Sun, 27 Apr 1997 11:59:45 -0400 COCKROACH! #56 (Part 2) A EZINE FOR POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE. WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS. It is time that the poor and working class people have a voice on the Internet. Contributions can be sent to Subscribtions are free at Now on line! Check out the Home of COCKROACH! http://www.algonet.se/~malecki How often this zine will appear depends on you! Back issues of Cockroach and my book at http://www.kmf.org/malecki/ -------------------------------------------------------- Cockroach publishes below a rather good article by PO, the Peruvian organisation of the Lcmcri. However Cockroach must warn Cockroach readers that recently the Lcmcri in a reply to Cockroach was defending the "progressive" role od cops and military in Latin America including the vitures of the Argentinean General Galteri as a potential leader for world revolution. -The below document albeit a little programmatically unclear in parts is in words at least a step away from the recent disgusting position they used in there arguements against Cockroach and the International Communist League. Warm Regards Bob Malecki and Cockroach By JUAN PONCE Poder Obrero Peru On Tuesday, 22 April, at 3:17 p.m., Peruvian president Roberto Fujimori ordered the assault on the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima. In approximately 35 minutes, the 140-man military-police team were able to rescue all except one of the 72 hostages. In the action, all the 14 MRTA guerrilla fighters, two soldiers and one judge, who was a hostage, were killed. Poder Obrero Peru condems the action of the Fujimori government and military, and stands in solidarity with the fighters against imperialism and reaction. Three days before the action, the Minister of Interior, General Juan Carlos Briones, and the police commander, Lt. General Antonio Ketín Vidal, resigned. The latter was the person in charge of the capture of the great leader of the PCP-Sendero Luminoso, Dr. Abimael Guzmán. Guzmán’s capture led to the downfall of the guerrillas which began more than four years ago. Ketín Vidal was apparently against an armed solution. For him the path to follow had to be a political one. The operation was a technical and military success. It was very well prepared by foreign anti-terrorist specialists. For more than four months, the Israeli army, which had the most sophisticated third generation electronic devises trained a special commando. According to La República (Lima, 23 April) the troops entered like moles from three tunnels. An AP cable said that they poured through the compound’s front gate and blasted open the mansion’s front door. Others attacked from the rear, and a third unit climbed to the rooftop and shepherded hostages down to the ground. The attack was made in clear daylight, and the MRTA commando was completely taken by surprise. Néstor Cerpa, the commander in chief, was playing football with some hostages when it happened. Despite that they where heavily armed, they where incapable of confronting such advanced technology and training. The official version claims that only one hostage was killed. Fujimori said 25 other captives were injured in the gunfire and explosions that rocked the compound. The Peruvian chancellor, Tudela, and few other hostages were hit by bullets and are hospitalised. It is still possible that more wounded people will soon die. Fujimori and the guerrillas Fujimori employed a purely military solution to finish the 127-day guerrilla occupation of the Japanese ambassador’s house. The occupation began on 17 December 1996, when more than 500 VIPs where celebrating the anniversary of the Japanese emperor in the house of the ambassador. The MRTA action differed from other guerrilla operations. They didn’t kill any hostages. In the first day of the occupation they liberated all the women (including Fujimori’s mother and sister), trying to show that they were macho Latino gentlemen. Some days later they also liberated all the U.S.hostages and all the diplomats from Europe, Canada and Asia. They only kept 72 hostages which included high Peruvian figures, Japanese businessmen and diplomats, and the ambassadors of Japan and Bolivia. On 26 January, in a gesture of pacifist will, the MRTA freed General José Rivas, a high-ranking repressive police figure, because he was very ill. The MRTA tried to demonstrate to the ruling class and imperialism that they were not savage terrorists, and that they wanted to open a road to a pacifist solution, which would consider the re-integration of the MRTA into the neo-colonial system, as has happened with similar organisations in Colombia and Central America. The MRTA didn’t appeal to the working class to build mass demonstrations. Despite the fact that they said that they wanted a change in the political economic programme, they didn’t strengthen that point. All the debate was around the status of the MRTA’s 400-500 imprisoned comrades. They didn’t even want to call for the liberation of the other 5,000 political prisoners which belong to other forces, mainly to the rival guerrilla organisation, the PCP-SL. The MRTA was founded in 1982 under the influence of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. At that time in Peru, the PCP-SL was already two years into the people’s war. The strategy of both organisations were very different. The PCP-SL had a Maoist-Stalinist strategy, which consisted of surrounding the cities from the countryside and establishing brutal bloc of four classes dictatorships in the occupied zones. For the Maoists, all other political parties were the same; as a result, they killed tens of leftists and trade unionists. They were in favour of the physical destruction of all the workers’ and peasants’ organisations and unions, which they would not be able to control. The MRTA wanted to appear as a force which was willing to have alliances with the United Left, a mass popular front, the APRA, the bourgeois nationalist party which won the 1985 elections, and sections of the army, the church and the ruling class. They used uniforms and had better weapons and military sophistication than the Maoists, who where mainly poor peasants and shanty-towns activists. Their most spectacular action was in 1990, a few days before Fujimori became president, when they liberated their comrades from a new maximum security jail in Lima. In 1990, Fujimori decided to crush the militant unions and guerrillas. His anti-terrorist measures served to destroy working class resistance. The guerrillas became isolated. After the April 1992 coup, in which Fujimori dissolved the parliament, the PCP-SL launched a premature adventure intended to capture Lima. They over-estimate their forces and their main leader was captured. One year later, Guzmán decided to radically change his strategy. He called on all his comrades to abandon the people’s war and to enter into a peace process with the regime. This led to the demoralisation and division of this formerly powerful guerrilla force. At the same time, the MRTA was nearly destroyed. In 1995 Fujimori was re-elected by majority vote. The guerrilla movement was extremely weak, and the workers’ movement and the left where disorganised. Some months before the MRTA assault on the Japanese ambassador’s house, the situation in Peru was slowly changing. Fujimori started to make concessions when he tried to privatise the petroleum industry, and when he tried to cancel some weeks of the holiday period of every worker. Some sections of the bourgeoisie, who supported all his repressive measures in the past, were beginning to ask for a more open society, to moderate the extreme power of the repressive forces, and to make some economic changes from an extreme neo-liberal programme. The MRTA occupation of the Japanese ambassador’s residence divided the ruling class into two main camps. The neo-liberals wanted a military solution which could allow more privatisation and measures against the organised workers movement. The moderate opposition wanted a peaceful solution which would weaken Fujimori, incorporate the guerrillas into the system and allow the development of an internal market. Peru has one of the worst human rights records. Political prisoners are judged by faceless military courts and can be sentenced to survive until their deaths in what Fujimori calls living tombs. They do not have access to the media, and only see the sun once in several weeks. They receive only one half an hour visit per month. The bourgeois opposition accepted that rule, because for them the terrorists are sub-human. However, they started to realise that such harsh conditions would affect the future of any stable society. Imperialism and its puppet In his latest declarations, Fujimori said that the MRTA dropped its original demands in favour of the liberation of all their more than 400 political prisoners to only 20. In Easter a solution was very close to being achieved. Japan was pressing for a deal in which the MRTA commando would be able to travel to Cuba and, in exchange, receive some money, the freedom of some minor prisoners (including the partner of Néstor Cerpa, the MRTA commander in chief of the occupation) and improvements in the situation of the rest of the MRTA prisoners. The aim was to prepare a peace process like that in Guatemala. The latest move indicates that Fujimori decided to implement a hawk decision. Some days ago, an opinion poll showed that Fujimori’s level of popularity was at its lowest rate since he became president of Peru on 28 July 1990. After having, for many years, a rate of support of around 60 to 75%, he had only 37%. In recent months, many Peruvians have expressed more dissatisfaction than support for his administration. The man that organised a self-coup in April 1992 and forced the change of the constitution to be re-elected in 1995, wants to break the laws again and be re-elected in the year 2000 for another five years. However, he was behind in some of the recent opinion polls. Fujimori wanted to recover his popularity by showing that he is a strong man, a way of operating that he copied from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. There is another reason why he ordered an invasion of the residence. In the last months there was a growing discontent in the population against his most loyal collaborators, and he was being undermined inside the army. A television station and two prominent politicians (an ex-Minister of the former APRA government and the national leader of the United Left) were attacked by para-military forces in recent weeks. Several charges of corruption where being made against high-ranking repressive figures, including Vladimiro Montesinos, the man in charge of the all-powerful National Intelligence System and the real Rasputin behind Fujimori. Four out of five Peruvians demanded that Montesinos explain the origins of his fortune. Former general Sinesio Jarama declared that the Peruvian army was unhappy with the situation and could produce a new military coup or Fujimori’s self-coup. During the five-month hostage crisis Fujimori was under pressure from two imperialist powers. The U.S. was pushing him towards a more intransigent solution to discourage other groups in the world from following the example of the MRTA. Japan was pushing for moderate and peaceful concessions. In the end, the Japanese decided to accept the recommendations of the real bosses of Peru: the U.S. The operation was carried out in a diplomatic territory which by international law, is under Japanese sovereignty. In Tokyo, Japan’s prime minister called it a splendid rescue, but also said it was regrettable that Peru had not forewarned his government. A workers’ solution When the hostage crisis started, Poder Obrero Peru published a very well-known international statement in which we criticised the guerrilla operation, while saying that we would critically defend them against repression, and that we are unconditionally in favour of the liberation of all the political prisoners. As we have said above, we condemn the action of the reactionary Fujimori government and military, and stand in solidarity with the MRTA fighters, against imperialism. The failure of the occupation shows how wrong the guerrillerist methods are. They are made outside the workers movement and, in the end, only aim to push the system toward reforms. The two guerrilla groups in Peru attacked workers’ organisations and workers’ democracy, had a strategy in favour of a popular front and a democratic regime with and behind the progressive bourgeoisie, and helped the reaction to isolate and defeat the toilers’ mass struggles. It is not possible to defeat the U.S.-trained army with only a well-armed elite. Only a mass uprising can do that. We work for that perspective. At the present low level of class struggle in Peru, we are in favour of organising the workers and poor people from the shanty towns and the countryside to fight for day-to-day demands, and to advance them through direct action. We fight for an eight-hour work day, a living minimum wage, the elimination of all anti-terrorist laws, stopping and reversing the privatisation, the cancellation of the foreign debt and for the reorganisation of the unions and popular organisations. We need to unite all the sectors in conflict into a committee of struggle which would organise mass actions. In recent months, different workers’ sectors carried out mass action (construction, oil, etc.). We need to avoid the isolation of these struggles. Unfortunately, most of the Peruvian left is in favour of popular front strategies. They want to create common governments with wings of the bourgeoisie. They disagree on the different electoral or armed methods to pressure them. Our strategy is for a mass insurrection led by workers’ and peasants’ councils and militias which would establish a socialist republic as part of a voluntary Latin American Socialist Federation. Our small forces are in discussions with other militants trying to create a nucleus for a revolutionary workers’ party, which could be the vanguard that struggle. Poder Obrero Peru