De la Torres Family speech to First IEC Conference
Return to Peru
De La Torres Family speech to First Conference of the International Emergency Committee to defend the life of Abimael Guzman. 1
February, 1993
Representatives of the International Emergency Committee in defense of the life of Abimael Guzman.
Delegates and members of the emergency committees of the different countries represented here.
Members of the press.
Distinguished public.
My wife and I attend this magnificent and important event as the parents in law of Dr Abimael Guzman Reinoso.
Since 12th September 1992, the relative calm of our lives, our final years, has been converted into a daily torment. Peace has gone forever and, in our minds, hammers the obsessive threat, formulated in diverse tones and at every opportunity by the genocidal Alberto Fujimori, who, usurping the presidency of Peru, seeks to apply, retroactively, the death sentence to our son in law.
This threat does not remain mere words. No! It has been thought out and planned over a period of time, and obeys the orders of Yankee imperialism and the dominant class in Peru who know that they are in danger of losing power before the advance of the Peruvian Revolution, that has developed over almost 13 years and that has Dr Guzman as its leader and teacher.
All of us have been witnesses of how the genocidal Fujimori, dreaming of humiliating Dr Guzman and achieve a political triumph, exhibited Dr Guzman in a cage dressed in stripped prison clothes, exposing him to the screams and reactionary insults of the dictatorship’s agents. But also, the Peruvian people and the people of the world have been witness to the complete failure of these dark intentions. Hundreds of millions of Television viewers have witnessed the unbendable stature of Dr Guzman who, with unlimited courage and absolute conviction for the cause, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology of the struggle, unmasked Yankee imperialism, the reactionary Peruvian state and called upon the people of the world to continue in their revolutionary tasks.
After this clear failure, the genocidal Fujimori mobilized his diplomatic corps in order to withdraw Peru from the San Jose Accord of Costa Rica with the aim of re-imposing the death penalty and assembled a tribunal of anonymous and masked military Judges who, with summary justice and cancelling the defense of Dr Alfredo Crespo, Dr Guzman’ lawyer, condemning Dr Guzman to life imprisonment. This is another aberration that the world looked upon in astonishment and which history will show that at the end of the 20th century justice can be arbitrarily manipulated by imperialism and the tyrants and despots that still remain.
The judicial farce concluded, Dr Guzman was confined in a cell 6 1/2 feet by 13 feet, located on the island of San Lorenzo, the fortified naval base of the Peruvian marines. by order of Fujimori Dr Guzman was prohibited from receiving any kind of visits, not from his lawyer, nor his relations, nor from a doctor who can verify his state of health. The food that he receives is mean and inhuman. Proof of this is being written in the newspapers and magazines that state that Dr Guzman, in a period of about 150 days, has lost 20 kilos in weight.
In the face of this barbarity and cowardice of the dictatorship, thousands of voices have been raised throughout the world defending the life of Dr Guzman. There is not a nation on the planet that in many ways has not condemned Fujimori for the brutality of his murderous intentions. An International Emergency Committee and a great number of committees have grown up throughout the world with the common aim of developing a tireless struggle in defense of the life of Dr Guzman.
The International Emergency Committee in defense of the life of Dr Guzman, as part of its strenuous efforts, has sent numerous delegations to Peru, each one of them composed of personalities recognized for their international prestige, who have self sacrificingly completed the mission to present their protest of the treatment given to Dr Guzman and to demand of the dictatorship that they respect his life and health. The humiliating treatment given by the dictatorship to these delegations, including the imprisonment and expulsion from Peru of one of them, is in clear contrast to the jubilant demonstrations of sympathy and support that the Peruvian people have given the visitors, all of which shows the close unity that exists between the Peruvian people and the peoples of the world, even more so today before the important and urgent task of defending the life of Dr Abimael Guzman.
We, as relations of Dr Guzman, maintain frequent contact with the International Red Cross, and we have communicated with them various times asking that their representatives in Peru demand of the dictatorship the right to visit Dr Guzman and that they let us know of the state of health in which they find him. The reply that the Red Cross has given in the face of our insistence is always the same that “still Fujimori will not give us authorization to visit Dr Guzman.”
This is even more proof of the extreme reactionary character of the Fujimori dictatorship, and shows the necessity that we must spread the struggle much wider, deeper and convincingly in the entire world, in order to oblige the dictatorship to show, and give guarantees for, respect of Dr Guzman’s health and life, allowing him the right of legal defense, permanent visits of his relations, doctors and national and international institutions that have the obligation to evaluate the fulfillment of the conventions and judicial norms to which the Peruvian state has subscribed.
In Peru, despite the low intensity counter revolutionary war that the Fujimori dictatorship has been carrying out under Yankee imperialist direction, the people’s war that the Party which Dr Guzman leads, grows convincingly. The north American analysts themselves agree in their conclusions and fears in the face of the triumphant prospect of the Peruvian revolution. So then, the murder or annihilation of Dr Guzman that the enemies of the Peruvian people plot will never prevent this formidable process of transformation that exists in Peru.
This conference must express the reaffirmation of our unstinted will to persist and raise even more the struggle to defend the life of Dr Abimael Guzman. We need to, can and must unite with all those that are amenable to be united. We must attract, win and organize more widespread sectors, more deeply, of the masses of the world. We must make a jump in the organisation of the International Emergency Committee, to establish a centralized leadership that represents and knows how to lead more effectively the committees of the different countries. It is necessary that this great movement that is being forged should be transformed into a unique torrent and into a fist of steel in order to destroy imperialism’s and the Peruvian reactionary’s plans and dreams of assassinating Dr Guzman. The Peruvian people and the people of the world demand it of us; we must, therefore, obey this powerful call and occupy our combat posts.
In the first place, it is for you ladies and gentlemen, friends and the public in general, my greetings and love on this occasion when we meet to continue untiringly the important task of saving the life of Dr. Abimael Guzman Reinoso.
My wife and I have come to unite with you that shape the firm voice and combative protest and that you are a powerful force in the struggle for the defense of this delicate and urgent cause to prevent the annihilation or the murder of Dr Abimael Guzman.
Already the alarm call that we give here will be so that the world listens to us, in order that the entire world knows the sinister intentions of making Dr Guzman disappear that the genocidal Fujimori government has in Peru. We see with profound emotion and pride how the men and women everywhere who already suffer oppression and exploitation are standing up to add their voices of protest to ours and to condemn those criminals without precedent of the dictator Fujimori.
And that all know that Dr Abimael Guzman is the most valuable and important man at this time in the world. Already the Immense masses of the world that have learnt by his example know this and they follow his path. Also, the Yankee imperialists and the Peruvian reactionaries who are planning to assassinate him know this.
Dr Abimael Guzman is a revolutionary of exceptional stature. He is the greatest leader that has pledged his word and his work for the liberation of the Peruvian people and all the peoples of the world from oppression, from humiliation, from hunger, misery and death. Dr Guzman has distinguished himself by his wisdom, studiousness and profound understanding of the great teachers of humanity like Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong, as a brilliant political and military strategist.
Dr Guzman is a social fighter, today in the temporary condition as a prisoner of war, immensely admired and loved by the Peruvian people and the peoples of the world and profoundly hated and feared by worldwide imperialism and reaction. Dr Guzman has devoted his existence to the study and revolutionary transformation of Peruvian and world truth, living, working and fighting together with the Peruvian and international proletariat, the poor peasantry, the middle class, the oppressed and exploited women, and the oppressed nations of the Earth. It is for this reason that Dr Guzman is the most vivid symbol of the indomitable fighter for the emancipation of humanity.
Having been caught prisoner one fateful day, he was presented by the genocidal Fujimori, on the advice by north American imperialism, in a cage dressed as a prisoner. But the rash triumphant dreams and the insolence of this apprentice dictator and his imperialist lovers fly back into their faces. Dr Guzman converted the cage into a shining combat trench, seen as a proud leader, valiant, unbendable, a giant in plain struggle that impelled them to listen to his historical speech. His words arrived to the Peruvian people and the entire world as an invigorating wind, with overwhelming force, faith and convincing optimism.
From the day that those hooded military cowards gave him the sentence, his fierce gaolers have put up a curtain of silence. Five long months have passed in which each day we wonder how he is, what is happening with him. But we all know and feel with unlimited pride that Dr Guzman has assumed his historic responsibility. he is destined to defend his people, to struggle for the sacred cause of the Peruvian people and the people of the world.
Nevertheless, we cannot stop imagining how he is bearing the most hostile and satirical sicknesses??? 2, surrounded by a fierce enemy. Nobody can see him; his lawyer, Dr Crespo, has been condemned to life imprisonment; the International Red Cross is not allowed to visit him; he is maintained in absolute isolation; he does not receive medical attention nor the medicines that he needs. Only a little while ago the press let it be known that Dr Guzman has lost 20 kilos in weight, which must now be much greater. Also, it is known that the dictatorship wants to transfer him to another clandestine prison, always with the aim of assassinating him or to continue his systematic annihilation. Then, ladies and gentlemen, Dr Guzman is subjected to a constant torture by the dictatorship and the armed forces. This means that we have to increase our hatred of his captors and to develop our desire to continue fighting to save his life.
We are all witnesses of how the dictatorship is committing a crime and using terror, the prison and death to silence the free press and all those who protest, all this as part of their infamous policy of genocide against the people. We also denounce that in the other prisons, like in Puno, there are hundreds of valiant combatant sons and daughters of the people who are suffering torture and hunger. They are exposed to an implacable climate where the temperature falls to -10 or -15 degrees or even more, having only a thin blanket to cover themselves with and many times not even this, sleeping on the floor and with food filthier and rottener than can be imagined. Our protest must also include those massive crimes of annihilation.
But none of this can break the revolutionary moral of the prisoners of war nor of the rest of our Peruvian people. The heroic example of Dr Guzman, his invincible thought and the perspective ever closer to the definitive triumph, as well as all the struggles of the peoples of the world, guarantee and impel the road traced by Dr Guzman. It is them, the north American Imperialists and their abortions like the genocidal Fujimori, that suffer from an incurable pessimism because they know that the epoch of their domination is coming to an end.
From here we salute the Peruvian people and the peoples of the Earth, the millions of people that are mobilizing in defense of the life of Dr Guzman, the distinguished and valiant personalities that travel to Peru in order to defend Dr Guzman, the self-sacrificing and valuable labor of the International Emergency Committee and of the many committees that have surged in all the countries that work for the same end, to all of you, organizers and participants of this event.
Finally, I ask you to allow me to finish.
We salute you Abimael. We pay our admiration and respect to you, keeping forever the dearest memory of your crystal clear and profound unbendable spirit at the service of the emancipation of our tormented Peruvian people and of all the people of the world. We will fight to the end and without faltering in defense of the life of Dr Abimael Guzman.
The work realized up to today has been overwhelmingly positive. Let us support ourselves on our successes, let us correct the mistakes that we have committed, let us listen to the voice of the masses and let us tighten, as Dr Guzman has taught us, our forces in order to achieve the victory in our struggle.
We, as the parents in law of Dr Guzman, have taken the firm and unbreakable decision of making our voices heard at all opportunities. We will defend his life, as long as our life remains.
Let us struggle to the end and without faltering in the defense of the life of Dr Abimael Guzman
2 Footnotes
