Comrades:
We want to report on two questions:
1) On the Celebration of May 1
We have printed the poster, announcing the formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. This poster was and will continue to be used mainly for propaganda and agitation; it has been distributed to Party organisations, platoons of the People’s Guerrilla Army, People’s Committees (forms of the new state power in the villages and small towns), unions and peasants organisations and people’s organisations in general. The majority of the posters were sent to the countryside for the education and mobilisation principally of the poor peasants; in the cities it was centred especially among the proletariat and also the poor working masses who live in the slums, as well as among university students. The centre of this campaign is the RIM as a new world unification of communists faithful to Marxism; and the explanation of the revolutionary content of “Break the Chains” and “Proletarians of All Countries, Unite” is of great importance.
Also a hundred thousand leaflets were printed with the designated slogans. . . The distribution and development of this leaflet campaign has been along the lines previously described; nevertheless, we should emphasise that because of the concentration of workers and of greater literacy in the capital, almost 30% of the leaflets were distributed there.
Finally, we’ve celebrated this May 1 by carrying out various armed actions: hanging banners, launching red balloons painted with hammers and sickles, wall painting campaigns, blackouts, harassment, sabotage, liquidations and arms capture, the seizure of a radio station to broadcast the message, incursions, attacks on police posts, razings and ambushes, all this in different parts of the country, which made the reactionary dailies speak of a “Wave of attacks,” “New terrorist (sic) escalation,” and publish a rather telling front page headline, “Terrorists (sic) Work on May 1.” Keep in mind that these actions were carried out after the conclusion of a military plan.
Among these actions we would emphasise the blowing up of 30 metres of the oil pipeline in northern Peru, a hard blow to the reactionary state as the Minister of Energy and Mines himself admitted. This action was carried out exactly on the dawning of May 1, as were the majority of those mentioned. We’d also underline that the most resonant of these actions were carried out in the region of Ayacucho and in the city itself, and in the very capital of the republic. And there were also celebrations among the ranks of the party, in the PGA, the People’s Committees, the People’s Schools and especially in the concentration camps where the prisoners maintain as always their unbending revolutionary spirit.
The hanging of red banners with hammers and sickles has a great impact among our people, because in them they see the symbol of the armed revolution on the march, the defiant unfurling of their centuriesold aspirations. We will quote the pro-government daily Expresso: “Also in an audacious action at dawn today the subversives raised two enormous red banners with the hammer and sickle symbol on the 35 metre high antennas of the radio stations “Ayacucho” and “Voice of Huamanga”… With the first appearance of the sun’s rays the people of the slums saw five metre long banners waving on the metal towers of these radio stations. This took place despite the fact that the antennas are surrounded and under permanent guard.”
This May 1 has been a brilliant day of combats and revolutionary successes for our people; and it took on a higher significance being part of the worldwide celebration agreed upon by the RIM. The formation of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement has been a great revitalising inspiration for the Peruvian proletariat and people, for the revolutionaries, and especially for the armed fighters and communist followers of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and at the same time it has been a hard blow for reaction and electoralist opportunism, especially revisionism.
For the workers, peasants and working people of our country the emergence of the RIM is something with great prospects, as they themselves say: “It’s great that the real communists are once again united,” “this is a guarantee for the development of the revolution,” “it is a great service to the international proletariat that we organise and unite ourselves in an international centre,” or as the fighters of the People’s Guervilla Army and the rank and file communists say: “To march together under the same banner, is decisive for the world revolution which we serve;” “To unite ourselves under Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on a world level is the condition for victory in the world.” The poster and the leaflet have had an outstanding welcome among the government workers (500,000 workers employed by the state who have held out for more than three weeks in an indefinite strike). Agitation, with the RIM documents, was carried out in the midst of their strike, especially in their protest marches and confrontations with the police.
In sum, this May 1 has been a successful fighting celebration of the Peruvian proletariat and people, and together with the campaigns underway served to root the RIM among the lowest and most combative layers of our people, among those who have little or nothing in this world except the necessity to build a new one.
2) On the New Military Campaign
June 22 we began a new military campaign called “Begin the Great Leap!”, which is the first of various successive campaigns with a view towards the political conjuncture in which we are developing in this country, including as one component the 1985 general elections. The current campaign is developing as part of the political strategy of “Conquering Bases” (that is, revolutionary base areas) and it serves to concretise the orientation of “Strengthen the People’s Committees, develop the base areas and advance the People’s New Democratic Republic.”
The objective conditions are broadly favourable, since a developing revolutionary situation is continuing to unfold; even more so spurred on by the armed struggle. As far as our revolutionary forces are concerned, they have grown remarkably: the Party has grown in membership, especially in terms of poor peasants, and it has been strengthened and further tempered. The People’s Guerrilla Army, organised in the first part of 1983, has become several times larger through the massive joining of peasants, especially poor peasants; the People’s Committees have multiplied considerably, and most importantly, have developed in terms of their exercise of state functions. An Organising Committee of the People’s New Democratic Republic has been formed, while the Revolutionary People’s Defense Front in the countryside and in the city the Revolutionary People’s Defense Movement are taking form, with the centres of resistance as their axis. Finally, 1983 saw more than half of the 15,000 armed actions carried out in the four years of armed struggle. Thus we can say that this year of combat against the armed forces (which came in to fight against the guerrilla actions at the end of 1982, setting up a Political-Military Committee in the state of emergency zone which now includes 13 provinces of the departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica and part of Apurimac, under the orders of a brigadier general), has been fruitful in every sense for the development of the revolution.
Nevertheless, the reactionary state, through its representatives, had been bragging, as they usually do every time we finish carrying out a plan and enter a period of preparation for a new campaign, that we’ve been turned back, that we’ve retreated and shrunk, so that according to them we were in full retreat under the blows: they boasted of dealing us. As a result, the campaign “Begin the Great Leap” has taken them by surprise and at present we are carrying forward the greatest offensive we’ve carried out so far. . . both in breadth (at this point we are active militarily in 15 of the country’s 24 departments, in the mountains as well as the coast and the jungle highlands) and in terms of our armed struggle reaching a higher level. We are dealing very heavy blows to the reaction, its armed forces and police, and, very importantly, we are taking back areas we’d lost and until now could not reconquer, while at the same time our action is reaching into new areas.
The struggle is taking a very cruel form and the bloodshed will grow as the reaction launches its counteroffensive; thus the repression applied so far will worsen in every way. But taking into account the grave problems and contradictions which burden the reaction in this country, and above all the objective conditions and the development of our revolutionary forces, we have the ability and the resolve to pay the necessary price, no matter what, to carry forward the armed revolution in our country, unshakeably decided to build the New State which has already begun to be built, since, as Lenin said, “Without state power, everything is an illusion.”
This is our commitment and responsibility to the Peruvian revolution and even more to the world revolution of which we are a component part and which we serve and will serve. . .
With Communist Greetings,
Central Department
of the Central Committee
PCP, Peru 1984