THE REAL STORY OF THE MOTHER COURAGE
Maria Elena Moyano ("Mother Courage") was a city official in the Shantytown of Villa El Salvador, on the dusty southern outskirts of Peru's capital Lima. She was a vice-mayor who administered a network of self-managed businesses, including soup kitchens. The Communist Party of Peru (PCP) leading the People's Front "Revolutionary Defense Movement" (MRDP) has a strong political presence in Villa EL Salvador (700,000 people) and continuously clashes with the powerful State political machine headed in 1992 by Moyano and in 1997 by Michel Azcueta, a Spanish nationalized Peruvian.
The people charged Moyano with serious crimes for many years. She has been denounced by local people for misappropriating the funds of the charity programs intended for the relief of the hungry. She countered by charging anyone who dared to criticize her with membership in the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), developing lists of "suspected terrorists," and their subsequent arrest by the political police (SIN, Dincote.) As a result, hundreds of women, men and even children were arrested, tortured, and assassinated by the military. Among them were 15 members of the PCP. Moyano was instrumental in organizing urban paramilitary (the rondas) with the purpose of breaking the strikes and defending the interests of Peru's ruling class.
The PCP has thoroughly investigated those charges for about two years. A year long campaign of denouncements were carried out in El Diario and local community papers. Moyano countered by expanding her counterrevolutionary activities to other districts of Lima calling for an "antiterrorist front" and working hand-in-hand with the military.
Moyano's political party, the Movement for Socialist Affirmation (MAS), was a legal "left" outfit whose very existence was based on being an organized link between the Shantytown poor and their oppressors. The MAS party represented the right wing of the so-called "United Left" coalition. MAS supported today's dictator Alberto Fujimori in his 1990 presidential campaign. Two members of MAS held ministerial posts, one of them was Gloria Helfer, the first minister of education in Fujimori's government.
The public activities of Moyano were known, but how did the PCP learn the details of Moyano's dirty work at the service of the Peruvian intelligence services? The PCP's intelligence is the thousand eyes and ears of the people. Gordon McCormick of the U.S. Naval Military Academy in Monterrey, CA, and US Department of Defense (USDOD) consultant, has an answer:
"...Sendero has been so effective at infiltrating the police and military in Peru, it even planted key aids to the Chief of Army Intelligence . . . " [Intelligence Report, Parade Magazine, March 6, 1994.] On February 15, 1992, as the whole Lima area was paralyzed by a historic armed strike, a woman fighter from the PCP delivered the ultimate punishment. Moyano was executed.
Since the execution of Moyano, enemies of the revolution in Peru and the world have made Moyano into their symbol. The Church hierarchy portrays Moyano as a "model grassroots activist." Like morticians who paint and reshape the faces of corpses, opportunists and revisionists remade Moyano into a "feminist leader." Fujimori and his top military called her "Mother Courage" and "one of the best generals of the war against subversion." Senderologists and the government cried for her departure. It was a great loss for the counterrevolution. People in Peru asked, since when in the republican history of Peru has the loss of a supposedly "popular leader" been deeply missed by the big Peruvian bourgeoisie and imperialism?
U.S. LIBERAL OUTLETS: ALLIES OF COUNTERREVOLUTION IN PERU.
"Nacla" revealed its anti-Communist campaign in its reports on Peru. It dedicated complete issues in January 1991 and 1996 to defame the Communist Party of Peru. The articles are generally written or have as sources the same discredited and biased Peruvian and Yankee Senderologists: Ivan Degregori, Raul Gonzalez, Carlos Tapia, Starn, Manrique, Palmer, McClintock, etc. There are other mediocre intellectuals in NACLA, who without further investigation, repeat the lies of the Senderologists and Fujimori against the PCP: Renique, Jo-Marie Burt and Mario Murillo (an employee at WBAI Pacifica radio in New York City.) Their attacks are consistent with the US government's denunciations of supposed attacks of "terrorism" against the developing "democracy" of Fujimori.
The liberal The Nation has also played a role in the demonization of the "shining path," as it did with the demonization of the "Vietcong" during the Vietnam war. But the fact is that both labels "shining path" and "Vietcong" only exists in their imagination. They were myths created by the CIA to discredit the Communist Parties leading the revolution.
The Nation has published several anti-PCP articles written by the pseudo-journalist, and trafficker of Third World struggles (e.g., Central America) and Consultant on Peru for America's Watch, Robin Kirk. She has used the pages of The Nation to launch a myriad of unsubstantiated slanders against the People's War. For example, on May 17, 1992 The Nation published an ad: "Peru's Shining Path: a Deadly Road." The ad was signed by the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi/USA and others. The first paragraph of the ad read: "Maria Elena Moyano was a feminist, a progressive activist, a gifted African-Peruvian working class leader. She founded a woman's group that set up dozens of communal kitchens to feed her desperately poor community. In 1989, Moyano was elected vice mayor of that community. On February 15, 1992, she was shot to death and her body dynamited in front of her horrified family and friends. Her killers? The Shining Path . . . Since Shining Path took up arms in 1980, the vast majority of its victims have been the very people the group pretends to be fighting for: peasants and poor urban dwellers. It has also murdered religious and development workers, bombed schools, homes and nonmilitary targets." Thus, the Nation's message was that a crazy group has killed a saint, a veritable "Mother Theresa." The same ad was published in Peru by the official government paper "El Peruano."
The Nation tried to fool its readers with this message: "These people are killing leftists. If Moyano was a people's heroine, then those who killed her must be heartless terrorists who don't deserve support from us." Fortunately, facts are stubborn things and people are not so simple minded that they can be fooled by the reactionary propaganda against the revolution.
OPERATION BEANS AND BULLETS
The sea of oppressed people surrounding Peru's capital Lima, millions of proletarians and former peasants, who were driven from the countryside by poverty and military oppression, built sprawling Shantytowns around the capital. These immigrants along with others who came during the last three decades are now the vast majority of the population in Lima.
The ruling class of Peru has long understood that these Shantytowns represented a danger to the system. For twenty-five years, various bourgeois political parties have worked to build progovernment networks in these towns. Literally, every political institution of the old society--the military, the church, the extreme right-wing parties and the reform "left"--uses food giveaways to buy votes and political loyalty.
In Peru, the game of turning hunger into reactionary political organization is called clientelismo or asistencialismo "hand outs." This is the way reactionaries and revisionists operate.
However, these political parties are only "funneling" funds that originally came from outside imperialist forces. They receive financing from the governments of the United States, Holland, Spain, Germany, Canada and other countries. Many times the money arrives directly through NGOs and also through Caritas (Catholic Church), Ofasa (Adventist Church), USAID (Division of Food for Development, directed by operatives in the U.S. Embassy in Lima), the World Bank, the UN, and other institutions of imperialism and the rest of the powers.
The army and police conduct raking operations in the poor neighborhoods. They break in modest homes, stealing, arresting, torturing, and brutally raping women. Shortly after these military operations, they hand out food and register the name of each household member to try to pacify them. Thereafter, once the shantytown is under military control, Fujimori accompanied by the TV and the government controlled press, stages a scenario in which he is showed "enjoying a great support" while handing out crumbs to the poor. This criminal practice has been done periodically in the interior of the country as well, where while the army does the dirty job, Fujimori visits the survivors so that the evening news will report to the world how "popular " he is. The raking operations and the crimes of the military preceding these visits of the "popular president" are swept under the rag by the yellow press in Peru .
This has been part of the counterinsurgency campaign known as low intensity warfare. In the US, the people who traffick with the needs of the people are often called "poverty pimps." Similarly, in Villa El Salvador, Melena Moyano was a "poverty pimp" that distributed food with political goals and counterinsurgency purposes. A network of 1,174 kitchens served almost 500,000 meals a day. No meal is left after 1PM.
POSITION OF THE PCP REGARDING THE SOUP KITCHENS
The PCP is not against the soup kitchens and hand outs that our people are rightfully entitled to. The PCP is firmly opposed to the political manipulation of those who blackmail the hungry to mobilize them against the revolution. Within this large organization, two conflicting class trends contend and collide: The Cafeterias are centers of collective organizing among the masses, especially among women, but at the same time, the Cafeterias were the basis for a corrupt political machine tied to the Church, the old State, and its various parties, as well as to foreign imperialist powers.
During the APRA and Fujimori regimes, the legal left parties were coopted and rewarded with funding by the government and international NGOs to try to organize the masses by providing them hand outs (e.g., food and used clothes.) Those who refused to be coopted were regarded as subversive, arrested, or killed. This process began in the late 1980's when Left Unity's Alfonso Barrantes was mayor of Lima, at which time he secured foreign funding for a Glass of Milk program.
Melena Moyano was no "grassroots organizer." She was a big-time bureaucratic hack who controlled this big Cafeteria system, including warehouses, cheese factories and an extensive patronage system, all on the basis of her political connections and her political line. Moyano, in particular, was extremely conscious and forceful about trying to use the Cafeteria networks to defeat revolutionary activity among the people.
She openly bragged to the reactionary press: "This country would have exploded long ago if it had not been for the solidarity work of the Popular Organizations." [Caretas, February 17, 1992.]
Moyano was a government official in a progovernment party who consciously and openly saw her role as suppressing explosions among the people. Supporters of Moyano deny she was connected with corruption. But the fact of the matter is that the corruption surrounding these kitchens had gotten so extreme that the Catholic Church had pulled out, leaving it in the hands of municipal officials like Moyano.
In 1996, old friends and colleagues of Moyano in the Left Unity such as Teresa Aparcana, Adela Timoteo, Dora Iturragan, Eulalia Gomez, and Doris Velarde were denounced and tried for the crimes of embellezment of funds, corruption, bribery [El Comercio, February 22, 1996.]
After Moyano's death, the Proletarian Movement of the Shantytowns (Movimiento Clasista Barrial), an organization developed by the PCP, issued a communique which described Moyano's economic crimes:
"From the very beginning, she found her niche in the state apparatus under the pretext of struggling for the people; creating and imposing new and crippling taxes on the small merchants and street vendors; creating the `people's inspectors' in charge of forcefully collecting commissions; she only generated more abuse and corruption. She cashed in on land sales in the seventh district in order to finance her electoral campaign in her wild and ambitious race for a seat in parliament. She had for herself: a cheese factory (Villa Cheeses), a grain factory, as well as other hidden businesses . . . " [El Diario, Lima, April 1992.]
MOYANO: "YES, WE ARE ORGANIZING NEIGHBORHOOD PATROLS"
From 1989 to the present (1997), the PCP has stepped up political and military activities in the cities, especially in the capital. Its growing strength in the iron belt of Lima, made up by large masses of people in the Shantytowns, have been a continuous threat to the corrupt political game of state servants like Moyano. Throughout 1991-2, Moyano and her MAS party openly called on the government to increase its activity against the revolutionaries in the Shantytowns. In the same fashion of other supporters of the system and "human rights groups," she had friendly "criticisms" of the military and police arguing that the armed forces should be more skillful in winning the hearts and minds of the people. [Que Hacer, No. 72. July-August 1991, p.14. Ideele, No.27, July 1991, p. 20 and No.30, October 1991, p. 20.]
Most importantly, Moyano and MAS offered the political networks of Shantytown Villa El Salvador to the government. They offered to organize armed counterrevolutionary squads called urban rondas. These "paramilitary" armed patrols were to be organized by the military to fight against the Maoist guerrillas. This effort has failed because of strong opposition from the masses. Starting in 1991 and early 1992, the national leader of MAS, Rolando Ames, called for "an agreement among all the political parties in order to develop the self-defense urban patrols under control of the political police." [La Republica, December 22, 1991, p. 9. It is interesting to note that MAS leader Rolando Ames was the author of the Peruvian Senate's Report on subversion in 1991, which was quoted extensively by Amnesty International to slander the PCP.]
In a 1991 interview, Moyano was asked "Are you organizing urban paramilitary patrols?" Moyano answered: "Yes, we are organizing neighborhood patrols.... If the people organize themselves and centralize their efforts, we can defeat Sendero." [La Republica, September 22, 1991, pp. 9-10.]
Commenting on a meeting with big Peruvian capitalists, the right wing Magazine Oiga stated: "Just as Ms. Moyano had stated last year at the Annual Conference of Executives one of the solutions was to entrust to the citizens, to their base organization the responsibility of building paramilitary self-defense groups. The absence of the state in this matter should be made up for by a combined effort of the citizens." [Oiga, March 2, 1992, p. 20]
The above shows that the Peruvian big bourgeoisie and big landlords saw Moyano as a sign of hope, and they started grooming her as a rising star of the counterrevolution! They nicknamed her "Mother Courage" for daring to organize armed anti-guerrilla squads in the Shantytowns.
Was the regime's "Mother Courage" an honest "activist" helping self-organization of the masses.? No. Moyano was openly working to transform charity and self-help organizations among the people into networks of informants and armed death squads.
Does the drastic action taken by the PCP have anything to do with the racial and religious card played by the reactionaries? Not at all. The Peruvian revolution is a class war not a race or religious war. The attempt to rally sympathy on the basis of Moyano's racial roots, as well as the cynical ruse to manipulate the genuine religious sentiments held by the people did not get off ground. Senderologists in the United States claim that Moyano was killed because she was black, but let us remind these reactionaries that many of the best sons and daughters of the Peruvian people, who gave up their lives for Communism, were from African descend (e.g., Janet Talavera, the Editor of El Diario, the great young poet Jose Valdivia `JOVALDO' among others.)
On February 14, 1992, the PCP called for an armed strike. This mass struggle, waged under the most bloody fascist conditions, was to be both a test of strength and a school of revolutionary war. Just before the armed strike, on February 9, 1992, the United Left slate was overwhelmingly defeated in the elections for the leadership of the Small Business Association of Villa El Salvador (APEMIVES). This victory for the pro-PCP front was "shocking" for reactionaries, and that was a proof beyond any doubt of the growing mass support among the various class forces for the People's War.
Facing defeat on their own terms and electoral terrain, Moyano and her allies responded viciously. They unleashed a bloody witch hunt aimed at revolutionary activists in Villa El Salvador. They publicly fingered the victors in the Small Business Association election as "Senderistas" in the official media. They demanded that the APEMIVES elections be declared null and void. They also demanded that the funds of APEMIVES be frozen because it was supportive of the "terrorists."
Thus, neutrality in the growing conflict between the forces of revolution and the pro-imperialist regime was and is no longer an option. People who gained leadership posts in community organizations were asked by Moyano to sign statements disavowing any connection with "Sendero Luminoso." Those who refused were then subject to arrest or disappearance by the government. The following week Moyano called for a military occupation of Pachacamac (a neighboring Shantytown) alleging that the residents there were "Senderistas." Recent migrants to the city who were escaping the Army's repression in the Andes were settling on the outskirts of Villa el Salvador and Pachacamac. Moyano played a role in fingering at least 15 revolutionaries to the police, who were then killed. [It is also interesting to see the analogy between the situation in 1991-2 with what is happening in Villa el Salvador today. Michel Azcueta, who returned to Peru and bought his post as a Mayor, was a close partner of Moyano. Since 1995 he is back in business, actively working with Dincote's General Ketin Vidal in organizing paramilitary thugs that Moyano could not achieve. Azcueta aspires to build his own urban rondas in the same fashion of the paramilitary built by Lima's Mayor Alberto Andrade. He is also demanding the regime that 300 former political prisoners from Villa El Salvador be sent back to jail. Because of his crimes, People of Villa El Salvador has already given him the nick name of "Father Courage."
Was Saint Moyano killed because the Maoists were unable to undermine her "mass support"? Not at all. This confrontation broke out because Moyano's corrupt State machine was losing mass support to the revolutionaries! It was Moyano who called for terror against the people and was responsible for the death of honest revolutionaries. Moyano was a police-snitch who had blood-soaked hands.
Actions against people such as Moyano are not taken lightly by the PCP. The annihilation of sworn enemies of the people follows a well known established procedures and guidelines: First of all, each situation is investigated thoroughly. Second, the support of the community must be assured. Third, ample opportunity is provided for the person to give up their official position or correct their wrongs against the people. Moyano had been warned for years, as she herself admitted. [La Republica, Lima, February 17, 1992]
On February 14, 1992, the day of the armed strike in Lima, people in a large community meeting confronted Moyano in Villa el Salvador, and demanded her resignation. She refused, and shamelessly pushed ahead with her scheme to hold a strike-breaking "peace march" to denounce the revolution. No more than 30 people answered her call. Most of them were payroll hacks in Moyano's political machine and members of her security personnel. Exposed and isolated, Mela Moyano had reached the end of her career. She packed up her suitcases, and under government sponsorship, obtained a Visa to go to Spain and thus escape justice. The next day, a few days before she could run away, on February 15, she received people's justice for her mounting crimes.
Those who claim Moyano was a "popular leader" should explain why the people boycotted her funeral. Though she was vice-major of more than 300,000 people and an official in organizations involving tens of thousands, only 3,000 people attended her funeral, most of them government and military personnel. By contrast, in Ayacucho, a small provincial capital of 70,000, more than 35,000 people attended the funeral of the young Maoist guerrilla Edith Lagos in 1982. Moyano's funeral was packed with official Peru. All the reactionary parties were represented, and the blood-soaked army and police sent a large contingent to honor her. The Interior Minister came, and Fujimori sent his vice-president to attend the funeral. The reactionary magazine Caretas wrote: "If this is a war, the assassination of Moyano is the equivalent of the disappearance of one of the most effective generals of the campaign." [Caretas, February 18, 1992 p. 27.]
In 1993-1997, the revolution has moved forward in Villa El Salvador. The community has voted in a new leadership, in most cases sympathetic to the revolution in the three most important organizations: The Federation of Women, the Communal Assembly of Delegates, and the Association of Small Businesses. If these changes had come simply through intimidation, as the reactionaries claim, these organizations would have been effectively destroyed. On the contrary, the community has never been more combative in its struggle, in spite of widespread government repression.
Also, in February 1993, the reactionary magazine Caretas lamented that no one, except government officials attended the ceremonies on the first anniversary of Moyano's death. When a statue was unveiled by the government at her gravesite, "only a handful" bothered to come. This dead agent, the "Mother Courage" of the bourgeoisie, is already forgotten in Peru, while her myth is promoted by anti-Communists internationally.
In 1995, the police station of Villa of Salvador was smashed by a PCP contingent. The radio stations were seized to air PCP communiques. The walls of the streets had fresh paintings with revolutionary slogans, and since then several other political and military actions were carried out by the People's War. The class struggle deepens. The players of revolution and counterrevolution are facing each other in the battle field. The second round began after the PCP overcome the "bend on the road" and continued the road of victory.
In summary, Maria Elena Moyano was a corrupt bureaucrat and careerist. She was an unrepentant police informant, a strike breaker and an aspiring chieftain of urban death squads. She ripped off the people, took payment from Imperialists and pledged loyalty to the old Peruvian state. Her crimes were egregious. Her execution was just and correct.
Chairman Mao Tse-tung once said: "To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather." And, after the murder of several women leaders of the PCP in the jail of Cantogrande (Yovanka Pardave, Elvia Zanabria, Janet Talavera, among other 50 women) President Gonzalo said: "They are the real `mother courage. They gave their precious lives for the Party and the Revolution."
From 1989 to the present, the PCP has stepped up political and military activities in the cities, especially in the capital. Its growing strength in the iron belt of Lima, made up by large masses of people in the Shantytowns, have been a continuous threat to the corrupt political game of state servants like Moyano. Throughout 1991-2, Moyano and her MAS party openly called on the government to increase its activity against the revolutionaries in the Shantytowns. In the same fashion of other supporters of the system and "human rights groups," she had friendly "criticisms" of the military and police arguing that the armed forces should be more skillful in winning the hearts and minds of the people. [Que Hacer, No. 72. July-August 1991, p.14. Ideele, No.27, July 1991, p. 20 and No.30, October 1991, p. 20.]
Most importantly, Moyano and MAS offered the political networks of Shantytown Villa El Salvador to the government. They offered to organize armed counterrevolutionary squads called urban rondas. These "paramilitary" armed patrols were to be organized by the military to fight against the Maoist guerrillas. This effort has failed because of strong opposition from the masses. Starting in 1991 and early 1992, the national leader of MAS, Rolando Ames, called for "an agreement among all the political parties in order to develop the self-defense urban patrols under control of the political police." [La Republica, December 22, 1991, p. 9. It is interesting to note that MAS leader Rolando Ames was the author of the Peruvian Senate's Report on subversion in 1991, which was quoted extensively by Amnesty International to slander the PCP.]
In a 1991 interview, Moyano was asked "Are you organizing urban paramilitary patrols?" Moyano answered: "Yes, we are organizing neighborhood patrols.... If the people organize themselves and centralize their efforts, we can defeat Sendero." [La Republica, September 22, 1991, pp. 9-10.]
Commenting on a meeting with big Peruvian capitalists, the right wing Magazine Oiga stated: "Just as Ms. Moyano had stated last year at the Annual Conference of Executives one of the solutions was to entrust to the citizens, to their base organization the responsibility of building paramilitary self-defense groups. The absence of the state in this matter should be made up for by a combined effort of the citizens." [Oiga, March 2, 1992, p. 20]
The above shows that the Peruvian big bourgeoisie and big landlords saw Moyano as a sign of hope, and they started grooming her as a rising star of the counterrevolution! They nicknamed her "Mother Courage" for daring to organize armed anti-guerrilla squads in the Shantytowns.
Was the regime's "Mother Courage" an honest "activist" helping self-organization of the masses.? No. Moyano was openly working to transform charity and self-help organizations among the people into networks of informants and armed death squads.
Does the drastic action taken by the PCP have anything to do with the racial and religious card played by the reactionaries? Not at all. The Peruvian revolution is a class war not a race or religious war. The attempt to rally sympathy on the basis of Moyano's racial roots, as well as the cynical ruse to manipulate the genuine religious sentiments held by the people did not get off ground. Senderologists in the United States claim that Moyano was killed because she was black, but let us remind these reactionaries that many of the best sons and daughters of the Peruvian people, who gave up their lives for Communism, were from African descend (e.g., Janet Talavera, the Editor of El Diario, the great young poet Jose Valdivia `JOVALDO' among others.)
On February 14, 1992, the PCP called for an armed strike. This mass struggle, waged under the most bloody fascist conditions, was to be both a test of strength and a school of revolutionary war. Just before the armed strike, on February 9, 1992, the United Left slate was overwhelmingly defeated in the elections for the leadership of the Small Business Association of Villa El Salvador (APEMIVES). This victory for the pro-PCP front was "shocking" for reactionaries, and that was a proof beyond any doubt of the growing mass support among the various class forces for the People's War.
Facing defeat on their own terms and electoral terrain, Moyano and her allies responded viciously. They unleashed a bloody witch hunt aimed at revolutionary activists in Villa El Salvador. They publicly fingered the victors in the Small Business Association election as "Senderistas" in the official media. They demanded that the APEMIVES elections be declared null and void. They also demanded that the funds of APEMIVES be frozen because it was supportive of the "terrorists."
Thus, neutrality in the growing conflict between the forces of revolution and the pro-imperialist regime was and is no longer an option. People who gained leadership posts in community organizations were asked by Moyano to sign statements disavowing any connection with "Sendero Luminoso." Those who refused were then subject to arrest or disappearance by the government. The following week Moyano called for a military occupation of Pachacamac (a neighboring Shantytown) alleging that the residents there were "Senderistas." Recent migrants to the city who were escaping the Army's repression in the Andes were settling on the outskirts of Villa el Salvador and Pachacamac. Moyano played a role in fingering at least 15 revolutionaries to the police, who were then killed. [It is also interesting to see the analogy between the situation in 1991-2 with what is happening in Villa el Salvador today. Michel Azcueta, who returned to Peru and bought his post as a Mayor, was a close partner of Moyano. Since 1995 he is back in business, actively working with Dincote's General Ketin Vidal in organizing paramilitary thugs that Moyano could not achieve. Azcueta aspires to build his own urban rondas in the same fashion of the paramilitary built by Lima's Mayor Alberto Andrade. He is also demanding the regime that 300 former political prisoners from Villa El Salvador be sent back to jail. Because of his crimes, People of Villa El Salvador has already given him the nick name of "Father Courage."
Was Saint Moyano killed because the Maoists were unable to undermine her "mass support"? Not at all. This confrontation broke out because Moyano's corrupt State machine was losing mass support to the revolutionaries! It was Moyano who called for terror against the people and was responsible for the death of honest revolutionaries. Moyano was a police-snitch who had blood-soaked hands.
Actions against people such as Moyano are not taken lightly by the PCP. The annihilation of sworn enemies of the people follows a well known established procedures and guidelines: First of all, each situation is investigated thoroughly. Second, the support of the community must be assured. Third, ample opportunity is provided for the person to give up their official position or correct their wrongs against the people. Moyano had been warned for years, as she herself admitted. [La Republica, Lima, February 17, 1992]
On February 14, 1992, the day of the armed strike in Lima, people in a large community meeting confronted Moyano in Villa el Salvador, and demanded her resignation. She refused, and shamelessly pushed ahead with her scheme to hold a strike-breaking "peace march" to denounce the revolution. No more than 30 people answered her call. Most of them were payroll hacks in Moyano's political machine and members of her security personnel. Exposed and isolated, Mela Moyano had reached the end of her career. She packed up her suitcases, and under government sponsorship, obtained a Visa to go to Spain and thus escape justice. The next day, a few days before she could run away, on February 15, she received people's justice for her mounting crimes.
Those who claim Moyano was a "popular leader" should explain why the people boycotted her funeral. Though she was vice-major of more than 300,000 people and an official in organizations involving tens of thousands, only 3,000 people attended her funeral, most of them government and military personnel. By contrast, in Ayacucho, a small provincial capital of 70,000, more than 35,000 people attended the funeral of the young Maoist guerrilla Edith Lagos in 1982. Moyano's funeral was packed with official Peru. All the reactionary parties were represented, and the blood-soaked army and police sent a large contingent to honor her. The Interior Minister came, and Fujimori sent his vice-president to attend the funeral. The reactionary magazine Caretas wrote: "If this is a war, the assassination of Moyano is the equivalent of the disappearance of one of the most effective generals of the campaign." [Caretas, February 18, 1992 p. 27.]
In 1993-1997, the revolution has moved forward in Villa El Salvador. The community has voted in a new leadership, in most cases sympathetic to the revolution in the three most important organizations: The Federation of Women, the Communal Assembly of Delegates, and the Association of Small Businesses. If these changes had come simply through intimidation, as the reactionaries claim, these organizations would have been effectively destroyed. On the contrary, the community has never been more combative in its struggle, in spite of widespread government repression.
Also, in February 1993, the reactionary magazine Caretas lamented that no one, except government officials attended the ceremonies on the first anniversary of Moyano's death. When a statue was unveiled by the government at her gravesite, "only a handful" bothered to come. This dead agent, the "Mother Courage" of the bourgeoisie, is already forgotten in Peru, while her myth is promoted by anti-Communists internationally.
In 1995, the police station of Villa of Salvador was smashed by a PCP contingent. The radio stations were seized to air PCP communiques. The walls of the streets had fresh paintings with revolutionary slogans, and since then several other political and military actions were carried out by the People's War. The class struggle deepens. The players of revolution and counterrevolution are facing each other in the battle field. The second round began after the PCP overcome the "bend on the road" and continued the road of victory.
In summary, Maria Elena Moyano was a corrupt bureaucrat and careerist. She was an unrepentant police informant, a strike breaker and an aspiring chieftain of urban death squads. She ripped off the people, took payment from Imperialists and pledged loyalty to the old Peruvian state. Her crimes were egregious. Her execution was just and correct.
Chairman Mao Tse-tung once said: "To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather." And, after the murder of several women leaders of the PCP in the jail of Cantogrande (Yovanka Pardave, Elvia Zanabria, Janet Talavera, among other 50 women) President Gonzalo said: "They are the real `mother courage.' They have given up their precious lives for the Party and the Revolution."
Peru People's Movement (MPP).
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