While being heavily attacked in some regions and pushed onto the defensive, Sendero Luminoso has stepped up its military actions and advanced in regions
PERU
PERO
500 years of resistance HUGO BLANCO Is a Trotskyist, a leader of Peru's Party of Mariateguist Unity(PUM), and organization secretary of the Peasant Confederation of Peru (CCP). He is presently a senator. In the interview of which extracts appear below, he talks about the peasant struggles in Peru and the violence in the country, analysing, notably, the roots and the nature of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerilla movement. The Interview first appeared in the Peruvian journal, Tierra Nuestra.
I have talked about the collectivist traditions of the peasant communities, and their democratic functioning, which is shown not only in voting but in the hours of debates that precede a decision. These are not the methods of Sendero Luminoso, with its "people's judgements", in the course of which it is the Senderistas who talk and pass judgement and where others have no right to speak and are trembling with fear.
In my eyes, the Senderistas are a bit like Superman or Tarzan, who are not Andean creations! Tarzan is a white man who brings justice to the negritos as if the negritos could do nothing for themselves. But, worse still, after having "handed out justice" the Senderistas leave the place free to the forces of the state, who kill innocent people.
Such massacres have reached big proportions. Sendero Luminoso have killed a unionist in the
T • HESE dave it is the fashion to HESE days it is the fashion to worship the so-called "informal sector" with its "popular entrepreneurs", , as the peasants who have emigrated to the cities to make a precarious living are called. This is cited as a proof of the validity of the capitalist system. What do you think?
Peru is a backward capitalist country, but more backward than capitalist.... Because of the policy of buying goods cheap from the countryside and selling them dear in the cities, the peasants are forced to lcave. The rural exodus is not soaked up by industry.
The migrants then have to do something; they become small artisans of a new kind. In this way comes into being the "informal sector" , which seems to me to be a characteristic feature of the semi-colonial countries. It is one of the curses inflicted on us by imperialism. • The existence of Sendero Luminoso, above and beyond your disagreements with its actions, is an important phenomenon in Peruvian society. It highlights the meaning and role of revolutionary violence in the revolutionary movement over the past decade.
Sendero Luminoso is a product of hunger and misery. The situation in Peru is so desperate that all of us feel a bit "senderist" ... Sendero Luminoso cannot be defeated because it is nourished by poverty.
However, 1 do not want to apologize for 24 it, nor do I think that it really represents the mentality of the Andean communities. International Viewpoint #210 • July 8, 1991 textile industry, miners, landless peasants at Caneta, activists who had seized land in Puno.
• What is your view of the United States' "war on drugs" in the Andes?
Once, the North Americans used the bugbear of communism. However, after the events in Eastern Europe and the rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, this is no longer credible. So new bugbears are necded; hence the "war on drugs".
I have grown coca, and consumed it when I was in the Andes. I add the last clause so that the police do not think I can be arrested for this; it is not illegal to chew coca in the Andes.
Coca is a part of our culture. It is an indigenous plant, in the first place a medicinal drug. It is also used in certain
Din(Pickchay) we do not rites. By chewing it (Pickchay) we do not absorb the cocaine, which does not dissolve in saliva, since we spit out the ccanchu. Finally, the gringos arrived to "bring civilization" and started drugging themselves on cocaine. They then prohibited us from cultivating and consuming coca. It is a bit as if there was an epidemic of tannin and cafeine abuse, so that the English were forbidden to drink tea or the Swedes coffee. Neither the English nor the Swedes would tolerate this infringement of their rights.
Why should we cease growing a crop that has been grown traditionally? Today, there is a state monopoly which buys at a very low price the coca produced at La Convencion, then sells it a high price in the Andes, as well as limiting production.
This struggle against coca cultivation, or for that matter against the paqueteros (who sell small quantities of cocaine paste) is just a smokescreen. In reality, people in high places in the US are involved in the drugs traffic. The same is true here. I have been asked what I think of the links between Sendero Luminoso and drugs.
My reply was that it seems that such links exist, but no more so than links with certain politicians, among them the for- certain politicians, among them the former president of our parliament, or another who was a deputy at the same time as myself. At the time we stated that there was a cell of drug traffickers in parliament. The same is true of the military.
... In the south of the Andes, it is possible that some of the coca is going to the drugs' traffic, but this region traditionally produces for local use. On the other hand, in the north east of Peru, in Amazonia, coca growing has appeared along with cocaine production. Furthermore, in the
United States and Europe, the laundering of coca dollars and coca is a lucrative business. You can see in North
American magazines adverts for utensils for taking cocaine...
• Finally; how do you feel about the 500th anniversary of the Spanish invasion of the Americas, which will be celebrated in 1992?
Five hundred years ago these people came to massacre us, rob us and suppress our culture. The descendants of the mass murderers continue to commit mass murder. The Quechua language remains ignored, above all in the state.
It would be a step forward if it had even the rights accorded to Guarani in Paraguay.
The descendants of the invaders are planning to celebrate the beginning of the massacres, the robbery and the suppression of our culture.
Obviously, we, who were on the receiving end, reject these festivities; we will instead be celebrating 500 years of resistance and the continuing struggle for our liberation. *
Altrabortion crusade meets resistance
THE young Polish democracy is being undermined, on the one hand by the desire of the new political elite to restore capitalism, and on the other by the desire of the Catholic church to impose a confessional state.
ZBIGNIEW KOWALEWSKI
N May 16, 1991, the Polish parliament discussed whether to maintain or to abolish the right to abortion. This was the last moment for Poland to fulfil the desire of the country's bishops and clerics and give a big gift to Pope John-Paul II, who was visiting his native land by becoming the "protector state of the conceived child" setting an example to Europe and the whole world.
As Catholic women have commented: "if the Holy Father could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." Under pressure from both sides, the majority of the deputies decided to support the last minute proposal from the Democratic Union of former prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and postpone the decisions indefinitely.