NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/9742

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From: [e-mail] (Harel Barzilai)
Subject: The Reactionary Shining Path (part 2 of 2)
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Topic 241    THE REACTIONARY SHINING PATH (Artic    Response  2 of  2
reg.andes     8:31 pm  Jan  2, 1993
From: [e-mail] (Harel Barzilai)
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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.