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Anarchy: a journal of desire armed. #37, Summer 1993
THE SAD TRUTH
-includes "How Nice to be Civilized!" by Des R=82fractaires; "Peru:
the Ideology of Apocalypse - Shining Path to What?" by Manolo
Gonzalez.
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How Nice To Be Civilized!
Assassinations, massacres, rape, torture: these crimes committed
on the soil of what was once Yugoslavia are not the acts of
uncontrollable savages; of educationless brutes.
No doubt as children they respected the family order; are now more
or less faithful followers of religions; earnest sports spectators;
content with television. In a word, civilized folks; normal people
doing what society expects them to!
Each crime demonstrates the success of diverse processes of
domestication which have come to be grouped under the heading of
Civilization.
The killers, rapists and perpetrators of massacres have
exceptionally well internalized today's world's fundamental logic:
to survive, other people must be destroyed! This mutual mangling
takes different forms, such as economic competition or war. But the
result is always the same: some must be trampled in order to give
others the impression that they are living more and better. Being
civilized signifies not taking your own life and those of others
into consideration. It means letting your life be used, exploited
and dominated by the always-superior interests of the collectivity
where fate decreed that you would be born and live your life. And
all for the financial etc. gain of the authorities of the
collectivity in question. In exchange for this submission one is
granted the possibility of being accepted as a human being.
Being civilized, as well, signifies sacrificing your life, and
those of others, when those in power attempt to solve their
management problems with wars.
Aside from a variety of benefits they offer, wars represent a very
efficient means of directing feelings of frustration against people
who, designated as prey, can then be oppressed, humiliated and
killed without qualms. Those who suffer, as with those who take
pleasure in making others suffer, become nothing more than
instruments of the conditions of social existence, conditions where
lives are only important in relation to the use that can be made of
them.
Following the collapse and decomposition of the Eastern Bloc,
various local and international gangsters have slots to fill,
markets to conquer and energies to channel through the formation of
new States.
To help slice up the pie, local political gangs have deftly played
the religious and nationalist cards. And if these cards work
effectively, unfortunately, it is because, for a portion of the
population, this collapse and decomposition have not been perceived
as openings towards increased freedom. On the contrary, people have
experienced an immense emptiness, one that has been alleviated with
nationalist and religious alienations which are often decked out in
a tawdry grab-bag of local history and culture. Instead of
attempting to understand and attack the real causes of our material
and psychological misery, too often people are thrown into a state
of disarray. In response to this disarray identities are presented
as lost values to be recaptured, whereas these values are simply
the ideological cement which is the prerequisite to founding and
developing State entities propped up by alliances between local and
world powers.
Nor, in a climate of generalized terror, is there any hesitation
to accomplish this by displacing populations and practising ethnic
cleansing in order to redistribute land. In this sense, don't the
peace plan concocted in Geneva and hypothetical military
intervention rubberstamp the UN's recognition of the dismemberment
of the territory of former Yugoslavia? And if this is to be the
price of pacification, everyone just closes their eyes to the
cortege of horrors which is integral to every war.
The humanitarian organizations, cynically baptized
non-governmental, present the dismal paradox of inciting pity and
indignation while at the same time impeding the possibility of
spontaneous participation from which true human solidarity could be
born.
Today humanitarianism is a true lobby in a financial, human and
media sense. But beyond generating money humanitarianism carries
out an educational task, channeling emotions and arousing feelings
of indignation on a specific and regular basis - paving the way to
military intervention in humanitarian wars which the State
undertakes to supposedly respond to pressure from a public
indignant about the very real massacres that they are powerlessly
witnessing. This type of media treatment's only goal is to convince
people that alone, by themselves, nothing can be done; the State is
in a position to come to the rescue and will watch out for their
political and strategic interests.
Everything is peachy because everyone consoles themselves with the
thought that peace and democracy are a privilege - the proof being
that elsewhere, over there, all is war and barbarism.
Denouncing the horrors, collecting accounts from the local
population, exhorting the government to intervene, the media have
the starring role in this affair. Real recruiting sergeants! As to
be expected, the media have carefully edited out any information
about those in ex-Yugoslavia who oppose the war, carefully
concealing information about the 1992 massacres in Zagreb and
Sarajevo which put the finishing touches on repressing the
movements against the war. These horrors are necessary in order to
lay the basis for the right to intervene, to invent humanitarian
wars and to create tribunals to judge the vanquished. The "New
World Order" which is coming into being is cutting its teeth on
small nation-State wars; it provides the arms, then comes to the
rescue, basing its activities in each case on a flood of horrifying
images!
Thus exalting ethnic, national and religious identities goes hand
in hand with gang warfare to constitute a new hierarchy of
Godfathers.
In response to the growth of ghettos - those artificial
separations and false communities which allow the world of money
and domination to thrive on human life - we, as people who are
refractory to the world around us, would like to affirm our
community of struggle and aspirations with those who are refusing
the war in ex-Yugoslavia, those who see themselves above all as
"human beings who want to live" and not cannon fodder.
We are refractory to all that is the glory of civilization. We
want to live human relations that would no longer be based on
appropriation, competition and hierarchy, and would thus be
relations in which individuals would no longer be obliged to treat
themselves a priori as adversaries and enemies.
-Des R=82fractaires
This text was collectively written, and sent from Paris by G=82rard.
Des R=82fractaires is a new group which doesn't have a post office
box at present. Translated by Michael William.
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Peru: The Ideology Of Apocalypse
Shining Path To What?
BY Manolo Gonzalez
Introduction
In one episode of his novel, Yawar Fiesta=FEFeast of Blood=FE, the
Peruvian writer Jos=82 Maria Arguedas describes in painful detail the
combat of a condor tied to the neck and shoulders of a bull. Seldom
does either animal win. The bird pecks madly, trying to get away
from the enraged bull. Often the bull, blinded and exhausted,
collapses and crushes the condor to death. This ritual has been
performed at religious festivities for about three hundred years,
since the Spaniards introduced European cattle into the Peruvian
Andes. Arguedas uses this as an allegory of the violent, never-
resolved conflict resulting from the invasion of the American
continent by the Europeans. The rapacious policies of Spain, the
super-exploitation of the indigenous population and the violent
methods used to obtain total submission reflect one of the most
cruel episodes of history. Perhaps up to 10 million Peruvians were
murdered or died of European infectious diseases, and that in only
the first 25 years of the invasion. Thousands of temples, adminis-
trative posts, roads and aqueducts were wantonly destroyed. Cities
like Cuzco, Caxamarca were disfigured or almost demolished. The
expropriation of the communal lands of the natives by the Europeans
was a religious desecration of the beliefs of the Peruvians who
revered the Earth, the Pachamama, as an all life-giving deity.
Precious objects of art were melted for their gold or moved into
European museums, or private collections. A practice that still
continues today.
In Peru, class conflict has always been exacerbated by racial
hatred. The lower classes are always Cholos, when not zambos or
cutatos for people of African descent. There is the term chinitos
for any oriental, like President Alberto Fujimori. The rich and
powerful are always considered white, regardless the color of their
skin.
Furthermore, different ethnic groups are antagonistic towards each
other. Peruvians from the coast seldom recognize their brothers and
sisters from other regions as their legitimate countrymen. Racial
epithets fly around at the least expected occasions, be they soccer
or politics.
In Peru, a sense of nation, of having a common background and
common symbols to unify the country, has never existed. It is com-
mon for Peruvians to call themselves members of the "independent
republic of Cuzco," or `Arequipa', etc. The middle classes of Lima
identify with New York, Paris or even Moscow but reject Peruvians
from the highlands or the jungle.
Geography is one of the most brutal challenges to the Peruvian
people. The Andes cross the country from north to south, creating
three regions: the arid, desolated coastal deserts; the highland
sierras; and the Amazonic jungle. Each of these regions is a
separate entity economically and culturally, always in conflict
with the other regions. There has never been a cohesive policy of
building roads or creating efficient systems of communications.
Most railways are from the 19th century, built by British or
Americans. 20th century travelers in Peru have observed that, if
you travel from West to East, you will move from the present to the
late 19th century and when you arrive in the jungle, you will be in
the Stone Age. Yet United Nations functionaries still manage to say
that Peruvians, decedents of the Incas, live royally compared to
the abject poverty and misery of Bangladesh or Northern India.
20th century technology has blanketed Peru with the message of
rock and roll and blue jeans. Radio and TV has transformed the de-
scendants of the Incas into consumers of Capitalism's junk. The
most popular soft drink is called Inca Cola. But these stand in
sharp contrast to another reality. The peasants of the Andes and
the dwellers of the slums of Lima and other urban centers live in
terrible conditions, victims of exploitation, unemployment and
diseases long-ago controlled in most of the world. Cholera,
tuberculosis, venereal disease are rampant in these improvised
villages. No wonder an uncontrollable rage has exploded.
Paradoxes, contradictions and exaggerations are the biggest
obstacles for those of us who deal with Peru's history. An Italian
geographer created a phrase that is a national obsession to all
Peruvians. Antonio Raymondi said, "Peru is a beggar seated on a
bench of gold."
The Failure Of Ideology
In 1980 when Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) started its military
operations, Peru was in the middle of the most profound crisis ever
in its 150 years of Republican existence. Both economic illusions
and long-revered ideological sacred cows had failed.
First, due to ecological reasons and overfishing, the fish
industry had collapsed. Since 1950, almost a million highland
peasants had abandoned their lands to work along the coast in a
profitable new industry. Peru became the world's largest exporter
of anchovies and fish meal. A gigantic fleet of `Bolicheras', high
sea fishing vessels, annually caught over $75 million worth of
fish. When the industry collapsed in the late '60s, millions of
Peruvians were affected. By 1970 the desperate, unemployed invaded
the streets of Lima in a wave of crime and violence. Nevertheless,
the government did not realize its political implications.
Second, the leftist military, in a period of State Socialism,
managed to impose radical nationalization of mines and industries
and the century old dream of social reformers: the Agrarian Reform.
But workers could not control artificial industries or compete
against international prices. The peasants did not benefit at all
from the land given to them in a rather chaotic manner. No
technical assistance, mechanical equipment nor seeds were avail-
able, and, without social incentives, the long-awaited Agrarian
Reform turned into a disheartening tragedy. The peasants continued
emigrating to the coast for jobs in factories and the fishing
industry, abandoning the land to the despair of romantic social
equalitarians and Marxist intellectuals.=20
Third, the election of Fernando Belaunde Terry in 1980 was the end
of any democratic illusions about social change. Belaunde was a
most inept man, arrogant and obsessed with expensive pet projects,
like building a highway in the Amazonian jungle, ignoring the
massive social problems surrounding him. Congress, controlled by
the middle-class APRA party that had dominated the political scene
for 60 years, followed a policy of sectarian opposition to
Belaunde, more on a political basis than due to any programmatic
differences. It is no coincidence that Abimael Guzman, the so-
called Presidente Gonzalo of Sendero Luminoso, decided in 1980 to
launch a frontal attack on all the institutions of Peru. In reality
there was not much left after the chaos of State Socialism and the
restoration of European democracy. Belaunde continued a hysterical
purchase of arms because someone had the idea that in 1979, one
hundred years after the War of the Pacific with Chile, there should
be a revenge for Peru's humiliating defeat. All this was paid for
with money borrowed from international banks, monies that could
never be repaid because Peru could barely afford to service the
massive interest charges on the loans.
Coca: Just Another Industry
In the meantime, Peru had become the main producer of coca.
Recondite valleys in the Andes easily hid coca cultivation, as well
as the army of Presidente Gonzalo. The cultivation and use of coca
leaves is a cultural leftover of the Inca civilization. Among the
peasants of the highland chewing coca was nothing more than a
potent snack to combat fatigue and the physical demands of working
in the high altitude of the Andes. For over a century, coca was a
monopoly of the State. Cultivators sold the leaves to government
agencies, which then distributed it to consumers in a rather
ordinary way, through regular stores, together with liquor, matches
and cigarettes, all monopolies of the State. It was the Coca Cola
company that first decided to buy large quantities of the leaves
for its famous soda, but it was the elegant elite of Europe and the
United States that made cocaine a drug of choice. Even Cole Porter
popularized the alkaloid. But, when poor Peruvian peasants began
selling coca leaves to different organizations of drug traffickers,
the success of the enterprise had unexpected results. Tragic
consequences for Peru and the battle for control of the coca crop
started. International agencies, mafias and political operatives
from many nations fought for the right to buy, and thereby control,
the superb leaves of the Peruvian Andes.
Prelude To Insurgency
The insurgency of Shining Path was a desperate, almost spontaneous
movement of a provincial college professor, students, and unem-
ployed youth. Cadres were easily recruited from the gigantic slums
that surrounded Lima, Arequipa and ports like Chimbote, still
suffering from the effects of the collapse of the fishing industry.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Peruvian politics had
experienced a predictable left/right polarization, the usual array
of Marxists and pseudo-Marxists versus the right-wing, including,
in the early '30s, black shirt fascists and Franco admirers. But
the Peruvian aristocracy had always controlled the most effective
political force, the Army. Since the 1950s, the Army had been
indoctrinated in the anti-Communist doctrines of Eisenhower and the
CIA, or the anti-insurgency `007' tactics of Kennedy. But, in the
classical style of tropical contradictions, the Army decided in the
'70s to try Socialism! Socialism failed, but things were not back
to business as usual. Mass mobilizations had occurred and industri-
al workers, peasants and students were forming cadres for a Maoist
revolution, at the moment the most fashionable theory for armed
struggle among Third World revolutionaries.
The original Peruvian Communist Party, affiliated with the Third
International and loyal follower of the Leninist ideology of the
Soviet Union had become a bureaucratic apparatus, an active
collaborator with the so-called "progressive bourgeoisie." But the
rift between the CPs or China and Moscow had repercussions on most
of the radical left in Peru, as well as in the rest of the Third
World. Abimael Guzman, a professor of Philosophy at the University
of Huamanga (Ayacucho), fought inside the Moscow-oriented CP of
Peru to follow a more radical line. In 1969 he was expelled from
the party, and Guzman and his followers found a Maoist faction,
reclaiming the name of the Communist Party of Peru for themselves.
Fire In The Andes!
The political parties of Peru were not ready for the offensive of
Sendero Luminoso. Elections in 1980 were more or less normal,
except for the minor inconvenience of the Maoist group in Ayacucho
launching its first military operation. By the 1985 elections, won
by APRA, Shining Path had devastated the capital of Peru with
constant assaults on the police, bombings and mobilizations of its
cadres in the slums, the "pueblos jovenes." The European-oriented
APRA party was, not only totally incapable of resolving the crisis,
but actually precipitated in an orgy of corruption, petty revenge
and sporadic brutal attacks on the regions where Shining Path
operated. The Army routinely massacred thousands of peasants in
Ayacucho, Alto Huallaga, Puno and other Andean points of resis-
tance. To no one's surprise, the armed forces became deeply
involved in the `protection' of the coca business organizations,
both local and from abroad.
The violence of Sendero Luminoso, its irreducible dogmatism, and,
especially, its mystical reverence for Presidente Gonzalo's thought
gives the movement a formidable image as an uncompromising
political ideology. Peruvians have always managed to, somehow,
combine political theories into civilized arrangements that have
made Socialists of the Army or fashionable Communists of the
children of the rich. Shining Path, however, is different, and per-
haps, that is its biggest weakness.
It has been said many times that people with deep religious
feelings cannot become capitalists or communists in their many
forms. Peruvian middle classes are strongly indoctrinated in
Catholicism. By and large, the peasants still keep the old
pantheism of the Incas. Shining Path tries to define Peru as a
peasant society, separated and segregated from the rest of the
world. In the desolated mountains of the Andes, deep in the jungle,
even in the small towns around Cuzco, Puno and Ayacucho, that
vision of the country seems real, almost a justification for
recreating the glory of the Inca Confederation. But neither Maoist
ideology nor a nostalgic conception of history is adequate to solve
the problems of Peru. With a population of twenty million, heavy
external debt and pressure from the IMF, and the tutelage of the
United States, the country cannot escape the ups and downs of the
current world economy. If capitalism is trying to survive and
retain its hold on Third World countries, Peru is a terrible
example of future conflicts.
Guerrillas And Romance
When the news of armed struggle in Peru started to appear in the
world press, there was, at first, a very sympathetic response.
Especially among social agencies, Church workers and liberal
intellectuals who decried the poverty of Peruvian peasants. The
social horror of Peru's misery had attracted the attention of the
international press, observers and hopeful radicals.
Collage professors of Latin American studies called for support
for the Peruvian revolution. The New York Times and The New Yorker
dedicated long pieces of reporting and analysis to the armed
struggle in Peru. The repressive methods of the Peruvian govern-
ment, whether Belaunde, APRA or Fujimori, had moved organizations
like Amnesty International to denounce the country as one of the
most flagrant violators of human rights. Shining Path still
maintains a rather well-organized network of supporters in Europe
and the USA. In the mid '80s, walls around Berkeley, California
were covered with the slogan, "Support the Popular Revolution in
Peru." One very large, impressive wall could be seen from the
entrance to the Bay Bridge, covered with hammer and sickle and
exhortations for revolution.
Few Americans knew what was happening, but CNN and the magazines
started to report on the brutal confrontation that was going on in
Peru. Committees of support appeared on the campus of UC Berkeley.
Videos, lectures and college agitation soon added the war in Peru
as another cause for the American Left. The presence of American
advisers only enhanced the concept that Peru was the next Vietnam.
Typical of the interest shown by young liberal intellectuals was
an article published in the 1992 Winter issue of New Politic.
Written by Professor Phillip Smith, a graduate of the Institute of
Latin American Studies at the University of Texas in Austin, the
piece concludes, "it is the responsibility of the U.S. Left to
challenge the assumptions of `narcoterrorism' and the international
war on drugs as promoted by the Bush administration. It is
certainly our place to fight against assistance to the Peruvian
military=FEamong the world's worst human rights violators. The threat
of direct intervention is real. With the U.S. government in a
chest-thumping mood after cheap and easy victories in Grenada,
Panama, and the Persian Gulf, and a public now conditioned for
militarism, the temptation for Washington to 'straighten out the
mess' may well be irresistible." His prediction of intervention, as
many other predictions of the U.S. Left, is a reincarnation of the
Vietnam syndrome. The Left forgets the lessons of El Salvador and
Nicaragua, the war against the revolutionaries was by proxy and
with mercenaries. In Peru the Army is an essential part of the
privileged alliance, the backbone of the scared middle classes in
Lima and other urban centers. The indiscriminate violence from both
the Army and Sendero was a sobering effect that slowly penetrated
liberal opinion.
Politics And Surrealism
The irrational political confrontation in the elections of 1990
left most observers flabbergasted. There was the old APRA, wasted
and running scared, while the Ex-President was being indicted on
charges of corruption. Traditional conservatives and Belaunde-
followers backed Mario Vargas Llosa, novelist and admirer of
British democracy. In a moment of irritation Vargas Llosa dropped
out of the campaign, only to return to declare that Peru needed a
Parliamentary Monarchy. (This while running for President of a 180-
year old Republic.) Finally, there was the obscure candidate of a
movement called Cambio 90, Alberto Fugimori. He only had to show
his face and declare, "I'm more Peruvian than those other dudes!"
While he made vague promises, it was his use of buzz words like
`blanqui=A4osos' (white crackers) that tapped into the profound
racial antagonism that pervades Peruvian society. His strongest
support came from the growing Protestant Evangelist movement that
is challenging the Catholic Church, the official religion for
centuries. No one won. The election went to Congress, and the APRA
majority gave its support to Fujimori. Vargas Llosa wrote in Granta
magazine, "After me Peru will fall into barbarism." He was almost
right.
Popular War
Years of popular war has not weakened the State. On the contrary,
Fujimori was free to justify his policies by pointing to the
difficulties of fighting an internal war and trying to repay the
external debt. He reestablished Peru's international credit in
order to pay for the repression, a new bureaucracy and all the
symbols of a modern nation. The condition of the poor continued to
worsen, but the many calls for national insurrection by Shining
Path have not been successful. Peruvians were certainly poor, but
the violence of Shining Path was repugnant to the impoverished
middle classes and, in a certain way, provoked indifference among
the peasants. Certainly the murder of many cells of the Maoists,
some in massacres within prisons, took a heavy tool on the
direction of the movement.
In his many interviews, pamphlets and revolutionary literature,
Abimael Guzman has never offered a political vision that could be
embraced by the industrial workers or the unemployed. The new
State, a vague phrase, like "after the revolution" in the '30s, is
not a promise of a brighter future, but demands indoctrination,
work and obedience. In a tropical nation that still takes its
siesta time very seriously, this is a letdown to any potential
revolutionary.
Is The End Near?
The capture early this year of Abimael Guzman, the elusive
Presidente Gonzalo and most of his staff, moved the strategy of the
Maoists into a new, never before accepted phase=FEpolitical accommo-
dation. Recently President Fujimori has accepted the visit of
international groups concerned with human rights. The official
press blasted the international delegations, but, still, they made
it into Lima. El Diario, the semi-official newspaper of Sendero has
appeared again in Lima. Perhaps Fujimori needs to play to the new
Clinton administration in order to get help for loans and
investments. Perhaps some of the revolutionaries realize that the
military struggle is not an end in itself. There must be political
objectives. The capture of the State apparatus, or at least the
destruction of enough of the old ruling class to ensure a degree of
popular power, needs the support of a large section of the
oppressed. The Russian communist, with Leninist theories of a
small, conspiratorial elite of terrorists and intellectuals,
produces only a dictatorship, ready to commit the most heinous
crimes, just as Bakunin predicted in his debate with Marx at the
First International.
Sendero, or any other revolutionary group in Latin America, needs
a solid base in the industrial proletariat while still keeping
emotional and family ties to the rural population. The impoverished
middle classes will respond only to a climate of freedom and
productive work, not political patronage or selfish professional-
ism. The peasant population will never participate in any movement
that has European theories as its ideology. Catholicism, Marxism,
Maoism spell disaster for the indigenous masses of Peru, Ecuador,
Bolivia and Guatemala. Because the question of State, popular power
are immaterial to groups that see race and class as an ambiguous
concepts, even as distortions of the social order. The masses of
peasants need a Federation of independent enclaves, united by
collective technology and social services, not a State run by the
white elite, Marxist intellectuals or progressive capitalists.
Peru, and many other Third World nations, reflect the cruelest
evidence of the erosion of the capitalist system. There cannot be
a constant growing economy. This means that millions of human
beings are reduced to starvation in order to maintain the system.
At the same time, ecological disasters have precipitated economic
crises for which even the seven powerful, industrialized nations
cannot afford to pay. Just observe the ecological disasters in the
former Soviet Union, in the U.S.A., in the North Sea. But even more
serious for Peru and other countries, is the aspirations of its
people to control their natural resources and the uncontrollable
appetite of international corporations backed by the most powerful
armies of Europe and the U.S.A.
The invasion of Latin America by Europeans will never have a
peaceful solution. When Germany invaded its neighbors it eventually
had to withdraw. So it was with the U.S.A. from Japan. But the
Europeans have never moved out of Peru. What is needed is a Peace
treaty, perhaps paying reparations to the indigenous populations
and restoring a more natural order with the pre-Columbian institu-
tions that still survive in the large Indian communities all over
the Andes, from Ecuador, Peru to Bolivia. That region of Latin
America has so many elements in common that it is not farfetched to
envision a new Andean Confederation, there is already a name for
it: Indoamerica. Meanwhile the drama of "Yawar Fiesta" repeats. The
condor should be allowed to fly free!