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[NousDefionsDoc]

Viva La Revolucion! (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&e=2&u=/ap/20041106/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/peru_terrorist_trial)

[Air.177]

With Purchase of equal or Greater Abimael.

While supplies last, Limited time only

[magician]

Abimael and the Super Friends.

From left to right:

Margie Clavo, Elena Iparraguirre, Abimael Guzman, (aka Presidente Gonzalo), Victor Zavala, and Angelica Salas.

I used to know all their "party names," but it has been a long time since I scrutinized these personalities in my target folders.

Make no mistake: these guys came very close to causing the Peruvian state to collapse back in 1992. It is important to explain that they were not exactly pushing Peru over a precipice, so much as they were deftly nudging it. Peru had problems all its own, but the Communist Party of Peru was masterfully exploiting them, and most importantly, was assiduously building grass-roots organizations with national breadth and range that would have been the only institutions still standing in the event of a total implosion of the state.

Had this happened, it is possible that they would have founded a hermetic socialist state on the south american mainland that would have made Cambodia under Pol Pot look like a garden spot. These are not just Marxists. These are Maoists, Maoists who advocate the collective raising of the young, the systematic atomization of the family unit, deliberate construction of a "new socialist man." These are Maoists who advocate "reeducation," "rectification campaigns," and endless revolution as the only means of banishing the tendrils of residual bourgeois capitalism. These guys are Communists, with a capital C, Communists who understand that there can be no true Communism unless it is global.

You can safely dismiss anyone who claims to be a Marxist, if they do not profess anything but respect for the Communist Party of Peru, and for Guzman himself as the "Fourth Sword of Marxism." That person is a poser, a dilettante, and worthy of the ultimate Marxist epithet, bourgeois, if they do not worship Guzman. The guys in this photograph are the real deal. It is to be hoped that we will never see their like again.

Their weapon is organization, their ability to organize, to inspire dedication and discipline and focus and sacrifice from cadres. They built a vanguard party which, at its height, never exceeded 250 actual party members, but which led thousands of militants, combatants, and unnumbered "masses" in various party organizations.

I do not know what the fuck Peru is doing, giving these people a forum. Wisely, they have banned cameras and tape recorders from future hearings. The first time that Guzman was arrested and presented to the press, back in 1992, he was displayed in a white and black prison uniform, in a cage, and he gave a speech (http://rwor.org/a/v19/920-29/926/iec.htm) which was, in its way, spellbinding in its mastery of oratory and Marxist cant. If you like, you can download and dissect it (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/countries/peru/cage.html) from the website of the MIM (http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/), the Maoist Internationalist Movement. Unless you are conversant with Maoist phrasing, it may all seem a bunch of gobbledygook to you. But to its target audience, this speech was a weapon, yet another weapon, and the last thing that the government of Peru needed to do was depict these aging revolutionaries standing in a rank, fists raised, chanting slogans.

I do not know why they have bothered with hearings in the first place. The state, for all its warts, has them in custody. Be thankful. They were outfighting the authorities until DINCOTE and Montesinos got lucky as hell and discovered Guzman living a quiet gentleman's life a mere block away from the Peruvian Ministry of Defense in 1992.

God help us all if he escapes.

Put the man back in his windowless cell. Feed him his oatmeal, three times a day.

Wait until he dies. Then bury him in the garden, in the middle of the night, and do not announce it to the world.

Let the Marxists of the world wonder, forever. Better that they wonder, than hold grand events celebrating his death, and demonstrations protesting his incarceration and death in captivity.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Linky no worky. :munchin

[NousDefionsDoc]

They took it down for some reason.

[Roguish Lawyer]

That's OK, you got Magician writing, and for that I am deeply grateful. :)

[Roguish Lawyer]

Try this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3985217.stm

Shining Path retrial suspended

The first hearing in the retrial of former leaders of Peru's Shining Path guerrilla group has ended in chaos.
The judge suspended the hearing after Shining Path Founder Abimael Guzman, 69, and his 15 co-defendants rose to their feet and chanted.

Mr Guzman is being retried on terror charges in a civilian tribunal, after his 1992 conviction by a military court was overturned last year.

He led an insurgency in which tens of thousands died in the 1980s and 1990s.

At the start of Friday's hearing the grey-haired Maoist - wearing his trademark thick-rimmed glasses - hugged one of his colleagues before sitting down among them.

Chaos

The trial began with one of his co-defendants addressing the court. Oscar Ramirez Durand, alias Feliciano, requested a state-appointed attorney saying he had no money for a lawyer.

After about an hour, Mr Guzman's turn came.

Moments after the presiding judge asked TV and radio journalists to leave the tiny viewing gallery, Mr Guzman rose to his feet.

With his right fist clenched and raised high, he began to shout: "Glory to Marxism, Leninism and Maoism".

His followers joined in, saying: "Long live the heroes of the people. Long live the Peruvian people".

The judge suspended the hearing until next Friday, and the accused were led back to their cells.

It was a farcical end to the first day of what could be one of Peru's most important ever trials, says the BBC's Elliott Gotkine in Lima.

No-one in Peru - not even Mr Guzman himself - expects the country's courts to free him, adds our correspondent.

But there are fears the rebel leader could appeal against any eventual guilty verdict to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the grounds that Peru's definition of terrorism is flawed, in the hope of winning his liberty.

Ruthless war

A total of about 70,000 people were killed by both guerrillas and security forces during the 1980s and early 1990s.

After Mr Guzman's capture in September 1992, he was presented to the media, wild-eyed, caged and dressed in a striped prison uniform.


Guzman was paraded to the media in a cage after his capture

The government of the day reportedly considered shooting him - but in the end he was tried behind closed doors by military judges.

They wore hoods to avoid being targeted for revenge by the Shining Path, and the group's founder was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

But last year, Peru's constitutional court repealed the anti-terror laws approved by former President Alberto Fujimori, and threw out Mr Guzman's initial conviction, prompting re-trials.

After his capture the Shining Path split and the rebellion collapsed - though the movement is still on a US list of terror groups.

[The Reaper]

He needs to have a nice, quiet demise.

Like Arafat, but without the subsequent acclaim and public spectacle.

TR

[magician]

which link was broken, brothers?


there are fears the rebel leader could appeal against any eventual guilty verdict to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the grounds that Peru's definition of terrorism is flawed, in the hope of winning his liberty.


I am mystified by this.

This is a country, like many others in Latin America, where the word desaparecido evolved to describe a phenomenon that defined political reality beginning in the latter half of the last century. Peru, like Guatemala, like Salvador, like Argentina, like Chile, has its share of people who simply vanished.

I hate to advocate monstrous measures, as I am among those who believe that doing so is infectious, and dooms you. But these people are at war, and so am I.

I do not get it. No truer enemy of the Peruvian state ever existed. You can argue that Guzman is a patriot. That, I can accept. Not that it matters. That accolade is ultimately for history to bestow, and Peru is not my country. But there is no doubt that Guzman is an enemy of the state. Guzman is an enemy of things as they are, of the order that prevails, and that makes him my enemy.

I suppose that I can understand that Peruvians feel shamed by the perceived excesses of the years following the autogolpe, they feel sullied by Montesinos, and Fuji, and apparently they feel a need for a "do over," and want to legitimize things that they believe went awry. But the imprisonment of Guzman is not one of those things.

There is simply no way that Peru can let this man go free. It is akin to putting Lenin on a closed train. I do not care how old that Guzman is. Until he is senile, and slobbering, and ultimately embalmed wearing lipstick and blush, he is dangerous.

I used to collect video of these guys....Peruvian media used to show captured tapes of them, pulled out of their safe houses....the glimpses of internal party life were revealing. Guzman was deified.

"Feliciano," aka Oscar Ramirez Durand, was the Military Secretary of the Party...he evaded capture the longest...and I believe was ultimately run to ground in the Upper Huallaga, where Sendero has long had a presence.

If the court follows its own rules, this will be the last that we hear of this trial. No more tapes, no more film. Why the Peruvian government even engages in this foregone conclusion of a trial is a mystery to me.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Europhilia, the Che factor, romanticism, the recent changes in Spain, short term memory loss of the atrocities he committed, a new generation rising to power and the general malaise associated with being one step removed from the victims.

A lot of South Americans still believe in communism and just don't understand why it didn't work. They also have a very strong Euopean-like aversion to the death penalty or even incarceration in general. Two year sentences in Ecuador for child kidnapping.

[magician]

I have a hard time believing that Peruvians can romanticize the national trauma inflicted by the insurgency. I am Spanish. I understand fantastic realism very well.

I also have a hard time understanding how a people equally descended from the vanquishing Conquistadors and the conquered Indians can blanche from the judicial killing of a man who was indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands. If we must be precise, we can be precise. Guzman himself claimed direct personal responsibility for ordering the deaths of up to 80 people at a massacre perpetrated by Shining Path at a village named Lucanamarca. He did it in his infamous Entrevista, which is a staple in the training of Sendero cadres, and now forms part of modern Maoist canon.

I just do not get it.

Maybe I need to return to the region. I am certainly beginning to miss it.

Montevideo and Santiago de Chile have been looking real good to me lately, for some reason.

[The Reaper]

Two of my favorite cities, hermano.

I also recommend Asuncion and Buenos Aires.

TR

[magician]

Been reading a lot of Borges lately.

Been making me homesick for South America.

:)

[NousDefionsDoc]

Come on down! I'll double bunk the kids and give you the Power Ranger room.

[The Reaper]

Been reading a lot of Borges lately.

Been making me homesick for South America.

:)

You should visit La Recoleta in B.A., it is magnificent this time of year, and the scenery is fantastic. Magnificent steak dinner to follow, and a trip to a tango bar. We met Robert Duval there in Recoleta on my last trip.

In Montevideo, I would recommend a little coffee shop on the corner of Plaza San Martin in the afternoon, followed by a trip to the Mercado del Puerto.

There is a fantastic German restaurant in Asuncion run by German immigrants and serving great sausages and hefeweizen, and a Brazilian parrillada where the meat is to die for.

Now I need to go there again!

TR

[magician]

shit.

do not tempt me.

please.