Article from JLO # 19 (April/97)

In the afternoon of the 22nd of April, 140 soldiers invaded the Japanese embassy, which had been stormed by militants of the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) for 126 days. In 40 minutes, they smashed the MRTA and liberated 71 of the 72 hostages. In spite of our enormous differences with the MRTA, we pay a hommage to its militants, who were murdered by the state terrorism promoted by the military regime led by the jackal Fujimori.

Fujimori tried to present this operation as a demonstration of the "efficiency" of his armed forces, and he is obviously going to make a thorough use of it with a view to his third re-election. But as the hours went by, the nature of the deliberate massacre carried out against the fourteen MRTA members became evident.

As shown by the whole world press, the "Operation Chavin de Huantar" was directly oriented by the CIA, the intelligence agency of American imperialism, and by the Israeli Mossad, who, with their vast experience in killing anti-imperialist militants around the world, have made this cowardly slaughter possible. Without their help, the jackal Fujimori, who now brags about intending to export technology around the world, would probably not have obtained his smashing military victory at practically no cost, despite the weakened morale of the MRTA after such a lengthy seizure.

The operation began with an explosion under the embassy’s ground, in the place where most of the MRTA members were playing an informal game of soccer. The bomb was placed in one of the tunnels dug by the military in March. Immediately after, 140 soldiers invaded the building and riddled with bullets all of the guerrillas.

The MRTA leader, Cerpa Cartolini, got a hundred and fifty bullets, one of them in the head. His second in command, Roly Rojas, received six shots point blank. Both were buried without wake or autopsy.

The twelve other members, also shot inside the embassy, were not even delivered to their relatives, and have been buried as "identity unknown."

A few hours after the operation, several hostages confessed that some MRTA members had surrendered and deposed their weapons, despite which they were murdered in cold blood.

One of them, Tito, was initially moved through the tunnels with the other hostages, but then he was taken back to the embassy to be executed. Another female member, Cynthia, together with her partner in the watch, deposed her weapons and surrendered, but nevertheless they both were shot to death.

In spite that Fujimori assured that there had been no executions and that all of the MRTA members had "died in combat," the high command of the army itself admitted to the massacre: "A terrorist was a potential danger against the life of the commandos and of the hostages. And all dangers must be suppressed" (Argentinian newspaper_Clarín_, Buenos Aires, 4/26/97).

Beyond doubt, the recovery of the embassy became a demonstration of Fujimori’s strength not only against the MRTA, but also addressed to all of the regime’s potential rivals. Various sources point out that the only hostage killed in the operation was deliberately executed after a government order: "The American Association of Lawyers demanded the clarification of the death of the hostage Carlos Giusti, a member of the Supreme Court of Justice, who was identified as an opponent to the death of the 14 guerrillas" (Brazilian newspaper_Folha de Sao Paulo_, Sao Paulo, 4/30).

According to the Peruvian newsapaper _El Sol_, Giusti was playing soccer with the MRTA at the time of the invasion, and received a wound in the leg after the first explosion. The government will not forgive even those factions within itself which offer mild resistance to a reform of the state that hardens the regime while simultaneously recolonizing the country. The Lima Association of Lawyers was even harder, denouncing in the newspaper _La Republica_ that Giusti "might have been murdered on account of his criticism of the reform of the Justice system promoted by the Fujimori government" (Brazilian newspaper_O Estado de Sao Paulo_, Sao Paulo, 4/25).

The wave of declarations by military officers and hostages admitting to the massacre forced the government to impose silence by force. Those hostages who are linked to the state (military, ministers, parliament representatives) were expressly forbidden to make public statements "under threat of being judged for disloyal acts" (_Clarin_, 4/27). As to the Japanese hostages, "it was the Tokyo government, an ally of Fujimori, that demanded hostages of that nationality not to give interviews" (_Clarin_, 4/27).

Meanwhile, on the 26th of April, the anti-terrorist police imprisoned Cerpa Cartolini’s brother-in-law’s wife, Rosa Cardenas de Gilvonio, and also the sister of an imprisoned MRTA leader, Susana Castro, who were making negotiations for the delivery of the fourteen dead MRTA members’ corpses, twelve of which are buried as "identity unknown."

Simultaneously, the government demanded from Germany the deportation of Isaac Velazco, the MRTA spokesman in Europe.

All of these "gag measures" by Fujimori’s genocidal regime are in the service of covering the brutal massacre.

During the four months of seizure, the most sophisticated espionage instruments were used in Fujimori’s service. "If we made a whole picture out of isolated data brought by several Peruvians, the Operation Chavin de Huantar was Israeli in audacity, German in organization, British in punctuality, Japanese in patience, and American in technology" (_OESP_, 4/24). The jackal Fujimori also received help from the Red Cross, that "wolf in a sheep skin" which, in the service of world reaction, moved radio and other communication devices to the Japanese embassy, permitting the hostages to practically take a co-leadership in the exact moment when the bombing of the embassy would occur. A few hours before the attack, the MRTA commando was interviewing the Canadian ambassador, who tried to reinforce the idea that a "negotiated" solution was being sought, trying to foster the illusions in that sense promoted by the world bourgeoisie.

In January we warned that "American trusts and the army are pressing for a violent solution and an unconditional surrender by the MRTA. Ones in order to ensure their control on the market, others to guarantee that they will not be judged for violations of human rights, since Fujimori needs to pull some demagogy in order to guarantee his own re-election. By exploiting the contradictions in the regime, the MRTA could easily enter the Embassy, but now those same contradictions are taking the road of a military solution, and it depends on the working class’ and the masses’ mobilization to smash the attempted massacre and wrest the political prisoners out of the regime’s prisons" (Declaration on Peru published, 1/24/97).

The decision to recover the Japanese embassy by a military action had to do with the political situation of Fujimori’s regime. From the very first moment, the bourgeois opposition condemned the MRTA’s action and placed itself entirely on the camp of the Armed Forces. The most explicit example of the complete claudication of the old nationalists and Marxists came from the failed "Izquierda Unida" (United Left), which tried to find an approximation with sectors of the regime opposed to its "most authoritarian" wing, such as "Rasputin" Montesinos, commander of the genocidal National Security Service.

The crisis in the embassy appeared in a delicate moment for Fujimori. In the weeks prior to it, the government had had to step back in its attempts at privatizing the whole Peruvian oil industry. His popularity was clearly declining. The national bourgeoisie was starting to press on the government in order to protect the internal market, completely destroyed by imperialist investment with Japan in the lead.

A few days after the recovery of the embassy, the Minister of the Interior, General Briones (the head of an independent police commando), and General Kentin Vidal (the highest leader of the police) had to resign due to their opposition to a violent solution. As everything seems to suggest, they were trying to negotiate a new alignment of forces with the bourgeois opposition in order to prevent yet another re-election of Fujimori.

The American embassy in Peru was the first to congratulate Fujimori for the success of the operation. Let us not doubt that, as of now, American imperialism will resume its position as the privileged advisor of the Peruvian murderous regime, and this will be its starting point in order to promote its own business by taking advantage of the distance Japan seems to have taken from Fujimori. In a leading article in the American newspaper _The New York Times_, it is said that "the use of force was a legitimate operation that must strengthen the ‘hard line’ of the military and encourage similar actions among the officers who used to challenge the president" (quoted by _Veja_, Sao Paulo, 4/30).

American imperialism took advantage of the flight of Japanese capitals form Peru after the storming of the embassy in order to take a better position in the market, and it also had an active, decided participation in the massacre. The American envoy, Dennis Jett, held a press conference in Lima twenty-four hours before the operation in order to "condemn the fanaticism and cruelty" of the MRTA. In this way, American imperialism was "warning" of the massacre that it later was to justify, by congratulating Fujimori and clapping hands at the murder of the fourteen MRTA members.

The military faction led by Montesinos is the most deeply involved in torture, murder, and disapparition of political opponents and guerrillas.

This faction, deeply repudiated by the population, was exposed to trial for violation of human rights. A sector of the army was even starting to take distance from Montesinos and his faction, in order to save their own heads.

This massacre is in the benefit of American imperialism as the main protagonist in future privatizations and direct foreign investment, and it partially outplaces Japanese capital from the Peruvian market. After the invasion of the embassy, Japan has been trying to reestablish relations and it has even offered economic help in gratitude for the services done, but it was already late. Fujimori, in a demonstration that he has a new master and that he harbors no fidelity to his principal trade partners of three months ago, let alone any respect to his formerly cultivated blood links with Japan, has been quoted as saying that: "The Japanese government has been cowardly in granting concessions to terrorists (with the payment of ransoms, among other things). He also said that the Japanese government offered no concrete proposal for a solution of the crisis" (Brazilian newspaper_FSP_, 4/29).

In early April, the American government held a Symposium on Strategy for the Western hemisphere, oragnized by the Southern Commando of the Armed Forces and the American University of Defense. In an unequivocal demonstration that the Peruvian episode served as a justification for American imperialism to increase its military control on the continent, the American Secretary for Defense, William Cohen, speaking before a public of generals and ministers of the three Americas, pronounced himself for a change in the security strategy for the next four years that should be compatible with the deepening fo the re-colonization: "Armed conflicts in Latin America and the deepening of the struggle against drugs are the strategic concerns of the USA... We see before us an explosion of areas of the economy and of trade, but not an outburst of terrorism and violence" (Brazilian newspaper _O Povo_, 4/16).

The faction headed by Montesinos, more directly compromised with the extermination and repression of political oponents, also came out of the massacre strengthened.

In Latin America, guerrilla actions involving the taking of hostages generally end up either as victories for the guerrillas or in massacres that politically weaken the dominant regimes. But this is the first time in the continent that an operation gives as a result a full success for the jackals of the colonial bourgeoisie. This has encouraged Fujimori to try to wash the public image of the SIN (the National Intelligence Service) and of its murdering goons such as the "Comando Colinas."

The massacre in the embassy was a hard blow not only against the MRTA, but also, fundamentally, against the Peruvian and even Latin American working class, since Latin American governments such as Menem’s and Cardoso’s greet Fujimori’s action as they justify the savage repression they enforce in their own countries.

As he said that "he would have done the same" as Fujimori, Argentina’s Carlos Menem was sending 800 gendarmes to Cutral Co on the last 12th of April in order to smash a new popular uprising there.

One of the main concerns of the Brazilian president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was to defend his Peruvian colleague by adducing that "‘he had no choice,’ in order to then congratulate him for the professional character of the operation" (_OESP_, 4/24).

Such words of admiration for the Peruvian dictator are very meaningful in the context that Cardoso’s government has a record of assassination of landless peasants, and when, in all regions of Brazil, new cases are constantly exposed of torture, extorsion, and brutal crimes led by the Military Police against the empoverished urban populations.

After Cardoso has congratulated Fujimori for the massacre, the great landowners demand him to "do the same thing" against the landless peasants that rise in demand of the agrarian reform. New massacres such as those of Rondonia and Para are being prepared by the Brazilian regime, now encouraged by Fujimori’s success.

During the seizure, our international current has called for the urgent mobilization of the working class in order to prevent the massacre that was under way, being aware that it would encourage the region’s regimes to deepen the colonization and repression of the working class.

"We made the mistake of trusting Fujimori. That was our main political mistake... We trusted ourselves so much that we believed that we could get concessions from him" (_Clarin_, 4/28). This was confessed by a high MRTA command days after the massacre.

Only this confidence can explain how easily and promptly the military recovered the embassy and massacred the guerrillas.

This is not the first time that the MRTA falls victim of its own illusions of class conciliation.

When Alan Garcia assumed government, the MRTA suspended all armed actions and called the new government to "dialog." Alan Garcia’s response was the slaughter of 300 prisoners in the Luringacho and El Fronton prisons in 1986.

In 1990, the MRTA repeated the same criminal mistake, trusting the brand-new president Fujimori to advance in the "dialog" and "pacification" of the country. But Fujimori responded to the MRTA’s truce with the massacre of 50 guerrillas in the Canto Grande house of detention, as well as with thousands of other assassinations and abductions.

Now again, the MRTA "trusted" the "dialog" with Fujimori, to the extent that they were surprised by the military invasion of the 22nd that massacred all of the guerrillas.

Isaac Velazco, the MRTA spokesman outside Peru, said that he was disillusioned by the failure to honor the promises made by the negotiating committee controlled by Fujimori. The MRTA’s strategy was to convince the Peruvian bourgeoisie of a "great national accord." They even admitted the possibility of a financial cooperation with American imperialism within the guidelines dictated by the IMF. The MRTA’s will to "dialog" was such that, after the storming, they released hostages such as General Jose Rivas, head of the general staff of the Peruvian police, a well-known murdered of several militants of the left, as a humanitarian gesture in the face of the fact that he had a health problem. Not to mention that they released Fujimori’s very mother as a token of "good will."

The illusions permanently harbored by the MRTA along its history are a byproduct of its political strategy based on "defending the democratic spaces and conquering peace with social justice" (quoted by _Voz Rebelde_, Jan/1997). The MRTA’s goal never was to expropriate the capitalists, but only to "reform" the system. They have defined themselves as a "dialog guerrilla; we have always been open to dialog, even with policemen and soldiers" (_VR_, Jan/1997).

The bourgeois state cannot be defeated by action in complete isolation from the masses’ movement and the working class. Nor can a group of petit-bourgeois voluntarists who intend to build a "patriotic government" awaken the masses from their profound paralysis, which is due to the defeats suffered as a result of popular-frontist politics such as the IU’s (Izquierda Unida) and the CGTP’s (the Peruvian federation of trade unions).

Illusions about an accord with the bourgeois regime and trust in the bosses’ mediators dug the MRTA members’ graves. As in a mirror image of the Stockholm Syndrome, when the hostages identify with their takers, this time the takers identified with their hostages, to the extent that they became adapted to the routine of the seized embassy and harbored hopes to come to an agreement with elements linked to the regime or to factions of imperialism, the guerrillas fed all kinds of illusions in dialog with the Red Cross and with a clergy deeply linked to state repression, as when they chose Archbishop Cipriani as mediator (a man linked to the SIN and a defender of the death penalty) and then the Canadian ambassador. Such "trustworthy" friends were active part of a sophisticated espionage apparatus that made it possible to the military commando instructed by the Israeli Mossad and by the CIA to plan the massacre. Everything suggests that it was guerrillas who called archbishop Cipriani a "traitor" and a "murdered" in graffittis on the walls of Ayacucho that appeared after the slaughter.

Despite that, all the time, we unconditionally defended the MRTA and called on the working class and its organizations all over the world to mobilize to prevent the massacre and wrest the political prisoners out of the jails, we did not fail to denounce the nature and methods of the MRTA. Their class conciliation leads to political suicide and defeat, and their method of "spectacular actions" aside from the working class can never awaken the working class, but only further harms their consciousness and condemns them to passivity and to expecting a "savior" acting in their behalf.

Illusions in the regime were reflected even at the time of the military invasion, when most of the guerrillas were playing soccer. They were even preparing a celebration for the 1st of May, which proves that they did not seriously consider the possibility of an immedaite military action, although the military had already patiently dug several tunnels under the Embassy.

The end of this cannot be surprising if one understands the beginning. Cerpa Cartolini admitted to the relative ease with which they entered the Embassy: "nobody was guarding the side street, we could have got there by foot" (Argentinian newspaper _El Cronista_, Buenos Aires, 1/17). The seizure was done at a time of great military crisis due to the imminence of trials for violations of human rights and to violent inter-imperialist disputes over control of the markets. But these same contradictions exploited by the MRTA in order to seize the embassy then turned agaisnt the guerrilla, for the military would use the storming as an opportunity to "clean up their image" and divert attention from the violations of human rights, and American imperialism would take advantage of the situation to speed up its investment as Japanese capital fled the ground.

The complete absence of any active support from the mass movement and the lack of a pollicy towards the working class are some of the factors that account for the tremendous defeat suffered by the MRTA. There is a huge difference between the occupation of a factory by workers (like the one Cerpa Cartolini led 18 years ago) and the occupation of an embassy led by a petit-bourgeois organization isolated from the masses. The most that the MRTA could have obtained from its action would have been the liberation of some of its prisoners, its political legalization, and some other minor advantages for its own organization, but they could never have defeated the regime and promoted a revolutionary rise of the masses by means of "heroic actions." On the contrary, the occupation of a factory stimulates the proletariat’s confidence in its own strength and can be generalized to the working class as a whole, engendering embryos of dual power organisms such as factory committees and soviets.

Despite that "a majority of those Peruvians that have been damaged the most by economic austerity seem to be sympathetic to Commander Evaristo’s calls for social justice" (_El Pais_, Madrid, Dec/1996) and that Fujimori’s popularity had descended from 74 to 33%, the Peruvian masses did not win the streets demanding the liberation of the prisoners and that the guerrilla be let out of the embassy alive and free. Obviously, this is not the masses’ responsibility, but that of the political and labor organizations that claim their representation.

Both the CGTP as the overwhelming majority of the Peruvian left accepted the state of emergency imposed by Fujimori and were opposed to promoting demonstrations against the regime during the 126 days of the seizure.

The masses’ passive sympathy was not enough, because, if no fight is waged, this objectively becomes mere neutrality and favors the government.

Pseudo-Trotskyist centrism and Stalinism, internationally and particularly in Latin America, in spite of affirming that they supported the demand for the liberation of the MRTA political prisoners, refrained from organizing any support mobilization of some importance, even when it was already evident that Fujimori was preparing a massacre.

Instead of unconditionally standing on the MRTA’s military camp, this reformist left called for the "democratic unity" of all political forces in Peru, supporting only the demands for the liberation of the political prisoners. An authentic revolutionary party could never defend the deposition of weapons by the MRTA; on the contrary, it should call the guerrillas to put their weapons in the service of the workers’ movement and to subordinate all their operations to the political discipline of workers’ and peasants’ councils, for the effective destruction of the bourgeois state through proletarian revolution.

In Argentina, for istance, barely some dozens of people demonstrated in March in front of the Peruvian embassy (the PBCI being one of the organizers), while centrism as a whole actually boycotted the demonstration. It just happens that these parties are in the middle of an electoral campaign and their leaderships did not want to engage in a defense of a guerrilla group that would scare away some votes among the middle classes.

There was another mobilization in the USA, convoked in March by our international current in San Francisco, again with the presence of some dozens of people, where some organizations refused to attend and others chose to send mere "symbolic" delegations.

In Brazil, a small mobilization to the Peruvian embassy was organized in Rio de Janeiro and led by the Frente Revolucionaria. Most of the left, including the pseudo-Trotskyist PSTU, feared to be identified by the petit bourgeoisie as sympathizers of terrorist groups.

Most of the centrist and Stalinist parties objectively refused to mobilize their forces in order to prevent the massacre in the embassy and to liberate the political prisoners. All they did was to regret the situation in their press. In this way, Fujimori could rely not only on the passivity of the masses, paralysed as they were by their organizations in Peru, but also on the absence of a massive international campaign against him.

Our international current, even with such scarce resources as it can draw on, was in the lead of several of the few mobilizations that were developed during and after the seizure of the embassy. The LBI, the Brazilian section of the BCFI, during a May Day rally called for by the CUT, proposed and won a minute of silence in hommage to the murdered MRTA members and against Fujimori’s pro-imperialist regime.

We fight to urgently mobilize the working class, being conscious that a massacre in the embassy would not only smash the MRTA and worsen the situation of political prisoners in Peru, but also encourage the region’s regimes to advance in their austerity plans and their repression of the masses.

As we said in our declaration in January, "the duty of the organizations that claim to belong to the working class is to converge in a united front before it is too late: we have to mobilize the working class to the Peruvian embassies in the whole world, demanding the liberation of the political prisoners and the life and liberty of the militants who stormed the embassy. Any hesitation on this would only favor Fujimori’s genocidal regime and imperialism."

We call on all militants of the left to draw a clear assessment of this, in the conviction that, to the very last day, we have struggled to mobilized the working class against this announced massacre, and again we call on all the organizations that claim to defend the working class to mobilize to the Peruvian embassies to repudiate the massacre and demand the punishment of the culprits and the liberation of the political prisoners.