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For more than a decade, the armed struggle in Peru has been dead. It should have been called "civil war" and not "terrorism" anyway, but today a defunct organization is still one of 44 designated as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization" by the State Department-- the PCP, the Peruvian Communist Party also known as "Shining Path."(1)
The PCP is one of two communist parties on the list and perhaps one of three or four organizations on the list that could be called "leftist." MIM was the first to spread PCP documents on the Internet and the first to translate some portions of PCP work, but we recognize today that the PCP never overcame the blow to its leadership suffered in 1992. There has not been a PCP for years.
Yet although the PCP is obviously dead with its Central Committee arrested and reported in prison if not buried, the State Department designation goes on. It seems there are military budgets in Peru and the united $tates to justify. In 2003, the Bush regime told Peru it would have its military aid cut off for failing to support the legal immunity of U.$. troops against prosecution for war crimes, so obviously he was not too concerned about "terrorism" there anymore, if he was willing to take that gamble.(2) Nonetheless, Peru ended up receiving $214.7 million in U.$. police and military aid in the 2003-2005 period. It was second most in Latin America.(3)
The Center for International Policy: Colombia Project explained the
situation not just for Colombia and Peru but all of Latin America as follows:
Though only Colombia and Peru have groups on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, the word “terrorism” appears frequently in the aid request’s description of U.S. programs in each country:Thus, the picture is that all aspiring military aid receivers play up the latest buzzwords in Washington, DC. It could be difficult to justify putting Peru into second place in military aid for Latin America without the alleged PCP.* “Argentina understands the importance of cooperation against terrorism. U.S. Antiterrorist Assistance programs brought Argentine officials to the United States for valuable counter-terrorism briefings and training.” * “Principal U.S. interests in The Bahamas include: combating…financial support for terrorism.” * “In order to ensure that Bolivia does not become an active transit point for international terrorism, we have also stepped up cooperation with the Bolivian military, customs, immigration, financial institutions, police and other organizations to ensure better Bolivian control over its long, sparsely inhabited borders.” * “The government of Brazil, along with those of Argentina, Paraguay, and the United States, has formed a working group to combat the threat of terrorism in the tri-border area.” * “Recognizing the increasingly intertwined nature of narcotics trafficking and terrorism, the Congress approved expanded authorities to allow United States support for Colombia’s unified campaign against both of these scourges.” * “FMF [Foreign Military Financing] will train Dominican forces capable of responding to terrorist threats.” * “The principal U.S. interests in the seven countries of the Eastern Caribbean…are preventing and combating transnational criminal activity against the United States, including terrorism.” * Foreign aid will help the government of Ecuador with the “disruption and interdiction of narcotics trafficking and terrorism.” * International Military Education and Training (IMET) funding will enhance the Honduran military’s “capabilities in the war on terrorism.” * FMF funds in Nicaragua will provide equipment that will “improve the Army’s capability to conduct counternarcotics, counterterrorism, disaster relief, and search-and-rescue missions.” * FMF in Panama will “augment the GOP’s counter-terrorism, security programs and maritime interdiction.” * “The primary U.S. national interests in Paraguay are the consolidation and strengthening of democracy and fortifying the open market system, along with anti-corruption and counter-terrorism efforts.” * Programs in Peru “will lower the risk of instability in areas facing the quadruple threat of increased coca cultivation, narco-trafficking, terrorism and minimal central government presence. Challenges to this effort will be the budding alliance between the narco-traffickers and the Shining Path.” * One of the “principal U.S. interests in Suriname” is “stemming the flow of illegal drugs and migrants to the United States, transnational crime, and international terrorism”; “Transfer of grant EDA [Excess Defense Articles]… will assist the Surinamese military in developing and sustaining regional inter-operability and a viable counter-drug capability, as well as in combating terrorism.” * IMET funding will “send Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force personnel to U.S. military training courses to support counterterrorism.” * “None of Venezuela’s challenges -strengthening democracy, fostering economic development, combating narcotics trafficking, or fighting terrorism-can be addressed in isolation.” The United States will use its “diplomatic resources… to press for Venezuelan action against narcoterrorism.”(3)
The U.S. State Department's web page on Peru does not mention "terrorism" in Peru except in reference to 1985.(4) There is more substantial talk of drug trade on that web page. Hence, we can say the U.S. Government itself knows better than to hype the PCP as one of 44 terrorist groups in the world.
History has gone in a terrible circle, so now in Peru president Alan Garcia is back after leaving office in disgrace universally hated for ruining Peru in the 1980s. It seems there is no other way to deal with the united $tates, but that is another story. Also another story is that anyone with any remaining doubts should have realized that when Garcia came back, it was stupid for any Peruvians to have opposed the PCP in the 1980s and early 1990s.
While other self-labelled communist organizations conducting armed struggle are at the negotiation table and not on the State Department "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list, the PCP remains. The PCP's own ideology says that it would not exist without protracted People's War from its very beginning--and the "three magic weapons." Now the Maoist-led armed struggle is over, but the public has yet to piece together why the PCP is just a symbolic political placeholder on the State Department list.
The ghost of the PCP justifies U.$. and Peruvian military budgets. The regime there claims there are still encounters with men in the jungle--easy to imagine and hard to disprove. Yet the people closest to the PCP in its heyday show all the signs that this story is false--a ploy for u.$. aid by a desperate Peruvian ruling class.
The man given the job of doing the only public interview with the PCP's leader known as "Gonzalo," Luis Arce Borja openly pointed out that the struggle ended long ago.(5) Today, he runs a journalistic website for all of Latin America.
A well-placed translator and assistant of Luis Arce Borja, Adolfo Olaechea found himself picked up by INTERPOL and released in Peru. Years before INTERPOL relocated him, Adolfo Olaechea gave up his focus on Peru issues and turned to anti-war activism in England, politics in general. If Peru were having a real armed struggle led by a real vanguard party, we doubt that Adolfo Olaechea would have changed his focus when he lived in England.
Somewhat confusing in appearance, we know the so-called "Communist Party of Spain" is quite active in talking about the PCP.(6) We understand how some readers might look at that website and get confused about what MIM is saying. However, if we take a close look, it's all about the "peace accords" that the PCP leadership in prison is supposedly talking up even more than 10 years after their arrest. It would be best interpreted as some embassy workers from Peru setting up a website abroad or maybe Spanish intelligence trying to discredit homegrown communists. In any case, no matter the source, the documents themselves are a mixture of the old documents from the original PCP that we at MIM distributed --included by the "Communist Party of Spain" for reasons of legitimacy obviously--along with newer documents calling for peace.
It costs the government almost nothing to run these sorts of websites while it also leaves the impression that there is some peace that has to be negotiated. Here we should also mention the loved ones of prisoners being taken advantage of by the U.$. and Peruvian governments. In the hearts of family of prisoners, of course there is something to negotiate. But "Foreign Terrorist Organization"? Please.
The best argument one could make against MIM is the "Sol Rojo" website(7)--as evidence that there is still some kind of PCP active. The Communist Party of Nepal(Maoist) is among those linking to this web page, if the www.cpnm.org is really the website of Maoists in Nepal.
At first the Sol Rojo had a hard time settling into an ideological groove. Now it is most definitely forever stuck in 1991-2 before the arrest of Gonzalo. At that time, PCP was in arduous struggle with the "Revolutionary Internationalist Movement" (RIM) that it belonged to but had not quite broken with.
Here again the formula is to take old PCP documents and rehash them over and over again. There are still a couple clues that this "Sol Rojo" is a phantasm. First, the documents all still pledge utter loyalty to jefe Gonzalo, as if he were not in prison and as if we were still in 1991. Secondly, the documents do not have the scope that would indicate contact with a party--and Gonzalo would have considered that impermissible.
During the First Gulf War, when Bush Sr. attacked Iraq, comrade Gonzalo still free but on the run from authorities took time out to upbraid his Amerikan counterparts and hail Saddam Hussein by name in a statement. Gonzalo's fake Maoist counterparts in the united $tates had echoed Bush Sr. on Saddam Hussein, as they still do to this day.
At the time, Amerikans regarded Kuwait as its own country that needed to be saved from bully Saddam Hussein. Comrade Gonzalo was having none of it; even though, it is true that Saddam Hussein's invasion preceded Bush's. Gonzalo's action was that of an authentic Maoist, someone who placed high priority on the defeat of U.$. imperialism as in the interests of the international oppressed and exploited. Now with both pro-peace accords and pro-phantom organizations endorsing the RIM, the U.$. government uses Gonzalo to endorse its invasion of Iran with RIM participants.
In contrast, "Sol Rojo" has nothing to say about Lebanon or Iran. It is completely unimaginable that Comrade Gonzalo would have sanctioned the RIM for setting up a party in Iran to organize the defeat of the government during a U.$. invasion. Yet "Sol Rojo" pretends to continue the RIM tradition and the line of Gonzalo without even mentioning Iran and the CIA activities of the RIM. Judging from their rehash of documents there, the "Sol Rojo" either just cannot deal or performs a paid role for U.$. and/or Peruvian intelligence.
Continuing on with Peruvian Gonzalo as their leader, despite the fact that he is in prison, Sol Rojo makes not even a mention of Iran as of this date October 11 2006. Yet we are supposed to believe that this phantasmic organization is actually connected somehow to a Maoist party in Peru. The only thing it does is justify more State Department categories, and therefore an "anti-terrorism" budget.
In the "RIM," the Sol Rojo web page is one of the better ones, but despite MIM's waiting for it many years to develop, it never did. Several other organizations reputedly in the RIM have no web page. Pushing too hard will only prove to one as of this day that there are two links down for the alleged RIM section in South America (Colombia). Other web pages are also non-existent in the RIM. Those that do exist stand by silently while the CIA uses them. Countless other organizations have already gone defunct.
Real communist parties have newspapers, come up with ideology and theory articles and comment on pressing current events. "Sol Rojo" has dogma leaflets from a day that does not exist anymore. An example of what a party looks like is another one on the State Department list, the "Communist Party of the Philippines." That party shows that despite coming from a poor country, people can issue opinions about current events internationally and struggle for theory in the Philippines. MIM does not agree with that party, but it is not a total phantom.
This brings us to the next point, on why the PCP is still on the State Department "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list. "PCP" is a name, sort of the equivalent of "Macy's" in the capitalist world. If Macy's went broke, there might be bidders to take over the bankrupt company and revive it just to use the name and not to start from scratch. PCP as a name is useful in justifying budgets, jobs and votes from an anti-communist public needing reasons to pay taxes for a "war on terror."
The idea of "Islammunism" or some such spelling goes over well in the South and other Red States inside U.$. borders, so whether or not there is any activity at all with the "Shining Path," there are contracts, jobs and votes to be had. At the same time, the Bush regime was so nice as to add a couple choices of organizations from the Chinese phony communist regime. It might upset some anti-Maoists to take the PCP off the list while anti-China organizations ARE on the list. There is another "leftist" organization on there for supposedly one killing sometime before 2000. In other words, it would not take much for Bush to drop all the "leftist" organizations on his list and focus on "Islamofascism" as he calls it. We've seen signs from Bush that he wants to unite the Amerikkkan left-wing of white nationalism to his war against Iran, Syria or Lebanon.
More than that, the PCP is a name with the most value in legitimizing the "RIM," which at the moment is openly preparing war on Iran in line with Pentagon and State Department orders. The oppressed know that comrade Gonzalo nearly came to power as a revolutionary communist in Peru. So "Sol Rojo" has little connection to the real world today, but the one thing it has managed to do is put forward the existence of a "CPI(ML)Naxalbari." This is an attempt to get involved in Indian affairs, probably by trying to split the Indian exploited by taking advantage of those who do not know the PCP does not exist anymore.
"Sol Rojo" is not the PCP anyway and cannot claim to be. It is based in Europe and never tried to hide that. It also does not represent a connection to any real vanguard party in Peru. Scattered loved ones of family imprisoned, embassy workers and CIA--that's about all that is left of the "PCP." Even if there really is an armed struggle in the jungle somewhere, there is no party, no program and no ability to interact with international events. The government succeeds in creating a scatter-brained impression of Maoists with these phantom websites living as if in a hologram from 1991. The impression of a PCP lives on to give life to the fraud that is the "war on terror."
[This the second of a five part series that will be completed this month.]
Notes:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Terrorist_Organization
2. http://thereitis.org/displayarticle221.html
3. http://ciponline.org/colombia/040219memo.htm
4. http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35762.htm
5. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/countries/peru/labbetrayedrev.html
6. www.bandera-roja.com/peru.htm
7. The English version is www.redsun.org