Excerpt from the Inaugural Session of the First Congress of the PCP¹

Chairman Gonzalo

February 1988²

(…) a people’s war, a revolutionary war, a just war, such as ours, can be led solely and exclusively by a Communist Party and by no one other than a Communist Party, through its leaders, its cadres, and its militancy; lead it, not make it, because it is made by the masses, we know this well, for while we are clear that the Party is the light that pierces the shadows, the masses are the force, the sap that transforms and changes everything, generating dawn forever; we know this well. But this leads us to comprehend more and more, as we look at our own history of this nation that we ourselves are solidifying, we see how those masses, orphaned of a Party, wander about groping in the dark, ceaseless in their struggles, yes, shedding their blood because they have never, ever stopped doing so and never will, comrades; the masses are the masses; but we know that without a Party, all that struggle of the masses, of the people and of the glorious international proletariat of which we are a part, and the Peruvian proletariat is part of it as well, that without the Communist Party, without that axis, without that factor that revitalizes, leads, and guides, nothing will be done; everything will be crumbly, a house of cards, and will collapse. For if the masses have the strength, we have the course. That is why the Party is the axis.