“The revolutionary war is the war of the masses, and it can only be realized by mobilizing the masses and being supported by them.”

“Our principle is: The Party commands the gun, and we will not allow the gun to command the Party.”

Mao Tse tung

The world political situation has entered a new era: That of Mao Tse-tung thought.

Under this sign, we have witnessed events in the past few years that have changed the world considerably.

The National Liberation struggles have advanced unstoppably, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China has achieved great victories, the International Communist Movement has been strengthened, and the masses throughout the world, (even inside the imperialist and social-imperialist countries) have unleashed furious revolutionary storms, shaking up the entire obsolete and rotten system of exploitation of man by man.

THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD ARE ON FIRE TODAY.
The sparks of the Peoples’ War set the prairies on fire. The violent conflagration of the revolution is extending, forever devouring the old world, sinking all the reactionaries in desperation and opening new and nearer hopes for all mankind.

LATIN AMERICA IS THE “BACKYARD” OF NORTH AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
By way of its semicolonial policy, imperialism has penetrated more ferociously in the Latin American countries, accelerating the exploitation and plundering of the natural resources, oppressing and ruining the masses of the people, mainly the workers and peasants.

By way of their global counterrevolutionary strategy, the imperialists have as a priority to “strengthening” their puppet and lackey regimes. Thus, strengthening the position of feudal landlords and bureaucratic capitalists, by the centralization of the economy, the media, and the use of political chicanery by making them adopt “nationalist” and pseudo-anti-imperialist poses, by funding, training and developing the reactionary army, the modernization of its weaponry and repressive apparatus, the perfecting of its methods of assassinations, and the increase of its material reserves.

All the above is being done in order to unleash a bloody counterrevolutionary war, in which they attempt to use the “masses against the masses.”

Their goal is to keep in power not only weak and venal reactionary politicians, but military commanders and chiefs who are much more corrupt and savage and ready to massacre the people without blinking an eye.

In the eyes of the imperialists, fascist regimes and police states offer greater “stability” and “efficiency” in safeguarding their interests as well as in the violent repression of the Peoples’ War. In the last decade, the military “corps” has been directly controlled by the imperialists and their “CIA-agents” subjecting most of the Latin American countries under fascist boots.

Our Communist Party (PCP) has pointed out the preventive nature of these imperialist plans many times. The real objective of modifying certain structures is to adapt them to their semicolonial plans, assuming that they will be more “productive” to them before the explosion and proliferation of guerrilla groups, and therefore, aiming at “preventing armed struggles, to contain the stormy advance of the Peoples’ War.”

Violent repression has always been the main weapon used by the imperialists and reactionaries.

At the least sign of guerrilla activity, they launch themselves frantically, to completely destroy them as soon as possible.

“Burn all, destroy all, and kill all” is their policy used against the masses and patriotic sectors, and against the wounded and captured guerrillas they apply the policy of “war without prisoners.”

Their barbaric proofs of ferociousness toward the unarmed population and captured fighters are constant, including their methods of mass murder and refined CIA techniques of torture and physical annihilation.

The reactionaries have promoted and maintain, mainly in the cities, secret groups of criminals and degenerates, who with the open support of reactionary authorities have caused the violent death of thousands of patriots and progressives.

In the Peoples’ War that the peoples of Latin America will eventually have to confront, they will face extremely harsh conditions in its development. It will have to overcome the most difficult conditions ever in history. But the imperialists and reactionaries are not invincible. (Our people will contribute to bury definitively all the exploiters.)

The Soviet Social Imperialists and other revisionists, showing their treacherous and counterrevolutionary face, as principal accomplices of Yankee imperialism, deceitfully proclaim and agitate their “peaceful transition to socialism.”

In reality, it means submission, servility and worship to the imperialists.

Because while collaborating politically and economically with the old rotten dying landlord-bureaucratic states, they call for the violent repression of the masses.

Thus, under the baton of their repulsive chieftains, the revisionists of Latin America have carried out successive and permanent counterrevolutionary activities, of shameless treachery and sabotage to the revolution and the Peoples’ War.

In their desperate attempts to get the “benefit” of legality, they have not hesitated to launch the most rapid attacks against the Marxist-Leninist parties and revolutionary violence. The revisionists have rendered “services,” in favor of the enemy, and in the measures in which armed actions prosper.

And when they are incapable of obstructing the growth of the revolutionary movement from the outside, they introduce themselves or infiltrate their ranks, after hypocritical demonstrations of support, in order to capture the leadership and use the guerrilla groups in their political negotiations for “legality.”

The experience of Latin America has confirmed the counterrevolutionary actions of Trotskyism and the damaging effects of its fallacious thesis of “decisively anticapitalist” struggle. Many revolutionary [cadres and leaders] were murdered by the police “thanks” to the information provided by revisionists and Trotskyists.

Only the people will judge them for the blood of these fighters.

With the victory of the armed struggle in Cuba in 1959, and the activity of the Castroist movement, Latin America has suffered an erroneous and harmful influence by part of petty-bourgeois “tercerismo.”

Tercerismo is a renewed version of the vain attempts of the petty-bourgeoisie to substitute the proletariat as the leading factor in the revolution and wrest away its hegemony.

The terceristas and their “ideologues” spread their so-called “particularity” of the revolution in Latin-America, fiercely attacking Marxism-Leninism-MaoTse-tung Thought [today Maoism], preaching its obsolescence, as well as the universal laws of the People’s War.

Petty-bourgeois terceristas substitute the proletarian politics by bourgeois politics.

They negate the leadership of the working class and their political party, and trust the actions of the group of petty-bourgeois heroes and their bourgeois military line. They pay homage to weapons and reject the protracted and systematic political work among the masses (especially the peasantry), favoring guerrilla “focos” for the auctioning of wandering armed bands.

They cultivate spontaneity, initiating the military activities without considering the political conditions and the subjective desire of the masses (acting above the conscience of the masses.)

All attempts by tercerismo have ended in defeat, as it was inevitable. Their vanguard endeavors, which pushed them to adventurism, have led them from failure to failure, and to suffer painfull losses.

All revolutionaries have the obligation and need to study and systematize the experiences accumulated [by our people] up to now. The continuation of the struggle demands it.

The best recipe to murder the revolution is to collude with revisionism and Trotskyism. The best recipe to lead the revolution to failure is to lead it on the road of petty-bourgeois tercerismo. These are the lessons drawn at the cost of the blood of so many fighters.

In Venezuela, for example, petty-bourgeois terceristas, erroneously analyzing the conditions, (opposed at first) of taking the road of surrounding the cities from the countryside limited themselves to mobilize small petty-bourgeois sectors.

They went ahead with urban guerrilla actions, practicing spontaneity and relying on the struggle of isolated elements. Their incapacity to link the revolutionary work to the workers and peasants movement, and the violent repression unfolded by reaction in the cities, forced them to abandon the cities. Later, some decomposed themselves going over to “legality” and accepting concessions, and others climbed the mountains to continue the fight in rural areas.

The revisionists, forced by the circumstances to join such groups, became agents of political corrosion to the fighters and ended up, as in other cases in Latin America, offering the guerrillas in their negotiations as bargain chips in exchange for their “legal” recognition. In the end, they were cowardly betraying, putting themselves in the tail of reaction, and shouting their stupid slogans of “democratic and peaceful development,” “electoral participation,” and so on.

Castro’s support for terceristas, as has happened in other cases in Latin America, was conditioned to their being subject to his orientations, or those of the pseudo organizations formed for that purpose, that is, external “leading centers,” violating the Marxist-Leninist principle that the revolution is done by the peoples of each country, led by their major staff, the “Communist Parties.”

Another example is the case of Colombia. Armed struggles emerged there in response to one of the most brutal repressions against the people ever recorded in America. Reactionary actions were personified by “violence” that systematically murdered thousands of patriots and covered Colombia with blood.

In Colombia, revisionists and terceristas played the same role as in Venezuela, the first ones by shamelessly sabotaging and betraying the revolution, and the latter, by leading the guerilla groups to failure.

After the treason of Vicera and hard blows by the reactionary army, the groups disintegrated. Some degenerated in banditry, while others attempted to organize what it became to be known as the “independent republics of Marquetalia and El Pato.”

They were isolated from the large popular sectors, unable to extend their influence to any large degree, and unable to strengthen themselves through the mobilization of the masses.

Thus, they were an easy prey of the counterrevolution.

In the last few years, the guerrilla struggle has revived in Colombia, but this time showing a greater tendency to orient the struggle to the proletarian conception of the People’s War.

As long as this position advances and leads the struggle in Colombia, it will achieve victories for their people. It will be a great contribution to the Latin-American revolutionary movement.

In Perú, the guerrilla groups that initiated their activity in 1965, under the noxious influence of tercerismo, spread away their forces, under the illusion that by so doing, they will disperse the forces of the enemy.

They became into wandering bands, almost with no links to the peasants’ masses, they made use of the golden rules of tercerismo: “constant distrust, constant security, constant vigilance,” which in essence means: mistrust and contempt for the peasants’ masses.

Meanwhile, the Cuzco guerrillas adopted the tactic of passive defense, of defending their territory inch by inch, rejecting active defense, which is a consistent Marxist-Leninist concept, and the only correct guiding thought for the peoples to be victorious in their revolutionary wars. They also built their “camps” in mountain regions, isolated from the centers of large concentrations of peasants naively thinking themselves to be impregnable [to enemy fire.]

The case of Bolivian guerrillas constitutes a typical example of the activity of petty-bourgeois terceristas in Latin America, and one of the most important acts of adventurism perpetrated by Castroism.

As worshipers of spontaneity, they trusted “prestige” more than the work of political mobilization of the masses, twisting the genuine concept of proletarian internationalism, and initiating their activities with their hopes in the bases of logistic support external to the guerrillas, neglecting the Marxist-Leninist line of only relying on their own efforts.

The failure of the National Liberation Army (initials in Spanish ELN) in Bolivia and the death of Che Guevara and the Peredo brothers, meant the total bankruptcy of petty-bourgeois tercerismo in Latin America. It was, besides, a clear example of the treachery of revisionists, and the false support preached by Castro.

The erroneous political orientation, and consequently, the erroneous military line, the isolation of the masses, the lack of revolutionary perspectives, and the abandonment of revolutionary work, led to some of the terceristas to terrorist activities in the cities, reducing themselves to such false methods.

Others are getting closer, however, at the cost of painful and bloody experiences, to the road of the People’s War, of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought [today Maoism].

The proletarians “need not only a just Marxist political line but also a just Marxist military line.”

Without the guidance of a correct political line, it is impossible to develop a correct military line, and without a correct military line, it is also impossible to apply and implement a correct political line.

This truth has been understood by the Marxist-Leninist [Maoist] parties of Latin America, which have made efforts to prepare themselves for the People’s War and dare to carry on the People’s War, following the proletarian military line of Comrade Mao Tse-tung.

Thanks to the correct orientation of the Marxist-Leninist [Maoist] parties and the powerful influence of the International Communist Movement, the idea that “power grows from the barrel of the gun,” a priceless teaching of Mao Tse-tung, that has taken deep roots in the masses, there is a greater and more profound understanding of the basic ideas of the People’s War and the People’s Army: the War of the People, and the Army of the People.

Understanding the road of the People’s War, and under the Leadership of their Communist Parties, the Marxist-Leninists [Maoists] of Latin America have consistently gone to the rural areas to do political work among the peasants’ masses, and to lay down the bases for revolutionary wars.

The leadership of the Communist Parties, the Marxist-Leninists is a very important and essential factor for the triumph of the People’s War in Latin America. Only such Parties, armed with the invincible Mao Tse-tung Thought [Maoism], will be able to carry on assuredly and victoriously the revolutionary struggles until the end.

Our glorious Communist Party is a firm Marxist-Leninist [Maoist] party.

Within our Party have been always struggles at every historical stage of the development of the revolution, between two diametrically opposed military lines. Our party has known how to successfully defend the proletarian military line, contributing mightily to defeat the false theories of contemporary revisionism and petty-bourgeois tercerismo.

In particular, the present internal struggle, against the liquidators, has left our Party in the best conditions and has gotten us closer to the brilliant reality of the People’s War.

Our Communist Party is committed to contribute to the struggle of the peoples of Latin America with the development of the struggle of the Peruvian people, maintaining itself firmly on the side of the fraternal parties in Latin America, and envisioning that the People’s War in Perú will provide greater contributions to the total victory of the world communist movement.

Only by firmly struggling against revisionism, trotskyism, all revisionists including the petty- bourgeois terceristas, and by discrediting them thoroughly and completely, will we be able to fight truthfully and resolutely against imperialism and feudalism.

We must energetically destroy the bourgeois military line and eradicate its venomous influence in Latin America.

We must prioritize the politics of the proletariat, which is to say Marxism- Leninism -Mao Tse-tung Thought [Maoism], and the thought of Jose Carlos Mariategui, and our Party’s line. We must insist on arming our cadres, militants, and the masses, with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought.

The decade of the 1960’s was a stage of victory for Marxism-Leninism in Latin America and the entire world and the new decade of the 1970’s will bring about even greater victories for world revolution.

We have achieved great victories.

Let us warmly welcome the new decade.

The perspectives are brilliant.

LONG LIVE THE TRIUMPH OF THE PEOPLE’S WAR!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAO TSE-TUNG THOUGHT!
DOWN WITH PETTY-BOURGEOIS MILITARISM!
BANDERA ROJA No. 42 May 1970