From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: The Reactionary Shining Path (part 1 of 2)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 05:42:20 GMT


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Topic 241	THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Artic	Response  1 of  2 
harelb 
reg.andes	 8:30 pm  Jan  2, 1993 
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From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai) 
Subject: THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Article) 

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			 Full Article Follows 
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	      Peru's Shining Path uses terror to impose 
	       reactionary policies on working people. 
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			   By Martin Koppel 
		  From The Militant, April 24, 1992 

        On February 15, members of the Shining Path organization   
assassinated the deputy mayor of one of the largest   
neighborhoods in Lima, the capital of Peru. Maria Elena Moyano, a   
leader of the United Left coalition, was blown to pieces by a five-  
pound charge of dynamite while attending a barbecue.  

        Moyano was killed for opposing Shining Path's call for an   
"armed strike" in Lima the day before. Fearing reprisals, many   
city bus drivers stayed home during the so-called armed strike.   
At the same time, the government responded with a show of force   
by deploying 30,000 troops on the streets and flying military   
helicopters over the capital.  

        Shining Path has stepped up its armed attacks throughout   
Peru. Based in the south-western rural regions, it has gained   
ground in recent years, extending its activities into the huge   
shantytowns surrounding Lima. It has recruited members   
primarily among residents of rural towns, peasants, and   
slumdwellers.  

        Shining Path, known in Spanish as Sendero Luminoso, has   
waged a decade-long war against the government. It is a   
reactionary organization that uses terrorist methods to impose its   
policies on working people and to attempt to restrict their ability   
to engage in political activity.  

        Sendero Luminoso appeals to the most impoverished and   
desperate layers of society that have been ravaged by the   
economic and social catastrophe in the country. The group has   
gained a hearing because of the crisis of the major capitalist   
parties as well as the discrediting of parties that claim to speak   
for workers.  


============================= 
Economic and social calamity  
============================= 

        Peru, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, has   
been devastated by the world economic crisis. Six out of 10   
working-age Peruvians are unemployed or underemployed.   
Today 94 percent of workers in Lima are earning less than the   
1970 minimum wage. More than half of the 22 million Peruvians   
suffer from hunger.  

        A cholera epidemic has swept the country since the   
beginning of last year, killing 2,500 people and afflicting another   
quarter million, with no end in sight. The easily preventable   
disease spreads because of inadequate sanitary conditions and   
lack of access to medical care for the majority.  

        Meanwhile, the wealthy businessmen and bankers who   
control Peru's economy have further squeezed working people. In   
August 1990, just two weeks after his inauguration, President   
Alberto Fujimori decreed a series of brutal austerity measures to   
meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund for the   
repayment of Peru's $22 billion foreign debt.  

        The government cut subsidies and lifted price controls,   
leading to a 30-fold rise in gasoline prices and a 7-fold increase   
for rice, sugar, cooking oil, and other staples. Further sharp price   
hikes were imposed in December 1990 and February of this year.   
These blows have pushed down workers' incomes even further   
and driven small businessmen to bankruptcy.  

        Conditions are even worse for peasants, who are almost   
half the population and are exploited by wealthy landlords. Many   
peasants are forced to grow coca leaf, the raw material for   
producing cocaine, because they cannot survive on other crops.   
The prices they get for beans, corn, and rice are so low they   
cannot afford to plant. The 250,000 coca farmers in Peru account   
for 60 percent of the world's coca production, which enriches the   
small handful of drug-trafficking capitalists who control the   
business.  

        Miners, electrical workers, teachers, health workers, and   
other unionists have carried out strikes and protests to fight these   
oppressive conditions. Peasants have also organized stoppages   
and strikes in many areas.  

        The regime has responded with ferocious repression. Under   
the banner of combating terrorism and drug traffickers the   
regime has placed almost half the country, including Lima, under   
a state of emergency. Last December the Fujimori government   
issued emergency decrees granting the military sweeping powers,   
such as the right to requisition property, draft individuals, freely   
enter universities and prisons, and jail civilians for treason if they   
refuse to cooperate with security forces. These repressive   
measures were greatly extended with the government crackdown   
that began April 5 (The Militant also has an article in the same   
issue reporting on Fujimori's suspension of the constitution,   
dissolving of the Congress and the restriction of civil liberties. The   
issue also contains an editorial denouncing the U.S. military role in   
Peru).  

        In Lima, a New York Times report noted, "factories in the   
industrial zone look like maximum-security prisons" with   
watchtowers, armed guards, dogs, and sometimes army units   
standing ground.  

===================================== 
Government tortures, jails opponents  
===================================== 

        Torture, jailing, and summary executions have become a   
regular feature of the government's so-called antiterrorist   
campaign. Peru is the country with the highest number of people   
detained and "disappeared" in the wold, In some cases the army   
has massacred the entire male population of a town where the   
guerrillas operated, claiming the villagers were Sendero Luminoso   
supporters.  

        Right-wing death squads linked to the armed forces have   
targeted journalists, human rights activists, lawyers, and peasant   
and trade union leaders. In addition the government has pressed   
peasants into "civilian defense" groups under army command in   
500 towns.  

        The U.S. government has stepped up its military   
intervention in Peru under the guise of fighting drugs. Since 1989   
U.S. Green Berets have trained 800 Peruvian police in "jungle drug   
interdiction." U.S. Marines have secretly trained Peruvian forces   
in river and jungle warfare and Drug Enforcement Agency officers   
are stationed at the Santa Lucia army base in the Upper Huallaga   
Valley, a Shining Path stronghold.  

        The White House and U.S. Congress reached agreement last   
fall on a $24.9 million military aid package to the Peruvian   
regime.  

        A recent New York Times editorial proposed setting up a   
U.S.-led military force with other Latin American governments to   
intervene in Peru and elsewhere on the continent.  

        Since 1980 some 20,000 people have been killed and tens   
of thousands have fled the countryside as a result of the political   
conflict in Peru. The crisis has torn the political fabric of the   
country and undermined the regimes' ability to govern.  

        The 1990 election of Fujimori was itself a result of the   
discrediting of the major capitalist parties. A little-known figure   
whose main campaign theme was honest government, Fujimori   
defeated President Alan Garcia of the ruling American Popular   
Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) as well as the right-wing   
candidate, novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. Once elected he began to   
apply Vargas Llosa's "shock therapy" economic policies and allied   
himself closely to the the hated military.  

        Most of the parties in Peru that call themselves socialist   
and communist, grouped in the United Left and the Unified   
Mariateguist party (PUM), have also been seriously discredited.   
They supported Fujimori in the elections as a lesser-evil   
candidate. The United Left then broke up as some of its wings   
accepted ministerial posts in the new government. These parties   
have been further undermined politically by their support to the   
regime's "antiterrorist" campaign of repression.  

        These are the conditions that have led to the growth of   
Shining Path.  

        This group began its guerrilla war in 1980 in the   
southwestern city of Ayacucho. The organization was founded by   
a group of university professors and students led by Abimael   
Guzman, a philosophy teacher. It originated with a split in the   
Stalinist Peruvian Communist Party in the mid-1960s between   
supporters of the ruling bureaucracies in Moscow and Beijing.   
Guzman's faction then split from the pro-Chinese group and took   
on the name Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path (PCP).  

        Shining Path wraps itself in the Stalinist phraseology of   
what it calls "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and principally   
Maoism." The cult around Guzman, known as President Gonzalo, is   
called "Gonzalo Thought."  

        While using a lot of rhetoric about fighting on behalf of   
workers and peasants, Shining Path is thoroughly anti-working-  
class in its political perspective and its actions.  

        In a recent pamphlet the group explains, "The war being   
conducted by the PCP is mainly a peasant war. Although it also   
includes combat and other work in the cities, it is based in the   
countryside and its fundamental strategy is to surround the cities   
from the countryside." Lima, where on third of the country's   
population lives, is viewed along with other cities as "bastions of   
reaction" to be strangled from the outside.  
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