From: harelb@igc.apc.org (Harel Barzilai)
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Re: THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Artic
Date: 5 Jan 93 00:08:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1296500465:cdp:1296500467:000:8258
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!harelb    Jan  4 16:08:00 1993


/* Written  8:31 pm  Jan  2, 1993 by harelb@math.cornell.edu in igc:reg.andes */
From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Article)

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	     [ . . . c o n c l u s i o n   o f   . . . ]
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	     ********************************************
	      Peru's Shining Path uses terror to impose
	       reactionary policies on working people.
	     ******************************************** 
			   By Martin Koppel
		  From The Militant, April 24, 1992


===============================
'Selective annihilation' policy
===============================

        Shining Path focuses its action in the cities on "selective  
annihilation of recognized enemies of the people (officials of the  
armed forces, government functionaries, mayors of villages and  
towns who ignore the Party's invitation to resign, etc.) and of  
informers," as one of its documents puts it. The guerrillas have  
assassinated 250 mayors and other local officials in the last three  
years. They have blown up schools, health clinics, and post offices. 

        The group also directs its terrorist methods against unions,  
peasant organization, and left-wing political parties. Between  
1987 and 1989 it murdered five leaders of the mine workers  
union and the president of the textile workers union, as well as  
numerous members of the Peruvian Peasant Federation. Sendero  
has gunned down leaders of the PUM and United Left and  
launched attacks against the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary  
Organization, another guerrilla group. 

        Shining Path justifies its antilabor course by attacking trade  
unions as "the labor aristocracy." The group has no presence in  
the labor movement and has played no part in the numerous  
mass strikes and union demonstrations of the last decade. Instead  
it calls its own "armed strikes" and sets up its own front groups,  
threatening workers who do not participate in them. 

        Guzman stated in a 1988 interview, "The masses have to be  
taught through overwhelming acts so that ideas can be pounded  
into them." 

        In its war against the government, Shining Path views any  
struggle by working people as a threat. Its actions aim to push  
workers and farmers out of political activity and debate. 

Sendero's chauvinist outlook 

        Sendero's anti-working-class perspective is also reflected in
its reactionary international outlook and xenophobia. In the early  
1980s, it bombed the Soviet, Chinese, Cuban and Nicaraguan  
embassies for representing "social-imperialism" and "revisionism." 

        Shining Path guerrillas have assassinated European-born  
priests and nuns, attached agricultural technicians from other  
countries, and burned down foreign-owned factories. 

        Playing on the deep resentment by Peru's Indian and  
mestizo majority against the systematic racial discrimination  
promoted by the largely while ruling class, Sendero targets  
"Europeans" and "foreigners" as the enemy. In an October 1991  
interview in London by the Lima magazine Expreso, Shining Path  
representative Adolfo Olaechea explained that the problem is that  
Peru is "a country that is managed by persons of foreign descent- 
-in other words, Spaniards and people of other nationalities  
including, at this time, Japanese." This refers to Fujimori, who is of  
Japanese ancestry. A small but significant number of Peruvians  
are of Japanese descent. 

        As part of this chauvinist campaign, members of Sendero  
Luminoso murdered a Japanese-Peruvian poultry farmer and  
bombed several Japanese-owned businesses last July. They killed  
three Japanese technicians at a farm, spray-painting anti- 
Japanese slogans on the walls of the compound. In response, the  
government of Japan pulled out most of its aid technicians from  
the country. 

        In the face of the country's social and economic collapse  
and the political bankruptcy of the major parties, however,  
Shining Path has won support among impoverished peasants and  
residents of shantytowns, particularly youth. "It's been 160 years  
of government by the rich. Now it's our turn," said one  
shantytown resident who supports the guerrillas. 

        Sendero now has some 3,500 combatants and operates  
freely in 19 of the 24 provinces, especially in the poorest and  
most backward parts of the countryside such as the Andean  
region of Ayacucho. 

        It has won support among peasants by promising "land to  
those who till it." In areas under their control the guerrillas  
execute landlords, judges, and other corrupt authorities. 

        In coca-producing areas Sendero offers coca farmers  
protection from the government and abusive drug traffickers in  
exchange for support and payment of "taxes." 

==================
Appeals to 'order'
==================

        Above all what Shining Path offers is "order." The group  
sets up its so-called people's committees in rural villages that  
establish strict rules for conducting local affairs and organizing  
agricultural work. The committee of five is run by a Sendero  
cadre, who "represents the proletariat," as one of its documents  
states. 

        A New York Times reporter recently described his visit to  
Raucana, a shantytown outside of Lima that is run by Shining  
Path. "Protected by high walls, watchtowers and trenches,  
squatters collectively dug wells, raised light poles and laid out  
streets," he observed. "A square was designated for people's trials  
and public whippings of prostitutes, thieves, homosexuals, drug  
users and wife beaters." 

        The appeals to order, stability, a strict moral code, and  
quasi-religious worship of a "wise" supreme authority, President  
Gonzalo, are particularly directed to women. The burden of the  
social breakdown falls especially hard on women in the  
countryside, who are responsible not only for child-rearing but  
often for feeding the family as men migrate to the cities in search  
of work. 

======================
Same course as Pol Pot
======================

        In spite of its demagogy Shining Path is no friend of  
peasants. "At first the Senderos seemed good because they  
imposed order against the authorities who had committed  
abuses," explained one refugee from a rural village. "But then  
they showed their fangs, because they not only demanded food  
and lodging from us but began to take away our children and  
husbands to attack other communities. They also began to  
demand our domestic animals to feed the 'comrades.'" 

        She added that after Shining Path left, army troops came in  
arrested and "disappeared" several villagers. This is one example  
of how the guerrillas set peasants up for government  
victimization without any means to defend themselves. 

        In fact, Shining Path uses its coercion and terror to prevent  
any independent effort by peasants to organize to defend their  
interests. The group imposes forced communal labor rather than  
voluntary cooperation among farmers. Its insistence on provincial  
"self-reliance" glorifies the isolation and backwardness facing  
many peasants that capitalists and landlords use to keep them  
divided. 

        Above all, Sendero Luminoso instills anti-working-class  
prejudices about the "corrupt" cities and labor unions and  
promotes a reactionary national socialist outlook to block an  
alliance of farmers and workers, both nationally and  
internationally. 

        Shining Path represents the opposite of a communist and  
internationalist perspective. It has much in common with the  
reactionary course of the terrorist Khmer Rouge gang headed by  
Pol Pot, which massacred at least 2 million people in Cambodia  
after taking power in 1975. A major part of the fight of workers  
and peasants in Peru to defend their interests against the ruling  
capitalists and landlords, will be to take on and politically defeat  
Shining Path. 
________ 

The Militant newspaper is a socialist newsweekly.  An  
introductory subscription costs $10 for 12 weeks. Write to The  
Militant, 410 West Street, New York, N.Y. 10014.