Don't Vote! Instead, Develop Guerrilla Warfare to Conquer Political Power for the People!

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Don't Vote! Instead, Develop Guerrilla Warfare to Conquer Political Power for the People! has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the edition published in Two Important Documents of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru, Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, Berkeley, November 1985.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a document drafted by Comrade Gonzalo for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru in Lima, Peru in February 1985. It was first published as a pamphlet by the Red Flag Publishing House.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#DON'T VOTE! INSTEAD, DEVELOP GUERRILLA WARFARE TO CONQUER POLITICAL POWER FOR THE PEOPLE!

#Gonzalo

#February 1985

#★

Strengthen the people's committees, develop the base areas, and advance toward the New Democratic People's Republic!

All reactionaries try to stamp out revolution by mass murder, thinking that the greater their massacre, the weaker the revolution. But, contrary to this reactionary wishful thinking, the fact is that the more the reactionaries resort to massacre, the greater the strength of the revolution and the nearer the reactionaries approach their doom. This is an inexorable law.¹

#1. THE GENERAL CRISIS OF PERUVIAN SOCIETY

Modern Peruvian society is in general crisis. This society, whose trajectory began toward the end of the last century, is gravely ill and incurable. It can only be transformed through the armed struggle which the Communist Party of Peru is leading the Peruvian people in doing today. There is no other solution.

The fact is that Peru today is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society in which bureaucrat capitalism is developing, a belated capitalism linked to the feudal lords' interests and which, consequently, in no way seeks the destruction of semi-feudal conditions but at most their evolution. More importantly, it is a capitalism completely subjugated to imperialism — in our case, mainly US imperialism — and therefore does not develop the potentially great productive forces of our country. Furthermore, it wastes, shackles, or destroys the productive forces and in no way develops a national economy; on the contrary, it is completely at the service of the increasing imperialist exploitation and is totally against the interests of the majority of the nation, of the most fundamental and most urgent needs of our masses.

Thus the modern Peruvian economy was born late and ill at its roots. It is intrinsically linked to the rotten semi-feudal system which, in spite of the government's bragged-about agrarian laws, cunningly called «land reform», continues to exist and characterizes the country from its most basic foundations to its most elaborate ideas. This situation maintains the great land question — the motive force in the class struggle of the peasants, especially the poor peasants, who are the absolute majority. Furthermore, the Peruvian economy is subjugated at its roots by imperialism — the last stage of capitalism, precisely characterized as monopolistic, parasitic, and moribund — an imperialism which consents to our political independence only so long as it serves its interests. Imperialism controls the entire Peruvian economic process: our natural wealth, export products, industry, banking, and finance. In sum, it sucks the blood of our people, devours the energy of our national development, and today, especially, it squeezes us through foreign debt — just as it does other oppressed nations. Therefore, the modern Peruvian economy — bureaucrat capitalism — is intrinsically linked to its half-buried, semi-feudal cadaver and subjugated to moribund imperialism, which lives ever more off the blood of the oppressed, reaped from exploitation guaranteed by its own weapons and those of its lackeys, while the domination of the world is disputed in a never-ending crisis and contention waged mainly by the two superpowers — the United States and the social-imperialist Council Union. In conclusion, we are in the midst of the general crisis of Peruvian society. This crisis, including the crisis of bureaucrat capitalism which has entered into its final stage, has fully matured the conditions for the development and triumph of the revolution — thus the general crisis that plagues the old society encompasses the revolution in its entirety and in all its manifestations.

This is our reality, this is the basis on which Peruvian society rests and the material roots of our problems and the misfortunes of our people. This is the social system to which the ruling classes and their US imperialist masters are faithful and defend with blood and fire, through their bureaucrat-landowner State based on their reactionary armed forces; constantly exercising their class dictatorship (of the big bourgeois and the landowners), whether it be through de facto military governments like the many we have had — for example, Velasco and Morales Bermudez, to mention just the most recent ones — or through governments born out of elections and called constitutional, like Belaunde's government today.

Thus, the governments in Peru — civilian or military — are the ruling cliques — elected or not — which exercise dictatorship over the people: the proletariat, the peasantry, the small bourgeoisie, and even the national or middle bourgeoisie itself, in the service of the big bourgeoisie (especially the big bankers today), of the feudal lords (manifesting itself today primarily in the authority of the local tyrants to exercise power in the countryside), of the ruling classes, and of US imperialism, and totally against the interests of the people and the nation. And this neither needs much historic recounting nor examples, since the proof is right in front of our eyes — the government of Belaunde and his gang, a system born of elections from the voting booths, from the «sacrosanct electoral system». This is the government that more than any other has sold the country to imperialism and sunk Peruvian society into its most serious crisis in modern history; it has submerged the people in the most implacable hunger, it has persecuted, jailed, tortured, and assassinated the people, even committing massacres and genocide because the people, along with the Communist Party, have dared to rise up in arms and proclaim: «It is right to rebel!»² — the irrevocable right of every people and class that refuses to be enslaved.

This is the reality of the country, of Peruvian society, and of the performance of the present government. And this will remain the same so long as we don't overthrow the present order by force of revolutionary arms through people's war. The history of the world as well as of our country has proved this, and what's more, it is right in front of our eyes: the reactionary government of Belaunde and his sinister gang that starves and murders the people will go down in history as the government of famine and genocide.

#2. TO VOTE IS TO ENDORSE THE SOCIAL SYSTEM AND TO ELECT ANOTHER GOVERNMENT THAT WILL BRING MORE HUNGER AND MORE GENOCIDE

What are the conditions in which the new general elections are taking place?

Economically, all agree that the country is suffering the gravest crisis in at least the last 100 years. What's more, the future is bleak. In the year 2000 the economy would barely be meeting its 1976 levels; that is, a quarter of a century would have been lost to this much-publicized economic development. And the problem does not end there. Since the Second World War the country has regularly suffered a crisis in the second half of each decade, each one worse than the previous one, and the next one is already rearing its head. The reactionary economists themselves paint a bleak picture for the coming years. Furthermore, reliance on highly glorified foreign capital is impeded by the present foreign debt and the impossibility of paying even the interest on it. At the same time, internal savings are reduced, industrial production is in recession, agriculture is in crisis, the prices of our export commodities continue to decline, foreign markets are shrinking, and so on. In sum, it is a bleak panorama with no real solution in sight whatsoever, much less one that would satisfy the increasing basic needs of the masses, which are delayed more each day, offering only more unemployment, longer workdays just to survive, lower wages and salaries, fewer rights, and more cutbacks of past gains and benefits. Thus, there is an ominous economic perspective in store for the rotten Peruvian society and more exploitation and oppression for the people.

Politically, the Constitution of 1979, just like with the rest of its type, negates every right it recognizes. Furthermore, it didn't even satisfy the factions of the reactionary camp, much less the people. That's why modifying it is, and will continue to be, an area of contention. The present constitution gives direct participation to the armed forces and police in every aspect of social life, fortifying their predominance, and at the same time it strengthens the powers of the Executive and organizes the most repressive police system of our history. Despite all its filthy demagoguery, in comparison with all previous constitutional charters the present constitution is the crudest, most violent, and bloody collision with our conditions. This is shown by the contrast between the so-called «right to live» and the sinister genocide being carried out with cruelty and impunity in the Ayacucho region by the armed forces directed by Belaunde himself.

And how do the sanctified bourgeois-democratic institutions work? Parliament abdicated its legislative functions, turning them over to the Executive. The courts, incapable of prosecuting thousands of accused, much less applying their own laws, even agree and protect the plan to liquidate prisoners of war in the known concentration camps like El Fronton and the secret ones like those in Totos, Los Cabitos, the stadium in Huanta, and so on, in complicity with the Ministry of Public Affairs. The Executive has become the real legislative power, with the most basic laws of the land in the hands of rancid bureaucrats and technocrats trained and advised by imperialism; with super-ministers who, like the old autocrats, do as they please; with broad and repressive powers used daily, from the gavels, bombs, bullets, and so on, to the state of emergency decree used even to confront strikes; and let's not forget the much called-for implementation of a state of siege. Finally, the reactionary armed forces and police have shown all their anti-popular hatred and brutality that is characteristic of their actions, they have shown clearly that they «authorize» any mistreatment and even the unpunished assassination of any child of the people. And those armed forces which call themselves «institutional guardians» — as if the Peruvian people were solely made up of children — and who are as specialized in being defeated by foreigners as they are experienced in smashing our disarmed people through blood and fire, today manifest more clearly the reactionary interests which they defend and all the class hatred contained in their intervention against the victorious armed struggle. Their leadership — the Joint Command, the Council of National Defence, and headed up by Belaunde himself — in its futile and desperate attempt to isolate the masses from the armed revolution, has found no solution other than the monstrous and infamous genocide which the fraudulent Peruvian democracy and that false democrat and cunning demagogue Belaunde have revealed to our people and to the whole world with their sinister anti-guerrilla actions.

Thus, on top of these ominous economic perspectives, old and reactionary institutions are established that only survive by the force of inertia and the arms that sustain them, always spilling more blood and bathing in the incendiary blood of the disarmed and cruelly oppressed people who have begun to say: «Enough!» — a people who every day believe less in the Old State and expect less from the government. In conclusion, the loss of prestige, the disorder, the chaos on top of corruption, and the most shameless wantonness all work to corrode the landowner-bureaucrat State. Thus a few demagogues of poorly concealed interests and uncontrollable ambitions are once again frivolously and happily competing with one another for the government — with verbal skirmishes and perhaps with one or another conflict. They are: Alva Orlandini, Bedoya Reyes, Morales Bermudez, and Alan Carcia, candidates of Popular Action, Democratic Convergence, the National Democratic United Front, and the American People's Revolutionary Alliance, respectively. All are well-known defenders of the existing order. And among them is also that devious opportunist Barrantes Lingan — a false Mariateguist and real loyal defender and supporter of the ruling system — representing the so-called United Left, an organization which was organized by its leaders as the most blatant expression of the old road of electoral opportunism and parliamentary cretinism in the country.

But the oppressive legacy does not end there. The class struggle of our people has developed into armed struggle against the old social order, the Old State, and its reactionary armed forces and police. The revolutionary war is now entering its fifth year, two of those against the old armed forces themselves. This historic fact has radically changed the conditions: it has shown how through armed struggle the old rotten system can be overthrown piece by piece and a new political power built up for the people, for the oppressed. This new and irreversible process will continue to increasingly unfold as the main problem of the Peruvian State because it will be its negation, its destruction. It is against this process that the State will have to increasingly concern itself in defence of the exploiting classes and their imperialist masters. The people, the masses — mainly the peasantry — will increasingly join the advancing peasant war, since, as Lenin said: «In the West, tens of millions of people are suffering the torments of starvation. It is this that makes social revolution inevitable, for social revolution stems not from programmes, but from the fact that tens of millions of people say: ‹Rather than live and starve, we prefer to die for the revolution.›»³

Therefore, we must ask, what are the implications of the elections? Do the people need to go to the ballot boxes? Is it worthwhile for the people to vote? Looking at Peru's own experience, what revolutionary transformations have the people won through elections or in parliamentary activities? Everything won by the people has been wrenched in the course of the people's struggle. As a result of these struggles, laws were enacted. From the beginning the State started cutting back and launching a process to reduce the effect of these laws or do away with them entirely — the history of labour legislation is proof enough. The victory of political rights has followed a similar course. All of this clearly has been won short of conquering political power since, for a revolutionary, political power can only be conquered through revolutionary violence. In Peru this can only mean armed struggle from the countryside to the city. But, furthermore, let us ask ourselves, what benefits have the people really won by their participation in the Constituent Assembly and in the 1980 General Elections? In the first case, simply to serve the third restructuring of the reactionary Peruvian State in this century, and the results are already known. In the second case, the emergence of Belaunde's government, one of the biggest sellouts of our history which has drowned our people in the darkest and bloodiest famine and genocide.

Furthermore, looking at the prospects, what can the masses of the people expect from participating in the 1985 General Elections, when, in fact, simply and concretely, to vote is to endorse the social system and to elect another government that will bring more hunger and more genocide?! It will aid the landowner-bureaucrat State to replace — according to its laws and conditions — their authorities who will exercise their class dictatorship against the people, and aid them in maintaining the semi-feudal and semi-colonial character of our society, in whose womb bureaucrat capitalism is developing, to serve the ruling classes and their main master, US imperialism. To vote is to aid in the establishment of a government that will bring more hunger, since this is determined by the needs and the class character of the State of which it is a part. To vote is to aid in the establishment of a more genocidal regime, since this, too, is determined by the needs of the Old State to defend its decrepit society in the face of the developing people's struggle and, most of all, in the face of the armed struggle which is advancing and with arms is destroying the old and building up the new: the forms of the new political power, of the new society, supported by the people rising in arms.

The people cannot serve their exploiters and oppressors, cannot help them solve their problems, cannot endorse their social system — to say nothing of electing another government that will bring more hunger and cause more genocide. This is not the road the people should take, and it does not serve the interests of the people. The only thing left to do is not to vote! That is the only true response of the people in the face of the elections of the reactionary State that brings hunger and genocide.

#3. GENERALIZE GUERRILLA WARFARE TO CONQUER POLITICAL POWER FOR THE PEOPLE!

The Communist Party of Peru, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political party, a Communist Party reconstituted in the struggle against revisionism — including internally — a political party of a new type to conquer political power for the proletariat and the people, took up its role of going over to the armed struggle on the 17th of May, 1980. Thus, the class struggle of the Peruvian proletariat and people has taken a leap in its long journey. The political struggle continues as a revolutionary war, taking armed struggle as its main form and the revolutionary armed forces as its main form of organization. Thus, our Party has left behind historical baggage, more than 50 years old, and has overcome the dark and rotten electoralism imposed on the masses. With dynamite and bullets it began to write the people's genuine liberation, armed and united from the beginning with the masses of the people — mainly the peasantry — who have always supported the most heroic actions of the Peruvian revolution, and who do so today more than ever as the armed struggle has concretized the centuries-old hope in an inextinguishable bonfire.

As Chairman Mao said: «When its life is at stake, the exploiting class always resorts to force. Indeed, no sooner do they see the revolution start up than they suppress it with force. [...] It is not only after the people have organized revolutionary political power that the exploiting class will oppose it with force, but even at the very moment when the people rise up to seize political power, the exploiters promptly use violence to suppress the revolutionary people.»⁴ Or, as the second quotation at the beginning says: «All reactionaries try to stamp out revolution by mass murder [...].»¹

The Peruvian State, the Old State, has acted according to these laws. First, it mobilized its police forces — the Civil Guard, the Republican Guard, and the Investigative Police of Peru — and its special forces — the Sinchis, the self-proclaimed «Llapan Atic», the Counter-Terrorism Directorate, and so on. They carried out their well-known persecutions, tortures, imprisonments, and assassinations with the brutality and cruelty that is their nature. Then they started their patrols, searches, and raids in the countryside and the cities — mainly in the countryside — basing themselves on the reactionary law of «burning all, killing all, and looting all». These police forces, at the height of their actions, were able at most to launch three campaigns (in January and October 1981 and March 1982) which were highly advertised and overstated in the press. Despite having direction and support from the armed forces, these campaigns ended in total failure, suffering humiliating defeats at the hands of the revolutionary armed forces — a fact that even the reactionary press could not deny. Thus, the police forces were used like cannon-fodder and guinea pigs caught in the contradictions in the reactionary camp.

Despite the clamour demanding their participation in the anti-guerrilla struggle, the armed forces of the Peruvian State did not directly intervene until late 1982, due to the opposition of Belaunde who feared that the military would use their intervention as a pretext to launch a State coup against him or to take over bit by bit. The military sent in the three branches of the armed forces — the army, the navy, and the air force — with the army as the main force and with the intention of sharing responsibility, since none of these branches wants to take full responsibility for the inevitable loss of prestige that their counter-revolutionary work carries with it. From the beginning the self-proclaimed «guardians of the national institutions» used bands of vigilantes (groups of feudal lords, local tyrants, and their lackeys) to camouflage themselves, including dressing like peasants and members of the Civil Guard, to commit atrocities and massacres in the vain attempt to separate us from the masses. They carried out numerous cowardly and bloody massacres like those in Huambo, Huaychao, Iquicha, Sacsamarca, and so on (among them, the massacre of the journalists). These actions were all approved by the Council of National Defence with the express authorization and congratulations of Belaunde himself. Further, with the failure of their sinister plans at the hands of the powerful blows of the revolutionary forces, and due to the necessities of the November 1983 Municipal Elections, the armed forces resorted to widespread massacres. Thus, in less than two months around the city of Ayacucho, more than 800 people turned up brutally massacred, and people began to disappear. These were vile, ignominious, and unpunished assassinations.

July 1984 brought important State measures, although they were not public — which is yet another violation of their judicial system. The Joint Command was granted the right to intervene in any and every part of the country to combat the guerrillas and, on their decision and request, to create political-military commands and establish emergency zones. Thus, the country is at the whim of the Joint Command, and the Executive gives the armed forces carte blanche to use their loyalty as they see fit. This is the state of so-called Peruvian democracy today. It is under this authority that they carry out new plans, pre-planned destruction, and, under death threats, forcefully push together sectors of the population to simulate a supposed struggle among peasants, when in fact it's simply and clearly a copy of the «strategic hamlets» used in Vietnam, or the «peasant organizations» formed in nearby Guatemala under US supervision. The war has been intensified and broadened, especially in the arena where the armed forces have to confront a genuine peasant war led by the Communist Party and despite the sinister genocide caused by their pigheaded plans to isolate the guerrillas from the masses. Therefore, they can't proclaim victory, and recently, the Minister of War himself talked of the necessity of taking time and having patience in combating the guerrillas, of the need for stronger measures and the support of all Peruvians. This was a clear confession of the difficulties they have in confronting an armed struggle which follows the principles of people's war. Such reactionary difficulties are even manifested in the uneasiness of the Pope who, while in Ayacucho — in that Papal meeting basically of repressive forces, preceded by more than a month of intense persecution and raids — blessed the criminal weapons, consecrated the graves of infamy, sanctified the counter-revolutionary war, blessed the genocidal armed forces and police — mainly its bloody chiefs — exonerated and, what's more, supported Belaunde's government, and called on him to liquidate us as soon as possible. And in a bombastic tone he threatened us to change our course, to abandon the revolution, to in fact submit ourselves to the ruling order, to betray the people. To this «communique» we have given our immediate, firm, and complete answer with the big blackout on the 4th of February that completely covered all of Lima and the whole central region of the country.

What has the armed struggle achieved in almost five years? 1980 could be called the initiation; 1981 and '82, the beginning of developing guerrilla warfare and the formation of the first people's committees — germinal forms of the New State. From then to the present, the war has concentrated on the contradiction between restoration and counter-restoration — that is, on the counter-revolutionary war to destroy the new political power, and the revolutionary war to defend, develop, and build it up by destroying little by little the old, rotten, and reactionary order. In almost five years (up to the beginning of 1985) we have carried out more than 20'000 actions. The Party has multiplied its membership many times over and has prestige as never before, both inside and outside the country. We have built up a People's Guerrilla Army made up of thousands of fighters, and, more importantly, hundreds of people's committees have been formed. We are pushing forward the construction of base areas and advancing the formation of the New Democratic People's Republic — thus, the new political power has arisen and is developing by exercising real State functions.

In sum, the Communist Party of Peru leads a successful and growing armed struggle, following the standards of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the only true communist ideology; armed struggle serving a democratic revolution — according to Chairman Mao's New Democracy — with the aim of doing away with imperialist domination, the subsisting feudal-landowner property, and confiscating the resources of bureaucrat capitalism; armed struggle which serves the world revolution and receives proletarian-internationalist support, mainly from the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in which our Party is a participant. We base ourselves on the masses of the country who support us, mainly the poor peasantry. We are not linked and will never be linked to any superpower nor any other power, since we firmly serve the revolution guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Guiding Thought, which is the application of Marxism to our conditions. And today our immediate objective is to generalize guerrilla warfare to conquer political power for the people!

#LONG LIVE THE ARMED STRUGGLE! DON'T VOTE!

#LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU!

#LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN GONZALO!

#GLORY TO MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM!