by By a commentator for Tjen Folket Media
This is an excerpt from a text on the people’s war in Peru that is forthcoming.
The Bend in the Road
We are here in these circumstances. Some think this is a great defeat. They are dreaming! We tell them to keep on dreaming. It is simply a bend, nothing more, a bend in the road! The road is long and we shall arrive. We shall triumph! You shall see it! You shall see it!
Chairman Gonzalo’s “Speech from the Cage”, September 24, 1992
On September 12, 1992, Chairman Gonzalo and a number of other leaders of the party were arrested. The Chairman was arrested in an apartment in the middle of Lima that intelligence services had kept an eye on over a long period of time. It was the investigation of the trash from the apartment that led them to believe that Chairman Gonzalo himself may have been living there.
The people’s war continued just as intensely after the arrest. Fujimori wished to execute Gonzalo, but the Yankee imperialists were to have insisted that this was not tactically advisable. Instead, they needed to use Gonzalo against the people’s war. In prison, the revolutionaries were subject to torture and blackmail. Their families were used against them. A number of the prisoners capitulated and went over to the first Right Opportunist Line (LOD). A letter that was claimed to have been authored by Chairman Gonzalo was published, which called for capitulation and peace negotiations. After Chairman Gonzalo, Oscar Ramírez became the leader for the party, and he, along with other leaders, were arrested in 1999. Even since then, hundreds of war hostilities have occurred annually, but the right-opportunist line created enormous confusion and defeatism in the ranks.
Throughout the 2000s, the revolution was clearly weakened considerably, but the armed struggle continues to this very day. There were a number of bombings, liquidations, attacks against the army, sabotage activities, and hostage actions throughout the 2000s. This included a famous bombing attack carried out against the Yankee embassy in Lima in 2002. Throughout the 2000s, arrests of earlier and alleged leaders within the party and the people’s army were also made. But it should be emphasized that a number of groups referred to as “Shining Path” do not by any means represent the party and the Chairman. Armed bandits have established themselves as nothing more than narcotics traffickers in the party’s name.
In Peruvian society, the right-opportunist line is particularly represented by the organization MOVADEF. MOVADEF’s mission is, according to them, amnesty for prisoners of war and reconciliation, but the organization plays the role of combatting the people’s war by using Gonzalo against Gonzalo. Just as false revisionists who use the party’s name to say that the people’s war is over and that all that is left on the agenda is negotiations and reform movements.
At the same time, there are reports of progress in the reorganization of the Communist Party of Peru, and just last year (2018), there were official statements and actions that pointed in this direction, and in the direction of a revitalization of the people’s war.
