Chaiman Gonzalo's name

[lquispe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Luis Quispe)]

                     WHO IS PRESIDENT GONZALO?

People in Peru call him "President" because he presides the New Power
emerging in Peru in the liberated territories (People's Committees),
this new State is being born in the midst of a bloody People's War
against the old State headed by the genocidal dictator Fujimori.
Most supporters abroad call him "Chairman", that is also accurate,
although his capture in combat ("the bend on the road") was a great
lost to the International Communist Movement and to the People of
Peru in particular, he will remain forever the Chairman of the PCP
since his powerful thought, expressed in hundreds of political,
ideological, and military writings guides the Peruvian Revolution.
It is a Maoist revolutionary practice that the People's War cannot
be led from prison not less when one is at the disposal of the enemy,
therefore, since August 1992, the People's War is led by the glorious
Central Committee of the PCP. It is with a raging People's War that
his life is being defended. His captors have been warned and they should
know better.

President Gonzalo's birth name is Manuel Abimael Guzman Reinoso (61).
A full member of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) since he was 15.
He was born at a time when bureaucratic capitalism was poised on the
brink of its enthronement in postwar Peruvian society and the
international situation was building up to the conflagration of the
second imperialist war.  In a universe shaken by stoic struggles as he
himself shows us: "Comrades, this is how the world is today.  It has
fallen on us to live in an extraordinary epoch.  Never before has humankind
had such a heroic destiny as is written today.  To the people of
today, to these that breathe, that struggle, that fight has
befallen the task of sweeping reaction from the face of the
earth, the greatest and brightest mission given to any
generation."

HIS EARLY LIFE

He was was born December 3, 1934 in a coastal region
of Arequipa. In the 1960s he led the Red Fraction of the PCP in a
tenacious struggle against the very Party that had become revisionist,
with the goal of retaking the path of Mariategui and developing and
reconstituting the party founded in 1978. The light of President
Gonzalo dispelled the dark shadows of revisionism, opportunism,
and liquidationism, building a party of a new type to conquer
power.  As he said: "We have laid tracks of steel towards
communism, no one or nothing will stop us, we are a machine of
war."  He lead the launching of the People's War on May 17, 1980,
"a daring political blow" with the vibrant and thunderous cry
that we all remember: People of Peru! Today your best children,
flesh of your flesh, steel of your steel, forged in thousands of
struggles and tempered by your untiring action, following your
shining and heroic example. This day your best and most faithful
children have unfurled in the wind the blazing flag of rebellion;
they have risen up in armed actions opening the path we should
all follow.  This is the path of democratic revolution that
wrecks imperialist domination, feudal oppression, bureaucratic
capitalist exploitation and the decrepit ruling state..."

He modestly said: "Like every communist I am a son of the class struggle
and the Party..." "We communists are fearless. The Party has forged us to
challenge death and carry our lives on our finger tips to give it up
when it is demanded by the revolution."

"The Second World War affected me profoundly.  Yes, I remember,
if that's possible, not very clearly - as if in a dream - when
WWII began, the up oar and the news on the old radios.  I remember the
bombing, the important news.  I remember the end of the war too, and how
it was celebrated with the blast of ships' horns, loudspeakers, a great
clamor and happiness."

I had a chance to see the so-called big five in the newspapers,
and Comrade Stalin was among them.  So I'd say that these events
left their mark on me, and impressed upon me in an elemental and
confused way the idea of power, of the masses, and of the
capacity) of war to transform things.  All these things exerted
an influence on me."

"I saw the fighting spirit of the people during the uprising in
Arequipa in 1950 - how the masses fought with uncontainable fury
in response to the barbarous slaughter of the youth.  And I saw
how they fought the army, forcing them to retreat to their
barracks. And how the armed forces had to be brought in from
other places in order to crush the people. This is an event that
I'd say has been imprinted quite vividly in my memory.  Because
there, after having come to understand Lenin, I understood how
the people, how our class, when they take to the streets and
march, can make the reactionaries tremble, despite all their
power.  Another event was the struggles of 1956, when the people
fought, while others betrayed them -well, that is what the
opportunists and reactionaries do- but the people fought and
carried out the day, and there were mass movements, powerful
ones.  These events, for example, helped me to understand the
power of the masses, that they are the makers of history."

"In college, in the struggle at the university, I experienced
firsthand big strikes, confrontations between Apristas and
communists, and debates.  And so my interest in books was
sparked.  Someone saw fit to lend me, I believe it was `One Step
Forward, Two Steps Back' of Lenin. I liked it, I began to study
Marxist books."

HIS ENTRY INTO THE PARTY

"I had problems getting into the Communist Party. They had an
absurd policy.  To become a member, you had to be the son or
daughter of a worker, and I wasn't.  But thanks to members who had a
different criteria, I was able to join the Party.  I participated in
the defense of Stalin.  At that time, taking him away from us
would have been like taking away our soul.  In those days, the
works of Stalin were more widely propagated than those of Lenin.
That's what the times were like."

"That's how I became a militant.  We all know militants became
incorporated into the Party, and when they do they assume a Party
name. There I was know as `Alvaro', for reasons I've already
mentioned, because of Mariategui's lesson that Marxism should
speak in Spanish.  That's the reason I chose a Spanish name that
had no translation.  Of course, people waste so much time on
absurd ideas about names.  It's a little funny..."

"At that time people who were drawn to communism and those who
became Party members were trained using Problems of Leninism.  It
was our mainstay and I studied it as it deserved to be studied,
seriously, given its importance.  Stalin's life interested me.
He was, for us, an example of revolution."

ON REBUILDING THE PARTY

"Some unlucky soul lent me the famous Chinese letter, `A Proposal
Concerning the General Line of the International Communist
Movement.' He lent it to me on the condition that I'd return it.
Obviously it was an understandable theft.  The letter led me to
get more deeply into the great struggle between Marxism and
revisionism.

I committed myself to work within the Party and to wipe out
revisionism and I believe that together with other comrades we
achieved it. We gave up on one or two who were too far gone, they
were died-in-the-wool revisionists.  Ayacucho was of enormous
importance to me, it has to do with the revolutionary road and
Chairman Mao's teachings."

"My stay in China was an unforgettable experience.  I was there
on another occasion as well when the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution was beginning.  We asked them to explain what was then
called Mao Tse-tung Thought.  They taught us some more and that
helped me understand more, a little more I should say.  One thing
that seems ironic is that the more I understood Mao Tse-tung, the
more I began to appreciate and value Mariategui Since Mao urged
us to apply creatively, I went back and studied Mariategui again,
and saw that we had in him a first rate Marxist-Leninist..."

"The process of reconstituting will develop in the Party until
1978-79, this stage will end around that time and will enter a
third stage, the stage of the line of people's war, the stage we
are living in."

LAUNCHING THE PEOPLE'S WAR.

The PCP under the leadership of President Gonzalo took the
transcendental and historic decision to launch the People's War
in Peru.  This was realized at the Ninth Plenum, where the
President established the Plan of Initiation:

"...In the preparation for People's War, we plan to temper
ourselves with militancy and great demands: break with the old
society, complete and perfect dedication to the revolution to the
point of giving our lives.  It is very good to remember the
Plenary of the Central Committee in 1980 and the military school;
at the end of these events all the militants made a solemn pledge
that later was taken by the whole Party. "

"The Political Bureau was assigned the task of defining how to
develop armed actions and was the body that presented the plan of
breaking into military detachments; that plan was completed in
1980..."

"We must always be very conscious of the brilliant success of the
application of the Plan of Initiation of the armed struggle, the
plan that transcends history and has shaken the country, putting
the Party at the center of the class struggle and the political
arena."

"The future begins to unfold, we write the new history with
flowers of stone in bronze and forever more.  We will conquer the
mountains, writing new history with sword points, with flames,
razing iniquity, giving birth to the future. "

That's how the people's war and its mighty blows turned the
country upside down.  The old stumbler began to root in the
rotten Peruvian society.

The titanic labors of President Gonzalo and the unified
leadership of the revolution, in the crucible of war and at the
center of the whirlwind, generated Gonzalo Thought.  Of immense
capacity and demonic energy, it outlined Maoism as a new, third
and superior stage of Marxism.  With good reason the First
Congress of the PCP was in its final session sanctioned this
tribute: "The members of this Congress express our recognition of
President Gonzalo as the successor of Marx, Lenin and Chairman
Mao Tse-tung, who has guaranteed the reality of this principal
historic landmark party.  This is our jubilant communist salute
for having launched and directed the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist,
Gonzalo Thought counteroffensive that will smash the new
counterrevolutionary offensive lead by Gorbachev and Teng, and
for developing the acceptance of Maoism as a new, third and
superior stage of Marxism, pointing to a new development of
Marxism at the service of the world proletarian revolution
towards communism."

IN DEFENSE OF THE IDEAS AND LEADERSHIP OF PRESIDENT GONZALO!

"...We should continue the task established by the III Plenum of
the Central Committee. A glorious plenum. You should know that
these accords are already being implemented and will be
continued. We shall continue to apply the IV Plan of Strategic
Development of the People's War to Conquer Power, that is our
task..."

These positions of President Gonzalo are organically correct and
politically necessary and concretely applicable and have been
carried out in full by the PCP Central Committee.

Victory to the People's War in Peru!

Peru People's Movement (MPP), December 3, 1995.
============================================
Published by The New Flag
30-08 Broadway, Suite 159
Queens, NY 11103
E-Mail:lquispe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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