 A Peruvian soldier (left) undergoes training in anti-subversive warfare by being drenched in blood while stabbing dummies. |
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More on the Situation in Peru:
Revolutionary Worker reprints on Peru The Reality Behind the So-Called Economic Miracle in Peru Foreign Economic Domination Reaches New Heights
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The US-Backed Counter-Revolution Against the People's War: Massacres, Torture and Lies
From its start in 1980, the People's War has faced and dealt with the most vicious brutality the Peruvian government could throw at it -- from slaughtering whole villages, to massacring hundreds of revolutionary prisoners, to hunting down and capturing Chairman Gonzalo, the leader of the PCP.
This has all been directly supported and guided by the U.S. government, according to its theory of low-intensity warfare. But none of it has succeeded in defeating the People's War.
In 1980, when the revolution first began in the Peruvian highlands, the people's fighters faced the police force. When the police proved unable to stop the advance of the revolution, the Peruvian military was brought in. It unleashed a campaign of genocide, focused on the Department of Ayacucho, where the revolution began. Whole villages were massacred or driven out of the area by government terror. It is estimated that nearly 10% of Ayachucho's population was murdered by government troops.
Still the revolution continued to advance, because it had the support of the people. Without that, there is no way any armed insurgency could withstand such genocide. So the counterrevolution devised new tactics. Under U.S. tutelage, the Peruvian government began organizing paramilitary units called rondas. Peasants are often forced to join these rondas, which are often used as little more than shields for the government's regular troops. When a ronda member is killed, it is reported that "Sendero killed a poor peasant." When peasants refuse to join the rondas, they are executed by the army for being subversives.
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The U.S. imperialists and their lackeys in Peru openly worried that the revolution had the initiative, and could actually win. They responded with all the desperate fury of cornered beasts, striking back with a more vicious and intense counterinsurgency campaign.
The U.S. stepped up its assistance to the Peruvian government through a variety of measures, from a more direct CIA presence, to assisting its counterintelligence operations, to increased financial and military aid.
Then, in April 1992, backed by his army and the US, Fujimori carried out a military coup. He abolished the congress and decreed Draconian antiterrorist laws in order to more effectively battle the People's War. Hundreds of political prisoners, including students, lawyers, and journalists, have been railroaded through military tribunals conducted by officers in hoods. Due process only aids the revolution, says Fujimori.
The regime stepped-up its terror, arresting 3-5,000 people living in Lima's shantytowns over a three-year period. The Peruvian military assaulted Canto Grande prison, killing over 40 political prisoners, including Party leaders, and it stepped-up its rural campaign against the revolution's Base Areas. The regime's US-orchestrated counterinsurgency operations climaxed in the September 12, 1992 capture of PCP Chairman Gonzalo and other top Party leaders.
Fujimori's "Little Vietnam" to "Wipe Out Subversion"
One centerpiece of Fujimori's new counterinsurgency campaign was announced
in October 1993. Fujimori said he was going to create a "Little Vietnam"
(his own words!) in the jungles of Peru in order to crush the Communist
Party of Peru. It ended up being a war against the people of the area
-- that failed!
According to one mainstream Lima daily, "...the army launched a ground and air offensive. First came helicopters, machine-gunning everything that moved, everything that was alive. Then came Army patrols to finish off the survivors, burning their homes and raping women." [La Republica 3/24/1994].
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"Stop
US-Sponsored Genocide in the
Revolutionary Base Areas of
Peru! (June 1994) "Anatomy of a Government Lie: The True Story of the Shining Path and the Ashaninka Indians", Revolutionary Worker reprint September 1993 |
Reuters News Service carried the following account: "...The captain said, 'You are a terrorist' and hit him with his gun until his mouth was bleeding... When my husband refused orders to repent, soldiers knifed him to death and cut his head off" [4/21/94]. The truth is that the Peruvian regime is waging a genocidal war against the people, including the Ashaninkas, in an attempt to defeat the revolution. Despite all the government's brutality, its offensive failed to crush the People's Army or its Base Areas.
U.S. Government Intervention in Peru
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Peru is the largest recipient of US aid in Latin America, which totaled $137 million in 1993 and $150 million in 1994. Its army officers are routinely trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia.
Under the guise of the "war on drugs," the US Green Berets have trained Peruvian troops and the US has built firebases in the middle of revolutionary Base Areas. US-manufactured and supplied Spike, a herbicide "too deadly for use in the US," is rained down on peasants.
The CIA has helped support, train and organize the Peruvian secret police, and still works closely with them, including supplying them with sophisticated surveillance technology. The US military under Southcom has established river patrols, upgraded helicopters, conducted long-range reconnaissance and radar surveillance, and has created strategic hamlets.
The US government has also orchestrated and encouraged a campaign of lies and slanders against the revolution in Peru, as an integral part of their low-intensity warfare strategy. Government officials have gone before the US Congress and denounced the PCP as the biggest "terrorists"
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Why is the US so concerned about the revolution in Peru? Simply put, the US ruling class is dependent on dominating and plundering vast areas of the world for its very existance. Latin America is a key part of this US empire, and Peru is a very important country in Latin America -- both strategically and economically. So the US rulers fear losing Peru to a Maoist revolution that would rip Peru out of the global web of imperialist exploitation and robbery, a revolution that claims nothing less than to be a Base Area for the advance of the world socialist revolution!
In many ways the vile slander is proof of the PCP's success -- this, and not supposed concerns for "human rights," is why the US government has gone to such lengths to slander and vilify the People's War.
On June 26, 1998 the U.S. and Peru inaugurated a “School for River Operations” built by U.S. military special operations forces at the Iquitos Naval Base, an important radar base where 35 U.S. troops are permanently stationed. The new U.S. funded $60 million program supplies Peru with an additional 30 personel, “specialized U.S. military instructors” consisting of fifteen Navy SEALS, nine Army Special Forces, four Marines and two Coast Guard officers.
The official story is
that they are training Peruvian comandos in ground and river
operations for “drug interdiction.” But the “war on drugs” has long been
a cover for U.S. counter-insurgency in Latin America, especially in
Peru. According to the Chicago Tribune (6/30/98), Peruvian soldiers “are learning to drive gray metal
high-speed cruisers [patrol boats] equipped with machine guns, rocket launchers and night-vision
scopes.” Many are veterans of the counter-insurgency war. In fact, Oswaldo Rio, a Peruvian marine
who spent 18 years fighting against revolutionaries in Peru’s mountains and jungles, will also be an
instructor. Perhaps most revealing: the area of operations will be the Huallaga River Valley and the
Satipo/Ene River Valley—both places of fierce contention between PCP-led forces and the Fujimori
regime.
Other Examples of US Involvement in Peru include:
- Fujimori suspended the Constitution on April 5, 1992 and met
with Bernard Aronson, the Bush administration's top official for
Latin America policy the same day.
- A Green Beret officer who returned from Peru said that burning
down villages of peasants for sympathizing with the PCP was "part
of the training." (Penthouse, July 1992).
- In 1990 the US opened a 100-acre firebase in Santa Lucia
in the Upper Huallaga Valley that is the largest and most expensive
US military installation south of the Panama Canal. See
photo above left. ( Foreign Affairs, V.69, #1).
- The US financed Peru's Administrative Justice Program,
which includes techniques of surveillance, as well as the "hooded
justice" system (US House Subcommittee on Western Affairs;
March 12, 1992).
- In February, 1993 the US announced that it would take part
in a $2 billion back loan to Peru (San Francisco Chronicle, Feb.
25, 1993). This was key to "reinserting" Peru into world financial markets
and propping up its oppressive regime.
- Fujimori's former Vice President, San Roman, said that the
National Intelligence Service [SIN] directly oversees the drug
trade and is equipped with "the latest US technology."
(Reuters, Dec. 12, 1992).
- "The CIA trains the SIN's intelligence units in everything
from vetting witnesses to polygraph testing; it has even donated
jeeps." (Newsweek, May 10, 1993).
- New York Magazine reporter John H. Richardson noted that he saw "framed certificates from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Special Training Group" on the office wall of Colonel Juan Gonzales of DINCOTE (Peruvian counterinsurgency police). Colonel Gonzales is the officer in charge of the case of New York activist Lori Berenson who was railroaded into a Peruvian prison on terrorism charges.
