From: mim%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (Maoist Intl'ist Mvmnt)
Subject: "Ms" Mag Trashes Peru's Communists
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 21:46:01 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

MIM Notes, Issue 70: November, 1992


        Ms. magazine trashes PCP in the name of "feminism"

                             by MC31

In the name of power for women, the July/August issue of Ms.
magazine blasts the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), specifically
denouncing the killing of Maria Elena Moyano.

The article explains that even some of Peru's poorest women are
helping others by providing local food and Glass of Milk programs
"to a population abandoned by the government."(1) Ms. recognizes
that the Peruvian state is one of the most brutal in the world
today, but Ms. speaks highly of those who didn't "take to the
streets" during the worst of economic times in Peru, and instead
went to a local soup kitchen to have a hot meal that day.

One reformist "community organizer" quoted in the article said
that women "'want progress. They aren't exactly clear how to get
there, but they know they're going. They're betting on something
that they're making up along the way.'"

PCP members practice the science of Maoism and do know exactly
where they are going and how to get there. But Ms. still prefers
the vague analysis and goals of the reformists to the hard-hitting
Maoist ideology and revolutionary practice.

The article refers to polls supposedly showing that Fujimori's
government has 70-80% support among the people. If that's so, what
are he and the military so worried about? How is that the PCP
(referred to as the "Shining Path" in Ms. and elsewhere) controls
so much territory and has as much support as it does? Ms. claims
that the PCP attacks mostly civilians, but won't mention that the
guerillas target lackeys of the fascist state (who do not all ear
uniforms), enemies in a people's war.

After blaming the PCP for killing Moyano, for which the PCP has
claimed credit and provided its reasons to the people (see MIM
Notes 67), Ms. goes on to claim that the PCP itself is a
patriarchal movement that suppresses its women members. (Note they
spend an entire article discussing the death of one woman and
barely touch the Fujimori dictatorship's killing of thousands of
PCP cadres and civilians, many of whom are women.) In other words,
First World white women who read Ms. can sift through the facts
and decide their own fates, but poor Peruvian women are just
stupid followers of a male oppressor.

Ms. offers no evidence of the suppression of PCP women, and
further did not interview women cadres to see what they thought
about handing out meals to some people versus organizing for
revolution so all Peruvians could eat. The women organizers of the
grassroots reformist groups are glorified while revolutionary
women are admonished for their political work.

Ms. helped make great strides for First World women in the 1970s.
It is now attempting to build a multi-cultural base by having an
international section in which to trash Third World revolutionary
movements which will ultimately make a better world for most women
of the world.


Notes: "Peru: The Government, the Rebels, And the Women in
Between" Ms. July/August 1992, p. 14-15.


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