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At tam it starts - for rice, bread, oil, meat, postage stamps, and longest and most revealing of all, for passports. Lima lives up to its nickname - the 'city of queues'. Postage stamps ran out because the government could afford only to print half those ordered by the Post Of fice.
Last year inflation almost reached 3000 per cent and is expected to hit 20,000 per cent by the end of this year. Peru stands on the brink of economic disintegration. 'Normal' society has all but ceased to function. Only the 'black' economy which accounts for over half of industry, 60 per cent of food distribution and nearly all 'public' transport, has prevented a complete collapse.
Living standards have plummeted. Average purchasing power has fallen by 70 per cent in one year. In the cities this is a catastrophe for the workers and unemployed, especially those herded into the 'pueblos jovenes' or shanty towns where over two-fifths of Lima's population live. And for the middle classes it means bankruptcy and ruin.
For over eight million quechua-speaking Indians in the countryside, life expectancy is just 45 years (compared to 58 years in the cities). Life is threatened by malnutrition or more suddenly through death at the hands of the army or sometimes the Maoist-inspired guerrillas, the Sandero Luminoso (Shining Path) Ayachuco, the birthplace of Sandero Luminoso, is called Huamango in quechua - 'the corner of the dead' - tragically apt for millions of peasants.
The high expectations aroused when President Alan Garcia's APRA party was elected have evaporated, replaced by hatred and antagonism. Austerity package has followed austerity package. Four emergency budgets have been introduced in the last year, while promised reforms have given way to counter reforms.
APRA (Popular Revolutionary American Alliance) was founded in 1929 by Haya de la Torre. It promoted a radical • nationalistic demagogic programme which gave it certain base among layers of workers, peasants and the urban intelligentsia. Before it came to power in 1984, APRA's protests against US imperialism, especially Garcia's announcement that he
Peru
Garcia fails
by Alejandro Rojas
would not allow more than 10 per cent of GNP to be used to service Peru's crippling foreign debt, won it wide popular support.
But as recent events have shown, APRA's policies were not derived from a concern at the plight of the Peruvian masses but from a desire to establish a stronger and more independent Peruvian capitalism, and to stave off the convulsions in society which the constant drain on the economy was provoking
APRA's real interests were revealed at last year's congress, when it backed a Thatcherstyle austerity package and removed the more radical Garcia from all his positions in the party. APRA's most reactionary wing has formed a 'death squad', the Commando Rodrigo Franco, which has already murdered several trade union leaders.
In response to austerity, a huge strike wave has swept the country. Last July, the largest general strike in Peru's history was called by the Communist CGTP and significantly also by APRA's own trade union federation, the CTP
Miners have held a 57-day strike. Telephone workers, teachers, civil servants, building workers, doctors have all taken action. Every day Lima is witness to demonstrations by one group or another - recently retired policemen marched to demand that their pensions be paid. Even the judges threatened strike action in April when their pay cheques bounced!
In the countryside a civil war is unfolding, as peasants and youth from the pueblos jovenes and even the universities, desperate for a way out, have joined the guerrillas. Over 13,000 have already died since 1980 in this bloody war with the armed forces.
APRA senator, Javier Riestra, summed up social situation when he declared: "It is duty to warn that Peru has all the symptoms
the our of a
Garcia.
A huge strike wave in the citie and civi war in cou try
MIR
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160 MIR Summer Peru
guerrilla ictory is
entirely possible
society in a pre-revolutionary stage. There is an institutional, social, moral and economic crisis and the leading class lacks faith in itself."
At present it appears that the Communistdominated Izquierda Unida (United Left ) could win a majority in elections scheduled for 1990. But what are the prospects?
All the objective conditions exist in Peru for the overthrow of landlordism and capitalism. If the IU was to adopt such a programme and introduce a socialist plan of production under democratic workers' management. involving the peasants and middle class layers. then a revolution along classical lines as in Russia in 1917 would be entirely possible. The working class could draw behind it the poor peasants and other exploited layers. overthrow capital ism and landlordism and establish a workers democracy: A democratic workers Peru could ignite the whole of Latin America, opening the way to the socialist transformation of the continent through international revolution.
However, already the IU and trade union leaders have failed to offer such an alternative which would answer the fears and alleviate the uncertainties gripping middle class layers. The IU leader, an ex-APRAista, Barrientes, has so far simply played the role of Garcia's left arm, rather than explain the need to overthrow capitalism.
This has led to some middle class layers turning to a new right-wing coalition, Fredemo, led by a well-known novelist Vargos Llosa. Fredemo demogogically parades as the defender of the middle-class and democracy. It particularly played on Garcia's clumsy and abortive attempt to nationalise the banks, without offering any guarantee on jobs to the bankworkers or on savings to investors. Fredemo could gain a majority in elections if the middle-classes' fear of the future and revulsion at the instability of life under hyper-inflation and chaos, is coupled with the absence of any alternative from the United Left leaders.
But a victory for the right would solve nothing except to increase austerity and military suppression of workers' struggles. It would only further boost support for the Sandero Luminoso guerrillas.
Nevertheless, victory for the United Left is still a strong possibility. Under pressure from the masses, it may implement more radical policies, including nationalisation, than its leaders intend. But if a United Left government fails to mobilise the workers and exploited layers to end landlordism and capitalism, measures that stop only halfway will provoke reaction in the form of a military coup.
Indeed, a coup is possible prior to elections if it seems that the United Left will win. The military planned such a takeover last January. Only the intervention of US imperialism aborted it. The US government feared that any coup then
would only hasten the movement of the masses into the Sandero Luminoso and produce open warfare at a time when the armed forces are divided and demoralised through fighting an already unwinnable guerrilla war.
The delay in revolution in the cities has strengthened support for Sandero Luminoso. Their armed strength is now estimated as high as 10,000 and growing. To fight them, one-third of the country has been placed under military rule. In Junin province, which produces 30 per cent of Lima's vegetables, the guerrillas are in effective control and threaten to cut off food supplies to the capital.
Hundreds of villages fly the hammer and sickle flag of the Sandero Luminoso - despite their ruthless methods and contempt for the masses. The guerrillas appear to be increasing in strength as the only way out of the economic and social nightmare for the peasant masses. Even in the cities the guerrillas are gaining a base in some trade unions and in the state machine itself. But their main support increasingly comes from the youth of the pueblos jovenes. For them there is nothing to lose.
The government and the armed forces are increasingly demoralised. As Garcia glaringly admitted: "How can we not admire them (Sandero Luminoso)? Imagine if we (APRA) had 10,000 militants with a fanatical faith that these men have who leave everything, who don't have families, who suffer tuberculosis. These are the real militants. What moral authority do we have to combat them when we are surrounded with small pseudo-comforts?"
A guerrilla victory is now entirely possible. As the social crisis intensifies. the army could progressively disintegrate. Many junior officers are forced to live in the pueblos jovenes. Majors live on the roof tops of garages. A Rear Admiral only earns S71 a month. Forty per cent of conscripts sent to the emergency war regions desert and even five per cent of the officers abandon their posts.
But the guerrillas have no perspective for any conscious movement of the working-class. So the guerrilla struggle may well be very protracted and costly in lives and social destruction. If the guerrillas come to power and consolidate their hold. they would establish a proletarian bonapartist regime ie. the end of landlordism and capitalism and its replacement by a state owned. centrally controlled economy, without workers democracy: It would be a regime in the image of Cuba. China or Vietnam, dominated by a ruling bureaucratic elite.
So the Peruvian revolution is reaching a decisive stage - one which highlights the urgent need for a Marxist leadership at the head of the working-class in order to secure workers' democracy in Peru and in other countries of Latin America.
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