About the History of the Communist Party of Peru and Its Internal Struggle – Communist Party of Peru
Back to Peru
About the History of the Communist Party of Peru and Its Internal Struggle1
Bandera Roja vol 1
1968
PRESENTATION
“Ediciones Bandera Roja,” overcoming a series of economic difficulties, publishes the important document entitled “ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU AND ITS INTERNAL STRUGGLE,” thus satisfying a justified desire of the Party’s rank and file and, in general, of the working people.
Knowledge of the Party’s History is very important for its uninterrupted construction, since it represents the examination of a wealth of experiences from which useful lessons can be drawn for the revolution. Comrade Mao Zedong states:
“No political party can lead a great revolutionary movement to victory if it does not possess a revolutionary theory, a knowledge of history, and a profound understanding of the practical movement.”
In its prolonged struggle to make the revolution, the struggle against external and internal enemies, the Party has been elaborating its revolutionary theory, based on the fundamental foundations elaborated by its founder José Carlos Mariátegui. That is why it is important to know the history of the Party. But this knowledge must be deeply linked to revolutionary practice and taking into account the historical conditions within which the Party was born and has been developing.
The work we are publishing fills a void; but only in part. The Leadership of the P.C.P. does not pretend to have exhausted the research into our history. It only aspires to place in the hands of proletarian revolutionaries an instrument that serves as a guide for a more complete understanding of what the Communist Party of Peru has been and is, which over four decades has withstood the onslaughts of external reaction and the attacks that, from within its ranks, have been carried out by the bearers of the bourgeois reactionary line. Having defeated these enemies in their attempt to destroy it demonstrates its great vitality and instills the conviction that it will know how to make the revolution and carry it through to the end.
The Editors.
—
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Peru, it is appropriate to briefly examine some historical problems relating to its development, in light of the internal struggle that has been waged within it during the years of its existence.
The raison d’être of our Party is to participate in the class struggle, to lead the struggles waged by workers, peasants, and the laboring people. Its objective is to enable the masses to liberate themselves. To liberate the working people, to make the democratic-popular revolution, that is to say, the new type of democratic-bourgeois revolution, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, national and democratic. This is the first stage it proposes to fulfill. Building socialism as a transition to a classless communist society is its second stage, which it will pass to in an uninterrupted manner, once the fundamental objectives of the first stage are fulfilled, in the course of the revolutionary people’s war. The destruction of the old society it proposes to carry out, for the construction of a new society, can only be achieved by uniting all the working people and mobilizing them in an organized manner for the revolutionary war. Political power can only be conquered through revolutionary violence.
The existence of the Communist Party of Peru is due to objective conditions and needs of our society divided into classes. It is not the result of the good will or caprice of a few personalities. It is fundamentally due to two factors: 1) The emergence and development of the working class; and 2) The ideological and political influence of the Proletarian Revolution of October 1917.
The founding of the Party on October 7, 1928, was preceded by an intense class struggle in the countryside and in the city. This historical event of enormous significance for the country occurred after a long process of class struggles, dissemination of Marxist-Leninist ideas, and unification around José Carlos Mariátegui of the communist groups that had already existed for some years before.
THE GREAT LEAP FROM ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION TO POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE WORKING CLASS
From its birth, the Peruvian proletariat began to fight against its exploiters, at first spontaneously, and then it gradually acquired consciousness of the need to organize itself as an exploited class. Mutual societies, guilds, and finally unions were the organizations that workers constituted for their primarily economic struggle against their exploiters.
The economic struggles of the workers gradually became confrontations with the state power; they were, in essence, political struggles that lacked the leadership of a proper political organization and suffered the influence of anarcho-syndicalist currents that limited them to the economic aspect. Hence the need for the working class to have its political party, the Marxist-Leninist Party, since the class struggle, being essentially a political struggle, requires a proletarian political organization to lead it, and such an organization can only be the Communist Party.
The genius of Marx pointed out the need for the proletariat to organize itself politically. In the Manifesto of the International Association, he said:
“The conquest of Political Power has therefore become the great duty of the working class.” He added: “The working class possesses an element of triumph: numbers. But numbers count for nothing in the balance if they are not united by association and guided by knowledge.”
Likewise, in the General Statutes of the International Working Men’s Association, Marx expressed:
“In its struggle against the united power of the propertied classes, the proletariat can act as a class only by constituting itself as a distinct political party, opposed to all old political parties created by the propertied classes.” He added: “This constitution of the proletariat as a political party is indispensable to ensure the triumph of the Social Revolution and its supreme goal: the abolition of classes.”
José Carlos Mariátegui and the nucleus of revolutionaries who collaborated with him fought against the pseudo-revolutionary dilettantes who denied the need for the working class to have its own Party. That is to say, in the very process of creating the Communist Party of Peru, there have been two lines: one, the proletarian line, represented by Mariátegui, who claimed for the working class, its right to constitute its own Party; and another, the bourgeois reactionary line, which denied it that right. At that time, this line was represented by Haya de la Torre, who only advocated the need to form a “united front of classes” against imperialism and spread the notion that the working class or the proletariat did not even exist in practice as such and therefore did not need a class party.
In the autobiographical notes he wrote, he said:
“We intellectuals who have given ourselves to socialism have the obligation to claim the right of the working class to organize itself into an autonomous party.”
“I have discovered that I was not alone, that my points of view corresponded to the class that interests me: the working class. I judged, naturally, by what its elements with class consciousness think.”
Fighting against the bourgeois reactionary line, in his work “Anti-imperialist Point of View,” Mariátegui said:
“The APRA 2 denies the need for the workers of Peru to create their class party and to link this party of the Peruvian proletariat with the international movement. The APRA wants to be itself ‘a great Latin American anti-imperialist party that fights for the freedom of the people.’ It is a party called to organize itself without class distinction. The elements of the petty bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, must have the direction and hegemony of the revolutionary movement of workers and peasants.”
Fighting against anarchist tendencies and against the verbiage of Haya de la Torre and his acolytes who pretended to remain in a political organization at the level of an anti-imperialist united front, Mariátegui maintained:
“Anti-imperialism, for us, does not constitute nor can it constitute, by itself alone, a political program, a mass movement capable of conquering power. Anti-imperialism, even if it could mobilize the bourgeoisie and nationalist petty bourgeoisie alongside the worker and peasant masses (we have already categorically denied this possibility), does not annul the antagonism between classes, does not suppress the difference in their interests.”
“Neither the bourgeoisie nor the petty bourgeoisie in power can carry out an anti-imperialist policy. We have the experience of Mexico, where the petty bourgeoisie has ended up making a pact with Yankee imperialism. A ‘nationalist’ government may use a different language in its relations with the United States than the Leguía Government in Peru. This government is frankly, unabashedly Pan-Americanist, Monroist 3; but any other bourgeois government would do, practically, the same thing, in matters of loans and concessions. Investments of foreign capital in Peru grow in close and direct relation to the economic development of the country, with the exploitation of its natural riches, with the population of its territory, with the increase in communication routes. What can the most demagogic petty bourgeoisie oppose to capitalist penetration? Nothing but words. Nothing but a temporary nationalist intoxication. The assault on power by anti-imperialism, as a demagogic populist movement, if it were possible, would never represent the conquest of power by the proletarian masses, by socialism.”
He added:
“In our countries the class factor is more decisive, it is more developed. There is no reason to resort to vague populist formulas behind which reactionary tendencies cannot fail to prosper.”
This article was presented as a thesis to the First Latin American Communist Conference, held in June 1929 in Buenos Aires.
We see, then, with total clarity that for Mariátegui: “The petty bourgeoisie cannot realize the aspirations of workers and peasants. Political experience has demonstrated this.”
And this struggle of Mariátegui was not only on the eve of the founding of the Party, but developed much earlier. Thus, he himself, in his report entitled “Antecedents and development of class action,” wrote, recalling the year 1921:
“Mariátegui returned at that time from Europe for the organization of a class Party. The U.P. (Popular University) which are at their peak, on the occasion of the events of May 23, offer him their platform and he accepts it… The anarchists show themselves hostile to this propaganda, especially for the defense of the Russian revolution to which it is partly addressed; but Mariátegui obtains the solidarity of the U.P. (Popular University) and its most enthusiastic adherents from the workers’ organizations.” 4
History has been responsible for confirming Mariátegui’s theses. The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, supposedly anti-imperialist, did not become anything more than a petty-bourgeois political party that, advocating class alliance, incorporated into its ranks elements of the bourgeoisie and latifundia and became a counterrevolutionary, demagogic political movement that played a negative role in the popular movement, deceiving workers and peasants with a false messianic policy, to completely unmask itself as a reactionary party of fascist and pro-imperialist essence.
Then, we see that spontaneously the working class cannot achieve class consciousness, nor can it liberate itself without an organized political leadership. That is why Lenin said:
“Political class consciousness can be brought to the worker only from the outside, that is, from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers.”
This means that the working class needs its revolutionary political party. Mariátegui fully understood this and dedicated his life to this task.
The role of Mariátegui, a strong Marxist personality who had become intimately linked with workers’ struggles since the second decade of this century and who later had imbibed from the sources of Marxism-Leninism, shines in all its greatness for having defended the need to overcome purely economic and union struggles, forging the supreme form of proletarian organization which is the Party. Its founding occurred after a process of ideological and political struggle against elements that, infiltrated in the bosom of the working class, introduced the ideology and methods of the exploiters. Thus, it had to overcome, as we have seen, the resistance of anarcho-syndicalism and other reformist and petty-bourgeois currents.
But Mariátegui did not simply and plainly organize the Party, but rather concerned himself with its ideological character as the vanguard of the proletariat and for that reason also fought against petty-bourgeois reformism. Thus, in number 2 of “Amauta 5,” the magazine created by him, clarifying a note by the APRista Heysen, he said:
“We could add nothing to what we previously expounded: the vanguard of the proletariat and the conscious workers, faithful to their action within the class struggle, repudiate every tendency that signifies fusion with the political forces or organisms of the other classes. We condemn as opportunist every policy that proposes the momentary renunciation by the proletariat of its independence of program and action, which must at all times be maintained in its entirety.”
In number 30 of “Amauta,” Mariátegui condemned social-democratic and reformist theses, with words that are pretended to be ignored by those who, calling themselves “revolutionaries,” have sold the political independence of the working class and advocate the peaceful path, aside from trusting the direction of the Revolution to other classes, less to the working class. He wrote the following:
“I share the opinion of those who believe that humanity is living through a revolutionary period. And I am convinced of the imminent decline of all social-democratic theses, of all reformist theses, of all evolutionist theses.”
Mariátegui understood that the Party should be the result of the fusion of scientific socialism with the workers’ movement and that is why he integrated into it, becoming a proletarian intellectual, being the main guide and promoter of the class organization of the workers and laying the firm foundations for the constitution of the General Confederation of Workers of Peru, whose formation had already been agreed upon at the II Workers’ Congress of 1927 and which materialized in 1929, under the direction of the Party.
When recalling these heroic moments of Mariátegui, we cannot fail to condemn the false “Mariateguists,” who, calling themselves “followers and disciples of Mariátegui,” currently deny the need for the Party under the pretext that it is to be formed “in the process of armed struggle” or after the conquest of political power. Mariátegui was a Party man and only as such can we remember him.
A HEROIC EFFORT TO FUSE SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM WITH THE WORKERS’ MOVEMENT
We must objectively study the internal struggle to have a correct vision of the history of our Party and not fall into the liquidationist position of denying everything, even the very existence of the Party, nor into that pretension of the Creole revisionists who present the 40 years of the Party’s life attributing to themselves the merit of having directed the struggles waged in this period by the popular masses, under the direction of dedicated rank-and-file communists or of sons of the working class and the peasantry who offered their lives for a new Peru. The position of the Creole revisionists, moreover, deforms the Party’s History, by trying to hide errors and with the purpose of erasing with the pen the betrayals that in practice they committed and continue to commit against the working class.
In an editorial article appearing in No. 39 of “Bandera Roja,” we said:
“The life of the Communist Party develops within the semi-feudal and semi-colonial society that Peru is. So, the current internal struggle has its intimate relations with the economic and political crisis that the country is experiencing. Its acute and profound character, as never before, is a consequence of the acute and profound character of the class struggle that is waged in Peruvian society.”
We added:
“In the final analysis, a consistent revolutionary Marxist-Leninist position must be reflected in a correct position regarding the concrete movement of the working popular masses and mainly in relation to the peasant movement.”
This that we stated earlier, referring to the current internal struggle that the Party is experiencing, can be applied to examine the various historical experiences of the Party regarding the internal struggle, since throughout it there is a constant contradiction between two lines.
The first period of the Party’s life, which extends from its founding to the death of Mariátegui, on April 16, 1930, was one of active combat against right opportunism, on all fronts and mainly in the way of conducting the struggles of the popular masses, since Mariátegui integrated himself into the workers’ and peasants’ movement, despite his serious physical health limitations, giving it a correct orientation and fighting against spontaneism. He defended and led the revolutionary proletarian line and fiercely fought the bourgeois reactionary line within the Party.
Mariátegui did not hesitate to give the Party a Bolshevik consistency, although his early death did not allow him to leave specific works on problems of party organization, a fact that is exploited by all those right opportunists and even blatant reactionaries to present him as a thinker not tied to a Party and to try to appropriate him by falsely raising his name as a banner to cover their betrayals.
Mariátegui, to ensure a Marxist-Leninist path for the Party, elaborated in March 1930 the draft resolution regarding adherence to the Third Communist International, a fact that frightened the followers of the opportunist line of the II International and precipitated them to separate from the Central Committee and to constitute another political grouping of a reformist character. This first anti-party struggle was represented by Luciano Castillo and a small group of followers who, hiding behind the inconvenience of using the name Communist Party, but simply that of “Socialist Party,” exposed revisionist social-democratic theses and he alone went on separating until forming the so-called “Socialist Party of Peru,” now devoid of principles and popular masses.
On March 16, 1930, Mariátegui received a letter signed by Castillo, Chávez León, Alcides Spelucín, and T. Sánchez, in which said revisionist theses are expounded. Here are some paragraphs:
“The revolutionary elements, whether inside or outside Peru, who have acted alongside the proletariat, had proposed to ourselves the alternative of organizing in the country a socialist party or a communist party, reaching the conclusion that biologically and historically a socialist party was what suited our reality, which would have the advantage of being able to develop publicly, within legality, and to gain for its movement some sectors of the middle classes. The alternative of a political organization of a communist character, despite the Marxist-Leninist ideology of some of its important members of the movement, was tactically discarded due to the impossibility of developing publicly, since the proletariat does not have either class consciousness or organization that would allow it to defend the communist party.” 6
In this letter, the very character of the Party, its revolutionary essence, is attacked, with the pretension of leading it down the path of reforms and the peaceful path: It is not merely a question of changing the name: As is well known, shortly after the death of Mariátegui, that is, on May 20, 1930, the Central Committee, with the vote against Martínez de la Torre, approved for the Party the name communist instead of socialist, as its founder and guide desired: José Carlos Mariátegui.
Mariátegui, despite some secondary errors, which in no way diminish his gigantic figure, adhered to Marxist-Leninist principles, rejecting the peaceful path of revolution, defending the correct characterization of Peruvian society as semifeudal and semicolonial, as well as the strategic orientation of the revolution. In his theses, he said:
“The ideology we adopt is that of militant and revolutionary Marxism-Leninism, a doctrine that we accept in all its aspects, philosophical and economic-social. The methods we uphold and advocate are those of orthodox revolutionary socialism. We not only reject but also combat in all their forms the methods and tendencies of social-democracy and the II International.”
That is why he had no hesitation in proposing and agreeing to the Party’s adhesion to the III Communist International. He said:
“The Central Committee of the Party adheres to the III International and agrees to work to obtain this same adhesion from the groups that make up the Party.” (Thesis on affiliation to the III International).
Likewise, reaffirming the bases for building the Party, he said:
“The phase of Marxist socialism in this period is that of Marxism-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism is the revolutionary method of the stage of imperialism and monopolies. The Socialist Party of Peru adopts it as its method of struggle.”
Regarding the construction of the party, he advocated giving it an eminently proletarian character, based on Marxist-Leninist ideology and maintained by an iron discipline. Moisés Arroyo Posadas, in his article: “Regarding the article ‘Populism in Peru‘ by V. Mirochevsky,” published in the magazine “Dialéctica,” No. 17, January-February 1948, transcribes these two quotes from Mariátegui, regarding party structure:
“It is urgent, it is fundamental, it is indispensable, to remove opportunism and petty-bourgeois demagogy from our ranks, let us build the cells within an iron discipline, worthy of a historical party subject absolutely to the methods, tactics, and objectives perfectly determined by official Marxism. Without prior recognition of the class struggle we cannot nor should we accept anyone. Anyone who disputes this basic truth cannot be one of us.”
“After a long polemic with these same elements, we must be inflexible in our principles. Unity of Action, Unity of Theory, Unity of Tactics. Legislative and executive centralism of the party: these are the mechanisms so that our class political organization is effectively an organic, concrete thing, identified with the class interests of the proletariat.”
The ideological struggle waged by Mariátegui fought against the existence of diverse tendencies within the Party and advocated Unity of Theory, pointing out the need to apply Marxism-Leninism to our reality. His famous phrase that socialism in Peru will not be a carbon copy or a copy, but a heroic creation of the Peruvian working class, does not imply the acceptance of ideological-political democratism nor the collusion with anti-proletarian tendencies so practiced by Trotskyists of all stripes. The reaffirmation that the Party adopts Marxism-Leninism as its method of struggle, made by Mariátegui, relieves us of further commentary.
Likewise, Mariátegui fought against the opportunists who advocated class conciliation in the workers’ movement. He put all his effort into the constitution of the General Confederation of Workers of Peru, based on the principle of class struggle, a principle that he expressly established in the Statutes of said Central when it was founded. But he did not fall into the error of believing that the working class would liberate itself only through its union organization, but rather defended, as we have already said, the right of the working class to achieve class consciousness and to build its own political party.
Regarding the peasant movement, Mariátegui had a revolutionary attitude, based on the principle that the main problem to be solved was the agrarian problem, and he fought against the falsehood that the Indian is a negative element as a revolutionary force, based on the historical fact of the long series of peasant insurrectionary uprisings; he wrote:
“When speaking of the attitude of the Indian toward his exploiters, one generally subscribes to the impression that, debased, depressed, the Indian is incapable of all struggle, of all resistance. The long history of indigenous insurrections and uprisings and the consequent massacres and repressions, suffices by itself to disprove this impression. In most cases the Indian uprisings have had as their origin a violence that has forced them incidentally into revolt against an authority or a landowner, but in other cases they have not had this character of a local riot. The rebellion has followed a less incidental agitation and has spread to a more or less extensive region. To repress it, it has been necessary to resort to considerable forces and to real massacres. Thousands of rebellious Indians have spread terror among the landowners of one or more provinces.” 7
In this way, he vindicated the revolutionary character of the peasantry, even though he restrictively uses the term “Indian”; but undoubtedly, he refers to the peasantry in general. This is very important because there we have the root of the proletarian revolutionary concept that in Peru the principal force of the revolution is the peasantry.
In this period of its life, the Party, under the personal leadership of comrade Mariátegui, had a revolutionary position regarding the workers’ and peasants’ movement. Without fear of being considered “practicist” or “legalist,” it is good to bear in mind that the founder of our Party, at the moment of its founding, proposed the following motion:
“The undersigned declare constituted a Committee that proposes to work, in the worker and peasant masses, according to the following concepts:
“1°—The organization of workers and peasants, with a clearly class character, constitutes the object of our effort and our propaganda and the basis of the struggle against foreign imperialism and the national bourgeoisie.”
“2°—For the defense of the economic interests of the workers of the city and the countryside, the Committee will actively promote the construction of factory unions, estate unions, etc., the federation of these into industrial unions and their confederation into a national central.”
“3°—The political struggle demands the creation of a class party, in whose formation and orientation it will tenaciously strive to make its revolutionary class views prevail. According to the concrete current conditions of Peru, the Committee will participate in the constitution of a socialist party, based on the organized worker and peasant masses.”
“4°—To guard against demoralizing reprisals and persecutions, the workers’ and peasants’ unions will seek their recognition by the Department of Labor. In their statute, their declaration of principles will be limited to affirming their class character and their duty to contribute to the foundation and maintenance of a general confederation of labor.”
“5°—The union organization and the socialist party, for whose formation we will work, will contingently accept a tactic of united front or alliance with organizations or groups of the petty bourgeoisie, provided that these effectively represent a mass movement and with specifically determined objectives and demands.”
“6°—The committee will proceed to the organization of committees throughout the republic and of cells in all work centers, with strictly disciplined relations.”
Here is how Mariátegui outlined immediate tasks in the construction of the Party, fusing Marxism-Leninism with the workers’ movement and doing mass work, that is, what some pseudo-revolutionary groups contemptuously call “bureaucratic mass work.” Mariátegui knew very well that the revolution can only be made by workers and peasants in alliance with the other exploited classes, under the leadership of the working class. Until the last moments of his life, he maintained close ties with the masses who gathered around his wheelchair and never despised any task, however small, as long as it meant working for the good of the workers and peasants.
PERIOD OF ABANDONMENT OF THE MARXIST-LENINIST PATH AND LONG PREDOMINANCE OF OPPORTUNIST CLIQUES
Within this second period, we can distinguish several stages in the life of the Party, although all have the common denominator of having departed from the path of Marxism-Leninism, temporarily defeating the proletarian revolutionaries who at different times raised red flags and fell, struck down by the governing reactionary oligarchies. The Party continued to exist fundamentally where conscious workers and peasants who militated in its ranks, as well as revolutionary intellectuals, kept their banners high and never ceased to fight against the enemies of the revolution.
In this period, the internal struggle must also be studied taking into account the Party’s attitude toward the workers’ movement and the peasant movement, as well as toward the path of the Revolution.
At a first moment, immediately after Mariátegui’s death, the Party Leadership gradually fell into the hands of right opportunism, which had to disguise itself as “leftism” in order not to be repudiated by the revolutionary militancy of the Party, and thus it traced an opportunist “leftist” line, with bombastic and demagogic language. However, through the work of the revolutionary cadres of the Party, following the teachings and personal example of Mariátegui, the organization of the popular masses continued, in accordance with their revolutionary upsurge, after the fall of Leguía in August 1930 and during the dictatorships of Samanez Ocampo and Sánchez Cerro, actively participating in the insurrectionary strikes of the central miners, despite the treacherous leadership of Eudocio Ravines, who was elected Secretary General after Mariátegui’s death. The Party suffered one of its most violent repressions within a total illegalization and the confinement of many of its militants in the jungles of Madre de Dios and Satipo, as well as in El Frontón and other prisons in the country.
The study of some issues of “Hoz y Martillo,” whose first issue appeared on July 27, 1931, as the organ of the Communist Party of Peru, is interesting, since it reflects the internal struggle that was already being waged in the Party at that time. For example, in that first issue, while on the one hand the use of revolutionary violence was upheld, on the other hand, the presidential candidacy of Eduardo Quispe was launched, a peasant leader who led the insurrections of Azángaro and Huancané in 1924. In this issue, in which Juan P. Luna appears as Editor-in-Chief, later expelled from the Party for his right opportunism, it is said:
“The Communist Party and the communists do not seek to reform the current system of exploitation, but to abolish it; we do not come to soften class antagonisms, but to abolish classes; we do not want the improvement of the existing society, but the establishment of a new one, through the expulsion of the imperialists, the destruction of feudalism, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and the liquidation of the fascist petty-bourgeois sector in the service of imperialism.”
Then propaganda was made in favor of the presidential candidacy of Eduardo Quispe, contender of Haya de la Torre and Sánchez Cerro, in the following terms:
“Vote, then, for Eduardo Quispe Huan Cane, our candidate for the Presidency, because Quispe is Indian, he is a poor peasant, because he has led many armed struggles of the Indians for land and freedom.”
“Vote, then, for the workers’ candidates of the Communist Party, many of whom are in El Frontón for your cause.”
In issue No. 2 of “Hoz y Martillo,” of October 1931, with Eudocio Ravines as Editor-in-Chief, the Party’s Electoral Platform was published, with 30 points, the main ones being the expulsion of imperialism; the non-payment of debts to imperialism; the suppression of all monopolies; the “return without indemnification of all lands that have been usurped from indigenous communities by landowners, hacienda owners, and authorities”; the “suppression of all forms of gratuitous and forced labor in the countryside and of all forms of feudal exploitation; abolition of pongaje 8, tolls, highway conscription, tithes, labor contracts, etc. Payment of wages for all work to the Indian, in current currency, at the same rate as that paid to agricultural workers.” “Disregard of peasant debt.” “Voting rights for illiterates, for women, and for all those over 18 years of age. Right of these to elect and be elected.” “Recognition of the Quechua and Aymara languages.” “Right to public existence of the Communist Party.” “Right to public existence of class struggle unions and the General Confederation of Workers of Peru.” Likewise, it advocated for the freedom of all prisoners for social issues, of those confined in the jungles of Madre de Dios, on the islands of Taquilla, and in El Frontón. It also demanded the freedom of soldiers and non-commissioned officers of the 5th Infantry Regiment, “summarily condemned for the Santa Catalina mutiny. For the suppression of the state of siege and martial law” and other points, such as vacations and workers’ retirement and the reduction of the workday to seven hours. That is, it gathered just aspirations of the Party’s rank and file and the working people. However, in the Party Leadership the process of decomposition began under the direction of Ravines, who masked himself with a “leftist” phraseology, calling for the constitution of soviets and creating illusions in a swift capture of power, such a cherished petty-bourgeois aspiration.
In July 1934, in the editorial “Class against class,” of Hoz y Martillo, number 10, it was written:
“The Communist Party calls upon the proletariat to continue its relentless struggle against the ‘waits’ imposed and the hopes promised by APRismo and its most conspicuous dignitaries, against the democratic, pacifist, and parliamentary illusions propagated by the ‘socialist’ lawyers.” “However, in that same year Ravines fled the country under the pretext that he was being tried by a military court for his escape from the Guadalupe Hospital.”
Ravines and his clique of bourgeois intellectuals, among them Portocarrero and Terreros, who remained in the Party Leadership, taking advantage of the fact that at Mariátegui’s death the Party had not yet achieved its ideological, political, and organic consolidation, even though its founder had already laid solid foundations with his famous “Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality” and other studies, began the work of political deformation of the Party, launching as a smoke screen for their future betrayals, the first opportunist “leftist” line. However, in practice they liquidated the workers’ cells left by Mariátegui and sowed confusion among many militants, especially among those from the petty bourgeoisie. Ravines, a sinister figure of this first moment of “leftist” opportunism, was an infiltrated element who, despite his false slogans, could not help but openly reveal his true traitorous character, since he soon began to deform the correct orientation left by Mariátegui and, using his position as Secretary General of the Party, acted on advice from Chile, where he managed to infiltrate the Party, even coming to control its press, and where he was precisely unmasked.
Ravines left well secured a right-opportunist Leadership and, from outside the country, could manage the unconditional and rotten elements he left in charge of the Party. That is why at that time the Leadership, despite the proletarian revolutionaries of the Party, did not hide its intentions behind “leftist” garments, but rather gradually elaborated a reformist, revisionist theory, under the name of “Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism.”
In 1938, during Ravines’ absence, but under his orientation, and under the pretext of the legal possibilities that were presented, the betrayal of the National Leadership was consummated, which included, among other opportunists, Terreros and Portocarrero, who openly surrendered to Benavides’ dictatorship, with the purpose of participating in the 1939 electoral process, all behind the backs of the rank and file and much to the regret of the correct position of many workers and peasants, sincerely revolutionary, who had bravely withstood the repression of Benavides’ dictatorial regime.
The 1939 electoral process was the opportune moment for the “great unveiling,” since that Leadership formulated a RIGHT OPPORTUNIST LINE that went to the extreme of recommending a “categorical rejection of all insurrectional, conspiratorial procedures, or that attempt to attack the dignity of our armed forces. Rejection and sanction of all violent forms of political action,” as made public in a Manifesto of February of that year. Practicing electoralism, they aligned themselves with the presidential candidate Manuel Prado under the pretext that he “raised” “the banner of democracy, of citizen concord, of fraternity among all Peruvians, of national unity.” In No. 3 of “Democracy and Work” —the Party’s organ at that time— of October 19, 1939, a Manifesto was published supporting this candidacy. Thus, this Ravinist clique totally degenerated, as a consequence of the fact that its mentor practiced the false policy of “select” cadres, of organic arbitrariness and of violation of the fundamental Marxist-Leninist principles of organization, setting himself up as a leader of a minuscule group that seized the Party Leadership.
Everyone knows that Prado in his first Government 1939-1945 exercised a ferocious repression of the workers’ and peasants’ movement. He demonstrated his anti-popular character, strongly persecuting even the APRista s, whose leaders pretended to have a revolutionary position.
This capitulationist policy brought confusion within the Party ranks, with the consequent indignation of the revolutionary rank-and-file militancy. And it was then that the Leadership, in which the traitor Jorge del Prado already participated, in Ravines’ absence, playing Pontius Pilate, unloaded all the blame for the betrayal onto him, being forced to expel him in May 1942.
After Ravines’ expulsion for his scandalous right-opportunist line and his open betrayal, and despite also having expelled Terreros, Portocarrero, and others, the Party Leadership continued in the hands of opportunist elements who appointed Francisco Pérez as Secretary General, replacing the one who had been acting in that capacity. Jorge del Prado, Arbulú Miranda, and others were integrated into this Leadership, continuing the same policy of capitulationism and betrayal of Marxism-Leninism. The first of those mentioned (del Prado), who currently serves as “Secretary General” of the revisionist party, in his pamphlet “Historical Outline of the P.C.P. 40 years of tireless revolutionary struggle,” recently published, tries to cleanse himself of the mud of betrayal, writing:
“From 1940 to 1942 the Party went through its first great internal crisis, generated by the opportunism and betrayal of Ravines and his group. They fell into the most abject following of Prado, using the struggle against Nazi-fascism as a pretext. Due to this and the healthy reaction that occurred in the ranks, Ravines was expelled in 1942 and that expulsion was ratified in the I National Congress held that year.”
However, it was Jorge del Prado and his clique who enthusiastically welcomed the rise to power of the tyrant Manuel Prado, following the instructions of the traitor Ravines. Months after Prado assumed power, in No. 6 of “Democracy and Work,” of January 14, 1940, they said:
“The democratic solution to the political problem triumphed and the new era that the current government has opened began peacefully.” “As for the Government, it should be sure of popular support, it can rely on the backing of the entire Peru for its action to remove the obstacles that stand in its way and advance decisively in the realization of its program and satisfaction of the people’s needs.” “For our part, we are, today more than ever, for the union of all parties, classes, and citizens who love the country, in a single national and democratic front; and, from our always independent position, we pronounce ourselves in support of the new government and its program.”
Jorge del Prado himself, in his Organization Report presented to the I National Congress of the Party, in 1942, recognized:
“Because the first leaders of the Party did not know how to liquidate their petty-bourgeois tares in time, our history, in these twelve years, has been characterized by capitulationism, present in different forms, according to the times. In the first stage it was anarcho-syndicalism, which handed over the fate of the Party and the working class into the hands of the trade union movement regardless of its orientation. In the second stage, the anti-APRista phobia, placed the Party on many occasions doing the bidding of Sánchez Cerro, whom it considered as a secondary enemy compared to the APRA. Later, reacting against this deviation, it fell into the opposite extreme: collaboration with the Prado regime, which was nothing more than a simple agent of Yankee imperialism.”
However, Jorge del Prado was not expelled, nor his henchmen, despite being the main responsible for the capitulationist policy practiced before Ravines’ expulsion and even after it. Despite the fact that the I National Congress of the Party, in 1942, made an assessment of the management of the right opportunists, these people continued in the Party Leadership. And under the protection of their opportunist policy, at the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944, Browderism began in Peru, which reached its maximum expression in the I NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF 1944, where it reached the height of betrayal, even recommending “the change of tactics” of the Party. Acosta presented a Report elaborated by Jorge del Prado and approved by the Leadership, entitled “The General Elections of 1945 and our tasks” and Juan Barrios presented another entitled “The political perspectives of the Post-war and the change of name of our Party.” These documents reflect the betrayal that these people had already put into practice. In the Report of the Leadership, presented by J. Barrio, it was affirmed that “class contradictions can be resolved and overcome, avoiding fundamental clashes and collisions within each country with a criterion of National Union beneficial both for the bourgeoisie and for the proletariat and all progressive sectors.” That a period of “democratic and peaceful development of peoples had been entered and that the very line of National Unity had ceased to be a class line.” That “the current name of the Party does not correspond to the changes that have occurred in the world and national situation.” That “the current name of the Party does not correspond to its social composition either. The line of National Unity has caused considerable numbers of intellectuals, employees, professionals, merchants, including wealthy people, to join its ranks.” These words reveal that from years before, admission to the Party had begun to be given to people from the well-off strata of society and even to exploiting people, with the purpose that they would become the social support of the opportunist clique of Prado-Acosta-Barrio.
Well, in the First National Conference, Jorge Acosta as Secretary General read the Report of the Central Committee with the title we have already mentioned, in which he held the following anti-Marxist theses:
“We have seen, comrades, how a historical stage of peaceful coexistence between peoples, of collaboration between the capitalist and socialist systems, of peaceful development of society opens up.” 9
These are theses that proclaim the abandonment of the class struggle, the abandonment of the revolution and, deep down, advocate class collaboration. The opportunists of Prado-Acosta-Barrio confused the united front with class collaboration, a position that was harshly criticized by Jorge Dimitrov. Likewise, in the I National Conference of 1944, the transformation of the Communist Party into a “Party of the Peruvian People” was advocated, under the false pretext that the communist name frightened people. That is, they advocated the liquidation of the Party as such.
Against these theses that “browderized” the Party, the revolutionary rank-and-file communists reacted. But the Ravinist Leadership brutally crushed it and continued its collaborationist policy. It must be noted that this policy was the same that Eudocio Ravines and Jorge del Prado had already begun before, and that it continued with the entry into the Party of a large number of well-off elements. Thus, the Party became populated with a mass of dubious elements, a petty-bourgeois mass that was the support of the opportunists of Prado-Acosta-Barrio. This mass was maintained with the trickery of cheap demagogy and with the use of funds provided by the subsidies that the Prado regime gave them through the Party’s “deputies.” This politicking and the dealings with the capitulationist bourgeoisie were based on a false line of National Unity which is in reality a policy of class collaboration. In this regard, the great strategist and tactician of the united front, Jorge Dimitrov, in his article “United Front or class collaboration,” wrote:
“The united front and class collaboration are not only not identical, but, on the contrary, are two profoundly contradictory, absolutely incompatible things that reject each other.” In reality, the united front of labor represents, by itself, the common struggle and effort of the working masses and their political parties and economic organizations for determined and concrete purposes, whose realization is only possible through the struggle against the bourgeoisie, capitalism, and their parties, and not through any kind of collaboration with them.” He also said:
“Class collaboration, however, subordinates the working masses to the capitalist bourgeoisie, strengthens its class positions, saves it from critical situations in which it finds itself at a given moment due to the discontent of the majority of the people, in order to be able afterward, with all the more force and brutality, to continue its policy of exploitation, robbery, and domination.”
Nothing, then, has in common the dirty policy of class collaboration practiced and proclaimed by Creole revisionism with the Marxist-Leninist policy of the united front.
In March 1946, the II NATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE PARTY was held, without producing a positive change in the political line. Since the I National Congress of 1942, there was an increasingly open violation of Marxism-Leninism, even though already before that event, shortly after Mariátegui’s death, the Party was being led along paths different from Marxism.
In the “Conclusions and Resolutions of the 2nd National Congress,” the betrayals of the Leadership, both to the workers’ movement and to the peasant movement and in general to the struggles of the working people, are half-heartedly recognized. On p. 12 of said document it is expressed:
“The National Unity that we advocate today must overcome the errors and weakness that certain comrades and certain organisms of our Party committed in its application… The errors committed during the previous regime must not be repeated.”
On the following page, it adds:
“If within the struggle against Hitlerism and the Fifth Column it was right to advocate a policy of National Unity with the bourgeoisie and all patriotic sectors, there was weakness in the defense of popular demands, especially of the working class and the peasantry. Our party has been and will be at the forefront of the struggles waged by the proletariat, but it is honest to recognize that there were vacillations and inconsistent attitudes on the part of certain leaders and organisms.”
But these so-called “vacillations and inconsistent attitudes” were real betrayals of the working class. Many strikes were halted and many class struggles paralyzed, in the name of a “social peace” supposedly necessary for a policy of unity without principles. Although it is true that in that historical stage, the policy of many communist parties was one of national unity against Nazi-fascism, this did not imply a betrayal of the interests of the working class nor was it a halt in the class struggle. The united front policy does not suppress the class struggle, it does not suppress the political independence of the Party, nor of the working class. But, since the Creole revisionists sold —as they are doing now— the political independence of the working class, they issued orders from the Party Leadership so that the worker comrades, as union leaders, would proceed according to their political line of betrayal. Many of these leaders, who complied grudgingly, indignantly, and out of discipline, with these directives, were liquidated as such, upon finding themselves with the repudiation of the workers, while on the other hand, the APRista union leaders —temporarily persecuted— were filled with a false halo of revolutionaries, because demagogically they stimulated strike struggle. The APRA, especially during Prado’s first Government, pretended to be in opposition and was the object of rigged repression against its main leaders and real repression against its rank-and-file elements who mistakenly believed in APRista “revolutionism.” That is why the workers’ organizations fell more and more under the influence of the APRA.
To cover up its fear and betrayal of the peasant movement, in the same Resolutions of the II Congress, it is said:
“Likewise, our Party must overcome its traditional underestimation of peasant work and concentrate its efforts on the struggle for the demands of this popular sector, considering that the national solution of basic, social, and political problems depends, to a large extent, on the liberation of the peasant masses from the feudal yoke and oppression, that is, on the implementation of ‘Agrarian Reform’.”
But it was not a simple “underestimation,” but a fear and at the same time a contempt for the peasant movement that, if it was successful on some occasions, was due to the work of the consistent rank-and-file communists who were always present in the Party:
All this means that the II National Congress of the Party did not manage to pull it out of its right-opportunist quagmire into which the members of the cliques of Ravines and Jorge del Prado had successively sunk it. The members of this last clique, surrounded by a cohort of unconditional elements drawn from the strata of the petty bourgeoisie and the exploiting classes, worked hard to hide their betrayals and to overcome the resistant internal struggle of the Marxist-Leninist sector of the Party, which was practically overwhelmed by a predominantly petty-bourgeois militancy, loyal to the clique. Apart from this, the ideological-political level was generally low and the right opportunists covered up their betrayals and in a certain way justified them, blaming everything on Browderism. This was not an obstacle for the II Congress to ratify its traitorous conception of National Union.
However, the II National Congress of the Party did not pass in the tranquil manner expected by the members of the revisionist clique, since in any case there was internal struggle and denunciations were made about the line of betrayal that the Leadership was imprinting, and even more so, truly repugnant acts committed by the ruling clique were revealed, such as the denunciation that in exchange for the sale of political independence, they received subsidies from the Prado regime through influential representatives in Parliament.
However, the corruption of the members of the Leadership, to a great extent, diverted the ideological and political struggle which was the essential one; that is, the internal struggle was not carried out along correct channels, rather focusing on economic corrupt practices than on the bourgeois revisionist and traitorous line. It is true that denunciations were made regarding ideological and political betrayal; but too much storm was raised over economic corrupt practices, so that the revisionists found it easy to evade accusations relating to administrative mismanagement, bureaucratism, bossism, poor mass work, etc.
The hypocritical self-criticism made by the main representatives of the bourgeois revisionist line, as well as the uncoordinated ideological and political resistance of the sincere communists, determined that in the II Congress they themselves were reelected and other elements loyal to the same clique were incorporated. The request that they go down to the ranks and that some of them be definitively separated from the Party, such as Jorge Acosta and Juan Barrio, was unsuccessful. The main positions of the Central Committee fell to Jorge Acosta, as Secretary General; to Jorge del Prado as Secretary of Organization; and to Juan Barrio as Secretary of Press and Propaganda. But in reality, the true Leadership was exercised by Jorge del Prado, drafter of most of the Party documents. Skilled in handling false self-criticism, he has always known how to present himself to the militancy as a self-sacrificing leader, managing to deceive a part of it. His vacillations, weaknesses, and betrayals, he has always loaded onto others. Thus, in his aforementioned pamphlet (“40 years of …”) he says:
“From 1942 to 1945, after overcoming that great crisis (referring to the expulsion of Ravines and his group) and clarifying the Party’s line in the I National Congress, new impetus was given to the reorganization, growth, and national extension of the Party, making it recover its role as vanguard. Although in mid-1943 the deviationist currents of Browderism came to influence us, as in all of Latin America, that deviation did not nullify the great successes of our work nor did it last long.” 10
Does this follower of Khrushchev forget that the I National Conference of 1944 — which he does not even mention in his pamphlet — was held under the sign of Browderism, but that in practice even before 1943 the Party Leadership was one hundred percent revisionist, as demonstrated by the disgusting Manifesto of 1939, appearing in No. 3 of “Democracy and Work,” of October 19 of that year, advocating the candidacy of Manuel Prado? Does he also forget that as early as 1936, they forced the class leaders of the C.G.T.P. founded by Mariátegui to capitulate before the so-called “Trade Union Central” that the APRista s concocted, as seen in the Manifesto that the workers’ central issued on May 1 of that year? These people forced the leaders of the C.G.T.P. to capitulate before APRismo. In said Manifesto, the following was said:
“Despite the fact that the C.G.T.P. is the product of a Congress, which has a tradition of glorious struggle, we are willing to work for a congress that determines which should be the Single Central. We do not pretend that it should be ours: the masses will say so.”
The policy of collaboration with the bourgeoisie and with latifundism is expressed in a Draft Law that the members of the Communist Fraction presented to the National Congress, since in 1945 the Party had obtained the election of four deputies, a Draft Law that advocated the creation of the “National Agro-Livestock Service,” from whose text it is seen that it was aimed at strengthening the power of the latifundists and landowners of the latifundia exploited with capitalist forms of production. This Draft, previously approved by the Party Leadership, was published with great pomp in No. 131, of “Democracy and Work,” of December 3, 1945, directed by Juan Barrio. It only proposed the technification and improvement of agriculture, the organization of peasants into “efficient bodies of agricultural production,” the rational exploitation and distribution of agricultural products, the improvement of the standard of the “peasants and indigenous people,” “through the dissemination of practices and knowledge of nutrition, hygiene, health, etc.” Likewise, it indicated the means for the fulfillment of its purposes and determined the constitution of its funds.
In this ill-fated project, the false agrarian policy of the revisionist leaders of that time is concentrated, and who are in part the same ones who now lead the group that acts as an Agency of Soviet social-imperialism. In this project, not even the slightest favorable solution for the peasant is proposed; not even improving rural wages is considered, nor the reduction of the lease fee, as any “progressive” bourgeois could propose. And, naturally, nothing is said about Agrarian Reform; the latifundists are not attacked in the slightest, but rather the project itself tends to strengthen and technify exploitation in the countryside. And let it be borne in mind that this project was presented during the regime of Bustamante y Rivero, after World War II. Why has Jorge del Prado not self-criticized this false agrarian policy? In his aforementioned pamphlet he does not even mention it, due to the fact that he was an accomplice in such a betrayal against the Peruvian peasant.
After the II National Congress of the Party, of 1946, the conciliationist policy of the revisionist clique continued in all fields and mainly in the leadership of the workers’ movement, and this was why this movement fell into the hands of reformist, anarcho-syndicalist, and APRista elements, with rare exceptions. During the capitulationism to the Prado Government, in its first period, as we have already said, the communist union leaders lost prestige because they were forced to halt strikes by pressure from the Party’s ruling clique, which had a conciliatory position, a capitulationist policy based on compromises with official circles, while the APRista leaders gained prestige with their demagogic and apparently pro-worker attitude. After the founding of the C.T.P. (Confederation of Workers of Peru). under the sign of reformism and conciliationism, since its Statutes no longer contain the class principles defended by Mariátegui—, the clique that usurped the Leadership, in the pursuit of its electoral ambitions and once again selling the Party’s independence, after the 1945 elections that strengthened the APRA, acceded to the APRista proposals and handed over to them the total direction of the C.T.P. Any reaction from the worker comrades was brutally suppressed. Many conscious workers were expelled from the Party and many others fell into passivity and even disillusionment.
The revisionist capitulationism, as well as the betrayal of the workers’ and peasants’ movement, gave rise to protests from the healthy militancy of the Party, albeit disorganized. That is why the opportunists of the Leadership continued to admit into the Party people from various non-working social strata and especially well-off elements of the petty bourgeoisie and even some latifundists. Already in the II National Congress of 1946, the existence of tens of thousands of members was reported. Among these tens of thousands, there were many non-proletarian elements and unproletarianized petty bourgeois, the same who were the social support of the revisionist clique.
From 1947 to 1948, a very acute internal struggle was waged, located in the Lima Departmental Committee, because the maneuver of the ruling clique that had itself reelected in the 1946 Congress had become clear, although this struggle had its antecedents in the discontent that had always been manifesting for years. This discontent of the revolutionary militancy, created as a result of the continuation of corrupt practices and the violation of principles, produced a justified rebellion that was repressed with mass expulsions against members of said Departmental Committee, including the refusal to take the measures proposed by the XIII Lima Departmental Congress, and the non-recognition of the XIV Congress of said body and the constitution of a parallel body, with the purpose that this one would participate in the III National Congress that was already being concocted.
The “Conclusions and Resolutions of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Central Committee,” published on August 1, 1947, reveal part of this struggle. Thus, in Resolution 10, it says:
“Considering that the Lima Departmental Committee at its XIII Congress has agreed to request the Central Committee to hold an Extraordinary Congress of the Party for the month of August (this agreement was taken in May), without taking into account that the Statutes indicate at least an advance time of four months for the convocation of a National Congress, whether ordinary or extraordinary, and having been verified by the text of the Resolutions of the XIII Departmental Congress that the political line of the Party has been revised, this fact also constituting a flagrant violation of the Party Statutes, the sixth Plenary Session agrees: to reject the request of the Lima Departmental Congress to convene an Extraordinary National Congress, it being understood that the III National Congress will be convened on the established date.”
“At the same time, considering the reasons expounded by the Political Commission, the Central Committee disavows the resolution of the Departmental Congress that deprives the comrades Juan Barrio and Edmundo Carranza of their rights as militants. Likewise, the Central Committee ratifies the agreement adopted by the Political Commission to entrust the National Control Commission with the judgment of the Disciplinary Commission of the Lima Departmental Committee that prepared the report to the Departmental Congress in which it made diversionist and Trotskyist proposals, characterized by its insidious and biased content against the National Leadership, with which it has tried to sow confusion and unfounded distrust in the ranks against the Party leaders, especially against the Secretary General, comrade Jorge del Prado, who has been attacked with the same arguments used by the traitor Ravines and the APRA.”
Since the Lima Departmental Committee became the main target of Jorge del Prado’s clique, the contradictions became more and more acute. The mass expulsions practiced by the clique entrenched in the National Leadership and the holding of the XIV Lima Departmental Congress reveal this. Held in May 1948, this Congress determined the expulsion of the members of said Committee, right in the middle of the event, as revealed by a document (leaflet) circulated by the National Leadership, which reports the expulsion of Juan P. Luna (ex-parliamentarian), Angel Marín, Oscar Doria, Antonio Barzona, and others, without further explanation. It is true that Juan P. Luna was responsible for right opportunism and was an accomplice of the Leadership in the capitulationism in favor of the Prado regime; but his expulsion was mainly due to the fact that in the XIII Lima Departmental Congress, he revealed the deals of the National Leadership with that regime, which naturally had an echo, because, moreover, Luna was at that time a national leader of the Confederation of Workers of Peru. This last point does not relieve him of his incurable right opportunism, since even later, during the dictatorial regime of Odría, he was elected representative to Congress in rigged elections in which there was only one candidate for the Presidency. This circumstance favored the Leadership clique to justify itself before the Party’s rank and file, and Luna’s expulsion was ratified by his own subsequent conduct.
The XIV Lima Departmental Congress disavowed the expulsions made by the National Leadership, on the grounds that they were adopted with the sole objective of preventing those expelled from testifying against the ruling clique in the upcoming III Party Congress, as explained by the expulsion of Angel Marín, against whom said measure was taken without him being a leader of the Regional Committee at that time.
The documents of the XIV Lima Departmental Congress, and mainly its Conclusions and Resolutions, were completely disavowed, as was the Departmental Committee elected in that event. And it was natural, because in those documents a countless number of revelations are made about the betrayal of the National Leadership of the ruling clique and the expulsion of Jorge del Prado Chávez, Juan Barrio, Jorge Acosta, Eliseo García, Ernesto Rojas, and others was agreed. These documents have not been well known by the Party militancy and, due to the fact that Juan P. Luna, a highly discredited element who shortly afterward was an instrument of Odría’s military dictatorship, was presented as the main spokesperson of the XIV Congress of Lima, the militancy was easily deceived by the clique that made itself appear as a victim of slander and misunderstanding, so that these documents were forgotten and the members of the Departmental Committee that held the XIV Congress weakened their resistance to the National Leadership, while on the other hand, the Departmental Committee constituted by indication of the clique took shape. However, many Party cells in Lima fell into discontent, discouragement, and passivity, due to the lack of political level, despite their revolutionary sentiment, and gradually disintegrated, also because many expelled by the ruling clique fell into political degeneration, such as right opportunism, collaborationism with the regimes of the time, and total passivity. There are very few comrades from that time who remain in the Party or who have an independent attitude of waiting, having others fallen into political confusionism as a result of the discrepancies produced in the international communist movement.
The internal struggle waged by the Lima Departmental Committee and which had its most acute expression in its XIV Congress of May 1948, had the defect of placing too much emphasis on the administrative corrupt practices of the elements entrenched in the Party Leadership, accusations that they easily managed to evade by calling them slanderous. While it is true that it denounced the betrayal of the principles of Marxism-Leninism and its capitulationism to the dictatorships, on the other hand, it did not indicate what the proletarian line was that the Party should follow, nor did it raise the main problem of the Peruvian Revolution, which is the struggle for political power. Likewise, the subsequent conduct of many of the members of this Departmental Committee, who did not persevere in Marxism-Leninism and fell into various forms of opportunism, distorted the internal struggle as a struggle between persons or groups of persons within the Party and has not passed into history as a struggle between the proletarian line and the right-opportunist line, although in the Party’s ranks there were comrades who sincerely wanted the Revolution and deeply repudiated the clique entrenched in the National Leadership.
After the opportunist clique had cleared the way, freeing itself from all proletarian opposition, it held the III NATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE PARTY in August 1948 in a rigged manner. The internal struggle was crushed in a dictatorial manner through the segregation of a good part of the militancy. That is why fundamentally, the political line continued to be right-opportunist, since its mentors were one hundred percent right opportunists, both in theory and in practice.
President Bustamante y Rivero was then governing, brought to power by a conjunction of dissimilar forces, such as the APRA, some supposedly democratic movements, and the Communist Party. Despite the character of that regime called of “lawfulness,” which in essence did not mean a change from the previous regime, the Party Leadership sowed illusions in the possibility of deepening that “democratic” regime, to the extreme of placing Bustamante on the same level as Mariátegui in some Party events, always dreaming that the bourgeoisie in Peru can come to take an independent attitude towards North American imperialism and that it was necessary to march with it.
At the time of the III National Congress of the Party, the political situation reflected an acute crisis of the aforementioned regime, since the APRA, the main Party which by its numbers considered itself the one that had truly given power to Bustamante, entered into open contradiction with him, as did a sector of the oligarchy, and openly revealed its fascist and conspiratorial character. The struggle between APRista s and communists reached its climax, especially during the struggle against the Press Law that limited the right of expression, which was approved by the Parliament dominated by the APRA. Throughout the country, this struggle was expressed with violent characteristics, since on the other hand, the communists and progressive elements also fought against the so-called Temporary Municipal Councils dominated by that fascist party.
This political situation was not correctly interpreted by the opportunist Leadership of the Party, which, from a vacillating policy, of intermittent struggle and alliance with the APRA, passed to a policy of seeking alliances even with the most reactionary, traditional sectors, in order to curb the APRA and save the regime of “lawfulness.” While it is true that in the 1945 elections the Party had no other electoral alternative than support for the candidacy of Bustamante y Rivero, who emerged victorious, the negative side was that it had given itself completely to this regime, and that is why when it saw it in difficulties, it sought various alliances to prop it up. That is why it entered into collusion with the so-called National Alliance, which grouped the blackest traditional reaction, under the pretext of opposing fascism. We regret not having at hand the Conclusions and Resolutions of the III National Congress, but only the document entitled “On our political line, thesis presented by the Political Commission to the organisms and militants on the eve of the III National Congress,” of February 1948, a document in which it is recommended to reach an “agreement with the National Alliance on concrete points for the common struggle,” despite the fact that the said Alliance had already demonstrated its anti-communist and anti-worker character by constituting the so-called “Front of Unity and Trade Union Independence.” That is, the opportunist Leadership, driven by its bourgeois reactionary conception, acted in the same way as during the years of World War II, a time when under the pretext of the common struggle against Nazi-fascism, it totally renounced the defense of the interests of the working class, the Revolution, and placed all its trust in the alliance with the bourgeoisie. To its open betrayal of the interests of the working class, it covered up its crime with the following words that we extract from the document in question:
“However, it is in the trade union movement where the thought and action of our Party have been least unified and where, for quite some time after the II Congress, the line has suffered from more misunderstandings and deficiencies, and where the pernicious influence of Trotskyism-Ravinism and the anarcho-syndicalist and caudillo residues has been felt to a greater degree, all this especially in Lima.”
The sale of the political independence of the working class has been a common denominator in the traitorous policy of the Prado-Acosta-Barrio clique.
In the document in question, only a slight allusion is made to the need for agrarian reform; but not a word is said about the peasant movement, about the land problem, which Mariátegui had precisely pointed out as the main, basic problem in our country. And it is natural that they said nothing about the peasant movement since they never wanted to make the Revolution.
All this means that the III National Congress did not signify a political improvement in the Party’s line, since it did not yet have a truly proletarian revolutionary line, but rather fundamentally the same opportunist line persisted and was represented by the same opportunist elements, except for some new inclusions, such as Manuel Ugarte, who was elected Secretary General, although party power remained in the hands of the same clique mentioned.
The coup d’état of October 1948, headed by General Odría, who initiated a new dictatorship in the name of North American imperialism and the old oligarchy, deflated the Party due to the repressive blows it dealt it. The tens of thousands of “communists” vanished, the main re-elected leaders also disappeared, although some were repressed together with many intermediate and rank-and-file leaders.
The militancy that persevered in the revolutionary struggle put up a tenacious resistance to the dictatorship, whose main manifestation was the popular insurrection of 1950 in Arequipa. This means that even though the Party Leadership was in practice disjointed, the Party continued to exist in clandestinity, represented by the workers and other proletarian revolutionaries who persevered in the revolutionary struggle. Resistance against the Odría dictatorship was persistently carried out by the revolutionary communists, as also revealed by the great strike movements of 1950 and other movements that even determined the fall of Esparza Zañartu, the main executioner of dictator Odría. Also, through the reorganization of the trade union movement, the work of the communists was felt, as revealed by the congresses held in Puno, Cuzco, Arequipa, and that of the central miners, in which broad trade union and political freedoms, free elections, agrarian reform, and other points aimed at democratizing the country were also demanded, including the demand for general elections. The C.T.P. itself, which was terribly hit by Odría’s regime, began to reorganize, this work materializing in the formation of a Reorganizing Committee; but, unfortunately, the maneuvers of the APRA and the lack of coordination of the communists determined that in the II Workers’ Congress that workers’ central fell largely into the hands of the APRA. Thus, it can be said that in the work of restructuring and raising the trade union movement, the work of reorganizing the Party was also taking place, still lacking a correct line.
THE SECOND OPPORTUNIST “LEFTIST” LINE
The blow suffered by the Party in its organic structure allowed some “leftist” opportunists to gather around Manuel Ugarte, elected Secretary General in the III National Congress —an unstable element without political level— who, in February 1956, carried out the SECOND NATIONAL CONFERENCE, managing to reach the Central Committee, despite their scant party militancy and their recent separation from the APRA and the MOLM group (Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Movement), all being of petty-bourgeois extraction. These elements imprinted the second opportunist “leftist” line, of short duration and scarce application, since everything remained on paper. Supposedly to counteract the right opportunists who placed all their hopes in the bourgeoisie, they passed to the total negation of the dual character of the national bourgeoisie and of the revolution by stages. They appeared to adhere dogmatically to Marxism-Leninism; but in essence they distorted it. Likewise, they imprinted an anti-worker policy by declaring that “the working class had fallen into a kind of collapse, of indifference, of pessimism, and of fear,” thus ignoring the hard struggles waged by the workers against the dictatorship and against their exploiters. Likewise, they expressed their lack of concern for the peasant movement, several of whose mentors, like the right opportunists who, since shortly after Mariátegui’s death, declared that the peasantry because it belonged to the petty bourgeoisie was not a revolutionary force, opted to underestimate it. As is known, this erroneous thesis was also maintained during the first “leftist” line of Ravines, which, as is well understood, was only a disguise to cover up his rightism and his betrayal. It is good to remember that Ravines used this opportunist “leftist” line only shortly after Mariátegui’s death, later declaring himself a right opportunist, unmasking himself as a traitor.
The opportunist “leftist” group, with its supposedly “revolutionary” and demagogic language, became a danger for Jorge del Prado’s clique, which very soon came out against it, sheltering itself in the healthy militancy that did not swallow the bait of “leftism.” Likewise, Jorge del Prado’s clique sublimated organizational principles, putting them into practice over ideological and political principles, and was thus able to attract some comrades who at that time had prestige in the ranks and managed to defeat the “leftist” opportunists in the XI PLENUM OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE, of September 1957. Some, like Virgilio Roel, its main mentor, were expelled, and others managed to group around the newspaper “Perú-popular,” directed by the poet Gustavo Valcárcel, placing themselves in practice outside the Party, from where they launched harsh attacks against del Prado and his clique. Later they fell into decomposition, not without first having formed the so-called “Leninist Central Committee,” by agreement of the XV Lima Departmental Congress, an organism of which they also temporarily took control. In this Congress, the division of the Party was sanctioned. Thus, in the Fourth Conclusion of a document published in “Perú-popular,” of January 1959, it is said:
“The formation of the PROVISIONAL CENTRAL COMMITTEE (Leninist) does not constitute the foundation of a new Communist Party. It means the organic separation of the revolutionary tendency from the right-opportunist tendency, the only way out to overcome the ideological, political, and organic crisis of the Peruvian Communist Party.”
The group that constituted the “Provisional Leninist Central Committee” acted in concert with the group called “National Movement for Restructuring of the P.C.P.,” which also included some expelled in 1948. Subsequently, both groups dissolved, made their “self-criticism,” and re-entered the Party with the consent of the rightist clique. Thus, those who from the trenches of “Perú-popular” virulently attacked Jorge del Prado became adulators of the latter, as demonstrated by the laudatory articles of Gustavo Valcárcel in favor of del Prado, forgetting that he had pointed him out as the author of the so-called “Rancagua documents” that were of such service to Yankee imperialism and internal reaction to repress the Party and the popular masses. Now in “Unidad,” they launch glowing praises to the one they previously typified as a traitor. All this ultimately demonstrates that the “leftism” of these people was nothing but a mask to cover up their real and putrid rightism.
THE RISE OF THE PEASANT MOVEMENT AND THE DIVERGENCES IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT GAVE A NEW CONTENT TO THE INTERNAL STRUGGLE
As a consequence of the intensification of the class struggle in the countryside, the organizational movement of the peasants experienced an unusual upsurge. The Peasant Confederation of Peru, founded in April 1947, as the continuator of the General Federation of Yanakunas and Peasants of Peru, gradually became a classist central to the extent that it directed the peasant movement along revolutionary channels. The organizational impulse reached quite high levels in the center and south of the country. By this time, the peasant movement enters its conscious stage regarding its class objectives, since it begins to concretely propose a Radical Agrarian Reform and combines its anti-feudal struggles with the struggle against North American imperialism. Despite this, it must be recognized that peasants have always had a combative and heroic spirit. But the entry of the peasant movement into its conscious stage occurs as a consequence of the active participation of revolutionary members of the Party in the concrete movement of the peasant masses. Those who have tried to deny this participation have minimized the peasant movement that culminated in land seizures and real confrontations with the repressive forces, as spontaneous movements, ignorant of the revolutionary activity of peasant activists of the Party who acted even against the will of the majority revisionist Leadership. The emergence of nuclei of peasant activists, revolutionary communists who worked in the organization and mobilization of the peasants, as well as in their class orientation, represented a new form of internal struggle within the Party, since the revisionist clique was characterized by its fear of the peasant movement. These nuclei of proletarian revolutionaries developed despite the conscious and systematic opposition of the revisionists.
Parallel to the impetuous rise of the peasant movement, the triumph of the popular armed struggle in Cuba also occurred in 1959, exerting a powerful influence throughout Latin America and especially in Peru. If Peru was convulsed by the gigantic awakening of the peasant movement, we can also mention the growing impetuosity of the working class that exceeded its union leadership. The triumph of the popular armed struggle in Cuba, right under the nose of North American imperialism, made it possible to understand the possibility of victory for the Latin American peoples in their liberation struggles, and that is why unprecedented enthusiasm for guerrilla warfare as a method of armed struggle was also produced. This means that the Cuban Revolution exerted a powerful influence even on the militants of the communist parties, on the one hand radicalizing them; but on the other, spreading some of the erroneous theses that were elaborated interpreting the process of its armed struggle.
Under these conditions, the III NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE PARTY was held, at the end of July 1960, in which the organic character of the Central Committee was regularized, having superficially examined national problems. The members of the revisionist clique of the Leadership pretended radicalism to contain the militancy; however, the resulting political line was, in essence, electoralist. Thus, in the Conclusions and Resolutions, when dealing with the country’s situation, in point 9, it indicated the following:
“Faced with the current situation and the electoral prospects, the III National Conference of the Party recommends that party activity be oriented towards the fundamental objectives of leading the Peruvian people towards the conquest of national independence, the liquidation of latifundism, the industrial and economic development of the country, and the progress and well-being of the people. In the process of the struggle for these objectives, the Nationalist, Democratic, and Popular United Front Movement must be forged, destined to defeat the forces of the oligarchy and Yankee imperialism in the 1962 elections.” 11
Here, what is condemnable is the fact of sowing illusions of being able to defeat Yankee imperialism in an electoral process. That is, actually advocating the peaceful path, after a long speech about the paths of the Revolution in Peru, a theme that was one of the main ones of the III National Conference, since it was demanded by the Party’s rank and file and the national situation forced a decision. That is why the documents of the III Conference are contradictory, since at the time of being drafted as a project they had a radical tint; but, in their final wording after the conclusion of the event, the reformist poison predominated in them. For example, making reasonings about the paths of the revolution, when mentioning the possibility of the peaceful path in some countries of “increasing democratization” and other favorable factors for the peaceful path, it was said in the Political Report:
“In our country such conditions have not been given and are still far from maturing.”
Analyzing these words, one might think that since in Peru the conditions for the peaceful path are not given, then the correct path is armed struggle; but the last phrase “are still far from maturing” suggests the possibility that these conditions for the peaceful path will eventually mature; that is, in essence, what is wanted is the peaceful path.
But again, in the same Report it is said:
“But this need (referring to the need to intervene in the electoral process) should not lead us to feed within or outside the Party collaborationist and reformist illusions about the possibility of the peaceful path.” 12
There is, then, a double-edged language, in a certain way to please the revolutionary militancy with allusions to armed struggle; but said only to disguise the open opportunism that is reflected in the Conclusions and Resolutions that followed that Report.
By then, the ruling clique had received with great pleasure the revisionist theses of the XX and XXI Congresses of the Communist Party of the USSR; but, aware of the great affection that existed in the Party for comrade Stalin, since Khrushchev’s slanders were never accepted; it had kept its revisionist opinion hidden, taking advantage of the circumstance that the militancy did not really know the content of those congresses. Thus, the III National Conference recommended adhering to the Conclusions of those revisionist congresses, in which the peaceful path of revolution was recommended. At this time, the rank and file did not yet have knowledge of the correct Marxist-Leninist points of view of the fraternal parties of China and Albania.
The III National Conference did not manage to defeat the revisionist clique, since the Marxist-Leninist positions were relatively weak, although they were felt mainly in the idea of armed struggle as the only path of the Peruvian Revolution. On the other hand, the III National Conference did not stimulate the struggle of the popular masses, since in this area the same opportunist line continued. However, some comrades who maintained revolutionary positions were incorporated into the Central Committee elected in said Conference.
After this event, the internal struggle between the bourgeois revisionist line and the increasingly growing proletarian revolutionary position of the majority of the Party’s rank and file continued to develop, mainly regarding the peasant movement, since in relation to it, two openly contradictory positions were clearly produced. This situation was reflected in the Party’s own press organ, “Unidad,” controlled by the revisionist clique, despite which some proletarian positions could be reflected. As a sample of this reflection of the internal struggle between the two lines, we reproduce paragraphs from the article entitled “Massacre of Peasants of Hupa and Agrarian Reform,” by comrade Saturnino Paredes Macedo, published in “Unidad” of August 31, 1960. After relating the horrific massacre of the 9th of the same month, he said:
“What do these facts reveal? They indicate that the contradiction between the productive forces and the mode of production is becoming more and more violently acute; that there is no other way out than the revolutionary liberation of the peasants through the change of social structure, with the suppression of gamonalism 13, the black ally of Yankee imperialism that subjugates our Fatherland.”
“We are witnessing a vigorous awakening of the national peasantry throughout the country; this is demonstrated by the strikes of the powerful Federation of Day Laborers of Chancay, the attitude of the commune members of Chepén, the sacrificial struggle of the commune members of Rancas, the march for Agrarian Reform that the peasants of Piura will soon initiate, from that distant province to the capital of the Republic, claiming land and freedom, and other movements.”
“The conditions for the liberating struggle that the peasants, the main and majority force of the Peruvian Revolution, are to wage definitively are maturing in an increasingly accelerated manner. It is the mission of the working class to contribute to the organization and orientation of the struggles of the peasants, because they are part of the battles that must be fought to break the chains of imperialism, the fundamental enemy of the Peruvian people. Therefore, it must be understood that the struggle against imperialism must be waged at the same time as the struggle against latifundism, its main ally and unconditional supporter.”
Then, he concluded with an allusion to armed struggle:
“Only through the awakening and consistent leadership of the peasantry in its struggle to free itself from the feudal yoke will the effect occur —and it will not be long in coming— of what Mao Zedong has said: ‘millions of peasants will rise up like a hurricane or like a violent storm, which no power, however great, can crush’.”
In this same article, the formation of a revolutionary front was stimulated, based on the worker-peasant alliance, to attack imperialism at its most vulnerable point: latifundism, which withstood the powerful onslaughts of the peasants. And, as can be seen, Marxist-Leninist theses were upheld, such as the path of armed struggle and that the peasants are the principal force of the Peruvian Revolution, a fact long denied by Creole revisionism.
The ruling clique of the Party waged a silent struggle against the proletarian revolutionary activists who intervened directly in the leadership of the peasant movement. The practice of the treacherous blows of the revisionist clique was coordinated with that of the class enemy and its agents. The inclusion of some revolutionary members in the C.C. gave rise to some revelations about this attitude; but they were silenced because the main nucleus of executive Leadership within the C.C. was in the hands of Jorge del Prado and his cronies. These people, in the manner of gossip, spread the word that such and such a peasant leader or peasant activist comrade was “Trotskyist,” “Trotskyizing,” “provocateur,” “adventurer,” and other things of the sort, adjectives they used to refer to comrade Paredes and other comrades of the peasant front. At the same time, the reaction and the APRA made the same campaign. For example, when on December 15, 1960, the massacre of the agricultural proletarians of the Torreblanca estate occurred, in the Chancay valley, with the purpose of repressing the entire peasant movement of that province, the reactionary newspapers published news making comrade Saturnino Paredes appear at the head of thousands of peasants invading the aforementioned estate and attacking the police forces. And also, the FENCAP (pseudo–Peasant Federation, in the service of the APRA, latifundism, and imperialism), in a communiqué made public in the newspapers, said:
“Therefore, we reiterate our accusation against the Lawyer Saturnino Paredes, who from a simple Advisor has managed to become the strong man of the unions of the Chancay valley, to put into practice his nefarious plan of ‘producing the bankruptcy of the estates, through continuous strikes and taking possession of the lands,’ offering to carry out Agrarian Reform with the ipse facto distribution of them. This disfigured banner of Agrarian Reform that Saturnino Paredes and others pretend to carry out, abusing the good faith of the peasants, the majority illiterate, is part of their premeditated plan of communist agitation, which attacks the Rule of Law and gives way to a dictatorship, which would bring about the paralysis of the unions and where they would again manage the interests of the workers to collect hefty fees, crawling at the feet of the tyrant”.
All this stimulated the imprisonment of comrade Paredes and more than 40 leaders from about 20 unions of the Chancay province.
The same Marxist-Leninist position was demonstrated by comrade Paredes Macedo when he integrated the National Liberation Front (an organism constituted on November 4, 1961, based on the Communist Party and other smaller groupings and democratic personalities). Thus, in an article published with the name “The peasantry and the National Liberation Front,” published in number 8 of “Frente,” of March 2, 1962, he wrote:
“The peasantry, which constitutes more than 65% of the Peruvian population, is currently confronting a series of struggles that go not only to the attainment of relative improvements in their living conditions, but also aim at the conquest of land by their own means. In these struggles, carried out with decision and courage, dozens of peasants have fallen under the bullets of the armed forces of the dominant classes, the feudal and pro-imperialist oligarchies. But the movement for the recovery and conquest of land continues unstoppable, despite the massacres, the imprisonments of peasants and their legal advisors. And it will continue forward, because the contradictions between the latifundium and the peasantry are irreconcilable and will be resolved, not by the path of conciliation, but by that of revolutionary violence.”
“The intensification of the peasant struggles, on the one hand, and, on the other, the increasingly blatant and brutal penetration of North American imperialism into our Fatherland, with the consequent heroic resistance of the people, allow us to qualify the present moment as a revolutionary situation, one that demands the solution of the noted contradictions, through the change of economic structure and national liberation from imperialist domination, since this, together with latifundist domination and that of its allies, constitutes the main enemy force that opposes the progress and happiness of the people.”
“The national problem is the agrarian problem. — This has been masterfully expressed by comrade Mao Zedong, when he says: ‘Since the imperialists are the supporters of the vestiges of feudalism, as long as the domination of the former is not overthrown, the remains of the latter cannot be extirpated’. From this it follows that the struggle against imperialism, that is, for national liberation, is also a task of the peasantry… Then it is the revolutionary obligation of the peasantry to actively participate not only in the process of Agrarian Reform, but also in national liberation. Thus have the peasants of the countries that have liberated themselves from imperialist domination and that have solved the land problem been successful.”
“Without peasant support there will be no revolution. — From all this exposition, it follows then that the peasantry has the great task of participating in the national liberation movement, constituting its principal force in close alliance and under the leadership of the working class. That is why the National Liberation Front bases its principles on the worker-peasant alliance, on which all the other forces interested in carrying out profound structural changes that we have referred to converge.”
As can be seen, in this article the principle of joint struggle against imperialism and latifundism is established and that the peasantry, led by the working class, is the principal force of the Revolution. Likewise, in this article the struggle existing within the Communist Party as well as within the National Liberation Front itself was reflected, since the opportunists only saw in it an electoral front, constituted to participate in the elections of June of that year. That is why, in said article, it is maintained:
“If the National Liberation Front were limited only to elections, then millions of illiterate peasants would be excluded from participating in it, due to the narrowness of the State Constitution and the Electoral Statute. It would constitute the worst opportunist aberration to constitute only an Electoral Front, however democratic it may be called, because it would marginalize and exclude the great majority of Peruvians. And let it not be said that that illiterate majority is not in a position to participate in political life, because that is not accurate. That great majority, despite not knowing how to read or write, is now fighting valiantly to break the chains of latifundism and is understanding that it will not be able to carry forward the conquest of land except by its own means. This is proven by the glorious land recovery movements that the commune members of Pasco are carrying out, as well as the great movements for the conquest of land carried out by the peasants of Pomacocha, in Ayacucho; those of La Convención, in Cuzco; and, in short, throughout the length and breadth of the country, the peasants, including the illiterates, fight vigorously for the Peruvian Revolution and, therefore, they cannot be marginalized with a simple electoral front.”
All these ideas, expounded both in the Party and in the National Liberation Front, represent not the ideas of a single person, but of an entire Marxist-Leninist line that, despite the opportunist Leadership, has been developing in the process of the class struggle and throughout the life of the Party. Along with comrade Paredes, numerous Marxist-Leninist comrades worked on the peasant front, active combatants against imperialism, latifundism and its lackeys, and they saw in armed struggle the only revolutionary path for the conditions in which the class struggle was developing in Peru. This internal struggle that was being waged at the rank-and-file level also came to occur at the level of the National Leadership of the Party, when in the III National Conference of July 1960, a few Marxist-Leninist comrades were incorporated into the C.C., including comrade Paredes who attended said event at the last moment. In particular, the struggle revolved around the path of the Revolution, the United Front, and the character of the revolutionary participation of the peasantry, since the revisionists, who always feared and underestimated it, never recognized its character as the principal force.
At the end of August and beginning of September 1962, the IV NATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE PARTY was held, in which the struggle between two positions, between two lines: the Marxist-Leninist and the revisionist, was more clearly perceived, although the majority of delegates did not have a sufficient ideological level to confront the right-opportunist clique that predominated in the National Leadership. The Marxists proposed that the Party should focus on the struggle for political power through the path of revolutionary violence, bringing up quotes from Lenin, such as the following:
“On the other hand, the ‘Kautskyian’ distortion of Marxism is much more subtle. ‘Theoretically’, it does not deny that the State is the organ of class domination, nor that class contradictions will be irreconcilable. But what is overlooked or concealed is the following: if the State is a product of the irreconcilable character of class contradictions, if it is a force that stands above society and that ‘divorces itself more and more from society’, it is evident that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible, not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power that has been created by the dominant class and in which that ‘divorce’ takes shape. As we shall see below, Marx arrived at this conclusion, theoretically clear in itself, with the most complete precision, on the basis of the concrete historical analysis of the tasks of the revolution.” 14
From the same work, the following quote was also mentioned:
“The need to systematically educate the masses in this, precisely in this idea of violent revolution, is fundamental in the whole doctrine of Marx and Engels… The replacement of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.” 15
Despite this, Jorge del Prado and his group, pretending “radical” positions and not verbally opposing the idea of violent revolution, allowed this sentiment of a great part of the militancy to be sidelined in the Conclusions and Resolutions of the Congress, rigging the ways to entrench themselves in the main Leadership despite having been re-elected with the lowest votes. Nevertheless, they were forced to say that we needed
“a powerful and experienced Communist Party, capable of leading the people’s struggles both through ‘peaceful’ or electoral means, as well as in strikes and rallies, on the barricades, in guerrilla warfare, in popular uprisings. And with equal efficiency in the city or in the countryside.”
He added:
“The IV Congress, when analyzing the reports and proposals of the delegates, considers that it is the Party’s historical duty to address the preparation of the militancy for all eventualities, overcoming the deficiencies that may arise in any of the aspects.”
Thus, they pleased part of the militancy, with the purpose of perpetuating themselves in the Party Leadership, acting in a coordinated manner. They achieved this objective, although the new Central Committee was also integrated with some comrades of Marxist-Leninist position. The revisionists retained the absolute majority in the Political Commission and the totality in the Secretariat. This itself made it possible that a series of revolutionary agreements and positions were not recorded in the Conclusions and Resolutions of the IV Congress.
Since the political moment the country was experiencing was shaken by the impetuosity of the peasant movement, clearly reflected in the historic II National Congress held by the Peasant Confederation of Peru in July 1962, the proposals and resolutions for the peasant movement, as well as the Report presented by the then head of the Peasant Front, comrade Saturnino Paredes Macedo, were approved and even the publication of these documents was agreed, as announced in the issue of “Unidad” published immediately after the Congress; but, the revisionists who obtained control of the Leadership, despite the fact that some of them were separated from it, never complied with publishing these documents.
In order to illustrate how a struggle was waged between the proletarian line and the revisionist line disguised as “revolutionary,” we cite some paragraphs of the aforementioned Report on the Peasant Movement, excerpted from the book “Work on the Peasant Front,” published by the Party after the subsequent expulsion of the revisionists. Thus, in the chapter entitled “Balance of the organization and mobilization of the peasants,” he said:
“From the work carried out to date, we can conclude that the Party officially has not given all the necessary support to this front, which has developed only thanks to the initiative, revolutionary enthusiasm, and will of the cadres emerging from the peasantry itself, as well as others who have integrated into the peasant movement without originally belonging to that class, among them some professionals and students.”
In the paragraph referring to “Weak worker support for peasant struggles,” it is said:
“It must be pointed out that in this, the Party of the proletariat has not consistently fulfilled its historical role of indicating to the working class its historical destiny with total clarity… It can be said, then, that Mariátegui’s teachings regarding the role that workers have in relation to the peasants have not been applied by the Party. Therefore, it is appropriate to make workers understand that their fundamental struggles are for the suppression of the exploitation of man by man and that peasant organizations constitute a lever for the conquest of economic and political power, that they are their natural allies. It is necessary that they understand that they must not forget the main problem, which is the conquest of political power and the need to rely on their proletarian party, the Communist Party.”
This fact, the negligence of the Party Leadership in the leadership of the peasant struggles, was verified. However, we see with astonishment that Jorge del Prado in his so-called “historical outline” says:
“Our Party not only expressed solidarity at every moment with the great peasant struggles of this period, but also guided and organized the peasantry through these struggles. Our press organ has been the main spokesperson for the peasantry and our Party is mainly responsible for the organization of the Peasant Confederation of Peru and its affiliates throughout the country (now liquidated by the sectarian and opportunist policy of Paredes’ group that has thus played into the hands of the reaction and the landowner oligarchy). 16
The only thing that can be accepted as such is that, as during the time of the great peasant struggles, the struggle between the two lines was being waged within the Party, in the newspaper “Unidad” this struggle could not help but be reflected, since the Marxist-Leninists demanded greater attention to the peasant movement, despite the members of the Del Prado-Acosta-Barrio clique, a clique that, as we have seen, attributes to itself the organization of the peasantry and even the formation of the Peasant Confederation of Peru, which it now fights, whereas said central is the product of the sacrificial and persevering work of the comrade activists of the peasant front and of many peasants without Party affiliation, but who have proven in practice a class position, all of whom acted against the revisionist current of the clique that predominated in the Party Leadership. Now it turns out that, by magic, those who organized and continue to lead the peasant struggles are those who have “liquidated” the Peasant Confederation, a central that, despite the revisionists, continues to fight and has not been able to be liquidated by the successive repressions it has suffered and continues to suffer.
In the chapter referring to the “forms and methods of work on the peasant front,” comrade Paredes maintained in the IV National Congress of the Party that, to develop good work in the countryside, one must start from full knowledge of the nature of the Peruvian Revolution.” “And, one must have the conviction that in this revolutionary process, in its first stage, the peasantry is the principal force, under the leadership of the working class and its Party, in alliance with the revolutionary student body and other progressive strata of the people.”
He also upheld the necessity of the path of revolutionary violence, citing Lenin’s phrases, applicable to the concrete situation of our Peru, such as the need to educate the working class in revolutionary violence and “to make the peasantry understand and carry out the revolutionary destruction of the old regime.”
Faced with these just theses, the revisionists did not openly oppose them in the IV Congress, with the aim of appearing as Marxist-Leninists and getting reelected, and that is why the Report on the peasant movement was approved and even its publication was agreed.
In the part referring to “Perspectives and Tasks of the Peasant Front,” as well as in other parts of the mentioned report, we can actually find the genesis of the current proletarian revolutionary line of the V National Conference, since that Report summarized the experiences of the Marxist-Leninists, as well as also gathered the feelings of the peasantry and the opinions of the revolutionary rank and file of the Party, since, in the correct points of view maintained by comrade Paredes, the ideas and feelings of the comrades who within the Party represented an entire Marxist-Leninist current were reflected. It was in this part of the Report that it was proposed: “To turn the main party activities towards the countryside.”
If the revisionists in the IV Congress found themselves cornered by the intensification of the class struggle in the country and by the radicalization of a large part of the militancy, which forced them to camouflage themselves with radical positions; on the other hand, based on the ignorance of the disagreements in the international communist movement, they maneuvered in the sense of making the Party appear as expressing solidarity with the traitorous points of view of the Soviet revisionists.
Distorting the sense of party militancy, Jorge del Prado and his clique elaborated at will the Conclusions and Resolutions. Thus, in Conclusion Four, it is stated that “the new Program of the CPSU are great theoretical documents that brilliantly testify to the creative power of Marxism-Leninism and the fecundity of the orientations traced in the XX Congress of the CPSU.” At the same time, a condemnation of the Labor Party of Albania is interjected, which at that time was waging a hard struggle against Soviet revisionism, for it is said:
“The National Congress” also considers it indispensable to condemn with the greatest energy contemporary revisionism, dogmatism, and sectarianism, and the divisive activity of the Albanian Party of Labor”.
None of these contraband items were approved by the delegates of the IV Congress; but they appear recorded in the mentioned document. In this way, they gave official party character to their points of view consistent with those of Soviet revisionism and it is through this channel that they disseminated Soviet revisionist documents to create a public opinion favorable to their social-traitorous proposals and, on the contrary, they hid the documents of the Chinese comrades, despite which within the party militancy the Soviet revisionist points of view were rejected because they were not in tune with the revolutionary situation the country was experiencing.
From the dominant positions they took in the Party Leadership, they began a silent campaign of opposition to the comrades they considered “pro-Chinese” or “pro-Albanian,” labeling them as sectarian, Trotskyizing, adventurers, and other similar epithets, and above all, they sabotaged peasant work, because to tell the truth, the comrades of Marxist-Leninist position had a correct attitude towards the peasant movement and the workers’ movement.
If on the one hand, they sabotaged work on the peasant front, through lack of political support for the peasant activists and resistance to publicizing the great struggles of the peasantry, on the other, the revisionists of the Del Prado-Acosta-Barrio clique have also sabotaged the workers’ movement, carrying out infiltration work to twist its correct orientation, playing the role of accomplices of the reaction and its APRista agents. When, along with the peasant movement, the working class experienced an upsurge, carrying out harsh confrontations with employers and the Government and struggled to build a new classist central, the revisionists did everything possible to frustrate the various attempts in this direction. They frustrated the formation of a new classist central when in October 1962 the National Trade Union Conference was held with the attendance of a majority representation of organized workers and peasants, since they prevented its birth and only gave directives to the Party activists for the formation of an Executive Committee for Unification and Reorganization of the C.T.P., an organism that declined as a consequence of the brutal repression of 1963 and practically disappeared after the mass dismissal of more than 600 bank employee leaders in 1964. In the present year (1968), a National Congress of Workers of Peru (C.G.T.P.) has been held with a predominance of Creole revisionism, Trotskyism, and other currents alien to the workers’ movement, this due to the fact that our Party, due to the momentary predominance of sectarian elements in its leadership, prevented the participation of the rank-and-file activists in the mentioned Congress. We already know that this C.G.T.P. only has the name adopted by the central founded and organized by Mariátegui and does not preserve its classist spirit. The very attitude of the revisionists, such as preventing the participation of the Peasant Confederation in said Congress, reveals the character that said event had.
THE THIRD PERIOD OF THE PARTY’S LIFE IS THE RETURN TO THE PATH OF MARIATEGUI, OF THE STRUGGLE FOR A PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONARY LINE
After the IV National Congress of the Party, of 1962, the internal struggle became increasingly acute, forcing the Creole revisionists to convene the XVIII Plenum of the Central Committee for October 1963, for which they made extensive preparations, such as successive consultations with their Soviet revisionist masters and with the revisionist cliques that were entrenched in the communist parties of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile, thus demonstrating their mental colonialism and the sale they had made of the Party’s political independence. At the same time, they profusely disseminated revisionist propaganda and hid that of the Chinese comrades, despite the fact that in the XVII Plenum of the Central Committee, the dissemination of the documents of both parties had been agreed so that the militancy could judge for itself and make independent decisions.
The convocation of the XVIII PLENUM OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE, with the main purpose of adopting a correct position regarding the disagreements in the international communist movement, reveals to what extent the Conclusions and Resolutions of the IV National Congress of the Party were adulterated, because it is clearly seen that even on that aspect no decision had been taken. That is why the XVIII Plenum of the Central Committee was the crucial point of the confrontation between the Marxist-Leninists and the Peruvian revisionists, spokespersons of the revisionism of the leaders of the C.P.S.U. Held with the attendance of the full members, to deal with the aforementioned problem of divergences, as well as problems of an economic nature and corrupt practices denounced against the opportunists entrenched in the National Leadership, said Plenum reached Conclusions contrary to what the Creole revisionists expected, since they were the following: To abide by the Moscow Declarations of 1957 and 1960 regarding the indicated discrepancies, advocating the holding of consultations and a great meeting of communist parties to achieve unity. Not to make any type of condemnation of any fraternal communist party. Continuation of investigations into the embezzlement of party funds.
As can be seen, these decisions were of a conciliatory nature that deferred the final pronouncement for the future; but in any case, they constituted a serious setback for the Creole revisionists, who had already promised their Soviet masters to agree on a condemnation of the correct positions of the Chinese and Albanian comrades. Therefore, they fell into despair, seeing that in vain they had made efforts to convince the members of the C.C. in the direction they desired. In vain they had had the Chilean Rolando Millas participate in the preparatory acts, who came to Lima before the Plenum to finalize the preparations and ensure the alignment of the Communist Party of Peru in the revisionist camp. Revisionism had not taken hold in the revolutionary ranks of the Party, which were fed up with the political domination of the right opportunists and were striving to achieve a clear definition towards Marxism-Leninism.
In the plenum itself, an attempt was made to pressure the Marxist-Leninist members with the presence of the representative of the Communist Party of Chile, Volodia Teitelboim, who, after making some allusions favorable to the peaceful path of the Revolution, upon noticing the heated climate of the internal struggle within the Central Committee, chose to withdraw prematurely.
All these facts motivated a revisionist maneuver consisting of making the Plenum fail or distort it, for which they held the last session with only the revisionist group and vacillating elements, who did not reach half the number of members of the C.C. In that way, they elected themselves and distorted the Conclusions that had been reached. They elected a pseudo–Political Commission and, to give it an appearance of revolutionary legality, they also “elected” comrade Paredes as a member of said Commission, setting aside the other members who at that time adopted a Marxist-Leninist position. This, naturally, determined that comrade Paredes, current Secretary General of our Party, disavowed the rigged self-election of the revisionists. This disavowal, made known in an open letter by comrade Paredes, in accordance with the feelings of the Party’s rank and file throughout the country, who repudiated revisionism by an absolute majority, led to other members of the Central Committee, elected in the IV National Congress, doing the same and also brought as a consequence that one by one, the regional bases of the country openly repudiated revisionism and demanded the holding of a National Conference. Therefore, immediately, the Marxist-Leninist members of the C.C. prepared the conditions and held the IV NATIONAL CONFERENCE of the Party, on January 18 and 19, 1964, with the attendance of the absolute majority of the Party’s bases, although not all attendees had yet sufficient ideological and political level, and for that reason, a part of them concentrated their main attention on the administrative aspect and on the corrupt practices of the revisionists.
The IV National Conference, although at the international level it adopted a fundamentally just position and contrary to contemporary revisionism, returning to the path of Marxism-Leninism, on the other hand, at the national level it did not elaborate a just political line, but rather it had much in common with the line that the right opportunists had previously imprinted on the Party. The circumstance that the drafting of the Political Report, as well as the Conclusions and Resolutions, was entrusted to José Sotomayor, considered at the time as a “theoretician” by some who in those circumstances simulated a Marxist position and who now lead the traitorous group of “Patria Roja,” led to these documents not achieving the expected Marxist-Leninist content. Of course, in this it is not correct to absolve oneself of responsibility for not having paid preferential attention to the national problem, concerned as the attendees to said Conference were to rid themselves forever of the old revisionists, who were justifiably expelled.
However, the IV National Conference was the beginning of a new period in the life of the Party and created the conditions for the development of the theory of the Peruvian revolution. Since the political line emanating from the IV National Conference did not fit the national reality, nor was it in accordance with revolutionary practice, very soon the impression was felt in the ranks that this line was not just, although this sentiment did not find concrete expression immediately. The pro-imperialist and oligarchic character of the Belaunde regime contradicted the political line that characterized it as a regime of the national bourgeoisie with which a policy of “unity and struggle” had to be carried out.
Under the protection of a political line that lacked clarity and was not just on the national terrain, the remnants of revisionism within the Party began to emerge and carry out their undermining work with the aim of ensuring their hegemonic positions in the National Leadership and displacing the Marxist-Leninists led by comrade Paredes Macedo, who was elected Secretary General in said Conference, not because he was considered a “theoretician,” but because of his participation in the peasant struggles and because he had led the internal struggle against the old revisionists.
The political line of the IV National Conference led to an incorrect characterization of Peruvian society and an erroneous characterization of the Belaunde regime, aside from the fact that it avoided the struggle for political power, by not having gathered the Marxist-Leninist position of the majority of the delegates who participated in said event: Due to these circumstances, a very singular internal struggle developed within the Central Committee, since on the one hand comrade Paredes defended revolutionary positions; on the other, the groups led by Sotomayor and Soria engaged in Byzantine discussions and both, on their own, opposed the Secretary General, who in practice was caught between two fires within the National Leadership, receiving instead the support of the Party’s rank and file, support that allowed him to promote the internal struggle for a proletarian revolutionary line.
THE PARTY ACHIEVED ITS PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONARY LINE AT THE V NATIONAL CONFERENCE
The proletarian revolutionary line adopted at the V National Conference, in November 1965, had its antecedents already during the struggle against the old Creole revisionists and was forged in a hard struggle against the remnants of the old right revisionism, represented by José Sotomayor and his minuscule group. In practice, the struggle for the adoption of this proletarian line began immediately after the IV National Conference, which had not embraced in its documents (report and Conclusions and Resolutions) the revolutionary sentiment of the bases, and because in the process of its application, it did not fit the country’s reality.
Sotomayor, shortly after the IV National Conference, began to surround himself with a group of unconditional followers and to act in a clique and fractionally, verbally spreading his revisionist points of view, unmasking himself before the Party’s rank and file with his negative activity. Skilled in camouflaging himself as a “revolutionary,” he had been careful to surround himself with a “halo” of theoretician, of “revolutionary intellectual,” with the purpose of reaching positions of power within the Party and then showing his revisionist and traitorous claw, which he indeed partly managed to do, on the occasion of the IV National Conference, whose line in national politics was an opportunist arrangement for a coexistence with the pro-imperialist and oligarchic regime of Belaunde, which Sotomayor never tired of qualifying as a regime of the national bourgeoisie, with which a policy of unity and struggle had to be carried out; but which he and his group practiced as a policy of class collaboration with that regime. That is, through his practice, Sotomayor gradually revealed himself as a thorough collaborationist.
On the other hand, the beginning of the guerrilla struggle by the Movement of the Revolutionary Left, in the first half of 1965, shook the Party as a whole, making necessary an examination of the concrete situation the country was experiencing in order to take the appropriate measures for that situation. An Expanded Session of the Political Commission of the Central Committee was convened, which took place on September 28 of that year. Without prior agreement, taking an initiative that corresponded to him as the Party’s leader, the Secretary General of the Party presented a Political Report proposing a total change in the political line at the national level, starting from a correct characterization of Peruvian society as semicolonial, in addition to semifeudal, dependent principally on North American imperialism; likewise, characterizing the Belaunde regime as a representative and defender of the interests of imperialism and its lackeys; proposing the need to address the resolution of the problem of political power through revolutionary violence; maintaining the need to place the main weight of work in the countryside. Likewise, he proposed that it should be pointed out that the principal form of struggle would be armed struggle and the principal form of organization the popular armed force, seeing things in perspective. Naturally, Sotomayor and his group tenaciously opposed these changes. However, the Expanded Session of the Political Commission issued a document incorporating fundamentally what was expounded in the mentioned report. The same Expanded Session convened the V National Conference, based on that Report presented by comrade Paredes, authorizing him to carry out further studies and substantiations regarding the characterization of Peruvian society.
The publication of the document of the Expanded Session of the Political Commission was the beginning of a change in the political line and was very well received by the rank and file, with which the internal struggle became generalized throughout the length and breadth of the Party.
The V National Conference debated, enriched, and approved the Political Report presented by comrade Paredes with the title “The current situation and tasks of the Communist Party of Peru,” a document that, together with the Conclusions and Resolutions of said Conference, constitutes the current political line of the Party. It substantiated and approved the Marxist-Leninist point of view that Peru is a semifeudal and semicolonial society, dependent mainly on North American imperialism; that the Belaunde regime was a regime representing and defending the interests of Yankee imperialism and its internal lackeys in our country; that the peasantry is the principal force of the Peruvian Revolution and that the leading class is the working class; it established the principle of the Party’s leadership over the Peruvian Revolution; it clearly indicated that the Party was addressing the task of resolving the problem of state power through revolutionary violence in its form of people’s war, emphasizing as the Party’s main task the building of popular armed forces, in the very process of mobilization, organization, and politicization of the masses, placing for this the main weight of party work in the countryside. It likewise ratified the principle that the Peruvian Revolution in its first stage is of an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, national and democratic character, and that the State that must be built, destroying the old State, must be a State of Popular Democracy, as a form of dictatorship of the proletariat. That the objectives of the first stage of the Peruvian Revolution are to be fulfilled in the process of the prolonged popular armed struggle led by the Party, and that once this stage is fulfilled, it will pass, in an uninterrupted manner, to the socialist stage.
Immediately after the holding of the V National Conference, and despite having participated in the approval of the political line (grudgingly), Sotomayor and his group desperately disavowed the agreements of said event and subsequently also disavowed the newly elected Central Committee, centering their attacks against the person of the Party’s Secretary General, accusing him of having distorted the “authentic agreements” adopted. Masking themselves behind a “Marxist-Leninist” phraseology, they also directed their fire against the classist central of the peasantry, the Peasant Confederation of Peru, calling its leaders members of a “paper directive,” at a time when several of them were in prison and others were persecuted. Like the old revisionists of Jorge del Prado’s clique, they demonstrated a negative practice towards the peasant movement, labeling the most valiant peasant leaders as Trotskyist adventurers. Falsely, they raised the banners of Mariátegui and Mao Zedong; but in practice they renounced the path of revolutionary violence and continued to maintain the character of “national bourgeoisie” of the pro-Yankee regime of Belaunde, to hide their real support and their renunciation of the class struggle.
Sotomayor and his small group were expelled at the XIX Plenum of the Central Committee, which they did not attend, since they had already separated from the Party, disavowing not only the agreements of the V Conference, but even its Leadership. Afterward, on the basis of some of his relatives, friends, and henchmen, Sotomayor constituted a mockery of a “Party,” under the name of “Communist Party of Peru,” carrying out a masquerade of a “V National Congress,” for which he elaborated a “Report” full of revisionism and of hatred and venom against the proletarian line.
It is good to emphasize that Sotomayor and his minuscule group are characterized, like the old revisionists, not only by their fear, but also by their hatred of the peasant movement and by their desire to divert the workers’ and student movements towards class conciliation. In his repugnant “Report” Sotomayor writes:
“The closed-door sectarians and ‘leftist’ adventurers have led the Peasant Confederation of Peru into a serious crisis, which in practice has ceased to exist.”
That is, like the old revisionists, they have issued a death certificate for the classist central of the peasantry. However, the Peasant Confederation of Peru continues to demonstrate its existence in the process of its acute struggle against its traditional enemies and develops despite the persecutions, massacres, and attempts to form another central that would prepare the ground for the application of a false “Agrarian Reform” and prostrate the peasants at the feet of imperialism and its lackeys.
False “Marxism-Leninism” has ended up being unmasked. Sotomayor himself, a false “defender” of the revolutionary theses of comrade Mao Zedong, has become a detractor of China and a “defender” of the erroneous theses of the Communist Party of Cuba and an adherent of Regis Debray. Reduced to a minuscule opportunist group, he has taken our Party as his main enemy and publishes the pamphlet “Class Struggle.” It is certain that in the very process of the authentic class struggle, Sotomayor and his group will become increasingly comprador to ever worse betrayals, in accordance with their nature as enemy agents.
We see, then, that in the struggle against the remnants of the old Creole revisionism entrenched in the Party’s ranks, the proletarian political line has been developed, just, clear, based on Marxism-Leninism. Only the organic rectification of the Party was needed in order to place the organizational at the level of the ideological-political. The Party is addressing this problem, also in the process of revolutionary practice and internal struggle against all right and “left” opportunist tendencies.
s
The current internal struggle is a process of revolutionization of the Party, of Bolshevization of its militancy, of defense and application of Marxism-Leninism, of Mariátegui’s theoretical legacy, and of the principles and agreements of the V National Conference. It is a process of ideological, political, and organic delimitation and of crushing of right opportunism disguised as “leftism.”
The present internal struggle, which has the merit of being carried out in the process of application of the principles and agreements of the V National Conference, is the hardest and most intense of the struggles that have been waged within the Party during its 40 years of existence. Although some revisionist remnants of the past subsist, whose representatives are the former national heads of Propaganda and Agitation and of Organization, it is also true that after the V National Conference and the XIX Plenum of the Central Committee, right deviations have arisen, whose representatives are the leaders of the anti-party group “Patria Roja,” who, shortly after Sotomayor’s expulsion, confronted the proletarian political line, denying that the Party’s main task is the building of popular armed forces in the process of mobilization, organization, and politicization of the popular masses and questioning the existence of a revolutionary situation in the country. Like the traitor Sotomayor, they disguise themselves with a “leftist” garb.
In the current internal struggle, the active participation of Trotskyist agents infiltrated in the Party is also seen, who have had their concrete outbreak in the Ica Regional Committee, whose Leadership they have usurped, and at whose head are two elements who respond to the pseudonyms of Antonio and Kobi. They have had their ideological and political expression in a note sent in September 1966 to the Political Commission, making objections regarding the Party’s decision to assimilate comrade Mao Zedong’s contributions to Marxism-Leninism and to have him as a guide and instrument of struggle. In the magazine “Teoría y Práctica,” corresponding to November-December 1967, in whose articles and mainly in the one entitled “Myth and reality of feudalism in Latin America and Peru,” written by Kobi, an attack is made on Mariátegui’s theoretical legacy and the Party’s proletarian line, since it directs its fire against the correct characterization of Peruvian society, as well as against the character of the Revolution and the strategic and tactical orientation of the Party.
Likewise, the current internal struggle is directed against the bourgeois revisionist military line advocated by elements infiltrated in the Communist Youth who have grouped around a supposed National Executive Bureau and who defend the Fidelist, Debrayist, or Guevarist theses, which are opposed to the Marxist-Leninist military thought about people’s war.
The anti-party, right-opportunist groups, disguised as “leftists,” have in common that they oppose the Party’s proletarian revolutionary line and in essence are of the same kind as the cliques of Jorge del Prado and José Sotomayor, that is, revisionists. They have in common with the old cliques a constant counterrevolutionary practice against the peasant movement. In addition, they advocate a puerile student vanguardism, pretending to substitute the leading character of the working class with a supposed petty-bourgeois student leadership of the Revolution. They ignore the heroic tradition of the working class, which in practice they despise. On the absurd negation that both the workers’ movement and the peasant movement are liquidated and on the clamor that the student movement is the only one that maintains a revolutionary position, they base their thesis that there are no conditions to make the Revolution and that there is no revolutionary situation.
The anti-party groups, united around “Patria Roja,” have recently constituted themselves as a so-called “National Reorganizing Commission of the P.C.P.” and, like all the traitors of the Party, have chosen to place themselves outside our party organization. This “Commission” has begun to pour poison mainly against the peasant movement, directing its attacks against the Peasant Confederation of Peru, against its leaders, and maintaining absurd theses regarding the struggle for an authentic Agrarian Reform. They have gone to the extreme of denying the revolutionary character of the peasant movement and even denying its existence, affirming that it is liquidated. In their mortal hatred of the classist central of the peasantry, they have maintained in said “Bulletin” that the leaders of the same are elements on the Party Leadership’s payroll.
The contradictions with these anti-party groups are of an antagonistic character, contradictions between us and the enemy. They have materialized in concrete practice, since while these people demonstrate with facts their counterrevolutionary nature, the Marxist-Leninists of the Party are raising their ideological and political level, through revolutionary actions, and have a correct attitude towards the workers and peasants.
The Marxist-Leninists will emerge victorious from this struggle because they are armed with Marxism-Leninism, Mariátegui’s theoretical legacy, and the revolutionary principles of the V National Conference of the Party. Let us remember that comrade Mao Zedong says:
” The comrades throughout the Party must take all this fully into account and be prepared to overcome all difficulties with an indomitable will and in a planned way. The reactionary forces and we both have difficulties. But the difficulties of the reactionary forces are insurmountable because they are forces on the verge of death and have no future. Our difficulties can be overcome because we are new and rising forces and have a bright future.” 17
With a just proletarian political line and a high spirit of struggle, despite its internal difficulties, the Party is carrying out a process of profound revolutionization through concrete practice, which reaches all its militants, and is on the sure path of integrating its theory with practice, which is to be realized by making the Revolution and carrying it through to the end.
Peru, October 1968
POLITICAL COMMISSION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU
EDICIONES BANDERA ROJA
[footnotes]
Footnotes
- Prepared and Machine translated by Maoism Library from https://lum.cultura.pe/cdi/revista/bandera-roja-boletin-1 ↩
- American Popular Revolutionary Alliance a party originally of the PB that rejected Marxism and the need for the party. Eventually becoming the party of the genocidal and country selling Alan García regime. —ML ↩
- Jame Monroe, President of the USA 1817 to 1825. Here the party is referring to his famous “Monroe Doctrine” that declared Latin America as the USA’s – ML ↩
- Quote taken from the collection “Ideology and Politics,” p. 100, Emp. Editora Amauta ↩
- Teacher in Quechua – ML ↩
- The problem of races in Latin America, thesis presented and discussed at the First Latin American Communist Conference held in Buenos Aires in June 1929 ↩
- A form of Corvée labor imposed on native people in Peru and Boliva. ↩
- P. 1 of the printed pamphlet ↩
- P. 23 ↩
- Underlining is ours ↩
- P. 28 of the pamphlet containing the documents of the III National Conference with the title “Peruanicemos al Perú” ↩
- refers to the exploitation of indigenous communities by landowners of European descent. ↩
- The State and Revolution, Selected Works, Editorial Cartago, p. 310 ↩
- Ibid ↩
- Op. cit. p. 33 ↩
- Little Red Book, Mao Zedong chapter 21. ↩