Peruvian Guerrillas back in the news

Once again the mainstream news media is focussing on the Communist Party of Peru, Which the media call the Shining Path. The U.K. Guardian has posted an article about the mainline PCP Shining Path guerrilla leader Comrade Artemio. He is one of the last PCP Guerrilla leaders in Peru. He continues the guerrilla war, but is trying to get the government there to agree to a ceasefire.

The Kasama Project has also covered this event. Artemio came out for an interview for the Guardian. It has been filmed and can be seen here;

The interview shows that the PCP guerrillas want to continue political work and want the government to agree to a ceasefire and allow them to do political work.

On the other hand, there is a new PCP which calls itself PCP-MLM. It is also known as the VRAE faction. It is lead by a one time Shining Path guerrilla known as Comrade Jose (Víctor Quispe Palomino).

He has blasted Presidente Gonzalo (Abimael Guzman) and the old leadership of PCP as traitors. He wants to continue the people’s war without compromising with the government. Comrade Jose admits to participating in the Lucanamarca massacre that Guzman referred to in the 1988 interview. He has also insinuated that Guzman has been reckless and too violent, and because of this he set the revolution back.

Here is a video in Spanish by of the PCP-MLM leader. I can’t translate this;

Entrevista a Sendero Luminoso en el VRAE - 2011 (segunda entrega)

  Here are some websites by this renegade PCP; http://pcp-mlm.galeon.com/, http://pcp-crm.blogspot.com/. These can be translated with Google. Most of the information is at least two years old. But the PCP-MLM has taken a long time to post anything for the outside world. It has not been a high priority for them, unlike the Guzman faction.

The two factions are seriously opposed to each other and both groups carry hard feelings about Peru and its guerrilla war.

Guzman was at one time a leader of one of the most advanced people’s war. He seriously threatened the Peruvian government and has been considered one of the most successful Maoist revolutionaries since China. But his capture, in 1992, lead to a major decline in the group. Neither the old faction nor the new has a major army left to presently take power. However, both armed groups have gown in the last few years and have made a comeback, although it is nothing like the old guerrilla army. Still, the Guzman faction has a lot of support through groups abroad and is still supported by RIM members.

The new faction holds promise of carrying on a guerrilla war that may be larger, and better organized. They seem to focus mainly in rural areas. The old Shining Path was also peasant oriented, but had some support groups in the cities and shanties.

The real question here is which strategy will actually work. The revolution in Peru will continue. The Situation is similar to that of Nepal’s United Communist Party of Nepal(Maoist), but the factions are not as angry at each other as those in Peru. We will have to wait and see which group is more successful.-សតិវ អតុ