World

The military and government of Peru are
using atrocities committed by the ultra-left
Shining Path rebels to impose military rule
and suspend human rights in the South
American country, a leading member of
Peru’s United Left coalition has reported.

Eduardo Caceres Valdivia told audiences
and reporters in Vancouver recently that a
military coup or a right-wing victory in the
1990 elections cannot be ruled out as the
social democratic government of President
Allan Garcia continues to plummet in pop-
ularity.

Garcia’s ruling APRA — American Pop-
ular Revolutionary Action — has been
unable to contain the galloping inflation
that marks the worst financial crisis in
Peru’s history, to enact any significant
teforms, or to control the military with its
tradition of violence against the populace,
Caceres said during a visit Sept. 24-25.

Caceres described Peru as a society frag-
mented politically with several groups vying
for power, including the military, ultra-left
guerrillas, right-wing death squads, the
right-wing party contesting the upcoming
elections, and the United Left, which has the
support of trade unions and peasant organ-
izations,

The ultra-left’s sectarian violence and the
counter-insurgency programs of the mil-
itary have placed more than 30 per cent of
the population under military control —
either by armed guerrillas or the armed
forces — and has given Peru one of the
worst human rights records according to
Amnesty International, Caceres said. (More
than half the country is under state of emer-
gency provisions.)

And he warned of activities by the United
States’ Drug Enforcement Agency, which,
under the excuse of aiding the Peruvian
government in its fight against the cocaine
trade, is increasing. U;S.. presence. inthe
Andean region.

_ “We see this as a form of low-intensity
war in the area.”

Caceres, a teacher, sits on the United
Left’s national executive and is secretary
general of the Unified Mariateguista Party
(PUM), the largest member of the coalition
and named after the 1920s Peruvian Marx-
ist, Jose Carlos Mariategui.

Ironically, a quote from Mariategui —
that Marxism-Leninism will “open a shin-

ing path” to revolution in Peru — is the
inspiration for the name of the Maoist Shin-
ing Path (Sendero Luminoso) guerrillas
who have been waging a campaign of assas-
sinations and bombings since their estab-
lishment in 1970. But this organization,
which mixes Mao’s theories of peasant revo-
lution with a near-mystical Inca worship,
and the smaller but growing Tupac Amaru
guerilla movement do not advance the
cause of social progress in Peru, Caceres
stressed.

“The main forces of struggle in Peru are
those developed by organizations led the
United Left,”-he said. . —o'

.“The participation in the elections and
the access to some form of government,
especially local and regional governments,
is a form of accumulating forces to allow the
mass movement to strengthen itself.”

In fact, the targets for assassination by
Shining Path are never right-wing figures,
Caceres pointed out. The ultra-left group
has instead picked on APRA officials and
other left groups, and lately it has narrowed
its focus to killing representatives of the

EDUARDO CACERES ... national executive member of Peru's United Left.

United Left.

The Senderistas, as Shining Path guerril-
las. are sometimes called, have also
increased attacks on trade unionists. In the
last 12 months 26 miners union leaders have
been killed — 14 by Shining Path and 12 by
right-wing paramilitary groups, he related.

Shining Path finds little support among
Peru’s peasants or trade unionists. What
strength it has is derived from elements of
the country’s marginalized Indian popula-
tion, although it is led by former academic
Abimael Guzman.

(It is a classic Maoist organization, sup-
porting»China’s»*Gang of Four”. old-line
Maoists and entertaining a program similar
to that of the genocidal Khmer Rouge of
Kampuchea. But it also envisions the
“return of the Inca” which makes it popular
among elements of the urban poor and
middle class descendants of Quechua speak-
ing highland peasants, according to an arti-
cle in the latest issue of the Canadian
Journal of Latin American and Caribbean
Studies.)

The organization receives no funding

in fragmented Peru

from abroad. But in recent years it has
financed itself by charging a “tax” ranging
from $5,000 to $8,000 U.S. on every plane
carrying processed coca — the substance
which is refined to make cocaine — that
flies out of Peru to the drug cartels in
Columbia, Caceres related.

Attacks on the left and trade unionists
also come from right-wing death squads
such as Comando Rodrigo Franco, which
in the first six months of this year staged 58
of the 94 actions that claimed the lives of 12
lawyers, seven municipal authorities, eight
members of the university community, 14
journalists and various left-wing leaders, he
reported.

The human rights organization Amnesty
International has compiled a report of
Peru’s massacres, assassinations and kid-
nappings and has appealed to the United
Nations to respond. Since the release of that
report in August, the situation has wor-
sened, Caceres said.

Garcia’s APRA came to power amid
high expectations by Peruvians that it
would turn Peru’s economy and human
rights record around. But a staggering infla-
tion rate, which this year will reach an esti-
mated 6,000 per cent, a crushing external
debt of $14 billion U.S. that the country can
no longer make payments on, and the dry-
ing up of foreign investment have rendered
the government’s few stabs at reform inef-
fectual. And the military, which ruled Peru
until 10 years ago, is a power unto itself, said
the United Left leader.

The United Left has a program that
includes imposing a moratorium on debt
payments and seeking avenues of finance
and investment through alternatives to the
usual sources, through increase trade with
other Latin American nations. Caceres said
the UL has the committed support of abou
30 percent oftheslertrrate: ge ae se a

There is always the chance of another
military coup. But that seems unlikely con-
sidering the well-financed campaign of the
Democratic Front led by popular novelist
Mario Vargas Llosa, a former left-wing
sympathizer who now espouses neo-
conservative views.

Caceres, on a national tour, said it is
important for Canadians to understand the
situation in Peru, and of the danger posed
by U.S. presence in the Andean region.

By WILLIAM POMEROY
As the 1992 integration of the 12-nation
European Community into a single
market draws near, the organized workers
of the EC countries are looking to the need
for joint struggles to protect their interests.
The Brussels-based European Trade
Union Confederation has planned a con-
ference for October in Ostend, Belgium, of
_ around 1,000 trade union leaders from the
_ various EC member states. This will focus
' on the ways employers are preparing for
1992 and what the trade unions need to do
to defend their gains and rights. The
ETUC also plans a demonstration of up to
10,000 shop stewards near the Brussels
| headquarters of the EC’s European
| Commission.
H The gatherings called by the ETUC will
_ focus on the proposed European Com-
_ munity Charter of Fundamental Social
| Rights. Drafted by the European Com-
' mission under the direction of its current
| president, French Socialist Jacques Delors,
_ the Social Charter is far from a radical
document, but it encompasses many of the
gains and demands of the trade union
movement, including collective bargain-
ing, the right to strike, limitations of work-
ing hours, safety protections, equal rights
of women, protection against racial and
other discrimination and freedom of job

movement.

The charter has proved highly contro-
versial. The big employers oppose any
legally binding minimum social standards.
Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatch-
er is fighting against any Social Charter.
As matters are developing, the European
Commission may adopt a Charter, but it
would be up to each member government
to enact its provisions. If the unions and»
their allies can’t get a legal Charter
adopted on an EC basis, a bitter fight for _
enactment would be needed in each coun- -
try. Z

At its annual conference earlier this
month, the British Trades Union Congress ©
passed a resolution for the creation of a
European section to serve as a link with
EC developments and with the trade
unions of EC members, including station-_
ing a TUC representative in Brussels. In |
the discussion, TUC delegates were
warned that the single market will
“increase the stranglehold of the multina-
tionals and conflict with our desire to pro-
tect our jobs and industries.”

Ford Motor Company, with compo-
nent and assembly plants throughout the
European Community, said in July that it
intends to radically reorganize produc-
tion. The new plan proposes “semi-—
autonomous” shop-floor work teams and _

| European labour movement looking to 1992

involves extensive automation and intensi-
fied production, as well as seven-day-a-
week operation instead of five, and three
shifts instead of two.

Trade union leaders have voiced con-
cern over the plan’s effect on working
hours and conditions and particularly
about the creation of over-capacity in the
auto industry. Japanese auto companies
are moving into Europe to be inside the
EC before its single-market protective
barriers go up. They project the same type
of production schedule. The unions see
plant closings and job losses resulting
from such competition.

A major problem has already deve-
loped: the multinationals’ practice of shift-
ing their plants from northern to southern
Europe. Trade unions are more strongly
organized and entrenched in the north,
particularly in the basic industries. The
main destination of this shift is Spain,
where wages are lower and benefits lag
behind those in Northern Europe. The
Gonzales government is ready to curtail
worker gains to attract multinational
investment.

The way multinationals are gearing
themselves for the free flow of capital
within the EC after 1992 suggest that they
do not expect any Social Charter to be
either liberal or enforceable. Indeed, a

number of countries are moving to intro-
duce or strengthen anti-labour legislation
before 1992.

In Britain, during the June strike of
railroad and London transport workers,
the Thatcher government declared that it
was studying outlawing strikes in all
“essential services.” British law already
bars strikes by police, the military, mer-
chant seamen, post office and other public
workers. Thatcher would greatly extend
this ban. Such a move would spearhead
similar moves across the European Com-
munity.

Steps by the ETUC to mobilize workers
to protect and expand social and industrial
rights and standards in the approaching
single market are paralleled by moves of
individual unions to prepare for the
greater internationalization of company
operations. West German unions, in par-
ticular the big metal workers’ unions, are
taking the lead in calling for single trans-
national unions. Synchronizing union
bargaining among plants of the same
company in different countries could be a
first step toward reshaping union strategy
and tactics to meet the anti-labour threats
in a Western Europe which monopoly
capitalism intends to run by and for itself.

Pacific Tribune, October 9, 1989 « 7