DOCTOR GUZMAN RECANTS
Left & bottom: Typically heroic images from the People’s War, a classically Maoist strategy of surrounding and choking off the old state from the countryside. Middle: Abimael Guzman (aka ‘Chairman Gonzalo’) as he appeared in a Lima courtroom in November, 2004.
Peru’s People’s War: A Melancholic Retrospect
Luis Arce Examines the “Remnants of a Betrayed Revolution”
A guerrilla action, and similarly a whole process of armed struggle, does
not by itself constitute a liberating political process in the sense of
revolutionary change of society and the state.
The revolutionary content of a political or military action is determined by
its strategic objective, whose essence is determined by a combination of
ideological, political and organizational factors.
From May 1980 until almost the middles of the ’90s the Maoist guerrilla was
without any doubt a hope for revolutionary change in Peru. The poor masses
took it as such and valiantly fought at its side. In that war the people
gave their blood and sacrifice, and more than 60,000 peasants, workers,
students, squatters, and others had died by the end of the armed conflict. A
historical epoch that is an extraordinary legacy for the Peruvian people and
their future revolution. What cut short that road? In October 1993 Abimael
Guzm