This is how NOT to fight a communist revolution...

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

This short comic (http://wordswithoutborders.org/graphic-lit/a-shining-path-of-blood-massacres-and-a-monologue) details the atrocities practiced by the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru under the leadership of party leader/theorist/lunatic Abimael Guzman.

Specifically, it talks about the massacres in Aranhuay Community, Huanta in 1988. This is typical of the SP's methods: basically impose their will on a peasant community and terrorize the villagers.

[Mr. Piccolo]

Very disturbing but interesting. I have long heard about the Shining Path's atrocities. Are the SP's atrocities evidence of the problem of cultism and leader-worship in communist organizations? Guzman seems to have developed a personality cult around himself.

[Creative Destruction]

Very disturbing but interesting. I have long heard about the Shining Path's atrocities. Are the SP's atrocities evidence of the problem of cultism and leader-worship in communist organizations? Guzman seems to have developed a personality cult around himself.

It's not strictly an issue with communist organizations. Anytime you're in an organization that has a structure that is centered on the workings of one or a few, instead of the entire organization, you're going to get this kind of thing. It forms much of the personality cults in places like the United States, where the founding fathers are venerated demigods and the constitution is supposedly this untouchable document, as if it were handed down by God himself through his male/white slave-owning vessels.

[ñángara]

Presidente (chairman) Gonzalo created his Maoist Communist Party - Red Banner at a university, among a student elite. His knowledges about the campesinos was not sound enough to comprehend their "Ayllu" (Inca life and agriculture). Basically, he just had a democratic-bourgeois solution to the problem of the agriculture. And, for sure, massacres had been committed by both the regular army and Sendero Luminoso.

[Atsumari]

-HnH-MguElU
33:35

[John Nada]

EL DIARIO: For eight years, the groups and parties of the right, the revisionists, the opportunists, and all the reactionaries have said and even screamed that the PCP is a "demented," "messianic," "blood-thirsty," "Pol Pot-ian," "dogmatic," "sectarian," "narco-terrorist" organization. The Partido Unificado Mariateguista (PUM) adds that you have trapped the peasantry in the middle, between two fires, that you are militarists. Recently, Villanueva has said you are "genocidal terrorists" and other things. What do you have to say about these charges? What's behind them?

CHAIRMAN GONZALO: To me they represent lies and the inability to understand people's war, and I understand that, the enemies of the revolution will never be able to understand people's war. With respect to the charge that the peasantry is caught between two fires, this is an elaborate invention because it is precisely the peasantry that makes up the vast majority of the People's Guerrilla Army. What must be understood is that the Peruvian State, with its armed forces and repressive apparatus, wants to drown the revolution in blood. This is our understanding, and we would recommend that these gentlemen study a little about warfare in general, revolutionary war, and mainly about people's war and Maoism. Although I doubt that they would understand it, because to do so requires a certain class stand.

With regard to what Mr. Villanueva says about "genocidal terrorists," it seems to me an obscene travesty and parody to want to apply to us a term like genocidal, which fits them like a glove. Before our country and the world it is perfectly clear who is committing genocide. It is they, it is the APRA government which is leading this reactionary State, it is the reactionary armed forces, the forces of repression--they are the vile mass murderers. Distortions will never change the facts. History has already been written, tomorrow it will be confirmed. Besides, how long will Villanueva last? What will his future be like? It would be better if he thought about that.It was the state that was drowning the revolution in blood. Source: http://www.redsun.org/pcp_doc/pcp_0788.htm TL;DR A bunch of stuff that might as well be written in Quechuan if you don't know about Maoism. And he likes Shakespeare and Einstein. Also fuck Khrushchev and Deng.

They seemed so close. Why did they adopt a liquidationist line?

[Creative Destruction]

You can't have a "people's war" when there are no people behind you. Even in their hey-day, the Shining Path only managed to get around 17% favor from "the people" in Peru.

[John Nada]

You can't have a "people's war" when there are no people behind you. Even in their hey-day, the Shining Path only managed to get around 17% favor from "the people" in Peru.I don't think you even know what a people's war is(or insurrection, or conventional war). Too much dialectic thingamajigs.:confused: Though to be fare most Maoists probably don't either.:)

What's amazing is that they managed to get 17% to admit support during a war. With all this brutality. There's ruling parties in an election that don't get this much support. Hell, I've read that it only takes the active support of 3% of the population to take down a regime. You could say they lost because of, well, going on a killing spree. And that was probably a factor. But the state matched or even exceeded them in that area.

They had bases, red zones and guerrilla zones covering most of the country. There were People's Committees with the participation of the people in those areas. They encircled the cities, and even had bases in the cities. The enemy was being encircled and annihilated, while avoiding the same. They infiltrated the police and military. The state was undemocratic and tyrannical. Massive inequity and bigotry. They clearly had some support and momentum.

And yet, after the central committee got busted, they lost most of it. Even more, many of the leaders, including Gonzalo himself, called for a cease-fire and to basically give up. Why did they do that? They were fighting a way in which it's rare to lose. Many others fighting a people's war(many of which aren't Maoist, or are even outright reactionary by everyone's standards) give modern 1st-world armies headaches. A lot of them manage to be even more ruthless. How did they "lose"(technically still fighting but still). What caused this 180 degree turn?

[Sewer Socialist]

17% is surprisingly popular for such a group to me. What was the basis of any support from the people of Peru? Surely there was more to the group than indiscriminate killing to get significant support?

Also, why were they so much more popular than the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru?

[Palmares]

I remember Rage Against The Machine had a video clip (which I think was possibly banned in some places?) which showed their support for the Shining Path. I wouldn't be surprised if they also provided economic support at some stage at least too.


What's the situation with them now? I haven't heard a peep about them for like 10 years or more.

[Atsumari]

They are mostly a narco gang now
VTpcBD23_HY

[John Nada]

^And that's HOW you fight for a communist revolution.:grin:

Coca's very important in Quechua cultures. In fact, Peru is where Coca-Cola gets their "secret ingredients" from. It'd be like banning caffine or nicotine.

Now they get the support of not just Rage Against the machine, but the whole music industry!

[Antiochus]

Eh, SP was mainly just another brutal 'Communist' group that failed miserably in understanding the local situation in Peru, too wrapped up in "global" revolution when they couldn't even persuade a few villages to join them.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't think you even know what a people's war is(or insurrection, or conventional war). Too much dialectic thingamajigs.:confused: Though to be fare most Maoists probably don't either.:)

What's amazing is that they managed to get 17% to admit support during a war. With all this brutality. There's ruling parties in an election that don't get this much support. Hell, I've read that it only takes the active support of 3% of the population to take down a regime. You could say they lost because of, well, going on a killing spree. And that was probably a factor. But the state matched or even exceeded them in that area.

They had bases, red zones and guerrilla zones covering most of the country. There were People's Committees with the participation of the people in those areas. They encircled the cities, and even had bases in the cities. The enemy was being encircled and annihilated, while avoiding the same. They infiltrated the police and military. The state was undemocratic and tyrannical. Massive inequity and bigotry. They clearly had some support and momentum.

And yet, after the central committee got busted, they lost most of it. Even more, many of the leaders, including Gonzalo himself, called for a cease-fire and to basically give up. Why did they do that? They were fighting a way in which it's rare to lose. Many others fighting a people's war(many of which aren't Maoist, or are even outright reactionary by everyone's standards) give modern 1st-world armies headaches. A lot of them manage to be even more ruthless. How did they "lose"(technically still fighting but still). What caused this 180 degree turn?

This is not really an accurate view of the SP. For one, they never really had the Peruvian state "on the ropes"...much of their earliest success was simply due to the Peruvian state & military being caught off guard (such as the theft of dynamite from mining operations to make SP's bombs).

SP's cadres were primarily recruited from the universities, particularly in Lima. They romanticized the peasants as their revolutionary agent but foolishly knew very little about them, and were divorced from peasant life. They alienated peasants by forbidding them to engage in ancient cultural practices, like trading in between villages. As well as the wanton brutality, like murdering peasants and letting the bodies rot in public rather than letting anyone bury the dead.

The "protracted people's war" never had a snowflake's chance in hell of succeeding. Guzman started the insurgency in the 1980's, as the Cold War was winding down, and he didn't exactly curry favor with the USSR or the (Dengist) PRC, who were traitors in the eyes of the SP. All vibrant insurgencies need an "outside", whether through state patronage (the North Vietnamese insurgency against the French and the aid the NVA received from other communist states, the Taliban & the ISI, African anti-colonial struggles post-WW2, etc) or through international grassroots efforts (like the IRA, or perhaps ISIS or Boko Haram in today's era)...the Shining Path didn't really have any of this. They were doomed to stagnate in Peru while being battered by Peru's armed forces, who not long before SP literally ran the entire country through a military dictatorship.

The SP kind of reminds me of the narodniki movement in Russia: a bunch of relatively privileged, delusional militants with an absurd millenarian ideology romanticizing a culture (ie peasant culture) that in reality they knew very little about. To their credit, though, the narodniks didn't actually massacre the peasants they fawned over.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

That is the case for the majority of armed conflicts that grew out of the Latin American newleft. Any struggle which immediately collapses once separated from leadership should be treated as suspect for us.

[John Nada]

This is not really an accurate view of the SP. For one, they never really had the Peruvian state "on the ropes"...much of their earliest success was simply due to the Peruvian state & military being caught off guard (such as the theft of dynamite from mining operations to make SP's bombs).

SP's cadres were primarily recruited from the universities, particularly in Lima. They romanticized the peasants as their revolutionary agent but foolishly knew very little about them, and were divorced from peasant life. They alienated peasants by forbidding them to engage in ancient cultural practices, like trading in between villages. As well as the wanton brutality, like murdering peasants and letting the bodies rot in public rather than letting anyone bury the dead.

The "protracted people's war" never had a snowflake's chance in hell of succeeding. Guzman started the insurgency in the 1980's, as the Cold War was winding down, and he didn't exactly curry favor with the USSR or the (Dengist) PRC, who were traitors in the eyes of the SP. All vibrant insurgencies need an "outside", whether through state patronage (the North Vietnamese insurgency against the French and the aid the NVA received from other communist states, the Taliban & the ISI, African anti-colonial struggles post-WW2, etc) or through international grassroots efforts (like the IRA, or perhaps ISIS or Boko Haram in today's era)...the Shining Path didn't really have any of this. They were doomed to stagnate in Peru while being battered by Peru's armed forces, who not long before SP literally ran the entire country through a military dictatorship.

The SP kind of reminds me of the narodniki movement in Russia: a bunch of relatively privileged, delusional militants with an absurd millenarian ideology romanticizing a culture (ie peasant culture) that in reality they knew very little about. To their credit, though, the narodniks didn't actually massacre the peasants they fawned over.
That is the case for the majority of armed conflicts that grew out of the Latin American newleft. Any struggle which immediately collapses once separated from leadership should be treated as suspect for us.This is what I was getting at. This is a "don't do a revolution like this" thread. Thanks.:)

Did they do any "boring" things, like welfare or infrastructure? Or was it basically neo-narodnikism.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I'm very skeptical of an anti-communist cartoon sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation among other imperialist organs of "soft-power".
Obviously the Shining Path had its problems, but it seems to me that there is extensive evidence of false flag activity by government-sponsored right-wrong paramilitaries, a significant CIA-created disinformation campaign, etc.
The last paper I researched for (but never ended up writing) before dropping out of university (a decade ago) was on SL, so I'm not entirely talking out of my ass here. I think one ought to be very skeptical of accounts of SL's " wanton brutality" or w/e.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well some of SP's most infamous actions like Lucanamarca were openly claimed and taken responsibility for by SP's leadership. It's not really suprising if you take note of what Guzman's own conception of struggle was according to his writings, some of which are really bloody and apocalyptic.

I've done a fair bit of reading on SP as well, simply because insurgencies are a subject that interests me. If the SP actually had a decent ideology and didn't just represent the worst cultish aspects of bastardized Maoism I might be more inclined to look past the reprisal killings and yes, wanton brutality and say "yeah those guys made a few mistakes buuut...". But SP was just terrible in every way, moreso than other Maoist "substitutionalists" in other areas like Calcutta or the Phillipines during the same general period. And yeah, the Peruvian govt responded to a brutal insurgency with a brutal counter-insurgency but no one on the left defends their reprehensible activities...although the whole situation in regards to the rondas is sometimes trotted out in some kind of attempt to mitigate the SP's own boneheaded terror tactics.