Circa June 1992

Straight Talk on Shining Path and the Catholic Church in Peru

• False Charges
• Catholic Supporters of the Revolution
• Priests and Nuns Living Alongside the Revolution
• Which Priests Are Punished by Revolutionaries?
• The Missionary Invasion
• Using "Community Networks" Against the Revolution
• Footnotes

In early December 1981, Salvadoran Soldiers murdered three U.S. nuns and a lay churchworker at a roadblock. The atrocity outraged religious people throughout the United States. And many religious activists became deeply involved in the anti-intervention movement to oppose the U.S. policies that sent agents, troops, arms and money to fight the guerrillas of El Salvador.

Today, another armed guerrilla movement has emerged in "America's backyard" --this time a Maoist revolution in Peru, led by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). Peru's armed struggle has spread up and down the spine of the Andes, creating revolutionary base areas despite a brutal death-squad campaign by the Peruvian regime. The oppressed people of Peru are starting to wield power in an area many times the size of El Salvador -- a third of Peru.

Washington's sinister legions are again directing a "dirty war" against the people. The U.S. government also wants to prevent the rise of a mass movement in the U.S. that targets their intervention in Peru. Efforts are underway to demobilize the U.S. Catholics who played such an important anti-interventionist role in the 1980s. The U.S. and Peruvian governments -- and their agents and apologists within the Church -- hope to convince Catholic activists that they should abandon the anti-imperialist stance they developed against U.S. intervention in Central America.

What better way to drive a wedge between U.S. Catholics and the revolution in Peru than to charge that in Peru, it is the guerrillas who kill activists nuns and priests?

This charge is now being spread in such an organized and energetic way that this can truthfully be called a classic disinformation campaign. Its goals are to keep progressive Catholic circles passive and neutralized as the U.S. attempts to crush the revolution in Peru.

False Charges

Here are some typical accusations that are made in this campaign:

The Catholic professor Jeffrey Klaiber writes in the Jesuit magazine America, "It is evident that Sendero has turned its wrath directly on the church, sparing no one who stands in its way...this Maoist fundamentalist group...does not waste time dialoguing. It simply kills religious people." 1

Writing in the same Jesuit magazine, Miguel Esperanza starts his article, "Terrorism in Peru," by explaining that his purpose is to prevent the Shining Path from gaining international support. Esperanza writes: "The Shining Path believes that a new phase of the battle has begun. In this new phase all opposition whatsoever must simply be liquidated, and that includes the church." Above this article, large letters read: "The Shining Path is not a popular grassroots movement." 2

In a 1991 speech, Bishop Jose Dammert, president of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, listed some clerics killed during the civil war and claimed they were innocent victims of a sinful terrorism: "None of these priests and religious who were victims had endangered the lives of their attackers; their only offense was to spread the gospel, to spread it and to unite themselves with the needy and suffering people. The cowardice of murdering the innocent, the senselessness of attacking those who were only helping their neighbor, constitutes a grave sin which offends God and all human beings." 3

A headline in Maryknoll, the magazine of the U.S.-based Maryknoll missionary order, sums up the charges: "Terrorists Target Church." 4

These accusations are unjust and untrue. Only a very few clergy have been killed by Maoist revolutionaries in Peru. And evidence shows these individuals did not die because of their religious faith or for "helping their neighbor." They died because they worked for and supported Peru's brutal state -- which has brought enormous suffering to the people of Peru and has been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.

When you look closely at the available materials, you quickly discover that no one claims that Maoist guerrillas of the PCP killed even a Single priest or nun between 1980 and 1987 during the first seven years of the people's war! To document this, we will quote from hostile articles intended to discredit the Shining Path.

Christian Century, a prominent U.S. Protestant magazine, says: "About 1,000 foreign clergy, most of who are European, North American or Filipino, have been engaged in social work in the slums of Peru's major cities and in relief work in the country's remote Andean villages. Until quite recently they had been spared the attention of Shining Path..."

In 1992, Miguel speranza writes, "Until about a year ago, the Shining Path did not dare to attack the church and its pastoral agents directly." 5

The U.S. journalist Robin Kirk writes that the death of Father Dordi on August 25 "puts the number of foreign religious murdered by guerrillas since beginning their war in 1980 at four, all this year." Kirk adds, "as long as the religious did not challenge guerrillas directly, they have been left alone." 6

The Jesuit Klaiber is also clear on this point: "Since Shining Path initiated its campaign...in 1980, it has caused the death of thousands of police, soldiers and civilians. But for years it carefully avoided touching Catholic Church personnel, at least directly." 7

In a second essay Klaiber writes, "In the first years after it initiated its own self declared war, Sendero did not pay particular attention to the church. The conservative church in Ayacucho, which had not felt the winds of Vatican II or Medellin, simply offered no threat or challenge to its strategy. The most dramatic example that illustrates the ambiguous relationship between Sendero and the traditional church was the mass celebrated in the Ayacucho cathedral for Edith Lagos in mid-1982. Edith Lagos had graduated from the colegio run by the Salesian sisters... But soon after graduating she was recruited by Sendero and shortly thereafter became a model leader: that is, a model terrorist. She was killed at the age of nineteen in a clash with the police. She was also perceived in Ayacucho as something of a heroine. The catheredral was filled, and thousands waited outside. Archbishop Federico Richter-Prada, a Franciscan, having no clear thoughts of what to say abut terroirsm and no doubt fearful to express them in public, allowed the mass to be celbrated." 8

Catholic Supporters of the Revolution

The facts contradict these statements.

Chairman Gonzalo, leader of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), openly welcomes religious believers to the revolution. In his famous1988 interview he said, "It must be remembered that the people are religious, something which never has and never will prevent them from struggling for their basic class interests, and in this way serving the revolution, and in particular the people's war."

As the Maoist people's war spread throughout Peru during the 1980s, sections of the Catholic Church were attracted to it. The military unleashed a genocidal "dirty war" against the Maoists after 1983. In some areas, the military also targeted clergy who organized peasants for nonviolent reform campaigns.

This produced a situation in which the military and right-wing death squads accused many priests of supporting the Shining Path. A French former nun, Ann-Marie Gavarret, was arrested for taking part in killing a landowner. Clergy in the southern Andes received written death threats from right-wing death squads -- written in crude attempts to sound like they came from Maoist guerrillas. Bishops complained that parish priests had been tortured by authorities who accused them of participating in a guerrilla raid on a police station. 10

Professor Carol Andreas recently pointed out that many dissenters from the Catholic Church's reactionary or reformist positions joined the Shining Path. Andreas mentions Sister Nelly Evans as one example. 11 Nelly Evans was a member of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary who taught in Lima's shantytowns. Peruvian authorities say Evans joined the Shining Path while working as a revolutionary activist in the national teachers union. 12

When Peruvian police accused Nelly Evans and a French priest, Jean-Marie Mondet, of supporting the Shining Path, a prominent bishop tried to explain. "When freedom arrives, it is like a dam bursting. Water escapes everywhere," said Monsignor Beuzeville, auxiliary bishop of Lima: "There were excesses after Vatican II and Medellin. Some small sectors in the Church radicalized themselves; nuns and priests left. They wanted to fight for the poor but in a more radical manner. Some get too close to the misery and poverty. They understand why people turn to violence and if their Christian faith is not strong enough, they are tempted to sympathized." 13

Priests and Nuns Living Alongside the Revolution

Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti writes, "Many priests and nuns at the jungle missions in Peru survived through the daily crafting of a volatile coexistence with the Shining Path." 15

A few months ago, a U.S. missionary reported how he has watched the PCP extend its influence among the people in the Lima shantytown where he lives. "Sendero Luminoso is infiltrating everything...parish organizations, confirmation classes, the Faith and Happiness schools," he said. A nearby church wall carries bright red graffiti: "Yankees out of Peru." 16

These accounts -- from sources openly hostile to the Communist Party of Peru -- reveal three things: that the Communist Party of Peru has genuine and growing mass support "at the grassroots;" that Church clerics have been able to "coexist" with the emerging new revolutionary state; and that some clerics have been won to supporting the revolution.

One-third of Peru is now controlled by revolutionary People's Committees. Revolutionary networks and guerrilla units are active everywhere else. The fact that 6,000 priests and nuns continue to live and preach throughout Peru is itself proof that the Maoist revolutionaries have not "targeted" Catholic clerics and believers.

The one rule insisted upon by the revolutionaries is that the religious clerics must not be actively counterrevolutionary. Those who enter combat on the side of the old state are treated as combatants. This is a justified and necessary part of the revolutionary process.

Which Priests Are Punished by Revolutionaries?

If Catholic clerics and Church projects are centers of counterrevolutionary activities, their religious covering does not grant them immunity. However, the number of clergy killed is so small that it shows that there is no systematic targeting of the Church, its clergy or the masses of Catholic believers. The Maoist guerrillas are remarkably careful to treat only active counterrevolutionaries as their enemies.

In the Jesuit' America, Miguel Esperanza give the following figures: "Between September 1990 and the present moment (June 1992), the Shining Path has assassinated five pastoral agents, two religious women and three priests. The number may seem small, but politically and socially their deaths clearly signified an important new step in the violent career of the Shining Path." 17 Klaiber's writings refer to the same five. 18

Peru's pro-revolution newspaper El Diario reports: "Maoist forces have executed three priests. On August 9, 1991 Michael Tomasak and Zbgniew Strzalkowski died. Both of Polish nationality, they were members of the diocese of Huarez whose bishop is Father Jose Ramon Gurruchaga, of Basque origin and known as an active organizer of the peasant patrols in the region. The Polish priests were sent by Pope John Paul II himself. On the 25th of this same month, the Italian priest Alessandro Dordi was found riddled with bullets. He was a member of the bishopric of El Santa, which is led by Luise Bambaren. In the wake of these events, the Church and the government have unleashed a frenzied campaign which attempts to accuse the guerrillas of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) of targeting the Church as a military objective. This immense and extravagant campaign hides, says nothing about, the real activities of those executed, which as is well known were not at all holy. They, like their religious higher-ups, were taking part in anti-subversive struggle designed by the government and the armed forces." 19

In other words, El Diario says that these three priests were killed because they were well-known and active agents of Peru's government and military. 20

According to Klaiber and Simon Strong, a nun, Maria Augustina, was killed in September 1990 when revolutionary forces rose up in the jungle village of La Florida in Junin Department. As is usual, one of the first acts of new people's power was administering justice to hated reactionaries and police collaborators. As the villagers and revolutionaries were about to execute the reactionaries, Augustina allegedly jumped out to oppose this revolutionary justice. She loudly blessed and defended each of the reactionaries. Ordered to stop interfering she refused. According to these accounts, she was then shot with the other counterrevolutionaries.

The story told about foreign missionary Irene McCormack is somewhat different. McCormack, a member of the Missionary Sisters of St. Joseph in Australia, was accused of acting as an agent of U.S. imperialism in the central Andes. She had been warned to stop her activities and had been given an opportunity to leave. According to Christian Century, a revolutionary unit of 80 guerrillas entered the village of Huasahuasi on May 21, 1991 and captured McCormack and some other reactionaries. Klaiber says 61 youth conducted a two-hour public trial; McCormack was sentenced and executed as an agent of U.S. imperialism. 21

As far as we know, neither El Diario nor the PCP have mentioned these two nuns. We have no way of knowing whether the stories told by opponents of the revolution are fabrications. But even by their accounts, all five of these clerics were charged with specific counterrevolutionary activities. Their deaths were not the indiscriminate targeting of religious people.

Accounts hostile to the revolution acknowledge that all five clerics were repeatedly urged to stop their activities. Klaiber writes, "in the case of the two sisters and three priests who were killed recently, all had received threats, and all had chosen to ignore them. They were aware of the danger of their decision and stood their ground." 22

Robin Kirk writes that Father Dordi was specifically warned by bright red wall graffiti that read, "Yanqui, Chimbote will be your tomb." 23 Anontio Culebras, from the Hauraz diocese, said the "two members of the Polish Franciscan order had been working in the town for about a year and had received a threat from Maoist guerrillas in recent weeks." 24

The Missionary Invasion

The Catholic Church has always been closely linked to Peru's ruling classes. And after 500 years, this church is still fundamentally dependent on foreign missionaries. According to the Episcopal Conference, Peru has more foreign missionaries per capita than any other country in South America. 61 percent of the priests and just under 50 percent of all the nuns in Peru are foreigners.

All during modern world history, foreign missionaries arrogantly penetrate countries to spread their submissive doctrines and carry out their political agendas. For centuries, throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America, missionaries have worked as conscious agents for colonial and imperialist empires: They train homegrown networks of cadre for their masters. They spy for authorities. And in revolutionary times, some missionaries even fight as combatants against anti-imperialist forces. The sincere intentions of many missionaries -- who believe they are "accompanying the poor in their suffering" -- does not change the cynical and reactionary purposes of their superiors.

In Peru, the Catholic hierarchy as a whole has been extremely hostile to the armed revolutionary movement. This includes both its conservative-fascist factions and its more social-democratic "Liberation Theology" factions. In the second half of the 1980s, the Catholic Church allied with right-wing Protestant churches and the military to organize armed struggle against the revolution by setting up armed "peasant patrols" called rondas.

El Diario wrote in mid-1991, "Today, various representatives of the church coordinate actions with political-military commands to suppress the people rising up in arms. The Bishop of Huaraz, Ramon Gurruchaga, known for organizing peasant patrols, has said: 'The cross and the Bible are the weapons that the peasants use to defeat the subversives of Sendero Luminoso.' So it is not too strange to read in the magazine Caratas, voice of the Peruvian anti-terrorist police: 'Hundreds of monks in the most distant areas of Peru are leaving no room for Sendero Luminoso, thus converting themselves from spiritual leaders into ideological leaders...'" El Diario adds that the priests are also emerging as military leaders. 25

Bishop Ramon Gurruchaga, "known for organizing peasant patrols," was the bishop in charge of the activities of the two Polish priests killed by Shining Path guerrillas.

In Peru, recent growth of Protestant evangelical churches has been closely linked to U.S. intervention into Peru's crisis. These churches have close links to the religious right in the U.S., to the CIA and to death squads in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala. Pentecostal ronderos are taught that the Shining Path is satanic. Hundreds of them have died in clashes with revolutionary guerrillas. 26

Using "Community Networks" Against the Revolution

In Peru the forces associated with "Liberation Theology" have, in the main, been closely allied with sections of Peru's ruling classes -- including various parliamentary parties and sections of the military. 27 Food, medicine and money is shipped in from imperialist countries and used to attract networks of believers. These networks form the base of various parliamentary party and religious organizations who try to channel the masses into "self-help" activities that do not challenge the power relations of society. El Diario writes: "'Liberation theology' and other religious forms try to suffocate the social explosion of the poor, leading the oppressed masses to conditions of extreme destitution. Parishes are converted into run-of-the-mill state offices of food distribution and promotion of a submissive faith in the laws imposed by corrupt regimes. The food, donated by rich and powerful countries, comes loaded with a reactionary, counterrevolutionary ideology position." 28

As the revolution grew in strength, the reactionary nature of some Catholic "community organizing" stood out ever more starkly. Charity and reformist networks recruited cannon fodder for the counterrevolution.

Klaiber documents how conservatives in the hierarchy, like Archbishop Vallebuona in the central Andes, "turned to progressives for help" in fighting the Shining Path. When armed strikes showed the strength of the revolution in Vallebuona's base in Huancayo, "Vallebuona urged priests known for their progressive stance to organize peace marches and to work with the youth of the archdiocese." 29

Klaiber also documents that forces associated with "Liberation Theology" played a central role in developing the counterrevolutionary rondas. And they reassured the Peruvian military to arm these counterrevolutionary units. Klaiber describes (and supports) this activity: "In the beginning the Government was reluctant to aid, much less to legitimize, private armies in Peru. But in the face of its own incapacity, and at the behest of enlightened civilians and military, it finally saw the wisdom of having civilians 'collaborate' with the army in fulfilling its mission. In Cajamarca the peasants are veterans and do not need the Government's aid, but in many towns and villages throughout the Andes the military themselves give out arms, usually obsolete rifles, and in some cases they teach rudimentary military skills to the peasants. One foreseeable result has been that Sendero has retaliated by killing leaders of the rondas." 30

In short, the Jesuit Klaiber denounces the guerrillas for clashing with "Liberation Theology" forces, but then he himself documents that these supposedly "progressive" networks were organizing armed rondas units for the Peruvian military!

This proved to be an extremely important innovation in the anti-guerrilla war. By the end of the 1980s, Latin America Review wrote that Peru's rondas are "now the military's first line of attack against insurgents." 31 In 1992 Covert Action magazine wrote that "the military has imposed rondas structure." 32

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There is a life and death struggle underway in Peru. Which side are you on? Peru's revolutionaries should be supported by progressive people everywhere -- and especially by those in the U.S., who have a special obligation to oppose U.S. imperialism's intervention and disinformation.

FOOTNOTES