01.05.1997

Strategy for the mass

Last week’s massacre at the Japanese Embassy in Lima was a disaster waiting to happen. Unquestionably, the deaths of all the 14 Tupac Amar (MRTA) guerrillas was nothing short of a tragic waste of life. The Israeli/CIA-backed operation we witnessed in Peru was a cold-blooded and chilling act of murder, and anybody who fails to utterly condemn it would not be worthy of the name democrat, let alone socialist or communist. Not for nothing does world imperialism quietly celebrate this act of butchery.

It must be mentioned that the killing of the MRTA guerrillas was not the result of a gun battle, or superhuman efficiency on behalf of the state troops.

It is quite clear that the MRTA rebels had surrendered, or were in the act of surrendering, when they were murdered.

President Fujimori wanted them dead - and was under intense pressure from United States imperialism, which wanted ‘a kill’. The US wanted a quick and neat resolution to the crisis, anxious that the MRTA ‘contagion’ might catch on in the rest of Latin America.

There were of course many heroic aspects to the MRTA operation which we salute. But having said that, the MRTA’s seizure of the embassy bore more of the characteristics of revolutionary suicide than of proletarian revolution.

However much communists unconditionally defended the MRTA from the attacks of the Peruvian state - one of the most vicious and repressive in the world - we are duty-bound to criticise its methods, tactics and strategy. To do anything else would be a disservice to the Peruvian and world revolution.

The MRTA is not an organisation with any base in the masses. It is a small guerrillarist group whose social origins lie in the middle class, whose cadre predominantly come from the universities.

Under these circumstances, to go ahead and take the embassy was a stunt which would inevitably fail. The demands the MRTA guerrillas made reflected their limited and non-proletarian outlook. Thus, they called for the release of only their political prisoners. They never asked for the release of the other 5,000 or more political prisoners who belonged to other political organisations. They did not even appeal to the working class in Lima and elsewhere to demonstrate against Fujimori and the state.

Instead, the Peruvian working class were relegated to the role of passive onlookers, peering in nervously from the sidelines.

Yes, as the siege progressed we did see demonstrations take place - in support of Fujimori though, not against him. The MRTA hoped to strike a dramatic deal with Fujimori and emerge as heroes, if not ‘activate’ the masses towards revolutionary action. Fujimori has steered a very careful course in Peru by winning support at the ballot box through minor concessions, combined with military rule and dictatorship when this falls short.

The working class and the left in Peru has been disorientated, while on the other hand isolated revolutionaries, unable to win the support of the masses, have pursued a guerrillarist strategy.

A good example can be found in the reactionary ultra-Maoist utopianism of Shining Path - with its attendant terror directed against workers’ organisations and the left in general in order to realise its nightmarish ‘peasant road to communism in one country’. By contrast, in Colombia and throughout Central America the MRTA’s sister organisations have been smoothly integrated into the capitalist system, and are now virtually indistinguishable from the mainstream bourgeois parties. The MRTA itself has an opportunist history, expressing an unhealthy willingness to do deals with bourgeois nationalist parties like the APRA, which won the 1985 general election in Peru, and has frequently attempted to align itself with ‘left’ sections in the catholic church and the army. The MRTA’s stunt in Lima expressed its frustration at being excluded from bourgeois circles, and was a desperate attempt to grab the headlines and shoot its way to respectability.

Revolutionaries in Latin America must struggle for Bolshevik organisation and a communist programme, which can gain hegemony over the masses and society as a whole. Terroristic actions - or ‘spectaculars’ - by small groups, whether motivated by modern-day Menshevism or Maoism, provide no solutions.

Paul Greenaway