Proletarians of all countries, unite!

Central Committee

Communist Party of Peru

1985

[Prepared for the Internet by the Magazine Red Sun]

DON'T VOTE! INSTEAD, EXPAND THE GUERRILLA WARFARE TO CONQUER POWER FOR THE PEOPLE!

"All reactionaries try to wipe out the revolution through mass slaughters and think that the more people they kill the more they will weaken the revolution. But, contrary to their wishes, facts show that the more people they kill, the stronger the revolution becomes and the closer reactionaries come to their doom. This is an irrefutable law."

1. THE GENERAL CRISIS OF PERUVIAN SOCIETY

Contemporary Peruvian society is in general crisis. This society, whose trajectory began toward the end of the XIX century, is gravely ill and is incurable. It can only be transformed through the armed struggle, which the Communist Party of Peru is doing it today, leading the Peruvian people. There is no other solution.

The fact is that Peru today is a semifeudal and semicolonial society in which a bureaucratic capitalism is developing, a delayed capitalism linked to the big landowners. interests and which, consequently, in no way seeks the destruction of semifeudal conditions but at most seeks its evolution. What is more important, it is a type of capitalism completely subjugated to imperialism, in our case principally Yankee imperialism, and therefore, does not develop the great potential of the productive forces of our country. Furthermore, it wastes, shackles, or destroys the productive forces and in no way develops a national economy. On the contrary, it is completely at the service of imperialism's increasing exploitation and is totally against the national interests of the majority of the population, and the basic and urgent needs of our people.

Thus, the modern Peruvian economy was born deformed and ill at its roots. It was born intrinsically tied to the archaic semifeudal system which, despite the regimes' bragged-about "agrarian reforms," continues to exist and characterizes the country from its most basic foundations to its most elaborate ideas. This situation maintains, in essence, the great land problem, the driven force of the peasants' class struggle, especially the poor peasants that made up the immense majority. Moreover, the Peruvian economy was born subjugated by imperialism, the last phase of capitalism, masterfully characterized as monopolistic, parasitic, and moribund.

Although this imperialism allows our political independence, as long as it serves imperialist interests, controls the entire Peruvian economic process: our natural resources, export products, industry, banking and finance, etc. In sum, it sucks the blood of our people, devours the energy of our national development, and today, especially, it squeezes us through the huge interests of the foreign debt, just as it does other oppressed nations.

Therefore, the modern economy, the bureaucratic capitalism, is tied to the unburied cadaver semi feudalism, and it is subjugated by the moribund imperialism, which increasingly lives off from the blood of the oppressed, reaped from an exploitation guarantee by its own weapons and those of its lackeys, while the domination of the world is dispute in a never-ending crisis and contention waged primarily by the two superpowers, the United States and the social-imperialist Soviet Union. In conclusion, we are in the midst of the general crisis of Peruvian society. This crisis, including the crisis of bureaucratic capitalism which has entered into its final stage, has fully matured the conditions for the development and triumph of the revolution, then the general crisis that plagues the old society encompasses the revolution in its entirety and in all its manifestations.

This is our reality, this is the foundation on which Peruvian society rests and the material roots of our problems and the misfortunes of our people. This is the social system that the ruling classes and their Yankee imperialist masters are faithful to and defend with blood and fire, through their bureaucratic-landlord state based on their reactionary armed forces, continuously exercising the class dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie and landlords, whether it is through de facto military governments like the many we had, for example Velasco and Morales Bermudez, to mention just the most recent ones, or through governments born out of elections and called constitutional like Belaunde's government today.

Thus, the governments in Peru, civilian or military, are ruling cliques, elected or not, which exercise dictatorship over the people, the proletariat, the peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, and even over the national or middle bourgeoisie itself, for the benefit of the big bourgeoisie (especially big bankers today), of the big landowners (particularly in their expression as gamonalism to exercise power in the countryside), in the service of the ruling classes, and of Yanqui imperialism and totally against the interests of the people and of the nation. And that needs no greater historical recount or demonstration, since the proof is right in front of our eyes: the Belaunde government itself and his clique; a government product of elections, coming out of the ballot boxes, from "sacrosanct electoral system." This is precisely the government which has sold the country more than any other before to imperialism and sunk Peruvian society in its most crisis in modern history; it has submerged the people in the most implacable hunger and has persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and murdered the people, even perpetrating mass slaughter and genocide because the people, led by the Communist Party, have dared to rise up in arms proclaiming, "It is Right to Rebel," irrevocable right of every people drowned in exploitation and oppression, the right of every people and class that refuse to be enslaved.

That is the reality of the country, of Peruvian society and the performance of the present government. It will remain the same with any other government in the future as long as we do not overthrow the prevailing order by force of revolutionary arms through People's War. The history of the world and our own history has proven this, furthermore, we have it before our own eyes: the murderous regime of Belaunde and his gang that starve our people will go down in history as the government of hunger and genocide.

II. TO VOTE IS TO ENDORSE THE SOCIAL SYSTEM AND ELECT ANOTHER GOVERNMENT, WHICH WILL BRING ABOUT MORE HUNGER AND GENOCIDE.

Under what condition(s) are the current general elections being held? Economically, all agree that the country is suffering the greatest crisis in at least the last one hundred years. In addition, the perspective on the future is bleak. In the year 2,000 the economy would barely be meeting its 1976 levels. That is, a quarter of a century would have been wasted because of the much publicized economic development. But the problem doesn't end up there, since World War 2 the country has regularly gone through a crisis in the second half of each decade and each new crisis is worse than the previous one, and the next one is already on its way. The reactionary economists themselves paint a bleak picture for the coming years. Furthermore, reliance on highly glorified foreign capital is hindered by the present foreign debt and the impossibility of paying even the interests on it. At the same time, internal savings are reduced, industrial production is on recession, agriculture is in crisis, the prices of our export products will continue to decline, the foreign markets are shrinking, etc. In synthesis, it is a black perspective with no real solution in sight whatsoever, much less one that would satisfy the growing elementary needs of the masses, which are denied more each day, offering only more unemployment, lower wages and salaries, the curtail of workers' rights, and more cuts of past gains and benefits. Thus, there is a black economic perspective for the obsolete Peruvian society and more oppression and exploitation for the people.

Politically, the Constitution of 1979, just like with the rest of its type, denies each right it recognizes in its contents. It did not satisfy even the factions of the reactionary camp, much less the people, for that reason modifying it is, and will continue to be, an arena of contention. The present Constitution gives direct participation to its armed forces and police in every aspect of social life, strengthening their domain, at the same time it empowers the faculties of the Executive and organizes the most repressive police system in our history. Despite all its filthy demagoguery, the current Constitution is the harshest and more violent and bloody shock that a Constitution has ever had with our conditions. This is shown by the contrast between the so-called "right to life" and the sinister genocide being carried out with cruelty and impunity by the armed forces in the region of Ayacucho, directed by Belaunde himself.

And, how do the sanctified demo bourgeois institutions work? A parliament abdicated its legislative function, turning them over to the Executive. The judicial power (the courts) is incapable of judging the thousand of accused, much less applying their own laws, they even consent to and cover the plan of annihilation of the prisoners of war in the concentration camps known as "El Fronton" and the secrets ones like those in Totos , "Los Cabitos," the stadium in the city of Huanta, etc., in complicity with the Public Ministry. The Executive has become the real legislative power, with the most basic laws of the country in the hands of rancid bureaucrats, and technocrats trained and advised by imperialism; with super ministers who, like the old autocrats, do and undo as they please, with broad and repressive powers used daily, from the clubs to the bombs and bullets against the people, the state of emergency decree used even to confront a worker's strike, let's not forget the frequently applied curfews or stage of siege.

Finally, he reactionary armed forces and police have shown all their hatred and brutality that are characteristic of their actions, they have shown clearly that it "authorizes" any abuse, even murder committed with impunity against any son and daughter of the people. And those Armed Forces which continue to call themselves "tutelar institutions," as if the people of Peru were made up exclusively of persons under age, those Armed Forces so specialized in defeats before foreign enemies, as they are experience in crushing by bloodshed and fire our unarmed population, today manifest more clearly the reactionary interests which they defend, and all the class hatred shown in their intervention against the victorious armed struggle. Their leadership, the Joint Command, the National Defense Council, headed by Belaunde himself, in its futile and desperate attempt to separate the masses from Armed revolution, has not found any solution other than the monstrous and infamous genocide which the fraudulent Peruvian democracy and that bogus democrat and cunning demagogue Belaunde has exposed before our people and the entire world their sinister anti guerrilla actions.

Thus, on top of a bleak perspective, obsolete and reactionary institutions are erected and only survive by the force of inertia and the arms that sustain them, always spilling more blood and bathing themselves in the incendiary blood of the unarmed, vilely oppressed people, who are already saying, Enough! , And each day they believe less in the old State and hopes for less from the government. In conclusion, the lack of credibility, the disorder, the chaos, besides the rampant corruption and the most shameless cynicism, corrode the bureaucratic-landowning State, for whose government all of them compete so frivolously and cheerfully, with verbal skirmishes and perhaps one confrontation or two, a few demagogues who poorly conceal their interests and greed. They are Alva Orlandini, Bedoya Reyes, Morales Bermudez and Alan Garcia, candidates of Popular Action, Democratic Convergence, Democratic Front of National Unity, and Apra, respectively. All are well-known defenders of the existing order. Among them is also the devious and opportunistic Barrantes Lingan, false Mariateguist and loyal defender and supporter of the ruling system, as representative of the so-called United Left, an organization mounted by its leaders as the most unfettered expression of the old way of electoral opportunism and parliamentary cretinism in the country.

But the oppressive legacy does not end there. The class struggle of our people has gone to develop into an armed struggle against the old social order, the old State and its reactionary armed forces and police. The revolutionary war is now entering its fifth year. Two of those against the old armed forced themselves. This historical fact has radically changed the conditions, it has shown how through an armed struggle the obsolete system crumbles and the New Power is built for the people, for the oppressed. This new and irreversible process will continue to develop more and more as the principal problem of the Peruvian State, because it is its negation, its destruction. It is against this process that the old state will have to confront more and more in defense of the exploiting classes and of their imperialist master. The people, the masses, will increasingly joint the peasant war going on in the countryside, since as Lenin stated, hunger itself impulses them:

"In the West, tens of millions of people are suffering the torments of hunger. That is, precisely, what makes the social revolution inevitable, since the social revolution does not emerge out of the programmes but from the fact that tens of millions of people say: 'rather than live and starve, we prefer to die fighting for the revolution.'"

Therefore, we must ask, what are the implications of elections? Do the people need to go to the ballot boxes? It is to the advantage of the people to vote? Seeing our own Peruvian experience, what revolutionary transformation have the people achieved through elections or in parliamentary activities? Every conquest won by the people has been wrested away in the course of the people's struggles. As a result of these struggles, laws were enacted. From the beginning the state started cutting back and initiating a process to reduce the effects of these laws or do away with them entirely, as is shown in the history of labor legislation in the country. The victory of political rights has followed a similar course. All of this clearly has been won outside the frame of the conquest of Power, since for a revolutionary, power is only conquered by means of revolutionary violence. In Peru is simply the armed struggle from the countryside to the city.

Furthermore, let ask ourselves, what benefits have the people really won by the participation in the Constituent Assembly and in the general elections of 80? In the first case, simply to serve the third restructuring of the reactionary Peruvian State in this century, with the results already saw. In the second case, the resurgence of the government of Belaunde that is one of the biggest sellouts of our history and which has drowned our people in widespread hunger and bloodiest genocide.

Moreover, looking in perspective, what can the people hope for, the masses, expect from participating in the general elections of 1985? Well, simply and plainly: To Vote is to avail the social system and to elect another government that will bring more hunger and more genocide! It will help landlord-bureaucratic State to replace, according to its own laws and conditions, their authorities who shall exert the class dictatorship against the people and in favor of maintaining the semi-feudal and semi-colonial society in whose womb bureaucratic capitalism is developing, for the benefit of the ruling classes and their principal master, Yanqui imperialism. To vote is to help install a government who will bring still more hunger, since this is determined by the needs and the class character of the old State of which it is a part. To vote is to help establish a government which will still be more genocidal than the current one, since this too is determined by the needs of the old state, to defend its decrepit society in the face of the revolution, that way it will also push the Old State to defend their obsolete society facing the people's struggle and mainly before the push of the armed struggle which with guns is destroying the old to create the new: the forms of the New Power, of the New Society, sustained by the people rising up in arms.

The people cannot help their exploiters and oppressors, they cannot help them to resolve their problems, they cannot avail their social system, even less to help elect another government bringing still more hunger and more genocide. Since that is not their road nor it helps their own interests, the only thing that can be presented today is, NOT TO VOTE! ; and the only truly popular answer before the elections by the reactionary State that brings hunger and genocide.

III. EXPAND THE GUERRILLA WAR TO CONQUER POWER FOR THE PEOPLE!

The Communist Party of Peru, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party reconstituted combating revisionism, including within its own ranks, a party of the new type to conquer Power for the proletariat and the people, assumed its role of applying revolutionary violence by initiating the armed struggle on 17 May 1980. Thus, the class struggle of the proletariat and the people of Peru have taken a leap in its long journey. The political struggle continues as revolutionary war, taking armed struggle as the principal form and the revolutionary armed forces as its main form of organization.

In this manner our party left behind a historical baggage, more than 50 years old, and has overcome a dark and rotten electoral ism imposed on the masses. With dynamite and bullets it began to write the genuine people's liberation, armed and united from the beginning with the people, mainly the peasants, who have always supported the most heroic actions of the Peruvian revolution, and do so today more than ever as the armed struggle has fulfilled the centuries old hope in an un extinguishable bonfire.

As Chairman Mao said: "When its existence is threatened, the exploiting class always resorts to violence. As soon as it foresees revolution, it strives to annihilate it through violence . . . It uses violence also to repress the revolutionary people from the moment in which they launch themselves to the conquest of Power" Or as the second quote at the beginning says: "All reactionaries attempt to eliminate the revolution through mass slaughters . . . "

The old Peruvian State has acted and will continue to do so in the future in accordance with these laws. First they mobilized their police forces: Guardia Civil (GC), Guardia Republicana (GR), Policia de Investigaciones (PIP) and its elite counterinsurgency forces: sinchis, the self-proclaimed "Llapan Atic,", Dircote, etc.; they applied their notorious persecutions, tortures, imprisonments and murders with the brutality and cruelty that are their nature. Then they started their patrols, home searches, and raids in the city and countryside, mainly in the countryside, following the reactionary law of: "Burn all, loot all, kill all." These armed forces at the height of their actions, at most were able to launch three operatives (January and October of 81, and in March of 82), which were highly advertised and inflated by the press, and which despite being led and supported directly by the Armed Forces ended up in total failure, suffering sound defeats at the hands of the revolution, a fact that even the reactionary press had to admit. Thus, the police forces were used as cannon fodder and guinea pigs caught in their own contradictions in the reactionary camp.

Despite the clamor which demanded their participation in the anti-guerrilla warfare, the armed forces of the Peruvian State did not enter the war directly until the end of 1982, due to the opposition of Belaunde, who was fearful that the military would use their participation to stage a coup d'etat against him or take over the government bit by bit. The Armed Forces entered the war all three together: Army, Navy and Air Force, although the first two ones as the principal force, so to be jointly responsible since no one wants to be blamed alone by their counterrevolutionary actions. But from the beginning the self-proclaimed "tutelar institutions of the fatherland" acted using mesnadas, to camouflage themselves, among them, even dressing like peasants and civil guards, to commit atrocities and mass slaughters in the vain attempt to separate us from the masses. They carried out numerous bloody massacres like those in Huambo, Iquicha, Sacsamarca, etc., among them the massacre of the journalists.

These actions of the armed forces were all approved by the Council of National Defense with the express authorization and congratulation of Belaunde himself. Yet, those attempts failed because of the stunning blows at the hands of the revolutionary forces, and due to the necessity to conduct the municipal elections of November of 83, the Armed Forces carried out generalized massacres. Thus, in less than two months more than 800 people were assassinated in the neighborhoods of Ayacucho, and then begin the disappearances. These were vile, ignominious, and unpunished crimes committed with impunity.

July of 1984 brought important state measures, although they were not public, which is yet another violation of their own judicial system. The Joint Command of the armed forces conferred upon itself the right to intervene in any part and every part of the country 'to fight the guerrillas,' and on their own discretion and request, to create political-military commands and establish emergency zones. Thus the country remains at the control and expense of the Joint Command and the Executive extends carte blanche to the Armed Forces so they can use it as they see fit. This is the so-called Peruvian democracy today. It is under this authority that they carry out new plans, premeditated raking operations and, under death threats, forcefully concentrate part of the masses under pressure to simulate a supposed struggle among peasants, when in fact it is simply and clearly a copy of the "strategic hamlets" used in Vietnam, or the "peasant organizations," formed in Guatemala under Yankee guidance and supervision. The war has been broadened and intensified, especially in the countryside, where the Armed Forces have to confront a genuine peasant war led by the PCP, and despite the sinister genocides they carry on their sinister plan to separate the guerrillas from the masses ending in a total failure.

Therefore, they cannot proclaim victory and recently their own Minister of War himself spoke of the necessity of taking time and having patience to fight the guerrillas, of the need for stronger measures and of the support of all Peruvians. This was a clear confession of the difficulties they have in confronting an armed struggle which follows the principles of the People's War. Such reactionary difficulties are even manifested in the uneasiness of the Pope who, while in Ayacucho, in that Papal meeting with the repressive forces, preceded by more than a month of intense persecutions and raids, the Pope blessed the criminal weapons, consecrated the mass graves of infamy, sanctified the counterrevolutionary war, blessed the genocidal armed forces and police, mainly its bloodthirsty chiefs, exonerated and what is more, supported the government of Belaunde and called on him to annihilate us as soon as possible. And in a bombastic tone he threatened us to change our course, to abandon the revolution, in concrete to submit ourselves to the ruling order, to betray the people. To this "communique" we have given our immediate, firm and complete reply on February 4th, with the massive blackout which placed all of Lima and the entire central region of the country in the dark.

What has the armed struggle achieved in almost five years? The year 1980 can be defined as the Beginning, 81 and 82 as the beginning of the development of the guerrilla warfare and of the formation of the first People's Committees, embryonic forms of the New Power. From that time to the present, the war has concentrated on establishment/counter establishment, that is, on the counterrevolutionary war to destroy the New Power and the revolutionary war to defend it, develop it, and build it, by destroying little by little and more each time, the rotten and reactionary old Power. In these nearly five years we have carried out more than 20,000 actions. The Party has multiplied its membership many times and has the prestige as it never had before, within and outside the country; we have constructed a People's Guerrilla Army of thousands of fighters; and what is more important, hundreds of People's Committees have been formed, we strive to develop the support bases and to advance in the formation of the People's Republic of New Democracy, it has emerged, then, the New Power and it is being developed by exercising real state functions.