There are currently over 5,000 political prisoners in Peru -- subjected to the most cruel and inhuman conditions. Most are accused of supporting the insurgency, and they are singled out for the worst treatment. Food is so scarce that prisoners only survive by having relatives bring food to them. The prisons are so cold and unsanitary that many freeze to death or catch tuberculosis. (One human rights report states that temperatures at Yanamayo Prison average less than 40°F. A prisoner said the conditions have left "a parade of skulls. I don't believe anyone could survive more than four years there.")

Yanamayo Prison, Peru

Many survive only because relatives bring them clothes and blankets. Overcrowding is severe, with two or three prisoners crammed in one cell for 23-1/2 hours a day. One prison, Picsi, was built to house 450 prisoners, but now holds 1,200. Many prisons have no running water. When water is delivered it is often filthy and there is never enough for everyone.

Yet harsh as these conditions are, recently the Fujimori regime has made them even harsher -- restricting visits from relatives and limiting the amounts of food, medicine and clothing they could bring prisoners. For the first year revolutionary prisoners are not even allowed visitors, and they are often sent to prisons far from where their families live.

• Statement from Challapalca Political Prisoners, (220k PDF) (Oct.02)
• Statement from families of political prisoners at Peru's notorious Challapalca prison, Jun 2002
• Uprising of Revolutionary Prisoners at Yanamayo, Feb 2000
  
• List of Demands of the Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War at Yanamayo Prison, Dec 1999
• Petition from Families and Detainees of the Women's Maximum Security Prison in Chorrillos, Sept 1998
• Petition from Men Prisoners at Canto Grande, Sept 1998

These conditions are a damning indictment of the brutal, fascist character of Peru's U.S.-backed regime. Yet from within these darkest dungeons, the revolutionary prisoners of Peru have historically found ways to continue to struggle and express their hopes for a new society.

Since the early days of the People's War in 1980, revolutionary prisoners have heroically found ways to organize study, work, recreation, and resistance right in the regime's dungeons. They have sometimes literally turned the regime's prisons into "Shining Trenches of Combat."

Women prisoners at Canto Grande celebrate International Woman's Day, 1992, singing "Movimiento Femenino Popular." Java-enabled browser needed for sound.

Men prisoners collectively prepare meals in the prison yard.

For example, in Canto Grande prison near Lima, 500 revolutionary prisoners of war were held apart from other prisoners. They lived collectively, continuing to contribute to the revolution through art, handicrafts, and so on and prepared themselves politically, ideologically, and physically to make the greatest possible future contribution in or out of prison.

For months the two buildings holding revolutionary prisoners had been under siege by the armed forces. Then on May 6, 1992, in a cowardly effort to strike at the revolution, the Fujimori Regime launched an all-out military assault on the revolutionary prisoners of Canto Grande. The regime wanted to destroy this shining example of what a new revolutionary Peruvian society could look like, and hoped to kill as many dedicated leaders as possible.

Musicians transform the prison yard.

El Fronton prisoners prepare for the coming military assault, June 1986.

Hordes of heavily armed soldiers and elite police surrounded the women's pavilion first, hoping to first subjugate the women and then later the men. But they could not. The women fought back the assault wearing homemade gas masks and using whatever they could amidst smoke and tear gas clouds. The women then gained access to the men's block, and together they fought off the police until the night of May 9. Finally, after an eight-hour pitched battle in which the state deployed all of the heavy weaponry imaginable, the revolutionaries were overpowered. Approximately 100 prisoners were killed, many of whom were revolutionary leaders singled out and coldly executed after the prison had been retaken and the fighting was over.

The military bombs Canto Grande prison during their attack, May 1992.

Canto Grande survivors lay face down in the yard.

Just weeks prior to this assult, revolutionary men prisoners
sang The Internationale in the prison yard.

This was not the first time a US-backed Peruvian regime massacred prisoners. On June 19, 1986, the Peruvian government launched an all-out military assault on three prisons where revolutionaries were held. The revolutionary prisoners at El Fronton, Lurigancho, and the women's prison at Callao rose up and resisted the reactionary government's plans to kill them. At El Fronton, an island prison near Lima, the prisoners held out for 24 hours against naval and helicopter-gunship attacks, mainly with slings, spears, and other homemade weapons. Nearly 300 prisoners were killed during the heroic resistance that ensued. The PCP declared that, "June 19th is forever stamped as the DAY OF HEROISM."

A walk-through picture story based on a PCP pamphlet issued on the third anniversary of the DAY OF HEROISM.

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Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru
PO Box 1246, Berkeley, California 94701
415-252-5786 * Fax: 415-252-7414
www.csrp.org