The death of Abimael Guzmán

Fernando Vicente

The founder of Shining Path, or, as he called himself, “the fourth sword of Marxism,” Abimael Guzmán, died on September 11 in Lima prison where he was serving a life sentence. Would you regret in your last minutes the seventy thousand deaths caused by the Maoist insurrection that it caused in Peru and in what the Truth Commission calculated the number of victims it caused? Probably not. He was a native of Mollendo from Arequipa, he was 86 years old, he had studied Law and Philosophy and getting to know China and the work of Mao Tsé Tung had transformed his life. So much so that he dedicated many years to discreetly preparing this revolution that filled the Andean region with blood and death, the poorest in Peru. His center was the University of Huamanga, in Ayacucho, where most of his early paintings came from;then many more would come, from almost all of Peru.

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• The shadow of Abimael Guzmán hijacks the debate in Peru

It was a revolution that lasted about twelve years since it began, in May 1980, and in which there was everything from cold murders, to blackouts due to the blasting of light towers, torture, dogs hanging on poles with an inscription that the senderistas believed ominous ("Ten Siao Ping"), confinements, and, above all, bodies of innocents scattered everywhere. The peasants of the sierra, at first, supported this senseless guerrilla due to the miserable conditions in which they lived and worked, but when Guzmán, faithful in this to the teachings of Mao, who wanted the countryside to assault the cities, prohibited them from Saturday markets where they sold and made their purchases, turned around and apart from fighting it with the so-called “ronderos” they supported the Army in ambushes and repression.Thus ended those collective killings and the disastrous impoverishment of Peru in the eighties, in which, why hide it, there was also a dictatorship that murdered many innocent people and looted the public coffers.

Now there is an interesting debate in Peru about what to do with the body of Abimael Guzmán, whether to hand it over to his widow, Elena Iparraguirre, who is also serving prison, since it is the second of Shining Path, or to incinerate him, to prevent his grave from attracting everyone extreme leftists to pay homage to him. The latter is certain, so the judiciary, or the Government, or Parliament, which must decide on this matter, already know what to expect.

Is the time of revolutions still valid in Latin America? Only the foolish could believe so. Since we achieved independence, we have been fighting with each other, or trying to overthrow our governments, which has allowed our Armies to load themselves with arms and feed the dictatorships that have emerged from their bosom, as well as to liquidate tens of thousands of young people. most generous and sacrificed countries of our countries, so that continuing on this path can only continue to produce massacres, in addition to sinking each day more into underdevelopment, third worldism and misery. Perhaps the time has come to take another path, that of countries that are truly progressing, increasing their living standards, growing their industries and with them the education and health systems, wages and jobs.This is not impossible. Just look at the example of European countries and, lately, that of Asian countries such as South Korea, Taiwan or Singapore. On the other hand, looking the other way should be enough to see that the famous “revolutions” have only brought catastrophes similar to those that Abimael Guzmán produced in Peru. It is true that some of his admirers are now in the Peruvian government and are nothing less than ministers, but the least that can be said about these people, who appear in police reports, is that, if they follow the model of their admired Guzmán, they will fail as much or more than him and they will plunge Peru a little deeper into disillusionment and misery.It should be enough to see that the famous “revolutions” have only brought catastrophes similar to those that Abimael Guzmán produced in Peru. It is true that some of his admirers are now in the Peruvian government and are nothing less than ministers, but the least that can be said about these people, who appear in police reports, is that, if they follow the model of their admired Guzmán, they will fail as much or more than him and they will plunge Peru a little deeper into disillusionment and misery.It should be enough to see that the famous “revolutions” have only brought catastrophes similar to those that Abimael Guzmán produced in Peru. It is true that some of his admirers are now in the Peruvian government and are nothing less than ministers, but the least that can be said about these people, who appear in police reports, is that, if they follow the model of their admired Guzmán, they will fail as much or more than him and they will plunge Peru a little deeper into disillusionment and misery.They will fail as much or more than he, and they will plunge Peru a little deeper into disillusionment and misery.They will fail as much or more than he, and they will plunge Peru a little deeper into disillusionment and misery.

The only revolution that has been "successful" in the history of Latin America is that of Fidel Castro and his two satellites, Venezuela and Nicaragua. The sad spectacle that we have witnessed a few days ago, in almost all the towns of the island, leaves a pitiful impression of their achievements, which seem to be negligible, while thousands of Cuban families have spread throughout the United States and the rest of the world. (Here, in Spain, they are innumerable). And what about Venezuela, the potentially richest country in Latin America, and perhaps the world, which has expelled five and a half million Venezuelans who were starving. And Nicaragua? To be re-elected once again, the sinister couple that governs that country have sent all their adversaries to jail - how easy it is to win such an election - and the last of their victims,the writer Sergio Ramírez, has just arrived in Spain, where he declared, "It is hard to be 79 years old and go into exile again." He is a generous fighter, he has already lived many years in exile fighting against the Somoza dictatorship, and once again begins an exile that hopefully does not last much longer, since they will be, it is evident, years of horror and misery for his unfortunate country.

The great problem in Latin America is corruption, which has its focus in the ministries and official centers, and which scares the best Latin Americans from doing politics, which they see every day with more disgust and disgust. And while the best despise politics, the worst will take care of it, with the most feared consequences. The most serious of them is the hunger of the majority and the diseases that it produces, the lack of work, the terrible public education and the excellence of the private one, which increasingly opens the difference between the poor and the rich. In the face of this, there are no revolutions that have triumphed and that respect freedom, which is essential to stop corruption in its own land, and to breathe easy, without knowing that they are a victim overnight of the outrages of government arbitrariness.

There are those who go back five centuries, to the sources of the evil that afflicts Latin America. For example, the president of Mexico, who has asked Spain to pay in cash the many millions that the conquest of Mexico would undoubtedly cost. The truth is that the primary responsibility of the state of the indigenous people of Latin America is the governments that we have had since independence. All of them, without exception, have shamefully failed in their obligation to encourage the Indians of Latin America in their modernization and in their way of life. Neither Mexico, nor Guatemala, nor Colombia, nor Peru, nor Bolivia, nor Paraguay, have done absolutely nothing for the indigenous people who are, as José María Arguedas said, a “class surrounded” by the ingratitude and contempt of the “whites ”And“ mestizos ”,who have continued to exploit and marginalize them. So it is not Spain, which left us that magic of the most current language in the world after English, and which is the best safe-conduct to modernity, but ourselves, the Latin Americans, who are responsible for the sad condition of the indigenous people, in all Latin American countries, without a single exception.

© Mario Vargas Llosa, 2021. World press rights in all languages ​​reserved to Ediciones EL PAÍS, SL, 2021.