for her mission, the author shared his views on guerrilla warfare with her. He said that according to his own experience in the Sierra Maestra, it would be very difficult for a guerrilla insurgency in the rural areas to maintain itself and succeed without the support of an organization in the city, especially during the insurgency's early states. Only after the revolutionary movement in the rural areas reached maturity could it then execute military and political operations with independence (pg 32). From a Maoist perspective, however, this political-military line is incorrect. Strategically speaking, it is completely backwards as the peasant masses make up the driving force of any revolutionary movement in agrarian societies. So before moving on with respect to this topic, let us be clear that as Maoists, we disagree with the Cuban political-military strategy known as Focoism. Focoism is defined as:</P><BLOCKQUOTE>
"The belief that small cells of armed revolutionaries can create the conditions for revolution through their actions. Demonstrated revolutionary victories, the success of the Foci, are supposed to lead the masses to revolution. Focoism often places great emphasis on armed struggle and the immediacy this brings to class warfare. Focoism is different from People's War in that it doesn't promote the mass line as part of guerrilla operations."
-From the <A HREF="https://www.prisoncensorship.info/glossary/">MIM(Prisons) Glossary</A>
So while as anti-imperialists we have great unity with the national
liberation movement that booted U.$. imperialism from Cuba, we also have
a variety of criticisms of Focoism, in particular the line being
espoused in this book. The line that says only the “urban population”
(industrial proletariat & left-wing sections of the
petty-bourgeoisie) in a Third World country are advanced enough to lead
the revolution is crypto-Trotskyist. The Focoists, while claiming to be
communist and claiming to follow in the footsteps of Marx, Engels,
Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, in fact prove themselves to disagree with the
philosophy of dialectical materialism in practice by attempting to prove
external forces as principal both in general and in particular. By
relegating the role of the masses as makers of hystory to mere
spectators in hystory, the Focoists display a lack of faith in the
masses and thereby uphold the bourgeoisie theory of hystory which they
also claim to struggle against in their individualist attempts to bring
about revolution. The Focoist political-military line upheld by the
author is therefore anti-Marxist, anti-dialectical materialist,
anti-communist and contradicts the entire hystorical process ever since
the emergence of classes and class struggle. It is no wonder that
Focoism has never succeeded in defeating imperialism anywhere in the
world with the exception of Cuba. Indeed the Cuban example has been the
exception and not the rule when it comes to the revolutionary
transformation of society.
On the other hand, if we look at all three major stages of the Chinese
Revolution: from the war of independence against Japan; to the
revolutionary war that ousted the KMT from China, including Amerikan,
British and French imperialism; to the struggle for New Democracy, we
can see how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under the leadership of
Mao Zedong struggled shoulder-to-shoulder with the masses in order to
build dual power from inside the revolutionary base areas from which
they were able to encroach upon, encircle and challenge the cities of
China. This revolutionary war strategy is called People’s War
and it is the model for national liberation struggles all throughout the
Third World in the era of dying imperialism.
Once her training was complete, Tania’s handlers were confident she was
more than prepared to fulfill her role. They believed that during the
course of her training, she’d displayed many new character traits: hate
for the enemy, firm ideological grasp of the revolutionary task at hand,
discipline, vigilance, a disposition towards sacrifice in victory
without any personal ambition or gain and satisfaction in completing her
mission (pg 42). Tania soon departed for Prague under the alias “Maria
Iriarte” from Argentina (pg 62).
Once in Prague, she was briefed on the next stage of her mission by
Czech agents working in tandem with Cuban intelligence. Tania then
travelled to Italy and then to the Federal Republic of Germany, also
known as West Germany, which was split at the time between U.$., Briti$h
and French imperialism. Tania’s objective here was to deepen her cover
as Maria Iriarte so that she may then establish herself as “Vittoria
Pancini” of Italian origin (pg 62). It was in the course of these trips
that Tania was finally confronted with the on-the-ground reality of
capitalism and the class distinctions between the developed West and the
under-developed Third World. Here Tania was able to witness the
existence of poverty alongside the opulence that characterized the West;
the egoism of western society and various other social ills she’d only
learned about in school and her studies of Marxism. Whereas many people
newly arrived in imperialist countries have swooned at the sight of such
riches, Tania on the other hand found that her resolve was only
strengthened (pg 63). After a few months in West Germany, Tania was sent
to Italy to create another persona, that of “Laura Gutierrez Bauer”,
also from Argentina (pg 79).
On 5 November 1964, after returning to Italy from West Germany, Tania
arrived in Peru by way of Argentina on her next stop to La Paz, Bolivia
(pg 82). This is where Tania really proved her powers as a Cuban spy.
Through her connections she’d established with the Argentine embassy as
“Laura”, she was able to infiltrate the Bolivian dictator, General Ramon
Barrientos’s inner circle. Near the end of 1964, Tania managed to get
herself invited to a special banquet breakfast for Gen. Barrientos,
where she had a conversation with him and even had pictures taken
together (pg 84). Following this event, Tania abandoned her residence at
Hotel La Paz and moved into the guest house belonging to Alicia Dupley
Zamara, the wife of an important cement factory administrator. From
here, Tania was able to stockpile connections deep within the Bolivian
bourgeoisie as well as with various right-wing leaders and
organizations, reactionary Christian social-democrats and pro-fascist
organizations (pg 35). Next, Tania began to embed herself into various
government agencies, such as the Office of Criminal Investigations,
where she was able to collect information on the extent of Amerikan
imperialism’s penetration into the Bolivian penal and judicial system.
She also gathered intelligence on the local jail in La Paz known simply
as “the Panopticon” (pg 89).
Afterwards, Tania left Bolivia for Mexico City, where she was to meet a
member of Cuban intelligence who informed her of her next mission and
congratulated her for a job well-done. Tania had accomplished far more
than anyone expected. She was also informed that she’d been voted in
absentia into the Cuban “Communist” Party* (pg 76).
The next stage of Tania’s mission was to gain Bolivian citizenship so as
to better facilitate her cover and role in the Bolivian urban
insurgency. She was to be Che’s eyes and ears in the Bolivian
government. Tania gained citizenship by marriage to a Bolivian
university student, Mario Martinez (pg 105). On 31 December 1966, Tania
met with Che in the ELN’s base camp in the Bolivian mountains for the
first time since leaving Cuba. By all accounts it was a joyous reunion
and Tania celebrated the 9th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution with
the ELN guerrillas. Two days later, Tania left camp with explicit orders
from Che not to return to the camp and to refrain from any illegal
activities that might blow her cover. However, on 19 March 1967, Che was
angered to receive news that Tania had returned to camp. In Tania’s
defense, she stated there was no other member of the incipient urban
insurgency she yet trusted enough to deliver fresh soldiers to the ELN,
which was the task Tania was carrying out at the time. The timing,
however, could not have been worse as the ELN had just suffered the
desertion of two volunteers (pg 113). Che immediately ordered Tania to
return to the city. Before she could leave, however, they received
information that the Bolivian Army was aware of the ELN’s location and
were on the hunt. On 23 March 1967 combat operations began when, during
the course of an ambush initiated by the Bolivian military, seven
government soldiers were killed and 14 were taken prisoner. Four days
later, news reached the camp that Tania’s cover might have been blown
when government officials announced over the radio that they were
looking for someone matching Tania’s description with links to the ELN.
Around this same time the Bolivian police found identification belonging
to a “Laura Gutierrez” inside of a jeep of a home they’d raided in
search of possible connections to the ELN (pg 118).
On 31 August 1967 “Tania the guerrilla” was killed by government
soldiers during an ambush along the edges of the Rio Grande. According
to the only surviving member of the ELN, the group were trying to march
out of the zone known as the Bella Vista mountain range where the
military was attempting to confine Tania’s unit, which had split off
from Che’s. As Tania knelt down to touch the water a single shot rang
out. Tania had been shot through the arm. She immediately lifted her arm
over her head to reach for the M1 slung over her back, when she suddenly
collapsed. The single bullet traversed her arm and hit one of her lungs.
Tania fell into the Rio Grande and was swept away by the current as
shots raced back and forth between the ELN and the Bolivian Army (pg
124). Tania’s body was found three days later by government troops (pg
125). On 8 October 1967, Che Guevara was taken prisoner and summarily
executed the following day (pg 126). The bodies of all 33 fallen ELN
guerrillas would then be disappeared by government troops and would not
be found for nearly 30 years, when retired Bolivian general Mario Vargas
Salinas confessed to Jon Lee Anderson the true location of Che Guevara’s
remains (pg 132).
As late as 2005, the people of Vallegrande, near the site where Tania
was killed and where her remains were last seen, still held a special
Mass every Sunday for Tania the guerrilla (pg 138). Until the
dissolution of the GDR in 1990, there existed more than 200 juvenile
brigades and “feminist” groups with the name Haydée Tamar Bunke Bider.
Day care centers and elementary schools also bore her name in the GDR
(pg 261). Today, with the temporary triumph of imperialism in Germany,
none of these are still around. In Cuba, up until 1998, there were many
collectives and various other institutions with either the name Tamara
Bunke or Tania the guerrilla. And in Bolivia, the name Tania remains
very popular for girls. In Nicaragua and Chile there also existed until
1998 many institutions and organizations with any variety of Tania’s
names and aliases (pg 261).
It was Tania’s mother’s last wish that Tania’s remains be laid to rest
alongside her fallen comrades whenever she was found. On 30 December
1998 Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider; alias Maria Iriarte; alias Vitorria
Pancini; alias Laura Gutierrez Bauer; alias Tania the guerrilla finally
arrived to the Ernesto Che Guevara Memorial in Santa Clara, Cuba, where
she remains today (pg 273).
The role of wimmin in the annals of revolutionary struggle are not
confined to a few noteworthy names such as Tania the guerrilla. From the
Maoist struggle of the Naxalbari currently playing out outside the
cities and urban areas of India, where guerrilla wimmin battalions and
guerrilla units led by wimmin are some of the most feared by government
troops, to the overwhelming amount of leadership positions held by
wimmin in the Communist Party of Peru (aka “Shining Path”) in the era of
Gonzalo, to the national liberation struggles of the internal
semi-colonies of the U.$. empire, wimmin will remain a vital component
in the struggle for socialism-communism – this is what Mao meant when he
said “wimmin hold up half the sky.”
Indeed, the most effective road forward has already been paved.
Revolutionary accomplishments should be viewed as the product of many
peoples’ collective labor and not just a select few. Anyone attracted to
the Focoist theory of revolution need only look at the hystories of
oppressed peoples’ movements everywhere and learn from practice. What
has been more successful – Maoism or Focoism? The relationship between
mass movements and the individuals leading them is a dialectical one and
neither can carry out the task of revolution without the other.
This week MIM(Prisons) received sizeable contributions from both inside
and outside prisons. Whether you’re looking forward to celebrating
Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Mao Zedong’s birthday this month,
please consider supporting our work financially.
One time donations are always welcome. But we’d like to recognize the
comrades who donated this week as regular contributors. We think it is
important to have an anti-imperialist newsletter for prisoners that
comes out regularly. To do so we need to have the funds coming in
regularly and reliably. It is our regular comrades and supporters that
allow that to happen.
So where’s our Paypal link? Well, you might have to make a slightly
greater effort to donate without utilizing the infrastructure of
corporate Amerika. But if you’ve got Bitcoin, we added our
Bitcoin donate
button this year. And if you don’t think Bitcoin is anonymous enough
email us for a
Monero address to donate to. If none of that made sense to you, cash is
still king, and cash by mail is always useable. If you want to send U.S.
postage stamps, we are currently flush in 47¢ Forever stamps, but we
always need more 21¢ additional ounce stamps.