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Gonzalo
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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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chapotraphouse
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The leader of the movement admitting to massacring peasants and saying it was good and he would do it again does in fact repudiate his entire ideological strain that he invented
source? cuz others in this thread say thats a misinterpretation of the facts, like the dude gave a non-apology apparently more than it was condoned but idk
http://www.redsun.org/pcp_doc/pcp_0788.htm
Here is an interview where Gonzalo just outright states he murdered ~70 indigenous men, women and children in Lucanamarca village and called it “revolutionary excess”.
Of those killed by the Shining Path, eighteen were children, the youngest of whom was only six months old. Also killed were eleven women.
Why does he openly defend killing 29 indigenous women and child peasants as a good tactic? Like what the fuck?
He’s talking about slaughtering peasant children to deal a “devastating blow”
You got a source for this part?
The interview doesn't seem quite as damning as you're making it out to be. He seems to be saying they dealt a devastating blow to the mesnadas.(which are supposedly government-run paramilitaries?)
He claims the army came in and
right before he says
So he doesn't appear to be saying they murdered a bunch of unarmed peasants, he's saying they attacked an armed paramilitary group.
This also doesn't suggest unarmed peasants.
I'm not saying he's telling the truth, or that they didn't kill any innocent people. It's just far from him openly admitting they killed babies.
He did this by killing 29 women and children in an unrelated village? This is open revenge killing of the poorest and most oppressed in society. shameful to defend this shit. The reports actually have 69 deaths whereas Gonzalo claims 80. Basically half of the deaths were kids and random civilians? This is not how the Bolsheviks fought their revolution, nor the Chinese Communists. They didn't kill peasant children purposefully and include them in their "kill count" they "annihilated". This is bloodthirsty mania, out of control, aimed downward not at the rich.
I'm not sure it matters too much (if the events there are as presented by the commission) that there were women killed does it? A lot of the membership of the communist side were women, which possibly meant they didn't uphold 'chivalric' values (for want of a better term) in wartime.
As for indigenous, Mao of course killed a lot of indigenous Chinese in the course of his war. I'm not sure using these categories of people for moral outrage is useful for analysis, unless there's some kind of sustained genocidal campaign, which there clearly wasn't.
Children of course are usually somewhat different, but as we know the Romanov children died during that revolution, and I would be surprised if thats the only example.
I'm not defending these actions - its bad optics to do so and so you must always caveat with this - but war is always like this. I suppose all you can do is weigh the result against what it took to get there - like the Terror in France, or the purge of landlords in China.
where i come free we don't slaughter unarmed women with machetes and boiling water comrade. some say it's not their revolution if they can't dance, for me that line is slaughtering defenseless women and children especially those of the people you're supposed to be fighting on behalf of. If you fuck up and bomb an area or accidentally shoot up an orphanage or something, you don't proudly display it as a good tactic that you are unapologetic about. That's something to feel shame about that is a great crime. If your soldiers commit such crimes, they should be shot - as Lenin often did to any criminals among the reds who mistreated the people
Mao and Ho Chi Minh were part of the people. Gonzalo obviously was not if he had to resort to this sort of terror
Well no revolution is fighting on behalf of all the people is it?
You're admirably vehement in defending the official version of events, have you wondered if you might be wrong? Like, if your opinion and view of what happened aligns with the US state department (among other imperialists and colonisers, and anti-communists), what if this is another case of lies like the supposed Uyghur genocide, or the 'holodomer', or basically any of the things the US tends to say about its enemies? What about this particular case, Peru, convinces you that the US and the colonial government are correct and not lying?
Unlike the Uyghur genocide lies there’s actually corpses here. Xi also doesn’t make speeches where he talks about how much he collectively punished the Uyghurs and “annihilated” them
That's your (and the US, Peruvian colonial anti-communist gov, and European) interpretation of the speech, in accordance with the same 'sides' claims about what happened - as has been pointed out to you, but you seemingly aren't in agreement with, although you haven't mentioned why.
Corpses of course occur in every conflict - it would actually however be useful as a piece of evidence as to what happened, provided of course we can trust the investigatory body that conducted autopsies, and there was nothing suspicious about the process (like in the Oct 7th case, or Bucha). Do you have a source for such autopsies or investigations, I couldn't find one when i looked?
We do have testimony, from members of the 'terrorist'/liberation group that operates in that region (as well as poor people who understandably will take money to say whatever is asked of them), regarding the alleged Uyghur genocide, and China has discussed previously its 'security' campaign in that area, which naturally involved killings - annihilations - of combatants (as well as police action, arrests and so on). There was also allegations of 'collective punishment' via mass arrests, seperation of families. Xi is unlikely to say such things, because of his position and circumstance - it would hardly be useful to brag about the defeat of a comparatively insignificant enemy force.
Of course, in the case of the Uyghur 'genocide' we can easily say that its a nonsense, that what happened there is not as the west alleges, for various reasons - mostly that we have more evidence from a wide array of sources, including the Chinese (and local government) side of the conflict. That isn't so in the Peruvian case as I'm sure you'll acknowledge - which is why I think leftists have been persuaded more easily to take the US state department line about savage murderous barbarian enemies of all that is good and right, who were supposedly hated by the people of Peru.
Incidentally, how do you feel, given what you've said previously (about the Red Army) about the so called Katyn massacres? The Russians admitted responsibility - though not that it was a war crime - in the 90s. Personally, my view of it is that it is likely that it was the Germans, but that it was expedient or useful to 'admit' responsibility (Stalin being long gone) for Russia at the time. Further, I'd also say that even if it did happen by the Soviets, I'm fairly indifferent to it - a bunch of military, aristos, and their sympathisers getting offed in the course of a war isn't a big deal.
Which comes to the point made by the Peruvian communists, that 'human rights' and 'war crimes' are a product of Imperial and Colonial governments. This is true, thats who drew the laws up. I don't think that means that there is no moral or ethical code, but rather that a concept of human rights must be the product of all of humanity to be meaningful. For example, its considered a war crime to take hostages, as Hamas (and the Peruvian communists) did. This is absurd of course - provided the hostages are treated well I don't see a problem, hostage taking is a very effective tactic in warfare particularly against a stronger and wealthier opponent, which is why its considered illegal by strong wealthy states. Collective punishment is another example - there are obviously degrees of such, and those matter when determining justification. Mass restriction of movement, while not ideal, is hardly the same as mass indiscriminate bombing (in fact is simply what happens at borders between states every day).
It's a much worse look since Gonzalo wasn't Indigenous but some white settler. It just reminds me of CHAZ where they made so much about CHAZ being free of the US but a couple of Black teens got murdered by white settler guards, meaning that CHAZ managed to reproduced the settler-colonial plantation of the US.
Honestly, the main takeaway from Gonzalo is that decolonization has to be the primary focus within settler colonies (Peru is a settler colony as well) and if your so-called revolutionary movement isn't decolonial, it will reproduce settler-colonialism. That's what the whole killing Indigenous peasants represented in the end. It's just a reproduction of settler-colonialism, which is inherently genocidal towards the Indigenous and Indigeneity. Towards the end, Indigenous communities began to take up arms against the PCP. You could say that those armed militia are reactionary, but to me, it's just them wanting to chase out settler crackers and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
its important though to seperate the 'look' from the actual circumstances. Was he anti-indigenous, did he kill indigenous Peruvians deliberately because of their ethnicity, or because some were fighting on the side of landed interests?
Lots of bolsheviks were Jewish, of course that doesn't mean that in killing Russian opponents they were carrying out an anti-Russian campaign - although that is a common rightist accusation, presumably because of how it 'looks'.
As far as I understand Peru, a lot of the rural areas have indigenous populations, partly because many fled there during the European conquest. I don't think it is possible that the resistance movement could have done what it did without the support of a large amount of indigenous people. Of course, some will have opposed the communists - the armed militia, referred to as 'peasant patrols' seem to me to be paramilitaries assisted by the state and fighting for landowners, particularly cattle ranchers.