PERU: THE ART AS REVOLUTIONARY WEAPON

[lquispe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Luis Quispe)]

              THE ART AS REVOLUTIONARY WEAPON

The People's War in Peru led by the heroic Communist Party (PCP)
has generated the following relationship: GRAFFITI - EXPRESSION OF
GRIEVANCES -  MARCH -  STOPPAGE -  STRIKE -  PEOPLE'S WAR
(INSURRECTION.) What for? TO GET PREPARED FOR THE GREAT ACTIONS
TO COME.

The PCP Central Committee stated: Let art fulfill its role as
instrument of class, let the masses take over the stage, let
actors and actresses represent them, that the masses see
themselves represented there. Let daily life be scenified,
"actors/actresses and their times" is not merely
a sentence, sowing is done that way too, it's part of propaganda.

Let graffiti drawings and writings be generalized in the
workplace, neighborhoods, schools, universities, centers of
ambulatory workers, or toiler in general. Let graffiti be in big
bold letters, on the walls, because only there can the people
really express their democracy. The walls are the sheets of books
where the people write their prose, their poems, their literary
works to air their demands, their struggles, singing to the
Revolution, to the only way to conquer Power: The People's War.
And let's not care if the masses make spelling mistakes in
writing later on they will learn; let them now write on the walls
how they themselves participate in the war; let them criticize
what is wrong; let them fight imperialism, Peruvian reaction and
revisionism. For instance, what does the labor aristocracy
General Confederation of Workers (CGTP) do for the proletariat?
They no longer even like to use the word "proletariat", they have
betrayed the class completely. Instead they repeat what the
fascist and corporativist general Velasco (its former allied)
used to say in the 70's, "laborers or workers."

A salaried worker can never equal an employer even if both do
work; one exploits, the other is exploited; one is a bourgeois or
landowner, the other a proletarian or part of the people. Let
there be talk of classes and of class struggles of dictatorship
of the proletariat, of joint dictatorship. Let them express how
the CGTP has betrayed the principles of the class, how it is an
instrument to harm their interests, which does not represent the
class and must be destroyed and replaced by a truly classist
body, one that struggles under the ideology of the class:
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought. Disown those false
leaders or bosses, capitulationists before imperialism, reaction
and revisionism; struggle against revisionist CGTP and for a
class central of the proletariat.

Let the youth, in graffiti, compare the phrases of the
opportunist and revisionists with those of the imperialists and
reactionaries. For instance, the phrases of Maritaine: The youth
is barbaric; with those of Bernales (trans. A leader of the
United Left): The response of university students against
president Fujimori is barbaric; and counterpoise those of
Chairman Mao: The youth is the sun that dawns.

Women too must write graffiti: By law women workers have right to
have cradles for their children at the factories. What employer
abides by that law?  Does the State force any enterprise to obey
that law? No. The homemakers stretch their salaries so as to fed
their children and many times they themselves remain with an
empty stomach. Let them reject work for free. Actually the family
work is being used to promote mini-enterprises in which all must
work: Children, parents and other relatives, 12 or 14 hours a
day, selling their products at a miserable price, and what social
benefits do they receive? None. Let them denounce and condemn
those types of exploitative family work.

Venting of grievances must be encourage at all manufacturing
centers, neighborhoods, community centers, mothers' clubs,
ambulatories, merchants, artisans, etc. The people have right to
expose their situation of exploitation so all can hear it. Let
the masses speak up with a deep class conscientiousness, instead
of so many sell outs and treacherous false leaders. At the
market, a bench of wooden box is sufficient to agitate. The
elderly too must speak, how the situation becomes worse with each
successive government, how long will this deterioration continue?
The elderly have heard before from the exploiters the same empty
chatter: "Sacrifice today so things will be better tomorrow."

This way, with the graffiti, the masses express true people's
democracy in writing, and verbally with the expression of
grievances.

Marches and rallies are good and make reaction tremble. When
workers march they give tone to the struggle. It is good example
to watch how the construction workers march with sticks, rocks,
burning tires and agitating; as is to watch the miners, textile
workers, teachers, women, youth, government and ambulatory
workers. The people must march against the exorbitant price hikes
on kerosene, water, light, gas, etc. and against the grievous
taxes imposed on them. The merchants, against the fines, coercive
payments, etc. In some marches, they merely agitate with slogans;
in others rocks are thrown at exploitative or repressive
institutions in others yet, groups are formed to block passages
with anything they can find, tree, trunks, rocks, tires, garbage,
traffic shacks, paving stones, whatever the masses can find to
support their initiative.

This resource can be applied at the workplace exit, at quitting
times so that heir way wages are not affected: In times of crisis
the masses see themselves economically overwhelmed and fear
losing what little they earn; yet they still want to struggle and
indeed are struggling. Marching during non-working hours is
efficient. Why aren't marches done again from the Old House of
San Marcos, from University Square, now surrounded by a steel bar
Fence? Let us give Lima once again its tradition of struggle, Why
should those places be like a museum? Let us march in the
industrial neighborhoods, in the shantytowns, at Lima's main
spots, in Miraflores, San Isidro, at Manco Capac Square; blocking
highways, avenues, the "big ditch", etc. Apply at the marches
BLOCKINGS, SACKINGS, MUTINIES.

The mobilization is a more developed form of marching, in quality
and quantity, and so it must be well prepared, PCP detachments
and militia must teach the masses how to repel an aggression. It
is false that in Peru there is unity between the Army and the
people; quite the contrary the people reject, repudiate the
genocidal armed forces. Police must be disarmed, why revere them
in any way? We must rescue those arrested. Aiming against armored
vans (it's a political stupidity to call them "Little
Pinochitos," it's a car to break up demonstrations, it's
repressive and neither a little puppet with a growing nose, nor a
harmless Pinochet, that's what TV announcers spread so as to
defuse the wrath of the masses.) Attacking the vehicles carrying
away the arrested, blocking them with other cars or trucks,
overturning them, we should be already dynamiting at the armored
cars.

That the Army will then intervene? That's a given. It was already
been decided and soon we'll have them on the streets of Lima
anyway; they should not be feared either, but loudly denounced as
genocidal, murderers, rapists, ransackers, traitors of their own
patrons of Grau, Bolognesi, Qui~nones [trans. Peru's national
heroes in the 1800's] , brave when confronting unarmed masses,
but scary like rabbits when facing the guerrillas. What morale do
they have fighting the People's War? None. Their desertions grow,
their officers force them to be their servants and to eat dogs.

What can they do against a march of 1,000 people just from one
neighborhood? Just brutal repression. Their regulations say that
to break up a demonstration first they shoot to the air, but they
shoot to kill from the onset, not even to the feet. Could they
kill 10, 100?, difficult but not impossible, the masses would
react still more explosively, since blood does not drown the
revolution but irrigates it, and internationally, good-by (adios)
respect for human rights! The Peruvian situation is going to get
worse and the masses will have to apply ever more developed forms
of struggle. They do not fear to pay the price for a true change
of system. These are not longer the 1930s, nor the 1960s, but in
the 1990s there is a Communist Party leading the people in a
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought People's War. The Party
is assuming its role of leading them, preparing them for days to
come, to conquer Power. We are going from a revolutionary
situation in development, to a revolutionary crisis, which is
coming anyway, that is today's tendency. The slogan of today is:
"Fight and Resist For the People's War!"

Extract from the book "May Directive to Metropolitan Lima" by the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP.)

==================================
Published by The New Flag
30-08 Broadway, Suite 159
Queens, NY 11106
E-Mail:lquispe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------