We Are the Initiators
#PUBLICATION NOTE
This edition of We Are the Initiators 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 by the Maoist Documentation Project on maoism.org.
#INTRODUCTION NOTE
This is the closing address delivered by Comrade Gonzalo at the First Military School of the Communist Party of Peru in Lima, Peru on the 19th of April, 1980. It was first published in the pamphlet We Are the Initiators, Red Flag Publishing House, Lima, 1980.
#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
#WE ARE THE INITIATORS
#CLOSING ADDRESS AT THE FIRST MILITARY SCHOOL OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU
#Gonzalo
#19th of April, 1980
#★
We are the initiators, and we should keep this fact deeply in our spirits. This meeting is historic.
Comrades, we will pass into history as the initiators. For some time, the Party has been writing this history on indestructible pages.
We are the initiators. This First Military School of our Party is both a seal and a breach, it both concludes and begins. It concludes the time of peace and opens the time of war. Comrades, our tasks with unarmed hands have concluded, and today our armed words begin: Let us uplift the masses and peasants under the unfading flags of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong's Thought. One period has ended and the preparations for the new one have concluded. From here on, the past deeds are sealed and we open the future. The key of the future is determined by actions, the objective is political power. This we shall do, history demands it, our class urges it, the people have foreseen and want it. We must accomplish it, and it will be accomplished. We are the initiators.
We should discuss some problems. Just as you, I will also speak with an open heart, sincere words, and a rational sentiment. This also has a strict logic.
#1. WE HAVE ENTERED THE STRATEGIC OFFENSIVE OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION
Centuries of devastating exploitation have passed. The masses have been exploited, subjugated, forced to yield, and implacably oppressed. But, through all this time, the exploited masses have always resisted, because they have no other sentiment than the class struggle. However, throughout history, the masses were abandoned and had no leadership. Their words, protests, actions, and rebellions were crushed and defeated. But the masses never lost hope. Our class always has hope. The masses are the light of the world; they forge ahead by themselves. They transform and create instruments with their own hands. They are the social fabric, the inexhaustible heartbeat of history. Thus, they have been creating ideas, science of the most advanced kind.
But the laws of history that came about as a result of the development of the class struggle have created one last class: the international proletariat. This class has risen up, fighting in the midst of an evil system, capitalism, which appeared dripping with blood and dirt from all its pores. Capitalism is a system in whose centre the militant proletariat developed trade unions, strikes, resistance, and revolutions. All of this became embodied in Marxism, and our class, endowing itself with a political party, evolved into a mature class with its own interests. The masses of the world finally have their liberator. In the old times, the masses awaited for a liberator. They used to put their faith in the hands of supposed saviours, until the powerful and invincible proletariat appeared, which is capable of creating a truly new order. This class organized itself politically, and a new history begun to unfold and become a reality.
In 100 years of struggle, setbacks, and victories, the proletariat has learned how to fight and to conquer political power with arms. The workers took it once, in an embryonic form ,but were crushed with blood and fire. Nevertheless, we remember the Paris Commune, where those who were reviled are today heroes. And their example lives on, while their tormentors are forgotten. The workers with Lenin conquered political power in Russia and created a powerful State. Our class continued fighting and with Mao Zedong paved a new road and resolved pending problems. Our class began to fight under the flags of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong's Thought.
Around the time of the Second World War, the revolution entered a strategic stalemate, leaving behind the reactionary holy alliances and their previously untouchable tormentors and enemies. With the powerful international labour movement, the cresting waves of the national liberation movements, the development of the Communist Parties, and the elevation of Marxism to the high summit of Mao Zedong's Thought, a new situation has been created: We have entered the strategic offensive of the world revolution. In the next 50 to 100 years, the domination of imperialism and all exploiters will be swept away. History cannot go backward. In the hands of the working class, under the leadership of the Communist Parties, and through the mighty force of the poor peasants, the People's War will be sustained and grow each day until it overthrows the old order. The world has entered into a new situation, the strategic offensive of the world revolution. This is of transcendental importance.
As Chairman Mao said: The storm draws near and the wind roars in the tower. Thus, the storm draws near, the storm begins, and the invincible flame of the revolution grows, converting itself into lead and steel. And from the din of battle along its inextinguishable fires will come forth the light. From the darkness, a light will appear and a new world will be born. The old order of reaction crackles, its old boat leaks and sinks in desperation. But comrades, nobody can expect the reactionaries to retire gently. Marx warned us: Even while drowning, the reactionaries are capable of inflicting asphyxiating choke-holds and desperate blows in order to see us sink with them. But that is impossible. The reactionaries have hyaena-like dreams of blood. Nightmares shake their somber nights. Their hearts come up with sinister schemes. They arm themselves to the teeth. But they cannot prevail. Their destiny is weighed and measured. The time has come for settling the accounts.
The imperialist superpowers (the United States and the Council Union) and powers seek to invade, penetrate, suffocate, destroy, and drown everything with terror. But, as Chairman Mao said, by attacking, assaulting, and launching offensives, they overextend themselves and become trapped in the midst of the masses. The people rise up, arm themselves, and rebel, putting nooses around the necks of the imperialists and the reactionaries. The people take them by the throat, threaten their lives, and will strangle them out of necessity. The reactionary meat will be trimmed of fat, they will be torn to tatters and rags, the scraps sunk into mire, and the remainders burned. The ashes will be thrown to the winds of the world, so that only the sinister reminder of what must never return will remain.
Comrades, that is the world today. It has befallen us to live in an extraordinary epoch. Thus, it is written, humanity never before had such a heroic destiny. To the people of today, to those people who breathe, struggle, and fight, has befallen the task of sweeping the reactionaries off the face of the Earth, the most illuminating and magnificent mission given to any generation. We find ourselves in this situation: The world revolution has entered its strategic offensive. Nothing will prevail against it. The innumerable iron legions rise up, and more and more will rise up, inexhaustibly multiply, and encircle and suppress the reactionaries. The reactionaries, who unleash their bloody claws, tearing the flesh off the people, continue to sow discord, embroil, and seek to sate themselves with the blood of the people. But the people's blood ascends like furious wings, and the stricken flesh converts itself into a powerful, vengeful lash. Their muscles and actions are converted into steel battering rams in order to destroy the oppressors, who will be irremediably crushed.
Comrades, the reaction will not prevail in any form. The hour has sounded, the revolution will triumph. The struggle will be hard, arduous, cruel, and difficult. Victory is ours. The masses will prevail, the peasants will rise up, the working class will lead, the Communist Party will command, and the Red Flag will be hoisted forever. The reaction has entered the final chapter of its history. That is the world in which we will live.
#2. OUR PEOPLE BEGIN TO CONQUER POLITICAL POWER THROUGH ARMED STRUGGLE
In this magnificent epic of world history, our people, along with the Latin American working classes and masses, have a role to play. This role is being fulfilled. Our people begin to conquer political power through armed struggle. In the course of hundreds of years of struggle, the peasant movements have shaken the foundations of exploitation, but they have not been able to uproot it as yet. In this country, the Communist Party was tempered as pure steel. It brought light to the people by upholding Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong's Thought. Comrades, in this country, we are entering a third period. The third period is a battle between the armed revolution and the armed counter-revolution, both of whom are prepared for violence. The counter-revolution is prepared with its old and bloody violence, its peace of the bayonets, its accursed wars that annihilate people in the prisons, schools, factories, the countryside, and even assassinating children through hunger and poverty in their maternal wombs.
Today, that sinister violence meets its match. Revolutionary violence prepares to take up the battle through arms. Our people with a rich history are finally entering the final chapter, the completion of the democratic period of the revolution. The masses tremble, the tide rises, and the storm approaches. The reaction in this country, as well as in the world, also dreams of destroying the revolution with blood and fire, of drowning it in blood. These are old, dark, and violent dreams.
They are not facing the same situation as yesterday. Time has passed, and bureaucrat capitalism has matured the revolution. The agrarian laws promulgated by the regimes have been failures one after another, and the peasants have understood the lesson: nothing will be given to them, nothing will come of any law. The land must be conquered by their own armed hands.
The working class is more aggressive and mature. It has a higher level of consciousness, it is numerically larger, politically more powerful, and much stronger than in the past. The masses of the people have grown in our country. The small bourgeoisie is being proletarianized. It has no other destiny than to serve the revolution and to put itself at the disposal of the proletariat. Its only course of action is to serve the revolution according to the dictates of the working class and to forcefully fight behind the road paved by the Party. This is good to remember, because, from this experience, we should particularly win over the intellectuals. As Mariategui already showed us, the masses must be mobilized, and only in this way will we will fulfil our role and serve the great battle that history has arranged for us.
Comrades, we have concluded that we are entering the third period of modern Peruvian history. But, just as yesterday, when we expounded the two periods of modern Peruvian history as part of the process of the development of bureaucrat capitalism in this country, some people condemned us and rejected our thesis and ideals with insolence and contemptible accusations of infantile disorders. We are putting forward today, with a clear and precise vision, that our country is entering a third period. This thesis will also be subject to misunderstanding. But it is no longer possible to condemn us with childish labels of infantile disorders, because this time, history has shown us to be right in many things, and they will also learn lessons. Nevertheless, it is not easy for our accusers to easily accept and comprehend it. It requires convincing deeds, concrete actions that pound their thick skulls and shatter their speculation to pieces, so that they also may carry the reality of this country in their spirits.
The understanding of the third period is key to the advance of our people. What does the third period imply? It implies the revolution, that the people, gun in hand, begin to conquer political power, that the reactionaries, with 400 years of exploitation, added to the exploitation of other epochs (comrades, we should think clearly, 400 years of foreign oppression, a vile system of enslavement that continues to exist today, a State which, although weak, still has force), will try to stop us and oppose the advance of the revolution. It is well known by materialists that what exists refuses to die; the reactionaries exist and therefore refuse to die. The reaction is an unburied corpse, but it protests, negates, resists, and attacks with fury and desperation, opposing its placement into a casket for its burial.
Thus, we must understand that the revolutionary struggle will be hard, violent, and cruelly contested by the reactionaries. They will send their sinister army armed to the teeth to fight us, assaulting the working class, the peasants, and the masses of the people, and spreading their sinister claws. They will try to encircle, isolate, crush, and wipe us out. But we are the future, the strength, and history.
Comrades, the revolution and the counter-revolution are also contending forces in our country. They are two parts of a unity of opposites in constant struggle. The reactionaries are armed and concentrated, defending the cities and towns. We are rooted in the countryside, in small villages, with the masses, especially with the poor peasants, with the power of the people, among their disorganized power, where we work in order to organize them into a powerful army. But this will not be easy. The dark, sinister armies of the reaction will fight against us, mount powerful aggressions and great offensives. We will respond in kind, splitting them, making them fall apart, and converting their offensives into a multitude of our small offensives. Therefore, those who encircle will be encircled, the would-be suppressors will be suppressed, the would-be victors will be defeated, and the beast will finally be corralled. As we have been taught, the clamour of our armed voices will make them tremble with terror. They will be crushed by their own fears and be converted into scattered black ashes.
That is what will happen. This is the way it is, comrades. Nevertheless, the fight will be hard, long, difficult, and cruel. We need to temper our spirits, be strong, vigorous, fearless, and confident in our victory. May the confidence of victory dwell in our hearts in as much as we serve the people and class. The point is to launch the armed struggle with decisiveness and firmness. We must deploy it and populate the land with our flags and with sonorous actions that history will record. Comrades, our people are embarking on the conquest of political power, gun in hand. We are setting out on the most magnificent march that our country has ever seen. Nothing like this will ever be seen again. It will be truly remarkable. This is what we will do! The people, our class, and the proletariat demand it. We cannot and must not fail.
#3. THE PARTY DEVELOPS ITSELF THROUGH ARMED STRUGGLE
We have lived through more than 80 years of working-class struggle and 52 years of the Party's existence. It took about ten years for a group of people, led by Mariategui, to found the Party. His name is inscribed forever in our ranks, the peoples of the world, and the international working class. Time has passed, many of us have fought, and we will continue to fight until exploitation is abolished. That is our destiny. We are a growing torrent confronting fire, rocks, and mud. But our power is greater. We convert everything into our fire. The black fire will be transformed into red fire, and the red is the light. That is where we are, that is the reconstitution of the Party. Comrades, we have reconstituted ourselves.
The Party is a political party of a new type. The purpose of this political party of a new type is to conquer political power for the working class and the people of this country. The Party cannot be developed more except through the use of arms, through armed struggle. That is the hard lesson we have learned in 50 years, a great lesson that we should never forget: We have no political power because we have no guns. Like Chairman Mao has written, whoever has more guns has more power. Whoever wants to conquer political power must forge an army, and whoever wants to keep political power must have a powerful army. This is what we will accomplish. The Party has embarked to develop itself through armed struggle, our historical course. We cannot go backward.
Comrades, we can now state that the development of the Party has prevailed. Its possible destruction, as it had to be, has been averted. This is the conclusion that we can derive from the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee and the First Military School. We have completed a task that we only now have begun to appreciate. We asked ourselves, how will we develop the Party? A plain and simple response is: Through armed struggle. In critical times, the situation enters into contentious struggles, and, according to the law of contradiction, specific circumstances can lead into development or destruction, of course transitory, but it does not cease to become a destruction if that could lead us to sink into the mud or march through a marsh.
The Party has triumphed, as it had to. Its destruction cannot happen. The Party embarks firmly, decisively, voluntarily, and energetically in its development. Comrades, this is what is derived from these meetings. However, what contradiction is being debated? The initiation of the armed struggle presents a contradiction: the old against the new. The development of the Party through armed struggle is the new, and the old is our accomplishments up until now, including the good ones. Even the best of our achievements have aged, and no matter how much we add to this tradition, we also add to that tremendous pile of rubbish which political parties, classes, and organizations create in the course of several decades. We must be very clear on this point. There is only one new thing, to develop the Party through armed struggle. Today, this is our contradiction. Just like in the international arena, where the contradiction is between the strategic offensive of the revolution and the strategic defensive of the reaction, in our country, the contradiction is between the armed people and the armed reaction. This contradiction, through the People's War, will inevitably lead to the triumph of our class and the sweeping away of 400 years of oppression. Comrades, in the Party, there is also a contradiction. It calls for serious reflection and no one should doubt that it exists.
Today, the Communists should be clear on the contradiction between the old and the new. I repeat, the new is the armed struggle: the unfading flames of the People's War, the steel which must be made purer, sharp sword and piercing spears, in order to wound the entrails of the reactionaries. This is new. Everything else is old, it is the past, and from that past, we must guard ourselves, because the past always tries to reestablish itself in a thousand forms in the future.
Comrades, let us not forget that, in order to guarantee the consolidation of 100, we need to advance to 200. Today, advancing to 200 means to launch the armed struggle; to launch the actions is the guarantee of thoroughly sowing the new with lead, demolishing the old walls. Comrades, this is the new. Everything else is old. We should be absolutely clear and understand it. The Party has embarked on its development through arms. This is our fundamental situation. Having stated this point, we have three conclusions:
- Firstly, we embark on the strategic offensive of the world revolution. That is our situation. The revolutionary tide is on our side.
- Secondly, the people set out to conquer political power with arms. The future will be decided through the advancement of the People's War.
- Thirdly, the Party begins to develop through the armed struggle. Thus, the Party will become the powerful political party which the revolution needs, and since it is needed, it must be tempered.
Comrades, the process of the world, the process of the nation, and the process of the Party are interrelated. Therefore, the future is assured, it is beating in the armed actions that we will begin to undertake. It is a delicate task that needs to be nurtured with the clamour of our arms, developed with guerrilla warfare, consolidated with the People's War, cared for and nourished like the seed of an army, giving birth to armed columns, allowing it to flourish into a guerrilla army that we must build into a powerful army.
Comrades, these three conclusions determine that the Party leads the armed struggle of the masses. In our hearts, minds, and wills, the political power of the people is alive, and we carry it with us. In the beginning, we will have no rear, or we will have one that is small, weak, fragile, and uncertain. Comrades, we must never forget the people's power, the State of the working class, the State of workers and peasants. This State marches with us, we carry it in the barrels of our guns, it is nestled in our minds, beating in our hands, and it will always be burning in our hearts. It is the first thing on our minds. We should never forget it. Comrades, the armed struggle will be born fragile and weak, because it is new, but its destiny will be to develop through change, from the variation of fragility, like a tender plant. The roots we grow at the beginning will become a vigorous State in the future. Comrades, all this begins to flourish with the modest and simple actions that tomorrow we will carry out.
There are three interrelated things: world history, the history of our country, and the history of our Party. These are three convergences, three realities, three combinations, and only one final conclusion, only one unmovable truth, only one future. We will respond to the flourishing revolution in our country.
#4. WE BEGIN TO DEVELOP THE MILITARIZATION OF THE PARTY THROUGH ACTIONS AND TO APPLY THE PLAN FOR THE INITIATION OF THE ARMED STRUGGLE
This is a derivation from the three issues discussed above. It is a logical, necessary, irrefutable, and irreversible conclusion. On the three previous issues, the Party, at the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee, has concluded to develop the militarization of the Party through actions. It ratified that, through armed actions, the Party will be transformed into a powerful and recognized vanguard of the Peruvian working class, and the legitimate centre of the Peruvian revolution. The Second Plenary Session has also ratified the Plan for the Initiation of the Armed Struggle, which solves a problem unresolved until today, that is, how to launch the armed struggle. Comrades, this is not to make us proud, but to understand our immense responsibility. No trace of vanity should ever be in us. Modesty and simplicity should accompany us, and the more we fulfil our tasks, the more modest and simple we become, because we are the faithful servants of the people and our class. We should learn to conduct ourselves in that manner. Many things will change and even more profoundly among us. We have comrades by way of the actions of universal history, by Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong's Thought, by the labour of our people who begin to define their history through arms, by the labour of 50 years of Party struggle and of innumerable Communists, and as a derivation of what our own founder began. We have resolved the problem of launching the armed struggle. We have resolved the first fundamental military problem, that is, how to launch the armed struggle. We know what needs to be done and how to arm ourselves. Most importantly, we know how to elevate the peasantry, so that, through arduous struggles, we can unleash guerrilla actions from their powerful soil. We know how to confront and destroy the enemy's «encirclement and suppression» campaigns.
Comrades, the problem of launching the armed struggle in Peru is resolved. No one should have doubts about it. We have nothing to doubt. The problem is resolved. Take it for what it is, a derivation from Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong's Thought, a result of our people embarking on the road to the conquest of political power with arms, a derivation of the Party's 50-year history. Thus, we have a sense of history and a comprehension and knowledge of where we stand now, where we are going, and the safe haven in which we shall finally arrive.
#5. WE ARM OURSELVES THEORETICALLY AND PRACTICALLY TO LAUNCH THE PEOPLE'S WAR
We are arming ourselves theoretically and practically with the Military Line and with the general political mobilization. We are forming detachments and developing actions to launch the armed struggle. This should be indelibly recorded.
This First Military School is historic. We asked ourselves, what is this school? If the Second Session of the Central Committee is the «Chime of Glory», what is this school? We will repeat it once more, it is the «Seal and Breach», because it closes and opens. It concludes our unarmed life and begins our People's War. Comrades, that is what this school is. Here, we have applied the decisions of the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee. We have successfully completed and resolved problems, which the Central Committee shall ratify very soon, and, at the same time, it arranges for the Party's readjustment and the beginning of actions.
Thus, the Party, through its central organizations, its directors and cadres, arms itself theoretically and practically with the Military Line. Comrades, the last meeting is a demonstration of the distribution of forces: proof of the encirclement and suppression of pessimism and opposition. It has burned and annihilated what among us and inside of us could have opposed the initiation. We have unfurled our optimism and are overflowing with enthusiasm. The victories to come have been unfurled. We must understand it in this way. We have seen the fighters march, we have seen advanced fighters with their commanders at the forefront, opening up breaches; we have seen the ranks march in order to maintain and support the actions. We have seen at last the definitive action, a passionate and ardent faith to reach the summit. What we have done today is a demonstration of how to act militarily. That is why we say that we are arming ourselves theoretically and practically. In this way, arming the cadres and directors for fundamental effectiveness, we have obviously entered the general political mobilization. Remember what Chairman Mao said: the key is to mobilize the cadres. That has been accomplished. The mobilization has begun, and what we have achieved here will echo tomorrow in more powerful waves, because the masses yearn to hear the Party say that we should begin to take action, and they want to know how to do this. Comrades, let us inform the branches of the good news. We must apply the Plan for the Initiation, and we should start it tomorrow. It is what the beating hearts of the Party members and the masses that work together with us desire to hear and dream of realizing.
Comrades, the general political mobilization of the Party is on the march. Forming armed detachments and developing military actions, we are launching the armed struggle. This begins from here, and that is why this meeting is both a seal and a breach.
#6. WE ARE THE INITIATORS
We are the initiators. We began by stating that we are the initiators. And we end by stating that we are the initiators. Initiators of what? Of the People's War and the armed struggle that is in our hands, shining in our minds, beating in our hearts, and irrepressibly agitating in our wills. This is what we are: «A handful of people, Communists, paying homage to the leadership of the Party, the proletariat, and the people. On this 19th of April», history will state, «standing upright, they expressed their declaration of revolutionary faith, with their hearts burning with an inextinguishable passion, with firm and resolute wills, and with clear and bold minds, taking up their historical obligation of being the initiators. What they decided on the 19th of April took shape in the autumn with the boycott and the harvest, was followed through with actions against the reactionary political power, taking aim against the local authorities, continued with land seizures and with the peasant masses in rebellion, and the guerrillas rose up. The guerrillas created the powerful army we have become today, and the State based on it. Our country is free...» That is what they will say, comrades. This is materialized in our Party decision, apparently simple, but of great historical importance.
Comrades, do these three final issues also present us with contradictions? Yes, they do. Here, in the Party, the focus is on our decision concerning the development of the militarization of the Party through actions and in applying our Plan for the Initiation; this is the essence of the new, a new part of the world, which cannot be stopped, because our armed hands have risen up with more to follow tomorrow. The new is focused in our country, the armed solution, and the Party's development through arms intensifies through the armed struggle. Thus, on the question of developing and applying the Plan for the Initiation, the new is the focus and the old is confronted. The old will pledge itself to the opposite, but it is already defeated, it is a great defeat for the Right wing. Their destruction is already assured, the development has triumphed, let us shape it through thunder, write it with lead, so that it remains written forever on pages of steel upon the ridge of the mountains; so that it can never be erased nor anything written to the contrary. That is the contradiction.
In the end, everything boils down to a fifth problem. The contradiction begins to address the problems of arms, war, armed struggle, and how to launch it. If, up to now, we have acted as unarmed people, the problem now is that we begin to act with armed hands. We cross over from times of peace to times of war. And the times of war have other requirements and other urgent demands.
Comrades, the contradictions will accumulate, but we will handle them. We have learned how to handle history, laws, and contradictions. It is in our hands to resolve them, shaping them with armed deeds. Nothing will stop us. We will pass through times of irreversible war, the contradiction will unfold, it will take us to a successful conclusion.
We are the initiators. What contradiction is presented to us? We and the other Communists of our branches, present or not, who reverberate within us, await with anxiety what is decided here. All of us have a problem, a contradiction: the great rupture. Comrades, the time has come. It is time for a great rupture. We will break all ties with what is old and rotten in order to completely and thoroughly destroy it, for, if we had any interest in that decrepit world, we would not be able to destroy it. People speaking individually can be weak. Each of us should think hard. As an individual, each person can be fragile and weak. But the revolution is omnipotent, and the armed revolution even more so, because it is sustained by the masses, who are the real power in the country and led by the Party, which is the light of the Universe.
Comrades, we begin the great rupture. We have stated many times that we embark upon that rupture and that many ties shall be broken, since they link us to the old and rotten order, and if we don't do it, we could never demolish it. Comrades, the time has come, there is nothing more to discuss, the debate has been exhaustively concluded. It is time to act, it is the moment of rupture, and it will not be done with slow and tardy meditation, nor in halls, nor in silent rooms. It will be done with the roar of armed actions. This is the form for carrying it out, a correct and appropriate form, the only form. It is through actions, as we have studied, that the conscious capacity of people intensifies, the will is tenser, our passions more powerful, and our energy enraged. Comrades, through actions, we will find the energy, force, and sufficient capacity for the great rupture. We have embarked upon this. The trumpets begin to sound, the murmur of the masses grows, and it will continue growing, it will deafen us, it will bring us to a powerful vortex, with one note: We will become the protagonists of history, conscious, organized, and armed. Thus, the great rupture will be open and we will become the breakers of a definitive dawn. This is what we have embarked upon, comrades.
I want to conclude. This school, this First Military School of the Party, is a seal and a breach; it seals the deeds done up to today and opens up a breach for tomorrow. What we have accomplished until now is very positive and has borne fruit. There is a saying that people are judged by their deeds. The deed is done, it stands before us. There is nothing more to prove. What has been done until now is good. The breach, what we must do, will be even greater and definitively the only great thing we have to accomplish. It will come forth from arms, from the barrels of the guns. It will come forth from the direct action of the Party upon the masses. It will come forth from the People's War.
Comrades, this school is historic. We cannot understand its dimension, we cannot weigh it as it deserves unless we turn our gaze decades into the future. This is the School of the Initiators. It is the name given to it by the Central Committee. In a word, it is the initiation of the armed struggle in 1980. It is a commitment and challenge. We are deployed. We will surpass it. I am not only saying that we will accomplished it, but we will surpass it, because it is a mandate and a historic necessity imposed upon us by our people, nobody can speak to the contrary.
Comrades, the role of the School of Initiators is to launch the armed struggle in 1980. Decades later, in the future, it will interpreted like this: the armed struggle was launched in 1980. The armed struggle was launched here. That sentence is beautiful, it has a double meaning, and if we look at it even more, it has a further meaning. It is the synthesis of what we done up to now. It shapes all the past. Comrades, what has guided us? To launch the armed struggle. Was not this stated at the Ninth Plenary Session? Comrades, it is the past summed up, opening up the present, it is the future that must be irrevocably accomplished. The initiation of the armed struggle in 1980 is also the implementation of our past decision on launching the armed struggle. In the present, it means launching the armed struggle today, this year, and in the future. The armed struggle was initiated in 1980.
Comrades, all that we have done during these complex days, in difficult moments, but, in the final analysis, satisfactory days, fruitful, healthy, good, and vital days, is all realized in the title: «School of Initiators: Initiation of the Armed Struggle in 1980».
The Central Committee and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee congratulates those present and everyone else, because, with their actions, they helped in the materialization of this reality. Congratulations to the Party, because, with its actions, it has made this reality concrete. Congratulations to the masses and our people, because their actions through centuries have been realized here. Congratulations to the working class of the world, the international proletariat, and the peoples of the world, because their actions have borne fruit here. We render homage, as always, to the unfading flags of Marxism-Leninism Mao-Zedong's Thought, because their immortal grandeur has been realized here. They now live within us. The spirit of the revolution dwells in the Party, our people, and our class. Finally, it has arrived! All our struggles have been validated. Comrades, finally, it has been realized: launch the armed struggle today. Everything that we have accomplished, including errors that have served as experience, are validated here. This is the essence of this school.
The Central Committee and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee feel and express, through the person who is speaking, an immense delight, because we have completed a simple and magnificent task: that the initiation of the armed struggle dwells here and puts the final touches on the past, specifies the present, and opens up the future. Comrades, we have accomplished this. Thus, the future opens up with promise and hope. We remember the words of a wise old man: «Dedicate your life to the fulfilment of whatever with which life presents you.»
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong's Thought, the international proletariat, the people of the world, the working class, the people of this country, the Party, with its branches, cadres, and directors, all this magnificent action through the centuries has been realized here. The promise blossoms and the future unfolds. Initiation of the armed struggle in 1980.
Our duty is to fulfil it. What has been presented to us is the future, we must dedicate our lives to fulfil it, for the sake of the people, the workers, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong's Thought.
Comrades, we have invested our efforts. We are satisfied, we feel delight at the accomplished tasks, are pleased by what has been done, and seek no compensation for it.