- Our action is weakening
* the event disdain for armed struggle, increased popular support for Fujimori's authoritarian efforts to curb Sendero, and was a major factor in his re-election victory of 1995. Another reason being his blow against hyper-inflation, which fell from 7, 659% in 1990 to 139% in 1991 and a historic low of 10% in 1995.
Unfortunately for the MRTA, in the popular imagination, even in the barrios of Lima, thev are often seen as little better than Sendero Luminoso. There is little popular support and sympathy for them in a country weary of violence and which longs to believe in the Fujimori promise of prosperity for all.
The Peruvian electorate are representative of a continental trend. Even with deeply unpopular austerity measures, they prefer the reality of economic stability associated with low inflation to vague promises from the Left. In Brazil, this was one obvious lesson of the defeat of the Workers Party (PT) by Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. (the other continental lesson is the short lived effects of those anti-inflation measures.)
The MRTA as a legal party may have better prospects, but that path is fraught with dangers too. The group could go the way of the Colombian M-19, a left wing guerrilla movement later co-opted into supporting the neo-liberal economic programme. Or the URNG in Guatemala, which recently signed a peace accord with the government, which included a clause guaranteeing immunity from prosecution of the army personnel responsible for tens of thousands of disappearances' and the genocide of entire indigenous village communities.
Peru's traditional left', the populist APRA and the United Left (IU) fared badly in the 1995 elections and are seen as part of the discredited political establishment. They have the opportunity to rebuild their support in the months ahead by leading the anti-privatisation campaign which the left wing daily La República is spearheading, combined with assaults against the authoritarianism and corruption of the present
The events of the last six weeks may be the stimulus to a reawakening of the popular movements. But this depends on future events, and the practical interventions of the
Latin America's revolutionary and guerrilla struggles are an essential part of the programmatic and cultural inheritance of the continent's radical left. The lessons, good and bad, of the armed struggle experience have had a significant influence on the development of numerous social and political movements across the region.
The form these struggles have taken is a result of the conditions of exclusion and violence which accompany the capitalist system in this part of the world. Forms of exclusion and violence which have shaped the political and social dynamics of these societies, the
LoLinsurrection »>p.6 4 International Viewpoint
Interview With Isaac Velazco, European Representative Of The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) Viewpoint: Why did the MRTA choose the Japanese ambassador's residence as the target of its action? Velazco: Japan today is a major economic major U.S. corporations are made up largely of Japanese capital. So Japan will play an increasingly important role in Latin America. And Japan regards President Fujimori as its primary supporting figure. the dirty war. The Japanese government was even partially to blame for the fact that two of its own citizens, who worked for an aid agency, were murdered by a paramilitary group. Japan is deeply involved in supporting this murderous regime. That's why the MRTA decided to attack this location — a place which would deeply hurt the dictatorship. Will this occupation help Fujimori to consolidate his base, under the motto of "joining ranks", or will it lead to splits within the government?
The Fujimori government has its back against the wall. All those who collaborate with the government - businessmen, politicians, and military figures — know very well that their integrity is in danger. If one day they, too, should become prisoners of war of the MRTA, the government won't do anything to help them. This is unprecidented in Latin American history. Comrades of the FSLN in Nicaragua captured politicians and businessmen with ties to the Somoza regime on three occasions. Each incident ended with their demands fulfilled. But Fujimori has a complete disregard for human life, even for the lives of his partners. Businessmen who support the government ought to think about that. What about the relationship between the military and the Fujimori regime?
The support which they have given to one another in the past has only served to act as a cover for state terrorism and corruption. The government and high-ranking military officials are very corrupt. They have usually been granted immunity from prosecution by the Fujimori regime. But there is a struggle for drug profits taking place between the military and the intelligence agency. Sometimes they work against each other. That's why the transport of 170kg cocaine in the President's plane was publicised recently, as was the "discoverv" of navy ships being used to transport coca paste. Nevertheless, all of this goes unpunished. And the government never talks about the dirty war, the torture, the violations of human rights, the murder of elderly persons, women, and children. Why did the MRTA take up armed struggle?
In the late 1970s, there were 60 or 70 leftist organisations in Peru. Two tendencies developed. One sought solutions to the nation's problems through the democratic process. The other felt that the path of political dialogue was blocked and the time was right to resort to other means. This development continued into the 1980s, and the MRTA became an important crystallisation point for many armed organisations. How many activists did you have?
During the First Conference of the MRTA as a political-military organisation, which was still legal at that time, 300 activists took part. Of course the total membership was much higher than that. Following this conference, the organisation took its work underground and the first units were formed to carry out armed propaganda actions. For example, they occupied radio stations, attacked arms depots, confiscated trucks full of food and distributed these goods in poor neighbourhoods, in addition to a series of actions designed to provide funds for the organisation.
The first military clashes were in the south of the country in 1984. The military surrounded one MRTA unit which was in the area to help establish a rural guerrilla. Following a long battle, 12 of our activists were arrested and many weapons were confiscated. Another unit was able to break through the military's lines and link up with MRTA forces elsewhere in the country. The deployment of the Peruvian military was marked by massive attacks on the civilian population.
For security reasons, I cannot say how strong we are today. But our forces are present throughout the country. The MRTA is present at many levels and is organised in various fields. There are rural units, special units, commandos, and militias.
In accordance with our outlook, our members are active in a variety of fields, such as propaganda, union organising, social movements, and the guerrilla. We've always said that it isn't the MRTA that's going to make a revolution in Peru, but the Peruvian
Fujimori people, through their numerous social and political organisations.
The government, and President
Fujimori in particular, had declared a total victory over the guerrillas...
medo abuso de poder the event * oshom ebramals racismo violência
Two factors played a role in this. First of all, the leader of Sendero Luminoso (Shining
Path), Abimael Guzman, signed a peace agreement with the government.
Secondly, there was tactical retreat by the corrupto
SECUSA
MRTA. As a result of several military offensives by the Peruvian military, the repression against the population, and the neo-liberal policies of the government, out social base was narrowed.
We decided to concentrate our political and military structures in the rural areas of central Peru, in the central forests. In the rest of the country we only had commando and intolerância militia structures, which carried out intensive political and organisational work in city neighbourhoods, with farmers, and with
The government lied to itself and even made itself believe that the guerrilla, in particular the MRTA, had been defeated. Now the government is faced with a new
We have continued our political work over the past few years and given politicalmilitary training to a new generation of fighters and cadre. We were never as weak as the government supposed. The number of actions carried out by the MRTA across the country, which dealt heavy blows to the army, are evidence of this. The government has tried to cover all this up, but they have failed. The people know that the government has not defeated the guerrilla and they know that the government's neo-liberal policies are making poverty worse. Two months ago, there were three days of riots in downtown Lima, when the police tried to force vendors off the streets. Hundreds of people and police were injured. Have protests against the government increased?
Yes. Since the end of 1995, the people are slowly rebuilding their organisational and mobilisational capacities. There are more rots, where the people defend their right to existence. But the repression has changed as well. Before, police and soldiers were everywhere in Lima. Today, you don't see as many. They have been replaced by secret police and plain-clothes forces. A German friend of mine recently had his briefcase stolen on the street in Lima. Within seconds, at least 20 plain-clothes police officers were corrupcão on the scene and brutally beat up the thief. Sendero Luminoso has reorganised, and seems to have altered its line...
The peace deal with the government signed by a large part of the group led to deep divisions within Sendero. The faction which wished to continue the armed struggle has carried out armed propaganda and has taken to interacting with the people in a way they used to criticise the MRTA for doing.
But despite some corrections in its political methods, Sendero is still the same. For example, in March of this year, labour activist Pascual Arozda was murdered. They have continued to attack all those who stand in their way or don't share their views. How is the relationship between Sendero and the MRTA?
Sendero is a very domineering force. They claim to be the sole possessors of the truth and the only standard bearers of revolution. That's why they have never accepted the existence of other revolutionary organisations in Peru. At the best moments, they have described us as "armed reformists" and "traitors". At other times, Sendero has described us as their "main enemy" and murdered many MRTA activists. They have even ambushed our units. These are crimes which cannot be justified in any way; they contradict the values of revolutionaries. How do you see the MRTA's future?
We try to put Peruvian reality ahead of any pre-defined ideology. We hope to build socialism... That's not to say we're going to build a socialism styled and modeled after the eastern European countries, a model which failed in practice... We don't want state centralism or the bureaucratization of Peruvian society. Life has taught us that is not the way. We should have a democratic, very participatory society, not an electoral democracy every five years, but a democracy where men and women get involved in their workplace, their community, their neighborhood and decide their own destiny. We want it to be a participatory democracy with the people as actors. It has to be that way.
The MRTA arose as a movement. Many social sectors are represented within the MRTA: men and women from the cities and rural areas, intellectuals, religious people, indeed the whole society. Of course, to transform society we must tear down the old state and build a new one. That means we must seize power. But seize power for whom? For what? And to what end? That is the central question. The answer is: Power must be in the hands of the workers in the cities and the countryside. There must be a participatory democracy. Mechanisms for people's power must be advanced. And we have been doing that for years. * Source: Interviewed by Darrio Azzellini for Junge Welt. This interview was first published on December 30, 1996. Translation by Arm The Spirit. Isaac Velazco has been active in the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru since 1984. In February 1988 he was arrested and tortured. Had he not been able to escape, he most likely would have died in prison. When statements by an informer led to a raid on his family's home in 1993, the MRTA decided to send Velazco to Germany. In November 1994, he was granted political asylum. Following a decision by the National Leadership of the MRIA, Isaac Velazco was chosen to act as the European Representative of the MRTA.
February 1997#285 5
* the event collective memory and imagination, and the demands, methods and results of struggles.
Left intellectuals who fail to understand this point often analyse armed struggle as some kind of terrible error or sectarianism. This reductionist vision ignores the economic, political, social and cultural reality of Latin American societies.
This latest action by MRTA, and the continued existence of the "Zapatista" (EZLN)
revolt in Mexico have reopened the debate on the MRTA armed struggle in Latin
America, just as the signing of a UN-backed peace accord between Guatemala's guerrillas and their persecutors seemed to mark the continent's "fareInfluential Latin American writer Jorge Castañeda is one of many left intellectuals who argue that the guerrilla cycle opened by Che Guevara 30 years ago is drawing to a close. El Che called on guerrillas to create "one, two, many Vietnams". Not only did this not happen, but, argues Castañeda, "the armed struggle, as a way to conquer power and transform society, is finished. Today, Che Guevara is a symbol, but not a military leader to be followed."
Castañeda also argues that most organisations which are in favour of armed struggle are no longer revolutionary. "Their programmes are radical compared to the obsession with the free market which is doing so much damage in the region. But the substance of the leftist platform in Latin America differs little from President Kennedy's 'Alliance for Progress of the early 1960s.*
Castañeda is mistaken. Clearly, revolution is no longer an immediate prospect, as it seemed to be in the 1960s. Nor, in today's specific conditions, is it realistic to implement a strategy of taking power through armed struggle. Nevertheless, the goal of taking power, and the dream of revolution, are still very present, and very relevant.
According to João Machado, a leader of Brazil's Workers Party, it is ridiculous to compare the demands of the radical left to the "modernist" pro-imperialist "Alliance for Peruvian guerillas on the Internet
The first two sites are excellent sources of Peru information
Voz Rebelde (MRTA newspaper)
http://www.cybercity.dk/users/ccc17427/
Arm the Spirit (solidarity group)
http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/mrta.htm
Shining Path(Sendero Luminoso)
http://www.calyx.com/~peruweb/csrp.ntm 6 International Viewpoint
DEMOCRACIA
LBERTAD
FORMA
Progress." The neo-liberal counter-reforms under way in Latin America are provoking such deep inequality and liquidation of national sovereignty that the struggle for economic reform, social justice, citizenship rights and national sovereignty that it "acquires an anti-capitalist character." Because, in this age of globalisation, capitalism "dissolves the nation and obliterates citizenship."
This means that "today, a moderate, but consistent progressive persona can only be a radical. The scenario is simplifying. On one side are the capitalists and the assorted postmodernists. And on the other side are those who still have a sense of solidarity and dignity."
In his obituary for the very strategy of armed struggle, Castañeda repeats the argument of so many "radical democrats" and post-Stalinist realists, according to which "redistributive, reformist changes can be made by following the institutional procedures." Hello? Is this possible in countries where the legal space is blocked, and popular struggles are savagely repressed? In Bolivia, where each strike ends in hundreds of arrests, and a few deaths? In Mexico and Peru, where the elections are a farce? In Guatemala, where more than 60% of the population abstains in the elections? In Colombia, where more than 30,000 militants of the opposition have been assassinated in recent years? Or even in Brazil, where the left has certainly won some important victories, and runs a number of progressive municipal councils, but where, at the same time, the Movement of Landless peasants (MS 1) is obliged to occupy plantations and farms, and carry weapons to protect themselves against the police, transforming the agrarian struggle into a low intensity civil war? Who are the guerrillas?
In the 1960s and 1970s guerrilla volunteers came from the liberal professions, or the student milieu, or the most radical, "class struggle" sector of the manual workers' movement. Not any more. The rank-and-file of today's guerrilla movements is overwhelmingly made up of those at the very bottom of society, people without work or housing of any kind. Look at the EZLN in Mexico, or the FARC and ELN in Colombia. And look at the guerrillas in Peru.
"Structural adjustment" plans, dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have created hunger and misery, but also the conditions for a new development of the popular movement of rebellion against an unacceptable social reality.
The actors in this rebellion are the social groups most affected by "capitalist modernisation:" the Indians, landless peasants, and the shanty-town dwellers of the urban desert. The people who live at the margin of the market economy.
Neo-liberal restructuring has fragmented Latin America's trade unions. In most countries, the legal left is just ornamentation. At times like these, the MRTA (and Sendero Luminoso) recruit in the poorer districts of the cities, and among peasants who have been chased off their land, or coca farmers who have been ruined by the narco-mafia or the regime's anti-drugs units.
Peru is a country suffocating in political violence. The last eight years have seen more than 25,000 politically-motivated violent deaths. Most of the guerrillas inside the Japanese Embassy compound are boys and girls, aged from 16 to 22. Beyond ideology, beyond programme, they are reclaiming their dignity. In a country where 300,000 young people arrive on the labour market every year, without the slightest hope of finding real work.
Most of Latin America's historic guerrilla currents have recently integrated themselves into the mainstream political system. Their programme and strategy hardly differ from that of the reformist left which never picked up a gun.
But the experience of armed struggle is clearly not disappearing. The brutality of neo-liberalism has left some people no other choice. Latin America is still producing Che Guevaras. We are witness to the resurrection of insurrection. * Sources: Who Are The Peruvian Terrorists? by Chris Gaal, Amnesty International, and press reports. 1. The MRTA is the product of a fusion between the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) formed in the 1960s by Luis de la Puende Uceda, and a "Marxist Leninist" split from "Velazquista" General Leonidas Rodriguez' Socialist Revolutionary Party. The new movement grew quickly under Alan Garcia's APRA government (1985-90) 2. Freeing jailed comrades is a high prority tor the MRTA, since guerrilla prisoners are often tortured, sexually abused, kept in isolated dark and unsanitary conditions, receive no medical care, and suffer from serious illnesses.) 3. As well as the recent re-appearance of Manuel Rodriguez' Patriotic Front in Chile, and the continuing epic struggle of Colombia's guerrillas 4. US President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress was formally launched in August 1961. It advocated Land reform, diversification of agriculture and rural cooperatives. It was concieved as a "revolution from above" to stifle the "revolution from below", without changing property relations and the dominant role of US private capital in Latin America. The Alliance died a natural death in 1963 when its functions were taken over by the Inter-American Development Bank. Che Guevarra made a very eloquent attack on the Alliance at a UNCTAD conference in Geneva. 5. Member of the national leadership of the Workers Party (PT) and of Socialist Democracy, the PT current associated with the Fourth International. Quotes taken from the November 1996 issue of Mas alla de lo posible magazine.