"The majority of the people in Peru are sinking deeper and deeper into poverty...It is these poor that the electoral candidates are most worried about, because the poor--the people living in the working class neighborhoods and shantytowns of the cities and the peasants in the countryside--as well as a significant number of people from other strata in Peru, have increasingly rejected the entire election process and have instead identified with the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) stand of 'Elections No! People's war, Yes!'
-- From Emergency Bulletin #50 of the International Emergency Committee to
Defend the Life of Abimael Guzmán (IEC)
On April 9 the U.S-backed government in Peru is holding elections, including for president. Government officials from the U.S. and Peru, along with most of the major media, claim that the elections and other signs indicate Peru is "on the rebound."
The Washington Post, for example, wrote recently: "After a remarkable political and economic transformation...Peru's human rights record has generally improved...Over the last two years, Peru's growth rate has outpaced its Latin American neighbors and ranks among the highest in the world...[President Alberto Fujimori] is popular among the rich and the poor...[His] government had even more striking success against the guerrillas."
Many of the elite in Peru might love Fujimori--although even among these forces, there are intense divisions over the way Fujimori and his generals have monopolized power. And the Yankee imperialists are praising Fujimori for opening the doors even wider so foreign investors can even more ruthlessly exploit the people and resources of Peru.
But for the vast majority of Peruvians--millions of workers, peasants, urban poor and many middle class people--life is hell and getting worse. Of the 22 million people in Peru, 15 million live below the official poverty line. And almost half of those below the poverty line are considered to be in "total misery," meaning that they are living close to starvation.
And the talk about an "improving human rights situation in Peru" cannot white out the truth: The Peruvian government is a blood-stained military dictatorship known for torture, mass arrests and death squads. Fujimori calls the Peruvian military's counter-insurgency campaign against the Communist Party of Peru his "Little Vietnam"--after the mass murder that the U.S. carried out against the people of Southeast Asia.
Even though the U.S. rules are backing Fujimori as their man in Peru at this point, they are more than a little worried about the situation. A New York Times article admitted that recent military actions by the Communist Party of Peru (known as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path in the media) show that the Maoist guerrillas continue to pose a "potent threat" to the Peruvian government. Wall Street investors are nervous that the huge foreign debt and other underlying problems in Peru's economy might make it the "next Mexico." Human rights groups continue to cite the Fujimori regime for many crimes against the people. And the border war that flared up between Peru and Ecuador in late January was an indication of continuing instability in these countries and the region as a whole.
It's because of these worries that the Yankee imperialists want the Peruvian rulers to improve their "democratic" cover--so that they can more effectively control the masses of people in Peru and wage war against the Communist Party of Peru. But however the U.S. godfathers may try to prettify them, Fujimori and his generals are vicious, cold-blooded tyrants. And their "democratic" elections are being held under the death squad guns.
Still, large sections of the people have refused to vote or have cast blank or spoiled ballots in past elections. The PCP has led broad campaigns to boycott government elections. In the 1990 presidential elections, there were more people who didn't vote than those who voted for Fujimori, despite the threats from the government. In the 1993 constitutional referendum, 38 percent of the eligible voting population refused to vote and 7 percent spoiled their ballots.
For the upcoming elections, 23 parties and movements have presented lists of candidates. There are a total of 2,760 candidates running for office, including no less than 14 running for President. The media acts as if this is proof that Peru's people can express their will through these elections. But 20,000 candidates like these could run for office, and it wouldn't make the election any more representative of the real will and interests of the Peruvian people. All of them are pro-U.S. reactionaries. Their only differences are over how to best carry out the war against the PCP in order to preserve the imperialist-dominated oppressor setup in Peru--and protect and expand their own particular interests within it.
Consider Perez De Cuellar, who is supposed to be Fujimori's leading opponent in the presidential race. As the IEC pointed out in Emergency Bulletin #50: "De Cuellar was a career diplomat in Peru, who was later secretary-general of the United Nations from 1981 to 1991. While De Cuellar was the head of the UN, the U.S. invaded both Grenada and Panama. De Cuellar was also directly involved in getting as much support as possible from UN member nations for the U.S.-led imperialist war against Iraq. Now, after supporting some of the greatest crimes of the past decades, this proven lackey of U.S. imperialism is trying to masquerade as a defender of the poor! But while condemning Fujimori's centralization of power and crude authoritarianism, De Cuellar openly supports imperialist policy by praising Fujimori's economic program and genocidal polices and promises to continue them."
One report on the offensives, based on eyewitness testimony, stated: "Villagers and journalists reported that houses were attacked indiscriminately. The dead included the elderly and a two-year-old named Lourdes...The woman who testified about this incident also...[said] soldiers knifed her husband to death and beheaded him. She said six others were also murdered. The woman testified that she was gang-raped but that her life was spared because the troops needed a guide."
When word of the April 1994 offensive came out, Fujimori was denounced worldwide. He was so deeply stung by the exposures that he even accused the Red Cross and mainstream human rights organizations of being Communist Party of Peru supporters.
The Fujimori regime continues to unleash vicious attacks on the masses throughout Peru. One group reported in 1994 that the government was responsible for "extrajudicial executions, disappearances, rape, torture, and a glaring lack of due process in the special courts...Many of those charged with terrorism during 1994 were arrested on the uncorroborated testimony of a single individual...Not a single person charged with terrorism or treason received a fair trail."
The imperialist press has made a big issue of the fact that officially recorded disappearances--people who are kidnapped and murdered by soldiers or death squads--dropped from 168 in 1993 to eight in the first eight months of 1994. Supposedly, this is proof that the "human rights situation is improving" in Peru. According to human rights groups, a main reason for this drop was the international pressure on the Peruvian government, which had led the world for several years in the number of disappearances. But as one group pointed out, this decrease "clearly indicated the extent of government control over disappearances."
While the official number of disappearances may have dropped, other fascist tactics have increased--like arrests without charges, which have "skyrocketed." According to one report, "In the 20 months after the terrorism and treason laws were implemented in mid-1992, 7,667 people were arrested." The police have carried out frequent mass sweeps in the shantytowns surrounding Lima, where the Communist Party of Peru had built strong revolutionary networks and organizations. IEC Emergency Bulletin No. 51 reported that in December, 800 police swept into the Huaycan shantytown and arrested 100 people. Similar operations were carried out in the Huanta, Huscaran and San Juan de Lurigancho districts in Lima, and hundreds of people without identity cards were arrested.
Almost a third of the country is under continuos "emergency" military rule. In these areas, the security forces dispense with any pretense of "democracy" and carry out blatant fascist repression. The military courts with faceless judges--like the one that railroaded Chairman Gonzalo, the leader of the Communist Party of Peru--remain in place. Thousands of political prisoners are being held in jails around the country, and many have been victims of rape and torture by the reactionary troops. Lawyers who represent political prisoners and victims of the military's brutality, as well as journalists who tell their stories, are attacked, arrested or murdered by the government and its death squads.
Last year the Peruvian government brought back the death penalty, but so far no official executions have been carried out. In October, Peru's representative at the Organization of American States called for amending the international treaties which prohibit the Peruvian government from reinstating the death penalty--a clear indication that the Peruvian government intends to move toward actually carrying out executions.
These are not the actions of a government popular among the people or secure in its power.
The Peruvian military often uses the rondas as a shield when battling the Maoist guerrillas. When the rondas are defeated the government and the obedient media lie that the guerrillas have "massacred ordinary peasants." In many rural villages the military has attempted to use the rondas to replace the old institutions of the state that were destroyed by the revolution, and ronda commanders have become de facto "lords" of these area.
The January 19, 1995 issue of the Peruvian magazine Caretas details the actions of one ronda in Quinua (a district in Ayacucho, where the people's war was launched in 1980). Townspeople told Caretas that the mayor, who is also the head of the rondas, abuses the people, that his chief lieutenant, called "Commander Lobo," murdered 26 people between 1990 and 1992 and that they forced people to vote for Fujimori.
"Lobo kills people for vengeance, then he says that terrorists did it," one woman told Caretas. "They forced people to vote YES on the [Constitutional] referendum, they gave the illiterate ballots already filed in." As far as having a secret ballot, she said, "It's not so secretive. In the surrounding areas there aren't that many people. They tell people who to vote for. They say lead is going to fly if their candidate doesn't win." This makes clear why two-thirds of the "yes" vote in the referendum came from areas in the emergency zone like Quinua.
The U.S. government's response to such savagery has been to utter a few "tsk, tsks," slap Fujimori's wrist once or twice--and then beef up aid to the butchers. In 1993 Peru received more U.S. aid than any other Latin American country--$137 million. In 1994 the U.S. was scheduled to give the Fujimori regime $150 million--again tops in the hemisphere--on order to help "construct democracy" and "promote peace." This January the U.S. provided an additional $8.4 million aid to the police. For fiscal 1995, the U.S. is proposing another $18.5 million in assistance and police aid.
On December 18, in Peru's central Amazon district, the army opened fire on the presidential campaign convoy of the Popular Action Party. A week earlier national police shot and killed Circo Fernandez, the head of APRA party, while he was campaigning in northern Peru.
Peruvian laws prohibit the armed forces from participating in any way in elections. But more than 50,000 members of the military and police were illegally issued voter registration cards (which have supposedly now been taken away). In addition, there have been numerous reported instances of the military openly campaigning for Fujimori--including General Howard Rodriguez Malaga, the military commander in Piura, who was photographed last September handing out calendars with Fujimori's photograph.
Some opposition candidates claim they are being spied on by the National Intelligence Service (SIN), as part of a plot to make sure Fujimori wins the election. SIN is headed by Vladimir Montesinos, the long-time CIA agent who some consider the man actually running the show within the Fujimori regime.
Fujimori has even intrigued to prevent Susana Higuchi, his wife, from running for president. Higuchi come from a rich Peruvian family and her group is backed mainly by retired police and military. Yet differences with her husband over how to rule Peru led her to denounce him as a "heartless, ruthless, corrupt dictator" and leave the Presidential palace. Fujimori responded by pushing through a law prohibiting any of his relatives from running for office.
Some of Fujimori's bourgeois opponents warn of the possibility that the generals may step in and make sure Fujimori wins. "What we fear is that if the difference is on the order of between 3 and 5 percent, the military will change the vote," one candidate told the Washington Post.
The OAS, which is supposed to determine if Peru's elections are "democratic," has shrugged off these blatant maneuvers by Fujimori. They praised the "advances" in Peru's campaign practices and stated that candidates are "able to express themselves" in Peru.
As IEC's Emergency Bulletin No. 50 said: "As elections approach [Peru's ruling class] will be increasingly nervous. They know that many people are already against the entire election process and will fight against it. They each want power, but they don't want the fighting between them to strengthen the People's War. They're walking on a tightrope.
"Peru's political map is well established. The real protagonists are not represented by the electoral candidates, but by the two sides of the civil war."
The Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru (USA)
PO Box 1246, Berkeley, California 94701
415-252-5786 * Fax: 415-252-7414