As a result of this conflict, Guzmán and his followers withdrew from the Partido Comunista del Peru (Bandera Roja) to form still another Maoist faction. It came to be known as the Partido Comunista del Peru (Sendero Luminoso) or Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path), a name taken from the writings of José Carlos Mariátegui.
Thus, from 1970 forward there were at least four significant Maoist parties in Peru, each of which was following different policies and strategies. These were the Communist Party of Peru (Bandera Roja) of Saturnino Paredes, the Partido Comunista (Marxista-Leninista) del Peru of José Sotomayor, the Partido Comunista del Perú (Patria Roja) of Odón Espinoza, and the Partido Comunista del Perú (Sendero Luminoso) of Abimail Guzmán.
In addition to these four principal Maoist parties of the 1970s, there were numerous other groups professing support of Mao Tse-tung Thought. In 1975, the editor of the pro-Moscow party’s paper, Unidad, claimed that he could identify twenty-three different such groups.[462] At the time of the Constituent Assembly elections of 1978, a U.S. Trotskyist source identified five “more orthodox Peruvian Maoist groups” that had formed one of the electoral blocs, Unión Democrática Popular. These were the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCRO), Revolutionary Vanguard (Marxist-Leninist, Mao Tse-tung Thought), Revolutionary Left Movement (Rebel Voice), Revolutionary Left Movement (Rebel Voice-Fourth Stage) and the Proletarian Action Movement.[463] We have little information on the origins or peculiarities of these groups.
To further analyze the Maoist movement in Peru, it is most useful to look separately at each of the four most significant organizations.
Partido Comunista del Perú (Bandera Roja)
Even after the splits of the PCP-ML and the Patria Roja group, Saturnino Paredes’ Communist Party of Peru (Bandera Roja) continued for some years to hold the Chinese “franchise.”[464] However, it was by no means the largest of the Maoist groups in Peru by the middle of the 1970s.
In 1970, the Bandera Roja group controlled one of the several factions of the country’s principal peasant group, the Confederación Campesina del Perú.[465] However, it was reported that by 1975 that peasant organization, still headed by Saturnino Paredes, was “dying.”[466]
Bandera Roja did not have major strength in the labor movement. It was reported in 1976 it controlled “only local organizations with fewer than 100,000 affiliates.”[467]
Paredes and his party recognized their weakness in the peasant and worker movements. In May 1973 they engaged in “selfcriticism” that noted that “One of the most important problems in connection with the composition of the Party is the improvement of the social composition of the mass militants of the Party. It is necessary that the Party be the avant-garde of the national liberation movement, and to accomplish this, it is essential that the best elements of the working class join the Party without delay. … The proletarian nature of the Party will come to be a reality when the working class is represented in party agencies from the lowest to the highest through the medium of the most advanced elements of the proletariat. It is necessary that the Party be composed of the working class so that the peasant movement may develop properly and that a unity of steel may be forged.”
This document clearly reflected the student base of much of the Bandera Roja membership. It said that it was necessary “to develop a campaign directed toward the enrollment in the Party of the best sons of the peasantry, the revolutionary intellectuals, in other words the best sons of the working masses.”[468]
The Partido Comunista del Perú (Bandera Roja) did not make any attempt to launch a guerrilla war, in spite of its supposed endorsement of the idea. In the 1978 Constitutional Assembly elections, the party joined a far Left coalition, the Workers, Peasants, Students and People’s Front (FOCEP).[469]
Apparently, after the split between China and Albania, the Bandera Roja party joined the Albanian side. In 1982, Rogger Mercado wrote of the organization that it was “always with Paredes and the solitary support of Albania.”[470]
In 1977, an English scholar specializing in the study of the Peruvian Left, Lewis Taylor, reported that “Bandera Roja is moribund.”[471]
The Partido Comunista (Marxista-Leninista) del Perú
The first splinter from the PCP (Bandera Roja), the Partido Comunista (Marxista-Leninista) del Perú, headed by José Sotomayor Pérez, had its main center of strength in the southern city of Arequipa.[472] It was the smallest and weakest of the Peruvian Maoist parties.
The PCP-ML did not remain loyal to orthodox Maoism. Its 1971 May Day proclamation had no mention of Mao Tse-tung or Mao Tse-tung Thought. Nor did it say a word about the need for violent overthrow of the existing system, or of “the countryside surrounding the cities.”
Rather, in the face of the reformist military regime that was in power at that time, the May Day proclamation said that “the working class cannot remain in the national democratic phase of the revolution. Its goal is not the simple destruction of dependency and the liquidation of feudal remains. As these objectives are achieved, it must prepare its forces to carry the revolution forward, to socialism.”
Although in the issue of the party’s periodical carrying the May Day Manifesto there was a reference to “the sadly famous Khrushchev Day (XX Congress of the CPSU),” there was no denunciation of “revisionism” or of Soviet “social imperialism.” The only extended reference to China was an article about the visit of a Chinese diplomatic delegation to Peru, which commented that “it must be taken into account that, for many reasons, the Chinese Popular Republic is more similar to all of the colonial and dependent countries, with which they form, in fact, a sole bloc in the struggle against imperialism.”[473]
In January 1976, the pro-Moscow party’s newspaper, Unidad, reported that at its Seventh Congress the Partido Comunista (Marxista-Leninista) del Perú had decided to dissolve itself. Its resolution to that effect said that “a revolutionary organization of the working class cannot be built on the basis of Maoism.”[474]
The Partido Comunista del Perú (Patria Roja)
The most important of the Maoist parties during the 1970s was the Partido Comunista del Perú (Patria Roja). Not only did it have significant influence in organized labor, and dominate the leftist student movement in much of the country, but there were indications that by the middle of the decade, the Chinese “franchise” had been transferred to it.
The core of the Patria Roja’s strength was among students and teachers. For much of the 1970s, the party controlled the student organizations in many of the country’s universities.
462
Interview with Alfredo Abarca, editor of
463
Fred Murphy, “Peru ‘Democratic’ Election on Military’s Drawing Board,”
467
Daniel Premo, in
468
Robert J. Alexander, in
469
Jean-Pierre Beauvas, “Peruvian Left Force United Slate for May Elections,” Intercontinental Press, February 4, 1980, page 94.
471
Letter from Lewis Taylor, Professor, University of Liverpool, to Robert J. Alexander, July 28, 1997.
473