In 1992, the Peruvian reaction, acting together with Yankee imperialism, managed to strike a heavy blow against the People’s War by discovering and invading a party apparatus in Lima, capturing Chairman Gonzalo and part of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). This coup was part of a plan that had been carefully orchestrated for years with the aim of crippling the PCP and the People’s War, which had been advancing unchallenged for 12 years, reaching the stage of its strategic equilibrium and seriously threatening the old Peruvian State and the system of exploitation and oppression that it guards. The capture of Chairman Gonzalo and part of the CC of the PCP was the most favorable condition for reaction to carry out its sinister plan to destroy the Party and thus end the People’s War, through a plot aimed at demoralizing Chairman Gonzalo, dividing the PCP and undermining the revolution.
After years of CIA investigations into the Peruvian People’s War, several Yankee academics were sent to Peru to study the history of the country, its historical people’s movements, and especially to try to understand the phenomenon of the masses, especially the peasants, joining the PCP and the People’s War so quickly, all in order to use this knowledge to formulate their counterinsurgency strategy for the application of their “Low Intensity War” (LIW) to the concrete conditions of Peru’s reality. These studies pointed to the PCP’s extensive links with the masses of poor peasants and the miserable outskirts of Lima, as well as the strength of the subjection of an ideologically forged Party to the Leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, a situation in which it was clear that the only viable strategy to adopt in order to destroy the PCP was one that could play “PCP against PCP” and “Chairman Gonzalo against Chairman Gonzalo.” And that’s what it did, setting up the mumbo jumbo of the “peace letters,” drawn up by CIA agents like the confessed Rafael Merino, with the collaboration of traitors, miserable repentants who in prison conformed to the revisionist and capitulationist Right Opportunist Line (ROL).
These fabricated “letters” were addressed to the traitorous and fascist dictator Fujimori, in which Chairman Gonzalo supposedly requested talks with the government for a peace agreement. These “letters” argued that the world revolution had entered a general decline, that, with the arrest of the Leadership, the Party no longer had proletarian direction to continue the revolutionary war, that a “New Definition” was needed, clashing antagonistically not only with the forceful and luminous speech given by Chairman Gonzalo on September 24, 1992, which was given a year earlier, at the time of his arrest, but also with everything established by the historic First Congress of the PCP, which it considered, by means of a special resolution, to be the “Great Milestone of Victory” in the process of the Peruvian Revolution. Many of the positions, tendencies and lines that form the basis of the “letters” were already being aired time and time again in the ranks of the PCP, and had been the subject of an internal two-line struggle, particularly during the Third Plenary Session of the CC in 1992, which was unable to fully conclude its sessions due to the arrests.
This revisionist and capitulationist ROL was structured in the prisons, headed by Osman Morote (imprisoned since 1988) and Maria Pantoja, and also made up of Cox, Magie Clavo Peralta, Roldán (cold name), Artemio (cold name), among others, and it was later revealed that it was the so-called “comrade Miriam,” Elena Iparraguirre Revoredo, who was its true and active head. Organized from inside the prison in a manner facilitated by the reaction, this ROL was based on spreading the lie that the “peace letters” were authored by Chairman Gonzalo, in order to put pressure on the prisoners of war to take a stand for the “letters,” and so that they could offer the reaction the heads of those who advocated continuing with the People’s War and who continued to defend the PCP’s Base of Unity. With the collaboration of the ROL rats, Vladmiro Montesinos, a CIA agent and figurehead of the Fujimori government, put together videos with reenactments of the appearance of Chairman Gonzalo and the capitulators to proclaim themselves the “Historic Central Directorate” and spread the “peace accords” to end the People’s War, despite the fact that Chairman Gonzalo was absolutely incommunicado, imprisoned in a solitary underground cell at the Peruvian Navy’s Callao military base in metropolitan Lima.
From the traitorous position of a “peace accord,” which achieved nothing except better prison conditions for the rats at the head of the ROL, the revisionist rats deepened their position to the whining of a “political solution to the problems arising from the war,” and then created the sham “Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights, Movadef,” to drag themselves through the rotten electoral farce with which they supported the election of the opportunist Castillo, one of Chairman Gonzalo’s executioners.
The rats have launched other hoaxes, such as the publication of the paper “De punho y letra,” a trick that uses a manuscript by Chairman Gonzalo that was made well before his capture, which is about the beginning of his militancy, as well as his notes of arguments for legal defense, these are used to make it seem as if it were his own work, but whose core is the text signed by the rat Elena Iparraguirre, with which she presents her revisionist theses, including the criminal claim that Chairman Gonzalo told her that his “task was over.” After this sham, Miriam increasingly set herself up as a continuator of Chairman Gonzalo, touting the revisionist and capitulationist ROL and launching another sham work attributed to Chairman Gonzalo, “Memoria desde Nemesis,” which compiles his writings taken from the newspaper “Voz Popular,” written before the war, and in its preface Miriam herself equivocates her positions as if they were those of Chairman Gonzalo. There she states that he would be writing the second part in which he would deal with the war and the years after his capture.
Since 2014, the ROL has set in motion the operation to make Miriam the successor to Chairman Gonzalo with an interview she gave to the Spanish news agency called Efe, in which the capitulator presents in full her rotten line that “bureaucratic capitalism in Peru has become viable,” that with “the defeat of the People’s War,” Peruvian reality has undergone major transformations; that there has been “primitive accumulation of capital” and that Peruvian society has become “dependent capitalist,” thus corresponding no longer to peasant war for the Revolution of New Democracy uninterrupted by Socialism, but to “socialist revolution,” resurrecting the old and rotten Trotskyist theses of the pseudo “Marxist Theory of Dependence.”
It was fought from the outset by the Peruvian Maoists who were firmly committed to defending the PCP and the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo, his health and life, the historic First Congress, the Base of Party Unity (BUP), Gonzalo thought, and the continuation of the People’s War. The Peruvian Maoists have foiled all attempts by imperialist and Peruvian reaction, in collusion with the ROL, to destroy the PCP and end the war. With the successive victories of Gonzalo thought, which is increasingly being espoused, defended and applied by the left wing of the International Communist Movement (ICM). The rats of the ROL, usurping the acronym of the PCP, have set themselves up to speak in the name of Chairman Gonzalo and have shamelessly launched joint international declarations with phantom acronyms of rubber-stamp parties and other irredeemable right-wingers interested in discrediting the name of Chairman Gonzalo. In these declarations they have aimed and aim to preach capitulationism, to continue lying about the People’s War in Peru and to spew out attacks and slander against the Maoist Communist Parties that are leading people’s wars or are preparing to start them.
After decades of banning the mere mention of the terms “Gonzalo thought,” “Chairman Gonzalo, Head of the Party and of the Peruvian Revolution,” and others, now in one of their latest booklets entitled “The historical transcendence of the Peruvian People’s War is imperishable,” the rats readjust the forms of their revisionist positions, in the vain intention of deceiving the unaware and the unsuspecting, confusing mainly the revolutionary youth, like a chameleon that changes color according to its convenience. Now, they no longer talk about a “general decline of the world revolution”; and, refining and polishing their revisionist anti-maoist and anti-Gonzalo thought theses, they argue that the “People’s War,” which they previously claimed had been defeated, would have “swept away semi-feudality” from the material base, leaving only manifestations of it in the superstructure, remnants that would be liquidated “with the socialist revolution.” These positions are simply identical to those of our well-worn Tupiniquin revisionists: Pecedobê and PCBrasileiro, to name a few. The ROL’s new endeavor, after cooperating with the vile assassination of Chairman Gonzalo - who heroically gave his entire life and work to the communist cause, defeating all his revisionist and reactionary tormentors, not shedding his indestructible communist stature in 29 long years of isolation, torture, and physical annihilation - the rats try to disguise themselves, wasting paper and ink, or even opening their rotten mouths to traffic in the terms of “Gonzalo thought,” “Chairman Gonzalo,” “crisis of decomposition of imperialism,” “revolutionary situation” etc., terms that have been banned from their jargon for decades to try to sell their putrid fish.
These facts and hoaxes are an arena of contention in the ICM, but they are not part of the PCP’s internal struggle. The two-line struggle in the PCP since then has been centered on firmly anchoring itself in the BUP to solve the new problems, repelling the mumbo jumbo of the “peace letters,” unifying around Chairman Gonzalo’s speech - in which he said that the reactionary coup was a “bend in the road” and that he should overcome it with more People’s War and around the historic First Congress, the BUP that was generated in it, and its three parts: the ideology, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism Gonzalo thought, principally Gonzalo thought for the Peruvian Revolution; the General Program of the New Democratic Revolution and the 12-Point Program of Communist Principles; and the General Political Line (GPL) with its five elements, the International Line, the Line of the Democratic Revolution, the Mass Line, the Line for Construction of the Three Fundamental Instruments of the Revolution (Party, Army of a New Type, and the Revolutionary United Front) and the Military Line, as the center of the GPL; all firmly united around “Overcoming the setback,” continuing with the People’s War.
In 1998,1 with the capture of Feliciano, who was then centralizing the Emergency CC (who capitulated after his arrest and renounced Marxism) and the treacherous rejection by the usurpers of the leadership of the Main Regional Committee (CRP, defined as the one who should assume the centralization of the Party in the event of the fall of the CC) and also the rejection by Artemio (who joins the ROL), responsible for the Strategic Regional Committee, who should take over in the line of succession after the CRP, the PCP was left without a CC. Then the fight to “Unite the people against Fujimori’s fascist, genocidal, and traitorous regime!” opens up with a plan for the General Reorganization of the PCP.
The task of General Reorganization, however, remains pending, as the usurpers of the CRP leadership have structured a third, revisionist and capitulationist ROL headed by José, Alípio and Raúl. These usurpers take over the party apparatuses in the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro Rivers (VRAEM), subjugating all the militants loyal to the PCP’s line and to Chairman Gonzalo’s leadership and forcing them to change their position, executing those who don’t.
José and his brothers (the Quispe family) adopted the traitorous position of accusing Chairman Gonzalo of being a “terrorist line,” going so far as to demand that the old genocidal Peruvian state hand over the Leadership to them so that they could shoot him for the “crime of terrorism.” Appearing to be a line on the “left,” José’s line is essentially right-wing, of the social-democratic type, and is based on idealistic conceptions and theoretical foundations. Arguing that the current stage of the Peruvian Revolution is one of national liberation, it is based on the incorrect positions that there is a white occupation of Yankee imperialism in Peru and that, therefore, the People’s War is against imperialism, solely and exclusively. These positions justify the position that it is necessary to build a “national front against imperialism.” To this end, they make a whole series of alliances with reactionary and counter-revolutionary organizations, such as the landowners and the ethno-cacerist movement.
Starting from its theoretical basis, it takes off from reality, affirming the fanciful position that in the field of imperialism, in today’s world, three superpowers - the USA, Russia and China - compete with each other and that this inter-imperialist competition is in “World War IV.” This ROL, which pretends to be left-wing, quickly dismantled the Party’s support bases and mass organizations wherever it could, carrying out a bourgeois militarist and caudillist line, effectively degenerating a significant part of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into “feudal warlords” - this is the group that is now called the “Militarized Communist Party of Peru” (MPCP), claiming to be the fourth stage and line in the history of the communist movement in Peru, ROL which denies the need to organize the peasantry through the Agrarian Revolution and complementary urban work; denies the construction of Support Bases as opposed to “Popular Mobile Committees”; they are based on the “support” of local political bosses and landlords, etc. In this way, this group of caudillos trades on the name of the PCP, denying the leadership and the ideological unity of the party.
In collusion with the Peruvian political police, José launched a real campaign to demobilize the popular committees by infiltrating his agents into party bodies. This was the case with the Peru People’s Movement (MPP), the body generated by the PCP for its work abroad, which had to go through a counter-intelligence campaign and a two-line struggle in order to reorganize itself, re-establish contact with the PCP and expose at international level the trafficking done by the two ROLs using the Party’s name and defaming Chairman Gonzalo. In addition, by cooperating with the reaction, José’s group inevitably marches towards collapse and capitulation: his reactionary attacks on Chairman Gonzalo and Gonzalo thought have only isolated him from the peasant masses of the Peruvian jungle and highlands, isolating him from the Peruvian revolutionaries and the ICM, where he has received no reception, not even among the false Maoists who slander Chairman Gonzalo. A similar condition prevails for its Siamese sister, led by Miriam.
Although they seem to propose two antagonistic positions, both Miriam’s and José’s lines promote right-wing opportunism, that is, denying the First Congress, the BUP, Chairman Gonzalo’s Leadership and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo thought, with the aim of finding a quick “end to the conflict,” that is, capitulation. The first, through parliamentary cretinism and legal agreements; the second, through armed blackmail and mercenarism. Both are aimed at causing confusion and demoralizing the Party and the leadership and thus promoting the capitulation of the isolated Committees as part of the Yankee imperialist strategy of Low Intensity Warfare (LIW) to make the general reorganization of the PCP through the People’s War impossible.
Both sell their principles, as the poem by the Peruvian revolutionary hero Jovaldo puts it, “for a plate of lentils”; with varying success: although Movadef’s request to become a legal party was rejected, today it is part of the government of the opportunist and counter-revolutionary Pedro Castillo, the government that carried out the assassination of Chairman Gonzalo. The “MPCP,” increasingly isolated by its own bourgeois military line, is increasingly moving towards negotiating its surrender with the state.
Both revisionist and capitulationist ROLs are being swept into the dustbin of history by the General Reorganization that the PCP is going through, which has been unifying party committees, cells, generated bodies, militants, PLA fighters and the masses mobilized to establish a centralized national leadership, concentrated on the basis of the First Congress, the BUP and the political, military and party-building plans established at the Third Plenum of the CC. Reorganization that takes place in and for the People’s War, and which, despite the harsh setbacks, has never stopped. It is the duty of all democrats and revolutionaries who are committed to the future of the Peruvian Revolution to raise high the banner of the General Reorganization of the PCP and clear up the confusion generated by the two ROLs, which only serve to sow doubt and add to the slanderous campaign and psychological warfare of the old Peruvian fascist state in collusion with revisionism and imperialism.
Sweeping away the infamous attacks on the PCP, Chairman Gonzalo, Gonzalo thought and the Peruvian People’s War is a task that true Maoists around the world must join forces on, supporting the General Reorganization of the Party, fighting relentlessly against those who traffic in the invincible and glorious People’s War and the heroic fighter, the PCP, who leads it. Among the Maoist Communist Parties, it is important to deepen the two-line struggle on this issue of crucial importance for the advance of the second Great New Wave of the World Proletarian Revolution that is developing. What we have in Peru are, on the one hand, two ROLs, equally capitulationist and revisionist, who traffic in the name of the Party to serve their own shady interests and in collusion with reaction; and on the other, the glorious PCP which, under a difficult reflux, is carrying out its task of General Reorganization around the BUP with its three elements already mentioned, in addition to the III Plenum of the CC and Chairman Gonzalo’s Speech of 1992; as well as around the corresponding plans and agreements, all in order to culminate the uninterrupted Democratic Revolution towards Socialism.