PREPARATORY SESSION

REPORT: ON THE THIRD SESSION AND THE AGENDA

GREETING

Receive a fervent greeting, in these 9 years of expansive and victorious people’s war, in the name of the Central Leadership, the leaders, cadres, and militants of the Party, the combatants of the People’s Guerrilla Army, the masses of the New Power, and the masses who work most closely with us.

Let us seal with great success the First Congress of the Party, the Marxist Congress, the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought Congress.

I. ON THE AGENDA

We must see the agenda within the laws of previous sessions of the Congress, but it has its specific questions. We propose that it be called the THIRD SESSION OF THE CONGRESS; let us keep in mind that it is the final session of the Congress. The agenda would comprise three parts:

• I. THE FIRST CONGRESS

  1. On the People’s War.

  2. Development of the Congress.

• II. GREAT CULMINATION OF THE PILOT PLAN

  1. Actions.

  2. Construction.

  3. Rectification Campaign.

• III. GREAT PLAN OF DEVELOPING BASES AND CONQUEST OF POWER IN PERSPECTIVE

  1. Basis, conditions, and perspective in which it occurs.

  2. GREAT PLAN.

  3. Application of the Plan to the Committees and organizations.

HOW TO DEVELOP IT

In the first part, we have to develop the Congress and culminate a pending question: to analyze the People’s War, hence point 1:

1. On the People’s War, let us remember that in the First Session we analyzed the ideological-political aspect and in the Second Session, construction. For this point, each Base has presented a Report on the People’s War, an investigation agreed upon in the Second Session and carried out at the level of the Leadership Committees; in the Central Leadership, we think that it is a good basis for developing it. In this Congress, it will be a study that leads us to the subsequent drafting of a document on the People’s War. Consequently, there is the fundamental material for fulfilling this pending point which, although it is not the only one, is fundamental.

2. Development of the Congress, consists of evaluating this historical milestone in its three sessions and its implementation, specifically aiming to conclude the work of the Congress, to finalize this great task.

In the second part, it is a matter of making the summing-up of the plan, of the second part of the Third Campaign of the Pilot Plan.

1. Actions. We see a great leap in quality and quantity; there are more than 60,000 actions in this campaign. The 4 forms of struggle are in full development, and the conquest of weapons and means, particularly modern weapons, is emphasized. The Party, with the People’s War, has stirred up the country in its most remote depths; so much so that the reaction, shaken, seeks how to reformulate its strategy, incapable of combating us. But whatever this strategy may be, the well-led People’s War is and will be invincible. The great leap is expressed in all the Party apparatuses, and some Committees are already expressing their condition as fundamentals. We must feel so delighted by the actions of the People’s War, very especially because each day we are entering further into the war of the masses.

2. Construction. It advances, particularly the construction of the People’s Guerrilla Army,² which has grown gigantically, and this cannot but lead us to a growth of the Party. I emphasize once again that, for reasons easy to comprehend, because it is the vanguard of the proletariat, because the best of the class enter the Party, and because of the character of our society, the Party cannot grow so rapidly. But the Congress is strengthening it ideologically, politically, and organically; therefore, we already have the elements to strengthen it more each day. The New State has considerable growth, and the 4 forms of the People’s Committees are being expressed, and in some cases, the fifth form.

   Thus, the construction unfolds through the People’s War, a blazing and scorching forge that is permitting us a great advance in the construction of the three instruments;³ and our practice demonstrates that Maoism is valid, clear proof of what Chairman Mao teaches us: everything grows out of the barrel of a gun.

3. Rectification Campaign. We must attain a higher consciousness that it is a specific form of handling the class struggle within the Party, specifically the two-line struggle, and strive to handle this instrument better, because it is what will permit us to prevent a Right Opportunist Line,⁴ which would be revisionist, from forming. It is also what will permit us to assume and resolve new problems that we are already confronting.

We ask you for more firmness and sagacity in applying it, to guide yourselves by its objectives of uniting, differentiating ourselves, and leading, and not to be surprised by problems in handling it, especially if it is a new instrument. But let us think that it must lead us to an ideological leap qualitatively superior to the Beginning. It is a new challenge, a new challenge: to conquer Power in the entire country. In the first place, a leap in the Party, on all its planes, starting from the ideological one; and in the second place, a leap that will occur in the masses, beginning with those that combat in the People’s Guerrilla Army, then in the masses that are in the New Power, and finally in the broad masses, because we have to unite 90%, of course following the class criterion of which we are unwavering followers, and even more, practitioners.

And, as we all know, it contains in perspective the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat, logically passing through the joint dictatorship in New Democracy, which must culminate the first stage of the Peruvian Revolution with the establishment of the People’s Republic of Peru.

Moreover, its importance does not remain only in what has been said, but is linked to our condition as proletarian internationalists, that is, to serve the World Revolution, especially if we see what is happening in the world today.

In the third part, we must see the GREAT PLAN OF DEVELOPING BASES approved in 1986, which began as a pilot plan, see its key location in the People’s War, since it has to do with the Base Areas, the core of the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside; moreover, it is linked to the conquest of Power in the entire country, hence this great plan must lead us to strategic equilibrium.

We must see that it is firmly grounded throughout the Congress and in previous Party meetings, such as the Fourth National Conference and the First Plenum of the Central Committee (CC); moreover, it is proven in practice for more than two years, from 1986 to 1989, in the three campaigns of the Pilot Plan.

To locate it in the conditions of the international and national class struggle in which it occurs, particularly in the political conditions.

At the national level, we must see that the old society-new society contradiction is being expressed; we must keep in mind how the semi-feudal base of this old society stands, on which the two imperialist superpowers act, especially the Yankee one, without failing to see how social-imperialism is penetrating further, nor overlooking the action of the other imperialist powers. We must see how the crisis of bureaucrat-capitalism deepens, which, as the Party said in the year 1974, is born sick from that semi-feudal base possessed by the old Peruvian society in its various degrees and from agonizing imperialism. And we must keep in mind that since 1980 it has entered into its definitive destruction.

We must analyze how today, in this old society, they have entered into a change of authorities, into an electoral juncture that will encompass a good amount of time until the new administration is installed, whether it is a civil or military regime. We must see that this sharpens the contradictions within the reaction and that collusion and contest are an everyday matter; the facts prove that what was agreed in the previous sessions of the Congress on the concretion of the period is just and correct.

But we must analyze further how the struggle against us unfolds on the ideological plane; everyone aims against us, so we must see well and differentiate: the role of the Church as an ideological shield, without overlooking its political role, which will grow more each day, and the role of ignorant individuals, hacks, and arch-reactionaries such as F. Guerra, who, in Expreso of May 17, 1989, attacks Marx but behind it attacks us, labeling us fundamentalists. This fashionable refrain began with F. Iwasaki, a petty historian, anthropologist, or whatever he is. But all who now come out to “combat us on the ideological plane,” dreaming of “sweeping away Marxism, communism, and the communists,” are nothing but the big bourgeoisie that defends the old society, sustainers of that decrepit order; and an ideological development of the big bourgeoisie has no perspective.

The same can be seen in the revisionists and opportunists of the United Left;⁵ those of Unity are very worried because their riding on the masses is expiring politically. Their cackling on Perestroika is nothing but a repetition of their masters, and they confirm what we agreed in the previous sessions: that they have entered into a new counter-revolutionary revisionist offensive. In Cambio of June 15 they attack Gonzalo Thought, but what’s behind it is their anti-Maoism, their revisionism, on which they say nothing; against us, only slanders. But their “ideological combat” lacks a fundamental, besides which they expressly distort what we say and even twist Chairman Mao, whom they supposedly do not conceive as being on the level of Marx or Lenin. Also in Amauta there is, among others, an article by Winer where they combat us as fundamentalists, but what do they want to tell us? That we have an underlying religious conception, like the imbecile F. Guerra, who repeats an Englishman and produces indigestions and regurgitations. All of this is nothing but part of the old idea that ideologies have gone out of fashion, and this is not new; it dates from 30 years ago. Thus, on the ideological plane, a struggle against us opens further, and it could not be otherwise. But they encounter the most powerful, truly scientific, and invincible ideology: Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism.

We must also see the political content of the struggle they wage against us, seeking to contain the People’s War. But the People’s War, if we apply it justly and correctly, following its principles, is invincible, and they will not be able to contain it, neither with tanks and bombs, nor with splintered helicopters, nor with fighter-bombers.

We must pay attention to the concern they have about our advance among the masses: the reactionaries, the revisionists and opportunists, and also the Church; and we must see what forms they will use against the Party, against the People’s War. For example, in Unidad, Cambio, and Amauta they call upon the mining Congress to condemn us, just as their ANP (People’s National Assembly) did, a revisionist organism that, moreover, does not move. These are nothing but signs that they are concerned about our advance among the proletariat. In the congress of the revisionists of Unity, in a resolution, they call upon the class to combat us and label us genocidal; in contrast, it states to Apra⁶ that it is going to generalize its repression further. Or we see the poses of Villanueva, Mantilla, and García himself, who, faced with the armed strikes, travel to ask that the people not strike.

They are concerned about our advance among the peasantry. García has posed that it is an error to combat those who sow coca, and Amauta has just discovered that those who sow coca are peasants who live from it and that, if they are combated, they pass over to our ranks, almost the same as the previous one; but they discover it after the Pentagon has posed it in its documents. They pull out their hair upon seeing our advance among the poor peasantry. For example, the Mariateguist Unified Party⁷ is discovering that the SAIS⁸ are good for nothing, but 20 years after having defended them, even under Velasco’s wing. The hacks in La República say that if SAIS Cahuide collapses, all the SAIS in Peru collapse; the Church in Puno is also acting against us. This confirms what the Party has posed since the 1960s: the problem of the land is burning, but not only productivity, rather also the ownership of the land. Land, then, is the basic problem that moves the class struggle in the countryside. In Puno, we began the land invasions, and the Mariateguist Unified Party, at the tail of Apra, asked the government to apply its restructuring; the difference was in who led it. The agrarian strikes of Puno and Cusco, as in 1974, today, with variations, have also served for the government to apply its plans, and the signed minutes prove it.

But, in addition, they are discovering that the peasant rondas can be used by the reaction against the People’s War and against the peasants’ own interests, forgetting that those from United Left along with the Apristas, Acciopopulistas, and other reactionaries approved them in Parliament. The Congress has already given its opinion on the peasant rondas and the specific policy we should apply; we have said that we must examine their class content, whom they serve, and that we are against armed organizations dependent on guilds, as the armed forces are led by the Party.

Among the intellectuals, the People’s War is having an increasing impact, and they are beginning to differentiate themselves and turn towards us. The reaction will also act against them to intimidate them and make them withdraw; it will apply greater repression than it already applies today. The revisionists, as with the masses in general, traffic in their interests, and some are nothing more than false revolutionary intellectuals.

Thus, our advance among the masses, its expressing itself more as a war of the masses, makes the reaction and revisionism tremble and puts them in serious difficulties.

We must also see how the contradiction old state-new state is expressed in the electoral juncture. On the one hand, there are those who are defenders of the order and seek to preserve it. Their political problem is to collude and contend over who gains more positions, with different specifications: Apra, to be the government; FREDEMO,⁹ outdated demo-liberals; and the United Left, with its multiple ruptures and denominations, to present itself as “socialist.” Moreover, they have the problem of the coup always present. On the other hand, there are those who struggle for the construction of the new order through the People’s War.

Economically, the deepening of the crisis of bureaucrat-capitalism is so evident that they themselves are seeing the economic situation and its perspective as black. What Apra aims at today is to use the few economic resources of the country for its electoral pursuits. Therefore, let us further unmask all its tricks concerning “works,” because they serve to continue oppressing and exploiting the class, the peasantry, and the masses of our people, whose explosiveness will grow still further.

Thus, the class struggle in the country sharpens more each day in the ideological-political and military aspects, but mainly in the political aspect, and the winds blow in our favor. All of this does nothing but confirm our positions agreed upon in the two previous sessions of the Congress, and we must define others on new problems.

Also, we must see the conditions of the international class struggle. We have dealt with Perestroika in part; we must continue combating it because it is part of that sinister counter-revolutionary revisionist offensive. In this session, we will concern ourselves further with analyzing the situation in China. We must strive to locate the historical characteristics possessed by China. Today there are one billion inhabitants, and that immense mass weighs in the world. When the democratic revolution triumphed in 1949, the correlation of forces in the world changed, and the socialist camp that existed was expanded. Today we hear Yankee spokespersons commenting that, if the political situation in China could not be handled, military caudillos would arise again and the equilibrium that they strive to maintain would be broken. This is not strange, because there converge the contradictions of the two imperialist superpowers and the other imperialist powers. But there are also a proletariat, peasantry, and people there, and what interests us is to see that there are communists, there is a Left, and this Left is expressing itself. We must see the geographical location of China; it is key in the Pacific basin, where the present conflicts are sharpening. It is the ocean of the coming century, and this is not geopolitics but political comprehension. What would it imply if the USSR interfered in China? Or the U.S.? Or France? Or Germany? Or Japan? Or England? It would be a grave war of plunder; its European stability would be disabled. Gorbachev maintains a prudent silence; up to today he has only expressed his concern. Bush has omitted an official opinion, and through his spokespersons. It would be, then, a new dismemberment of China.

We must keep in mind everything that Chairman Mao told us because we are Maoists, and in his light we must analyze and take a position as the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists that we are, as Communists, because it is our obligation; we must see everything from the class point of view of our invincible ideology. Chairman Mao told us that, if China changed color, it would turn from red to black and fascist. He told us that, since the year 1911, when the last dynasty was overthrown, no one has been able to govern tranquilly. Chiang Kai-shek could at most remain for twenty years; moreover, they could not maintain the unity of China. He posed to us that it was very probable that upon his death the right would usurp Power, but that its life would not be tranquil either. He teaches us that the restoration and counter-restoration that had been registered in China between slaveholders and feudals required a process of 250 years of class struggle to definitively crush the restoration of slavery, a process that implied struggles and wars to recover usurped Power. He also told us that it would be a beautiful spectacle, the right and the left upholding him in order to combat each other. And, in the full upswing of the Cultural Revolution, he said: “We have at least 20 to 50 years of class struggle in China.” And what do we see today? Chairman Mao died in 1976; not even 20 years have yet passed, and what is happening? The events in China today have this background.

There, the class, the proletariat, the communists, and the Left are expressing themselves, and this is the main thing. Of course, the reactionary press is not going to spread this, but we have to see it. The Left is expressing itself little by little until it acts as a strong erosion that passes to the offensive. Events such as the appearance of portraits of Chairman Mao in the demonstrations will not be a forest of red flags like those we saw yesterday, but it is already a sign of the action of the communists. The fact that three wretches threw ink against the official portrait of Chairman Mao makes us think that it could have been a trick by the sinister Teng in order to say: “They have even dared to go against Chairman Mao!” And this is trafficking, because what he sought was to bring him out, but such is the strength of the communists, the proletariat, and the people that they have not been able to do so. They are already waging their battles, and we must think of the dimension of the struggle of the masses in a greater perspective. In Shanghai, three workers are condemned to death. Is it the action of the class or not? Confronting the tanks of that reactionary, fascist army with simple Molotovs; the fact that a group named “Dare!” has appeared — is this not what Chairman Mao has taught us, that the problem of making or not making revolution is to dare? Do we not know the quotation: “He who is not afraid of death by a thousand cuts dares to unhorse the emperor”?¹⁰ The forms of struggle that they are applying, the heroism with which they confront, the fact that a banner contains a quotation from the Chairman, “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force . . .”¹¹ — is all of this not a resonance of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? I do not say that today there is a cultural revolution, but that we must see the underlying substance of the events: that these are part of that process of struggles and wars through which the Left, the communists, will recover Power and overthrow the revisionists, and Maoism will again shine in China.

That the bourgeoisie says that it is a movement for “freedom,” for “democracy,” does not surprise us; it is its class position. That others see only the slaughter in Tien An Men Square is not to see the main thing in the struggle. That Amuta or Cambio chime in like the revisionists of the USSR — are they not followers of the command baton? Why do they silence that heroism which only the communists, the class, and the people can give? Because of their anti-Maoism! Let us differentiate ourselves clearly and distinctly.

Also, if one sees the USSR, the problem of the Afghans is the same as that which occurs in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. They are all national struggles that are likewise appearing in Georgia, Armenia, and the Soviet Muslim republics, although each one has characteristics proper to it. Let it be considered: if the USSR loses one subjugated nation, in the end it will lose them all.

There are extremely serious and important situations: the problems of Eastern Europe. In Hungary, they have vindicated Nagy, who was sentenced and executed for commanding the struggle of 1956. In Poland, we see unbridled efforts to develop bourgeois political molds more akin to Yankee imperialism.

In their own system, there are serious problems between the imperialist superpowers and the Western imperialist powers. For example, the document signed between the USSR and the FRG¹² is a subscription to Perestroika, a defense of the rights of man above classes. Why does a Christian-fascist democrat subscribe to it? Because those theses fit him like a ring on a finger, and there the U.S. enters into problems.

Well, we pose all of this because we see that this counter-revolutionary revisionist offensive has entered into serious problems. They enter into the problem of: what road to follow, what course? What is it that the masses want and need? We must see the facts seriously and mainly see their perspective. The ground begins to tremble beneath those supposed powerful masters of the Earth, a “handful of sand,” as Chairman Mao teaches us, and his words are indelible. They have gone too far, and when the right crosses the line, the masses begin to react and no longer allow themselves to be deceived. The Chairman also taught us this. The world, then, is neither still nor at peace; winds blow and storms rise in favor of the World Revolution.

2. GREAT PLAN OF DEVELOPING BASES. It is the question of how this Great Plan leads us to strategic equilibrium. It has a circumscribed and key moment for making the leap from guerrilla warfare to war of movements, even more so at the moment of the period in which the reactionary authorities are changed over in order to preserve the old order. But as its counterpart it has the construction of the New Power through the People’s War, and this is in our hands. We must also think that the Great Plan of Developing Bases¹³ leads us to harder and more complex situations, but ones necessary for the conquest of Power in the entire country.

3. (…) Thus, what is incumbent upon all of us is to strive ardently through the People’s War to conquer Power in the entire country and enter into processes of the construction of the conquest of Power. Having seen the content of the Agenda that we propose, we must keep very much in mind that this Third Session is within the law of the Congress. In the Standing Committee, when we were preparing this meeting, we were quite concerned that, this being the session that culminated the Congress, problems could arise, because finalizations always definitively sanction everything. We need only think that the People’s War had to be examined — and this is the principal thing — together with construction, which is a basis; and the Congress is the guide, and all of this is part of the Military Line, which is the center of the General Political Line.¹⁴ Moreover, it has to do with the selection of the Leadership, although on this we already have agreement from the First Session.

We consider that the present session is mature, the conditions are given, and it already has the advantage of two previous sessions. It is underpinned by the brilliant and expansive People’s War, which has been strengthened gigantically; it will also be underpinned by the immediate preparations, such as the collective study of Chairman Mao’s documents, Chairman Gonzalo’s expositions, and the Party’s publications. Moreover, it is underpinned by the World Revolution, which is the main trend; its success is in our hands.

In synthesis, the Central Leadership considers that the Third Session of the Congress implies, on the one hand, reaffirmation in everything already agreed upon and, on the other, development in the perspective of the conquest of Power.