WE ARE THE INITIATORS

 

We are the initiators and we should keep this fact deeply in our spirits. This meeting is historic.

Comrades, we will pass into history as the initiators. For some time, the Party has been writing this history on indestructible pages.

We are the initiators. This first Party Military School is both a seal and a breach, it concludes and begins. It concludes the time of peace and opens the time of war. Comrades, our tasks with unarmed hands have concluded, and today our armed words begin: Let us uplift the masses and peasants under the unfading flags of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought. One period has ended and the preparations for the new one have concluded. From here, the past deeds are sealed and we open the future. The key of the future is determined by actions, the objective is power. This we shall do, history demands it, the class urges it, the people have foreseen and want it. We must accomplish it and it will be accomplished. We are the initiators.

We should discuss some problems. Just as you, I will also speak with an open heart, sincere words and a rational sentiment. This also has a strict logic.

 

 

I. We Are Entering the Strategic Offensive of the World Revolution.

 

 

Centuries of devastating exploitation have passed. The masses have been exploited, subjugated, forced to yield and implacably oppressed. But through all this time, the exploited masses have always resisted, because they have no other sentiment than the class struggle. However, throughout history, the masses were abandoned and had no direction. Their words, protests, actions and rebellions were crushed and defeated. But the masses never lost hope. The class always has hope. The masses are the light of the world that forge themselves ahead. They transform and create instruments with their own hands. They are the social fabric, the inexhaustible beat of history. Thus, they have been generating ideas, science of the most advanced kind.

But the laws of history that came about as a result of the development of the class struggle have generated one last class: The international proletariat. The class has surged up struggling in the midst of a sinister system, capitalism, which appeared sweating blood and muck from all its pores. A system in whose center the combative proletariat developed unions, strikes, resistance and revolutions. All of this became embodied in Marxism, and the class, endowing itself with a Party, evolved into a mature class with its own interests. The masses of the world finally have their liberator. In the old times, the masses awaited for a liberator. They used to put their faith in the hands of supposed saviors, until the powerful and invincible proletariat appeared, which is capable of creating a true new order. The class organized itself politically, and another history begins to unfold to become a reality.

In one hundred years of struggle, setbacks, and victories, the proletariat has learned how to fight and seize power with arms. The workers took it once in an embryonic form but were crushed with blood and fire. Nevertheless, we remember the Paris Commune, where those who were reviled are today heroes. And their example lives on, while their tormentors are forgotten. The workers with Lenin seized power in Russia and created a powerful State. The class continued fighting and with Mao Tse-tung paved a new road and resolved unsolved problems. The class began to fight under the flags of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought.

Around the Second World War, the revolution entered a strategic equilibrium, leaving behind the reactionary holy alliances and their previously untouchable tormentors and enemies. With the powerful international workers' movement, the cresting waves of the national liberation movements, the development of Communist Parties, and the elevation of Marxism to the high summit of Mao Tse-tung Thought, a new situation has been created: We are entering the strategic offensive of world revolution. In the next 50 to 100 years, the domination of imperialism and all exploiters will be swept away. History cannot go backwards. In the hands of the working class, under the leadership of the Communist Parties and through the mighty force of poor peasants, the peoples war will be sustained and grow each day until overthrowing the old order. The world is entering into a new situation, the strategic offensive of world revolution. This is of transcendental importance.

As Chairman Mao said: "The storm draws near and the wind roars in the tower." Thus, the vortex draws near, the vortex begins, and the invincible flame of the revolution grows, converting itself into lead and steel. And from the din of battle along its inextinguishable fires will come forth the light. From the darkness a light will appear and a new world will be born. The old order of reaction crackles, its old boat leaks and sinks in desperation. But comrades, nobody can expect reaction to retire gently. Marx warned us: Even while drowning, the reactionaries were capable of inflicting asphyxiating chokeholds and desperate blows in order to see us sink. That is impossible. The reaction has the hyena's dreams of blood. Convulsive dreams shake their somber nights. Their hearts scheme sinister hecatombs. They arm themselves to the teeth but they cannot prevail. Their destiny is weighed and measured. The time has come for the settling of accounts.

The imperialist superpowers, U.S.A., U.S.S.R., and other powers seek to invade, penetrate, suffocate, destroy and drown everything with terror. But as Chairman Mao said, by attacking, assaulting, and launching offensives they overextend themselves and enter the powerful core of the people. The people rise up, arm themselves and rebel, putting nooses on the necks of imperialism and reaction. The people take them by the throat, threaten their lives and will strangle them out of necessity. The reactionary meat will be trimmed of fat, they will be torn to tatters and rags, the scraps sunk into mire, and the remainders burned. The ashes will be thrown to the winds of the world so that only the sinister reminder of what must never return will remain.

Comrades, that is the world today. It has befallen on us to live in an extraordinary epoch. Thus it is written, mankind never had such a heroic destiny. To the people of today, to those people who breathe, struggle, and fight, has befallen the task of sweeping reaction from the face of the earth, the most illuminating and magnificent mission given to any generation. We find ourselves in this situation: The world revolution enters a strategic offensive. Nothing will prevail against it. The innumerable iron legions arise, and more and more will arise, inexhaustibly multiply, encircle and annihilate reaction. Reaction, which unleashes its bloody claws tearing the flesh off the people, continues to sow discord, embroil, and seeks to sate itself with the blood of the people. But the people's blood ascends like furious wings and the stricken flesh converts itself into a powerful vengeful lash. Their muscles and actions are converted into steel battering rams in order to destroy the oppressor who will be irremediably crushed.

Comrades, reaction will not prevail in any form. The hour has sounded, the revolution will triumph. The struggle will be hard, arduous, cruel and difficult. Victory is ours. The masses will prevail, the peasants will arise, the working class will lead, the Communist Party will command and the Red Flags will be raised forever. Reaction has entered its final chapter. We will develop in that world.

 

 

II. Our People Begin to Seize Power Through Armed Struggle

 

 

In this magnificent epic of world history, our people along with the Latin American working classes and masses have a role to play. This role is being fulfilled. Our people begin to seize power through armed struggle. It is hundreds of years of struggle in which the peasant movements have shaken the foundation of exploitation, but they have not been able to uproot it as yet. In this country the Communist Party was forged as pure steel. It brought light to the people by upholding Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought. Comrades, in this country we are embarking upon a third epoch. The third epoch is a battle between armed revolution and armed counter-revolution, which are prepared for violence. Counter-revolution with its old and bloody violence, peace at the hands of bayonets, their damned wars that annihilate people in the prisons, schools, factories, in the countryside, and even assassinating children with hunger and misery in their maternal wombs.

Today, that sinister violence meets its match. The revolutionary violence prepares to take up the battle in arms. Our people with a rich history are finally embarking to the final chapter, the completion of the democratic period of the revolution. The masses tremble, the flood tide rises, and the storm approaches. Reaction in this country as well as in the world, also dreams of soaking the revolution with blood and fire, of drowning it in blood. These are old, dark, and violent dreams.

They are not facing the same situation as yesterday. Time has passed and bureaucratic capitalism has matured the revolution. The agrarian laws promulgated by the regimes have been failures one after another, and the peasants have understood the lesson: nothing will be given to them, nothing will derive from a law. The land must be conquered by their own armed hands.

The working class is more aggressive, mature. It has a higher level of consciousness, it is numerically larger, politically more powerful, and much stronger than in the past. The popular masses have grown in our country. The petty bourgeoisie is being proletarianized. It has no other destiny than to serve the revolution and put itself at the disposal of the proletariat. Its only course of action is to serve the revolution according to the dictates of the working class and to forcefully fight behind the road paved by the Party. This is good to remember, because from this experience we should particularly win over the intellectuals. As Mariategui has already shown us, the masses must be mobilized and only in this manner will we will fulfill our role and serve the great battle that history has arranged for us.

Comrades, we have concluded that we are embarking into the third epoch of contemporary Peruvian society. But just as yesterday, when we expounded upon the two moments of contemporary Peruvian history as part of the process of the development of bureaucratic capitalism in this country, some condemned us and rejected our thesis and ideals with insolence and contemptible accusations of infantilism. We are putting forth today, with a clear and precise vision, that our country enters a third epoch. This thesis will also be subjected to misunderstanding. But it is no longer possible to condemn us with childish labels of infantilism, because this time, history has shown us to be right in many things, and they will also learn lessons [translator: this refers to the two line struggle within the Party]. Nevertheless, it is not easy for our accusers to easily accept and comprehend it. It requires convincing deeds, concrete actions that pound into their hard heads and shatter their speculation to pieces, so that they also may carry the reality of this country in their spirits.

The understanding of the third epoch is key to the advance of our people. What does the third epoch imply? It implies the revolution, the people with arms in hand begin to seize power, that reaction with 400 years of exploitation, added to the exploitation of other epochs, (comrades, we should think clearly, 400 years of foreign oppression, a vile slave system that continues to exist today, a state which although weak, still has force), implies that reaction will try to contain us and oppose the advance of the revolution. It is well known by materialists that what exists refuses to die; reaction exists and therefore refuses to die. It is an unburied corpse but it protests, negates, resists, and attacks with fury and desperation, opposing its placement into a casket for its burial.

Thus, we must understand that the revolutionary struggle will be hard, violent and cruelly contested by reaction. They will send their sinister army armed to the teeth to fight us, assaulting the working class, the peasants and popular masses, spreading their sinister claws. They will try to encircle, isolate, crush and wipe us out. But we are the future, the strength, and history.

Comrades, revolution and counterrevolution are also contending forces in our country. They are two parts of a unity of opposites in constant struggle. The reactionaries are armed and concentrated, defending the metropolis and capitals. We are rooted in the countryside, in small villages, with the masses, especially with the poor peasants, with the force of the people, among their disorganized force in order to organize it into a powerful army. But this will not be easy. The dark, sinister armies of reaction will fight against us, mount powerful aggressions and great offensives. We will respond in kind, splitting them, making them fall apart, and converting their offensives into a multitude of our small offensives. Therefore, those who encircle will be encircled, the would-be annihilators will be annihilated, the would-be victors will be defeated and the beast will finally be corralled. As we have been taught, the clamor of our armed voices will make them tremble with terror. They will be crushed by their own fears and be converted into scattered black ashes.

That is what will happen. This is the way it is, Comrades. Nevertheless, the fight will be hard, long, difficult and cruel. We need to steel our spirits, be strong, vigorous, fearless and confident in our victory. May the confidence of victory dwell in our hearts in as much as we serve the people and class. The problem is to initiate the armed struggle with decisiveness and firmness. We must deploy it and populate the land with our flags and with sonorous actions that history will record. Comrades, our people are embarking on the seizure of power with arms. We are launching the most magnificent march that our country has ever seen before. Nothing like this will ever be seen again. It will be truly remarkable. This is what we will do! The people, the class, and the proletariat demands it. We can not and must not fail.

 

 

III. The Party Develops Itself Through Armed Struggle.

 

 

It has been more than 80 years of working class struggle and 52 years of the Party's existence. It took about 10 years for a group of men and women, led by Mariategui, about 10 years to found the Party. His name is imprinted forever in our ranks, the peoples of the world and the international working class. Time has passed, many of us have fought, and will continue to struggle until exploitation is abolished. That is our destiny. We are a growing torrent confronting fire, rocks and mud. But our power is greater. We convert everything into our fire. The black fire will be transformed into red fire and the red is light. That is where we are, that is the Reconstitution of the Party. Comrades, we are reconstituted.

The Party is a Party of a new type. The purpose of this Party of a new type is to seize power for the working class and the people of this country. The Party can not be developed more but through the use of arms, through armed struggle. That is the hard lesson we have learned in 50 years, a great lesson that we should never forget: We have no power because we have no guns. Like Chairman Mao has written, whoever has more guns has more power. Whoever wants to seize power must forge an army, and whoever wants to keep power must have a powerful army. This is what we will accomplish. The Party has embarked to develop itself through armed struggle, our historical course. We cannot go backwards.

Comrades, we can now state that the development of the Party has prevailed. Its possible destruction, as it had to be, has been averted. This is the conclusion we can derive from the 2nd Plenary Session of the Central Committee and the First Military School. We have completed a task that we only now have begun to appreciate. We asked ourselves, how will we develop the Party? A plain and simple response is: Through armed struggle. In critical times the situation enters into contentious struggles, and according to the law of contradiction, specific circumstances can lead into development or destruction, of course transitory, but it does not cease to become a destruction if that could lead us to sink in the mud or march through a muddy place.

The Party has triumphed as it had to. Its destruction cannot take place. The Party embarks firmly, decisively, voluntarily and energetically in its development. Comrades, this is what is derived from these meetings. However, what contradiction is being debated? The launching of armed struggle presents a contradiction: The old versus the new. The development of the Party through armed struggle is the new, and the old is our accomplishments up to now, including the good ones. Even the best of our achievements have aged, and no matter how much we add to this tradition, we also add to that great garbage which parties, classes and organizations generate throughout decades. We must be very clear on this point. There is only one new thing, to develop the Party through armed struggle. Today, this is our contradiction. Just like in the international arena where the contradiction is between the strategic offensive and the strategic defensive of reaction, in our country the contradiction is between the armed people and armed reaction. This contradiction, through the People's War, will inevitable lead to the triumph of the class and sweep away 400 years of oppression. Comrades, in the Party there is also a contradiction. It calls for serious reflection and no one should doubt it.

Today, the Communists should be clear on the contradiction of the old versus the new. I reiterate, the new is the armed struggle: the unfading flames of People's War, the steel which must be made purer, the sharp sword and piercing spears in order to wound the entrails of reaction. This is new. Everything else is old, it is the past, and from that past we must guard ourselves, because the past always tries to reestablish itself in a thousand forms in the future.

Comrades, let us not forget that in order to guarantee the consolidation of 100, we need to advance as 200. Today, advancing with 200 means to initiate the armed struggle, to begin the action is the guarantee of thoroughly sowing the new with lead, crumbling the old walls. Comrades, this is the new. Everything else is old. We should be absolutely clear and understand it. The Party has embarked on its development through arms. This is our fundamental situation. Having stated this point, we have three conditions:

First, we embark on the strategic offensive of world revolution. That is our situation. The revolutionary tide is on our side.

Second, the people set out to seize power with arms. The future will be decided through the advancement of People's War.

Third, the Party begins to develop through the armed struggle. Thus, the Party will become the powerful Party which the revolution needs, and since it is needed it must be forged.

Comrades, the world process, the process of the nation and the Party are interrelated. Therefore, the future is assured, it is palpitating in the armed actions that we will commence to undertake. It is a delicate task that needs to be nurtured with the clamor of our arms, developed with guerrilla warfare, fortified with People's War, cared for and nourished like the seed of an army, giving birth to armed columns, allowing it to flourish into a guerrilla army that we must build into a powerful army.

Comrades, these three conditions determine that the Party leads the armed struggle of the masses. In our hearts, minds and wills, the power of the people is alive, and we carry it with us. In the beginning we have no rearguard or we will have one that is small, weak, fragile and uncertain. Comrades, we must never forget the people's power, the State of the working class, the State of workers and peasants. This State marches with us, we carry it on the muzzles of our rifles, nestled in our minds, throbbing in our hands, and it will always be burning in our hearts. It is the first thing on our minds. We should never forget it. Comrades, the armed struggle will be born fragile and weak because it is new, but its destiny will be to develop through change, from the variation of fragility like a tender plant. The roots we plant at the beginning will be the future of a vigorous State. Comrades, all this begins to flourish with the modest and simple actions that tomorrow we will carry out.

There are three interrelated things: world history, the history of our country, and the history of our Party. These are three convergences, three realities, three combinations and only one final conclusion, only one unmovable truth, only one future. We will respond to the flourishing revolution in our country.

 

 

IV. We Begin to Develop the Militarization of the Party Through Actions and Apply the Plan of Initiation.

 

 

This is a derivation from the three issues discussed above. It is a logical, necessary, irrefutable and irreversible conclusion. On the three previous issues, the Party in the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee has concluded as follows: The "Development of the Militarization of the Party through actions." It ratified that through armed actions, the Party will be transformed into a powerful and recognized vanguard of the Peruvian working class, and the legitimate center of the Peruvian revolution. The Second Plenary Session has also ratified a "plan of initiating the armed struggle" that solves a problem unresolved until today, of how to begin the armed struggle. Comrades, this is not to instill ourselves with pride but to understand our immense responsibility. No trace of vanity should ever be in us. Modesty and simplicity should accompany us, and the more we fulfill our tasks, the more modest and simple we become, because we are the faithful servants of the people and class. We should learn to conduct ourselves in that manner. Many things will change and even more profoundly among us. We have comrades by way of the actions of universal history, by Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought, by the labor of our people that begin to define their history through arms, by the labor of fifty years of Party struggle and of innumerable Communists, and as a derivation from what our own founder initiated. We have resolved the problem of initiating the armed struggle. We have resolved the first fundamental military problem, how to initiate the armed struggle. We know what needs to be done and how to arm ourselves. Most importantly, we know how to raise up the peasantry so that through arduous struggles we can unleash guerrilla actions from that powerful land. We know how to confront and destroy their encirclements.

Comrades, the problem of initiating the armed struggle in Peru is resolved. No one should have doubts about it. We have nothing to doubt. The problem is resolved. Take it for what it is, a derivation from Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought, a result of our people embarking on the seizure of power with arms. A derivation from fifty years of the Party. Thus, we will have a historical sense, a comprehension and knowledge of where we stand now, where we are going and the safe port we will arrive.

 

 

V. We Arm Ourselves in Theory and Practice to Launch the People's War.

 

 

We are arming ourselves in theory and practice with the Military Line and with the general political mobilization. We are forming detachments and developing actions to initiate the armed struggle. This should be indelibly recorded.

This First Military School is historic. We asked ourselves, what is this school? If the Second Session of the Central Committee is the "Chime of Glory", what is this school? We will repeat it once more, it is "the Seal and Breach", because it closes and opens. It concludes our unarmed life and begins our People's War. Comrades, that is this school. Here we have applied the agreements of the Second Plenary Session of the Central Committee. We have successfully completed and resolved problems, that the Central Committee shall ratify very soon, at the same time it arranges for the Party's readjustment and the commencing of actions.

Thus, the Party, through its central organizations, its leaders and cadres, arms itself with the military line in theory and practice. Comrades, the last meeting is a demonstration of the distribution of forces: proof of the encirclement and annihilation of pessimism and opposition. It has burned and annihilated what among us and inside of us could have opposed. We have raised up optimism and are filled with enthusiasm. The victories to come have been unfurled. We must understand it in this way. We have seen the fighters march, we have seen advanced fighters with their leaders at the foreground, opening breaches; we have seen the ranks march in order to maintain and support the actions. We have seen at last the definitive action, a passionate and ardent faith to reach the summit. What we have done today is a demonstration of how to act militarily. That is why we say we are arming ourselves theoretically and practically. In this manner, arming the cadres and leaders for basic effectiveness, we have obviously entered the general political mobilization. Remember what Chairman Mao said: the key is to mobilize the cadres. That has been accomplished. The mobilization has begun, and what we have achieved here will be reverberated tomorrow in more powerful waves, because the masses yearn to hear the Party say that we should begin to take action and they want to know how to do this. Comrades, let us inform the bases of the good news. We must apply the plan of initiation and we should start it tomorrow. It is what the beating hearts of the militants and the masses that work jointly with us desire to hear and dream of realizing.

Comrades, the general political mobilization of the Party is on the march. Forming armed detachments and developing military actions we initiate the armed struggle. This begins from here, and that is why this meeting is both a seal and a breach.

 

 

VI. We Are the Initiators.

 

 

We are the initiators. We began by stating we are the initiators. And we end by stating we are the initiators. Initiators of what? Of the People's War and the armed struggle that is in our hands, shining in our minds, beating in our hearts and irrepressibly agitating in our wills. This is what we are "a handful of men and women, Communists, paying homage to the leadership of the Party, the proletariat and the people. On this 19th of April, history will state, standing upright they expressed their declaration of revolutionary faith, with their hearts burning with an inextinguishable passion, with firm and resolute wills, and with clear and bold minds, assuming their historical obligation of being the Initiators. What they decided on April 19th took shape in autumn with boycotts and the harvest, followed through with actions against the reactionary power, aiming at local authority, continued with land seizures and with the peasant masses in rebellion the guerrillas were raised up. The guerrillas generated the powerful army we have become today, and the State based on it. Our country is free..." That is what they will say, comrades. This is materialized in our party decision, apparently simple but of great historical importance.

Comrades, do these three final issues also presents us with contradictions? Yes, they do. Here, in the Party, the focus is on our agreement concerning the "Development of the Militarization of the Party through actions" and in applying our Plan of Initiation is the essence of the new, a new part of the world which cannot be detained because our armed hands have surged with more to follow tomorrow. The new is focused in our country, the armed solution, and the Party's development through arms intensifies through the armed struggle. Thus, on the question of developing and applying the plan of initiation, the new is the focus and the old is confronted. The old will pledge itself to the opposite, but it is already defeated, it is a great defeat for the Right. Their destruction is already assured, the development has triumphed, let us shape it through thunder, write it with lead, so that it remains written forever on pages of steel upon the ridge of the mountains; so that it can never be erased nor written in a contrary form. That is the contradiction.

At the end, everything reduces to a fifth problem. The contradiction enters to address the problems of arms, war, armed struggle and how to initiate it. If up to now we have acted as an unarmed people, the problem now is that we begin to act with armed hands. From times of peace to times of war. And the times of war have other requirements and other urgent demands.

Comrades, the contradictions will accumulate but we will handle them. We have learned to handle history, the laws and contradictions. It is in our hands to resolve them, shaping them with armed deeds. Nothing will stop us. We will pass through times of irreversible war, the contradiction will unfold, it will take us to a successful conclusion.

We are the initiators. What contradiction is presented to us? We and the other Communists of our bases, present or not, who reverberate within us, await with anxiety what is decided here. All of us have a problem, a contradiction: the great rupture. Comrades, the time has come. It is time for a great rupture. We will break all ties with what is old and rotten in order to completely and thoroughly destroy it, for if we have an interest in that decrepit world, we would not be able to destroy it. Men speaking individually can be weak. Each of us should think hard. As an individual, each person can be fragile and weak. But the revolution is all-powerful, and the armed revolution even more so, because it is sustained by the masses, who are the force of the land and led by the Party, which is the light of the universe.

Comrades, we begin the great rupture. We have stated many times that we embark upon that rupture and that many ties shall be broken since it links us to the old and rotten order, and if we don't do it, we could never demolish it. Comrades, the time has come, there is nothing more to discuss, the debate has been exhausted. It is time to act, it is the moment of rupture and it will not be done with slow and tardy meditation, nor in the halls nor in silent rooms. It will be done with the roar of armed actions. This is the form for carrying it out, a correct and adequate form, the only form. It is through actions, as we have studied, that the conscious capacity of people intensifies, the will is tenser, our passions more powerful and our energy enraged. Comrades, through actions we will find the energy, force, and sufficient capacity for the great rupture. We have embarked upon this. The trumpets begin to sound, the murmur of the masses grows and it will continue growing, it will deafen us, it will bring us to a powerful vortex, with one note: We will become the protagonists of history, conscious, organized and armed. Thus, the great rupture will be open and we will become the makers of a definitive dawn. This is what we have embarked upon, comrades.

I want to conclude. This School, this First Party Military School, is the seal and the breach, it seals the deeds done up to today and opens a breach for tomorrow. What we have accomplished until now is very positive and has borne fruit. There is a saying that people are judged by their deeds. The deed is done, it is before us. There is nothing more to prove. What has been done until now is good. The breach, what we must do, will be even greater and definitively the only great thing we have to accomplish. It will come forth from arms, from the barrels of the guns. It will come forth from the direct action of the Party upon the masses. It will come forth from the People's War.

Comrades, this school is historic. We cannot understand its dimension, we cannot weigh it as it deserves unless we turn our gaze decades into the future. This is the School of the Initiators. It is the name given to it by the Central Committee. In a word it is IAS 80 (ILA 80), which means: Initiate the Armed Struggle in 1980. It is a commitment and challenge. We are deployed. We will surpass it. I am not only saying that we will accomplished it, but we will surpass it, because it is a mandate and a historic necessity imposed upon us by our people, nobody can speak to the contrary.

Comrades, the role of the School of Initiators, ILA 80 is: Initiate the armed struggle in 1980. Decades later, in the future, it will interpreted like this: ILA 80, the armed struggle was initiated in 1980. ILA was done here. That word is beautiful, it has a double meaning and if we look at it even more, it has a further meaning. It is the synthesis of what we done up to now. It shapes all the past. Comrades, what has guided us? To initiate the armed struggle, was not this stated in the Ninth Plenum? Comrades, it is the past summarized, opening into the present, it is the future that must be irrevocably accomplished. ILA 80 is also the implementation of our past agreement on initiating the armed struggle. In the present it means initiating the armed struggle today, this year, and in the future. The armed struggle was initiated in 1980.

Comrades, all that we have done during these complex days, in difficult moments, but in the final analysis, satisfactory days, fruitful, healthy, good and vital days, is all realized in the "School of Initiators: ILA 80."

The Central Committee and the Political Bureau of the Central Committee congratulates those present and everyone else because with their actions they helped in the materialization of this reality. Congratulations to the Party, because with its actions, it has made this reality concrete. Congratulations to the masses and our people, because their actions through centuries have been realized here. Congratulations to the working class of the world, the international proletariat and the peoples of the world, because their actions have borne fruit here. We render homage, as always, to the unfading flags of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought, because their grandeur which will always live has been realized here. They, now live within us. The spirit of the revolution dwells in the Party, our people, and our class. Finally it has arrived! All our struggles have been validated. Comrades, finally it has been realized: Initiate the armed struggle today. Everything that we have accomplished, including errors that have served as experience, are validated here. This is the essence of this School.

The Central Committee, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee feels and expresses through this speaker an immense delight, because we have completed a simple and magnificent task: That the initiation of the armed struggle, ILA 80, dwells here and puts the final touches on the past, specifies the present and opens the future. Comrades, we have accomplished this. Thus the future opens with promise and hope. We remember the words of a wise old man: "What life promises you, fulfill it yourself to life."

Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought, the international proletariat, the people of the world, the working class, the people of this country, the Party with its bases, cadres, and leaders, all this magnificent action through the centuries has been realized here. The promise blossoms and the future unfolds. ILA 80.

Our duty is to fulfill it. What has been given to us as a future, we must fulfill it with our own lives, for the people, workers, and Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought.

Comrades, the efforts invested are a satisfaction, a delight in the accomplished tasks, pleased by what has been done, and seek no compensation.

 

The future is in the barrels of the guns! The armed revolution has begun!

Glory to Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-tung Thought!

Long Live the Communist Party of Peru!

Initiate the Armed Struggle!

 

(From the First Military School, April 19, 1980)

 

 

TOWARDS GUERRILLA WARFARE!

 

 

The first part of this meeting gives us essential conclusions:

I. The Plan of Initiation, its application and the conclusion of the first actions, are brilliant and all-round success of transcendental importance, with great repercussions that have kindled the ever living flames of the People's War in our country.

II. Summarizing the experiences of the General Balance of the first actions has led to further develop the Party's military line, and advanced its consolidation, crushing the Rightism which proposed militarist positions tending to evolve into a bourgeois militarist line.

III. The Party fortified in the forging of its first actions is on a war footing ready to march toward the launching of guerrilla warfare.

The first stands out as a brilliant and clear success obtained by the Party, which has a great historical repercussion.

The second indicates that in the balance of the first actions, the military line of the Party has developed and advanced. It has consolidated by combating militarist positions that tend to evolve as a bourgeois military line. In this manner, we have obtained a major development and consolidation. The military line, like all lines, only develops and consolidates itself in struggle.

The third establishes and highlights that the Party is prepared to march towards the beginning of guerrilla warfare.

We have finished the first phase, which is essential and the basis of this meeting of the Expanded Central Committee. Upon these solid bases, we can outline the national and international context and lay out the plan to begin the guerrilla war. We should be very conscious of the brilliant and great success of the application of the Plan of Initiation of the armed struggle. This plan is of historic transcendence and has shaken the country, placing the Party in the center of the class struggle and political contention.

The constant struggle of Communist militants as the expression of proletarian class struggle and the masses of our country has been historically molded and defined in the countryside. We have embarked upon a superior form of struggle, armed struggle, to destroy the old order and construct a new society.

From now on, the People's War dwells in us and inhabits the nation. Its ever-burning flames kindle and inflame our people. Its flames will be invincible, trembling and demolishing the rotten dominant society, flames from whose hearts will be born the most potent bonfire of the future.

It has befallen to us the historical mission of launching the armed struggle in our country and to develop it and sustain it as part of the struggles of Latin America, the international proletariat, the peoples of the world and world revolution, which we serve by adhering faithfully to the principle of proletarian internationalism.

The struggle will be long but fruitful, bloody but brilliant, and hard but vigorous and omnipotent. It has been said that the world will be transformed with arms, and that is what we are doing now. From the barrels of guns everything will come. We are already living it and we will see it more as the People's War develops.

To the Communists members of this Party, in this country, who have broken the stonewall of more than fifty years, their spirits must be no less than vibrant today with the realization of this great balance which proves and tests the achievements, counting, measuring and weighing the future. We are very conscious of and responsible for our actions. We have nothing to be vain about except to fulfill our duty. We have nothing to brag about, since glory is for the class, the people and the Party. Nevertheless, we need to be optimists, assured that the pebbles of the new order begin to fall into place. The future begins to be written. We will write the new history with flowers of stone in bronze forever more. We will tame the hills, we will write a new history with the points of swords, the light of fire, tearing down iniquity and giving birth to the future.

For every Communist Party that assumes its role as the armed vanguard of the proletariat, there comes a time to tear away the centuries of oppression. It lets out its war cries and assaults the heavens, the shadows and the night. It begins to tear down the old and rotten reactionary walls, it begins to rattle and crackle like dry leaves before new and tender flames, before young but crackling bonfires. The People's War begins to sweep away the old order in order to inevitably destroy it. From the old, the new shall be born. And finally, like the pure and glorious phoenix bird, Communism will arise for all time.

We should unfurl optimism and overflow with enthusiasm, futhermore thinking that we serve to carry out a task that will last forevermore. We humans are mere fragments of time and heart beats, but our deeds will remain for centuries stamped on generation after generation. Men march inevitably towards their end, but humanity, the working class and their creations will never end. We will people the Earth with light and happiness.

With us, with our armed struggle, the authentic and only true liberty begins to be born. We are trumpets of the future, the inextinguishable fire that crackles in the stormy present.

Long Live The Irresistible March Towards Guerrilla Warfare!

(Expanded Central Committee, August 24, 1980)