This note refers to "Peru's Shining Path: A Critique of the Critique", posted in the Peruvian list in the week of March 22-27, 1993 from the address lecourt@u.washington.edu. If somebody needs the original note, it could be requested, I presume, to such address. If that address does not respond, I will be willing to forward the original article. I personally do not care who posted the original article, and I give her/him the benefit of the doubt, assuming that just forgot to sign her/his article. I do not care, either, if that person is Christian, Muslim, White, Cholo, French or if (s)he lives in Manhattan, Mozambique or Andahuaylas. I think all that is unimportant and should not be put into consideration. Finally, I am posting this in English, because the original article was also posted in English. In the article, I will call the author "Lecourt", and change his/her sex just for the heck of it.
The article opens with an invocation to understand the Shining Path phenomenon, because Lecourt has grown tired of the misinformation. The thesis of the article is that the Shining Path would NOT be "the more blood thirsty group in the Americas". The method followed to test the thesis is a somehow statistic (and therefore supposedly academic) comparison of SL with the El Salvador's FMLN. Sources: America's Watch' reports and other public sources. As to her objective, the author says "My intention is to force the debate about the Shining Path out of the good guy/bad guy problematic and into the more general but infinitely more concrete question of whether radical change is desirable or not."
Nice. So far so good. Now for some comments.
First, the basic premise is that the problem is the need of radical change. Granted: Peru's ills are too many as to solve anything with band aids or good wishes. But there is a BIG problem that Lecourt's shares with Sendero: No statement whatsoever of the direction of change. If you make a survey among Peruvians of what Sendero wants, you will have all kinds of answers, very few among them related to the desired organization of society. If Lecourt just wants radical change, that's very sad: she would represent the most non-scientific and anti-anything tendencies in that vaporous entity called "the Left". Even Sinead O'Connor (who sings beautifully, no buts here) has some sort of program which she speaks or rather yells about at every opportunity, like she did at the Bob Dylan's celebration. Sendero wants a "Socialist Society of New Democracy", but does not give too many clues of what that may be. (By the way, Sinead's political program does not have anything to do with Sendero's, in spite of her subscribing a letter of concern for a fair trail to and the health of Abimael Guzman.)
Second: Lecourt says that "the good guy/bad guy problematic" should not be an issue. The answer to this proposition is not demonstrable, for it is based on the acceptance or rejection of the ages-old question of whether the end justifies the means, any means. This is an issue, a big issue which has to be decided by the will of the people affected by the change. I am not advocating here a referendum in the Western style, which would be affected by the usual brain-washing propaganda which characterizes Western elections, with a strong probability that the candidate or idea with more money wins. Sendero, in this regard, behaves as many other fundamentalist groups that today make headlines, without any regard for what the feelings and desires of the "masses" are. In the case of Sendero, the good guy/bad guy issue may be the most important one, for they themselves categorize people into those two categories: either you are with us, or you are an enemy to us.
Third, Lecourt uses data and jumps dates with total disregard for history. Point in case: Lecourt quotes a 1989 report by America's Watch: "Sendero assassinated 10 governors and lieutenant-governors, six engineers and officials of development projects", and after quoting that, goes to a 1986 report to sustain that "agricultural technicians and development workers are not bothered by Sendero as long as none of them is installed as an authority..." This is terrible misuse of information. In 1986, what America's Watch said was true: people working for research programs in which I was involved were faced with Sendero people who at that time told them to keep doing what they were doing, but were warned not to interfere in local politics. All development workers knew that, and were very careful in keeping themselves to the technical side of the work, because they felt that their mission (agricultural research, for instance) was for the benefit of the local people, and they continued working, even with fear. Then, in 1988, Sendero began the systematic killing of development workers in all positions: from technicians to volunteers. The first one was in mid-1988, in the central Sierra, where two locally hired research workers (one happened to be an American citizen but was not an expatriate in the usual sense of the word, who worked for US$400 per month) were assassinated in the field. Contrary to former Sendero practices, no warnings had been issued for these people to leave. This left most observers momentarily baffled, thinking that the killings were a mistake, but soon it was clear that Sendero's tactics had changed. One after another, modest development workers, known scientists, reputed scholars, journalists, priests began to fall to Sendero: most of them were guilty of great love for the Sierra and their people. Even the systematic killing of local authorities cannot be accepted in countless cases, in which these are just local people who in many cases feel the need to lead their villages to better times. The whole issue here is _terrorism_, as a method to achieve some goals. There was terrorism in many other movements in history, but as far as I know, only the very cynical (Menachem Begin in Israel comes to mind) have felt proud of what they did. There is a big difference when terrorism occurs as a by-product of a revolution, as opposed to the main means to achieve the goals. In any case, decent human beings have to condemn both stances of terrorism: the systematic and the "casual". The essence of terrorism is to kill and destroy to paralyze people out of fear. And this means destroying whatever it is there that people appreciate, and killing leaders, i.e. the best people you can find there. (Please note that my point here is the defense of non-combatants human rights, which Sendero disregards, totally.)
Fourth, the whole exercise of comparing who killed more mayors, if Sendero or the FMLN is void of any significance. In both cases, I would believe that those killings grossly violated the rights of non-combatants, unless one can be led to believe that all mayors killed were informants of the military, which in the case of Peru is out of the question. To put a sign in the chest of somebody telling that he/she was an informant is not enough evidence. The mock trials of Sendero are totally inhuman, and should be condemned. Now, as to the comparison with El Salvador, Lecourt should try this exercise: it was possible to go to the field in El Salvador during the war, with confidence that one's life would be respected by both sides (I was twice in the countryside working with small farmers). That is not the case in Peru, where in most Sierra rural areas you can be killed, without even knowing who did you in! Why does not Lecourt compare how many frontal combats have occurred between the FMLN army and the government forces, with the number of frontal combats between Sendero and the military in Peru? In the case of Sendero that number approaches zero. This shows that the nature of terrorist acts is very different in the two stated cases. I cannot argue whether the FMLN became more or less vicious (do not have data), but they kept a STANDING army until the very end. In the case of Sendero, terrorism is the ONLY tactic they have used. As of combats, the only ones that could receive such name are the ones that seem to happen in the coca-growing region of the Upper Huallaga valley, where Sendero fights the military to protect the money-making machine of drug trafficking. Elsewhere, Sendero almost never (I do not know of any cases) frontally engages the military, and its targets are infrastructure and non-combatants.
The MIM wants them together
Fifth, the Pol Pot connection is not an invention. The four or five times this network has seen first or second-hand postings of the Maoist International Movement, they themselves have put Abimael Guzman and Pol Pot in the same league.
Lecourt's case is flawed, and her misuse of information does not help to her purposes of shifting the focus to the problems of Peru and the need for radical change. Many people -me included- cannot offer a clear alternative, but that does not mean that we should surrender our principles just because somebody else is doing something. The costs of Sendero's war are terrible for Peruvians of today and for Peruvians of tomorrow, no matter if Sendero itself is in the government: the _systematic_ destruction of infrastructure, scientific knowledge and installations, animals (including alpacas), and ethnic groups cannot be condoned under any circumstances. There has to be a better way. The response of the Peruvian government has in many cases been at the same level of Sendero's attacks, and that is regrettable and is also constantly denounced in this medium.
Finally, I suggest that Lecourt studies, if that is possible, some ethics. If after 15 years of "studying" Sendero that is the best you can deliver, you have a problem, an ethical problem, very similar to those that occur in academia through misrepresentation, hiding of data, quoting out of context, etc., etc., but with more, by a long way, far-reaching consequences, including the lives and human rights of people, the future of children, the environment, etc. Please apologize. Not to us, to them.