Tu Weiming is an ethicist and a . He is currently Harvard-Yenching Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy and of Confucian Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He was Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute . He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Tu was born in Kunming, Yunnan Province, Mainland China in 1940. He obtained his in Chinese Studies at Tunghai University in Taiwan and earned his in Regional Studies and in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University. Tu taught at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley and has been on the Harvard faculty since 1981.
Tu was a visiting professor at Peking University, Taiwan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Paris. He holds honorary professorships from Zhejing University, Renmin University, Zhongshan University, and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He has been awarded honorary degrees by Lehigh University, Michigan State University at Grand Valley, and Shandong University.
Tu was appointed by Kofi Annan as a member of the United Nation's "Group of Eminent Persons" to facilitate the "Dialogue among Civilizations" in 2001. He gave a presentation on inter-civilizational dialgoue to the Executive Board of UNESCO in 2004. He was also one of the eight Confucian intellectuals who were invited by the Singapore Government to develop the "Confucian Ethics" school curriculum.
Tu has two sons and two daughters: Eugene, Yalun, Marianna, and Rosa. He was featured in ''A Confucian Life in America'' . His homepage: .
Tu has written about two dozen books in and , including:
* ''Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness''
* ''China in Transformation''
* ''Confucianism and Human Rights''
* ''Confucianism in Historical Perspective''
* ''Confucian Ethics Today: The Singapore Challenge''
* ''Confucian Spirituality''
* ''Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative Transformation''
* ''Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity''
* ''Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought''
* ''Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming's Youth''
* ''The Confucian World Observed''
* ''The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today''
* ''Traditional China''
* ''Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the Confucian Intellectual''
Monday, September 22, 2008
Ou Shizi
Ou Shizhi was Song Dynasty scholar. A native of Chencun, Shunde in Guangdong province, he was known as "Mr. Dengzhou" and was famous for his learnedness. His native village was renamed Dengzhou Village in commemoration of him. He is the attributed author of the Three Character Classic, a that embodied yet suitable for teaching young children.
Laurent-Desire Kabila
Laurent-Désiré Kabila was of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from May 1997, when he overthrew longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko after 32 years of ruling Zaire, until his assassination in January 2001. He was succeeded by his son .
Kabila was born to a member of the tribe in Jadotville in the Belgian Congo, province. His father was Luba, while his mother was . He studied political philosophy in France and attended the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
When the Congo gained independence in 1960 and the Congo Crisis began, Kabila was a "deputy commander" in the Jeunesses Balubakat, the youth wing of the Patrice Lumumba-aligned General Association of the Baluba People of Katanga , actively fighting the secessionist forces of Moise Tshombe. Lumumba was overthrown by within months, and by 1962, Kabila was appointed to the provincial assembly for North Katanga and was chief of cabinet for Minister of Information Ferdinand Tumba. He established himself as a supporter of hard-line Lumumbist Prosper Mwamba Ilunga. When the Lumumbists formed the Conseil National de Libération, he was sent to eastern Congo to help organize a revolution, in particular in the Kivu and North Katanga provinces. In 1965, Kabila has set up a cross-border rebel operation from Kigoma, Tanzania, across Lake Tanganyika.
Che Guevara assisted Kabila for a short time in 1965. Guevara had appeared in the Congo with approximately 100 men who planned to bring about a Cuban style revolution. In Guevara's opinion, Kabila was "not the man of the hour" he had alluded to, with Kabila being one who was more interested in consuming alcohol and bedding women. This, in Guevara's opinion, was the reason that Kabila would show up days late at times to provide supplies, aid, or backup to Guevara's men. The lack of cooperation between Kabila and Guevara led to the revolt being suppressed that same year.
In 1967, Kabila and his remnant of supporters moved their operation into the mountainous Fizi-Baraka area of South Kivu and founded the People's Revolutionary Party . With the support of the People's Republic of China the PRP created a secessionist state in South Kivu province, west of Lake Tanganyika. The mini-state included collective agriculture, extortion and mineral smuggling. The local military commanders were aware of the PRP enclave and reportedly traded military supplies in exchange for a cut of the extortion and robbery profits. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kabila had amassed considerable wealth and established houses in Dar es Salaam and Kampala. While in Kampala, he reportedly met Yoweri Museveni, the future leader of Uganda. Museveni and former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere later introduced Kabila to Paul Kagame, who would become president of Rwanda. These personal contacts became vital in mid-1990s, when Uganda and Rwanda were looking for a Congolese face for their intervention in Zaire. The PRP state came to an end in 1988 and Kabila disappeared and was widely believed to be dead.
Kabila returned in October 1996, leading ethnic Tutsis from South Kivu against Hutu forces, marking the beginning of the First Congo War. With support from Burundi, Uganda and the Rwandan Tutsi government, Kabila pushed his forces into a full-scale rebellion against Mobutu as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire . By mid-1997, the ADFL had made significant gains and following failed peace talks in May 1997, Mobutu fled the country, and Kabila declared victory from Lubumbashi on May 17, suspending the Constitution and changing the name of the country from Zaire to Democratic Republic of Congo. He later made his grand entry into Kinshasa on May 20 to effectively commence his tenure as President.
Kabila had been a committed Marxist, but his policies at this point were a mix of capitalism and . While some in the West hailed Kabila as representing a "new breed" of African leadership, critics charged that Kabila's policies differed little from his predecessor's, being characterised by authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. Kabila was also accused of self-aggrandizing tendencies, including trying to set up a personality cult, with the help of Mobutu's former Minister of Information, Dominique Sakombi Inongo.
By 1998, Kabila's former allies in Uganda and Rwanda of the Rally for Congolese Democracy . Kabila found new allies in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola and managed to hold on in the south and west of the country and in July 1999 peace talks led to the withdrawal of most foreign forces.
However, the rebellion continued and Kabila was shot during the afternoon of January 16, 2001 by one of his own staff, Rashidi Kasereka, who was also killed. The assassination was part of a failed coup attempt which was crushed and Kabila, who may have been still alive, was flown to Zimbabwe for medical treatment. The Congolese government confirmed that he had died there on January 18. One week later, his body was returned to Congo for a state funeral and his son, , became president ten days later.
The investigation into the assassination led to 135 people being tried before a special military tribunal. The alleged ringleader, Colonel Eddy Kapend , and 25 others were sentenced to death in January 2003. Of the other defendants 64 were jailed, with sentences from six months to life, and 45 were exonerated.
Early life
Kabila was born to a member of the tribe in Jadotville in the Belgian Congo, province. His father was Luba, while his mother was . He studied political philosophy in France and attended the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
Congo Crisis
When the Congo gained independence in 1960 and the Congo Crisis began, Kabila was a "deputy commander" in the Jeunesses Balubakat, the youth wing of the Patrice Lumumba-aligned General Association of the Baluba People of Katanga , actively fighting the secessionist forces of Moise Tshombe. Lumumba was overthrown by within months, and by 1962, Kabila was appointed to the provincial assembly for North Katanga and was chief of cabinet for Minister of Information Ferdinand Tumba. He established himself as a supporter of hard-line Lumumbist Prosper Mwamba Ilunga. When the Lumumbists formed the Conseil National de Libération, he was sent to eastern Congo to help organize a revolution, in particular in the Kivu and North Katanga provinces. In 1965, Kabila has set up a cross-border rebel operation from Kigoma, Tanzania, across Lake Tanganyika.
During the Mobutu dictatorship
Che Guevara assisted Kabila for a short time in 1965. Guevara had appeared in the Congo with approximately 100 men who planned to bring about a Cuban style revolution. In Guevara's opinion, Kabila was "not the man of the hour" he had alluded to, with Kabila being one who was more interested in consuming alcohol and bedding women. This, in Guevara's opinion, was the reason that Kabila would show up days late at times to provide supplies, aid, or backup to Guevara's men. The lack of cooperation between Kabila and Guevara led to the revolt being suppressed that same year.
In 1967, Kabila and his remnant of supporters moved their operation into the mountainous Fizi-Baraka area of South Kivu and founded the People's Revolutionary Party . With the support of the People's Republic of China the PRP created a secessionist state in South Kivu province, west of Lake Tanganyika. The mini-state included collective agriculture, extortion and mineral smuggling. The local military commanders were aware of the PRP enclave and reportedly traded military supplies in exchange for a cut of the extortion and robbery profits. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kabila had amassed considerable wealth and established houses in Dar es Salaam and Kampala. While in Kampala, he reportedly met Yoweri Museveni, the future leader of Uganda. Museveni and former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere later introduced Kabila to Paul Kagame, who would become president of Rwanda. These personal contacts became vital in mid-1990s, when Uganda and Rwanda were looking for a Congolese face for their intervention in Zaire. The PRP state came to an end in 1988 and Kabila disappeared and was widely believed to be dead.
War and presidency
Kabila returned in October 1996, leading ethnic Tutsis from South Kivu against Hutu forces, marking the beginning of the First Congo War. With support from Burundi, Uganda and the Rwandan Tutsi government, Kabila pushed his forces into a full-scale rebellion against Mobutu as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire . By mid-1997, the ADFL had made significant gains and following failed peace talks in May 1997, Mobutu fled the country, and Kabila declared victory from Lubumbashi on May 17, suspending the Constitution and changing the name of the country from Zaire to Democratic Republic of Congo. He later made his grand entry into Kinshasa on May 20 to effectively commence his tenure as President.
Kabila had been a committed Marxist, but his policies at this point were a mix of capitalism and . While some in the West hailed Kabila as representing a "new breed" of African leadership, critics charged that Kabila's policies differed little from his predecessor's, being characterised by authoritarianism, corruption, and human rights abuses. Kabila was also accused of self-aggrandizing tendencies, including trying to set up a personality cult, with the help of Mobutu's former Minister of Information, Dominique Sakombi Inongo.
By 1998, Kabila's former allies in Uganda and Rwanda of the Rally for Congolese Democracy . Kabila found new allies in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola and managed to hold on in the south and west of the country and in July 1999 peace talks led to the withdrawal of most foreign forces.
Assassination
However, the rebellion continued and Kabila was shot during the afternoon of January 16, 2001 by one of his own staff, Rashidi Kasereka, who was also killed. The assassination was part of a failed coup attempt which was crushed and Kabila, who may have been still alive, was flown to Zimbabwe for medical treatment. The Congolese government confirmed that he had died there on January 18. One week later, his body was returned to Congo for a state funeral and his son, , became president ten days later.
The investigation into the assassination led to 135 people being tried before a special military tribunal. The alleged ringleader, Colonel Eddy Kapend , and 25 others were sentenced to death in January 2003. Of the other defendants 64 were jailed, with sentences from six months to life, and 45 were exonerated.
Jose Manuel Barroso
José Manuel Dur?o Barroso is the 12th of the European Commission. He served as of Portugal from 6 April 2002 to 17 July 2004. He assumed the position in the Commission 23 November 2004.
He holds two nationalities, Portuguese and Brazilian . He graduated in Law from the University of Lisbon and has an MSc in and Social Sciences from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. His academic career continued as an Assistant Professor in the Law School of the University of Lisbon. He did research for a at Georgetown University and Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C.. He is a 1998 graduate of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar. Back in Lisbon, Barroso became Director of the Department for International Relations at Lusíada University . He also received an honorary degree from Liverpool University on the 3rd of July 2008.
Barroso's political activity began in his college days, before the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974. He was one of the leaders of the underground MRPP . In an interview with the newspaper ''Expresso'', he said that he had joined MRPP to fight the only other student body movement, also underground, which was controlled by the Communist Party. In December 1980, Barroso joined the right-of-centre PPD , where he remains to the present day.
In 1985, under the PSD government of Aníbal Cavaco Silva , Barroso was named Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs. In 1987 he became a member of the same government as he was elevated to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation , a post he was to hold for the next five years. In this capacity he was the driving force behind the Bicesse Accords of 1990, which led to a temporary armistice in 's civil war between the ruling MPLA and the opposition UNITA guerrillas of Jonas Savimbi. He also supported independence for East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, then a province of Indonesia by force. In 1992, Barroso was promoted to the post of , and served in this capacity until the defeat of the PSD in the 1995 general election.
In opposition, Barroso was elected to the Assembly of the Republic in 1995 as a representative for Lisbon. There, he became chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1999 he was elected president of his political party, PSD, succeeding Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa , and thus became Leader of the Opposition. elections in 2002 gave the PSD enough seats to form a coalition government with the right-wing Portuguese , and Barroso subsequently became Prime Minister of Portugal on 6 April 2002. As Prime Minister, facing a growing budget deficit, he made a number of difficult decisions and adopted strict reforms. He reduced public expenditure, which made him unpopular among leftists and public servants. On July 5 2004, having become -designate of the European Commission, Barroso arranged with Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio the terms of the cessation of his job as Prime Minister of Portugal.
In 2003, Barroso hosted U.S President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar in the Portuguese Island of Terceira, in the Azores, in which the four leaders met and finalised the controversial U.S-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Under Barroso's leadership, Portugal became part of the coalition of the willing for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In June 2004, following his being proposed as a consensus candidate by the European People's Party, the European Council appointed José Manuel Barroso -designate of the European Commission. 22 July, the European Parliament endorsed him in the position by 413 votes to 251, with 44 blank ballots and three spoiled ones. He was due to take over officially from Romano Prodi on 1 November. This process was however delayed until 23 November due to problems regarding parliamentary approval of the Barroso Commission.
During his presidency, the following important issues have been on the Commission's agenda:
* The reform of the institutions
* The Bolkestein directive, aimed at creating a single market for services within the EU.
* Lisbon Strategy
* Galileo positioning system
* Doha Development Agenda negotiations
* European Institute of Innovation and Technology
Son of Luís António Saraiva Barroso and wife Maria Elisabete de Freitas Dur?o , José Manuel Barroso married at the Lisbon Cathedral, Lisbon, on September 28, 1980 to Maria Margarida Pinto Ribeiro de Sousa Uva, born in Lisbon, Santa Maria de Belém, on November 25, 1955, with whom he has three sons: Luís , Guilherme and Francisco de Sousa Uva Dur?o Barroso.
Apart from his , Barroso is professionally fluent in , he speaks and and has taken a course to acquire a basic knowledge of .
Academic career
He holds two nationalities, Portuguese and Brazilian . He graduated in Law from the University of Lisbon and has an MSc in and Social Sciences from the University of Geneva in Switzerland. His academic career continued as an Assistant Professor in the Law School of the University of Lisbon. He did research for a at Georgetown University and Georgetown's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in Washington, D.C.. He is a 1998 graduate of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar. Back in Lisbon, Barroso became Director of the Department for International Relations at Lusíada University . He also received an honorary degree from Liverpool University on the 3rd of July 2008.
Early political career
Barroso's political activity began in his college days, before the Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974. He was one of the leaders of the underground MRPP . In an interview with the newspaper ''Expresso'', he said that he had joined MRPP to fight the only other student body movement, also underground, which was controlled by the Communist Party. In December 1980, Barroso joined the right-of-centre PPD , where he remains to the present day.
In 1985, under the PSD government of Aníbal Cavaco Silva , Barroso was named Under-Secretary of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs. In 1987 he became a member of the same government as he was elevated to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation , a post he was to hold for the next five years. In this capacity he was the driving force behind the Bicesse Accords of 1990, which led to a temporary armistice in 's civil war between the ruling MPLA and the opposition UNITA guerrillas of Jonas Savimbi. He also supported independence for East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, then a province of Indonesia by force. In 1992, Barroso was promoted to the post of , and served in this capacity until the defeat of the PSD in the 1995 general election.
Prime Minister of Portugal
In opposition, Barroso was elected to the Assembly of the Republic in 1995 as a representative for Lisbon. There, he became chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1999 he was elected president of his political party, PSD, succeeding Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa , and thus became Leader of the Opposition. elections in 2002 gave the PSD enough seats to form a coalition government with the right-wing Portuguese , and Barroso subsequently became Prime Minister of Portugal on 6 April 2002. As Prime Minister, facing a growing budget deficit, he made a number of difficult decisions and adopted strict reforms. He reduced public expenditure, which made him unpopular among leftists and public servants. On July 5 2004, having become -designate of the European Commission, Barroso arranged with Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio the terms of the cessation of his job as Prime Minister of Portugal.
In 2003, Barroso hosted U.S President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar in the Portuguese Island of Terceira, in the Azores, in which the four leaders met and finalised the controversial U.S-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Under Barroso's leadership, Portugal became part of the coalition of the willing for the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
President of the European Commission
In June 2004, following his being proposed as a consensus candidate by the European People's Party, the European Council appointed José Manuel Barroso -designate of the European Commission. 22 July, the European Parliament endorsed him in the position by 413 votes to 251, with 44 blank ballots and three spoiled ones. He was due to take over officially from Romano Prodi on 1 November. This process was however delayed until 23 November due to problems regarding parliamentary approval of the Barroso Commission.
During his presidency, the following important issues have been on the Commission's agenda:
* The reform of the institutions
* The Bolkestein directive, aimed at creating a single market for services within the EU.
* Lisbon Strategy
* Galileo positioning system
* Doha Development Agenda negotiations
* European Institute of Innovation and Technology
Personal life
Son of Luís António Saraiva Barroso and wife Maria Elisabete de Freitas Dur?o , José Manuel Barroso married at the Lisbon Cathedral, Lisbon, on September 28, 1980 to Maria Margarida Pinto Ribeiro de Sousa Uva, born in Lisbon, Santa Maria de Belém, on November 25, 1955, with whom he has three sons: Luís , Guilherme and Francisco de Sousa Uva Dur?o Barroso.
Apart from his , Barroso is professionally fluent in , he speaks and and has taken a course to acquire a basic knowledge of .
Internal conflict in Peru
It has been estimated that nearly 70,000 people died in the internal conflict in Peru that started in 1980 and, although still ongoing, had greatly wound down by 2000. The principal actors in the war were the government of Peru, the Shining Path, the , and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
A great many of the victims of the conflict were ordinary civilians. All of the armed actors in the war deliberately targeted and killed civilians, making the conflict more bloody than any other war in .
Peruvian history has long been plagued by coup d'états and military dictatorships. General Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a coup in 1968 and led a -leaning military government until he was thrown out of power by in 1975. Francisco Morales Bermúdez was installed as the new in 1975, and allowed elections to be held in 1980.
During the dictatorships of and , Shining Path had organized as a political group based at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in Ayacucho Region, Peru. The group was led by Abimael Guzmán, a professor of philosophy at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University. Guzmán had been inspired by the Cultural Revolution, which he had witnessed firsthand during a trip to China. Shining Path members engaged in street fights with members of other political groups and painted graffiti exhorting "armed struggle" against the Peruvian state.
When Peru's military government allowed for the first time in a dozen years in 1980, Shining Path was one of the few leftist political groups that declined to take part, instead opting to launch a guerrilla war in the highlands of the province of . On May 17, 1980, the eve of the presidential elections, it burned ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho. It was the first "act of war" by Shining Path. Nonetheless, the perpetrators were quickly caught, additional ballots were brought in to replace the burned ballots, the elections proceeded without further incident, and the act received very little attention in the Peruvian press.
Shining Path opted to fight their war in the style taught by Mao Zedong. They would open up "guerrilla zones" in which their guerrillas could operate, drive government forces out of these zones to create "liberated zones", then use these zones to support new guerrilla zones until the entire country was essentially one big "liberated zone." Shining Path also adhered to Mao's teaching that guerrilla war should be fought primarily in the countryside and gradually choke off the cities.
On December 3, 1982, the Shining Path officially formed the "People's Guerrilla Army", its armed wing.
In 1982, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement launched its own guerrilla war against the Peruvian state. The group had been formed by remnants of the in Peru and identified with guerrilla movements in Latin America. The MRTA used techniques that were more traditional to Latin American leftist organizations than those used by Shining Path. For example, the MRTA wore uniforms, claimed to be fighting for true democracy, and complained of human rights abuses by the state, while Shining Path did not wear uniforms, abhorred democracy, and rejected the idea of human rights.
During the internal conflict, the MRTA and Shining Path engaged in combat with each other. The MRTA played a small part in the overall internal conflict, being declared by the to have been responsible for 1.5% of deaths accumulated throughout the war. At its height the MRTA was believed to consist of only a few hundred members.
Gradually the Shining Path made more and more violent attacks on the National Police of Peru, and the Lima-based government could no longer ignore the growing crisis in the Andes. In 1981, Fernando Belaúnde Terry declared a State of Emergency and ordered that the Peruvian Armed Forces fight the Shining Path. Constitutional rights were suspended for 60 days in Huamanga Province, Huanta Province, Cangallo Province, La Mar Province and Víctor Fajardo Province. Later, the Armed Forces created the Ayacucho Emergency Zone, in which military power was superior to civilian power, and many constitutional rights were suspended. The military committed many human rights violations in the area where it had political control, including the famous Accomarca massacre. Scores of peasants were massacred by the armed forces. A special -trained counterterrorist police battalion known as the "Sinchis" were particularly notorious for their human rights violations.
The reaction of the Shining Path to the Peruvian government's use of the military in the war was not to back down, but instead to ramp up the level of violence in the countryside. Shining Path attacked police, military, and civilians that it considered to be "class enemies", often using particularly gruesome methods of killing their victims. These killings, along with Shining Path's disrespect for the culture of indigenous peasants it claimed to represent, turned many people in the sierra away from the Shining Path.
Faced with a hostile population, the Shining Path's guerrilla war began to falter. In some areas, peasants formed anti-Shining Path patrols, called ''rondas''. They were generally poorly equipped despite donations of guns from the armed forces. Nevertheless, Shining Path guerrillas were militarily attacked by the ''rondas''. The first such reported attack was in January 1983 near Huata, when some ''rondas'' killed 13 ''senderistas''; in February in Sacsamarca, ''rondas'' stabbed and killed the Shining Path commanders of that area. In March 1983, ''rondas'' brutally killed Olegario Curitomay, one of the commanders of the town of Lucanamarca. They took him to the town square, stoned him, stabbed him, set him on fire, and finally shot him. As a response, in April, Shining Path entered the province of Huancasancos and the towns of Yanaccollpa, Ataccara, Llacchua, Muylacruz and Lucanamarca, and , many of whom were children, including one who was only six months old.
Additional massacres by Shining Path occurred, such as one in Marcas on 29 August 1985.
The Shining Path, like the government, filled its ranks by conscription. The Shining Path also kidnapped children and forced them to fight as child soldiers in their war.
Under the administration of Alberto Fujimori the pace at which the armed forces committed widespread atrocities such as massacres was slowed. Additionally, the state began the widespread use of intelligence agencies in its fight against Shining Path. However, atrocities were committed by the , notably the La Cantuta massacre, the Barrios Altos massacre, and the Santa massacre, all of which were committed by Grupo Colina.
On April 5, 1992, Alberto Fujimori ordered the military to occupy the Congress of Peru, declaring the Congress dissolved and the Constitution abolished, initiating the Peruvian Constitutional Crisis of 1992. The pretext for these actions was that the Congress was slow to pass anti-terrorism legislation. Fujimori set up military courts to try suspected members of the Shining Path and MRTA, and ordered that an "iron fist" approach be used. Fujimori also announced that Peru would no longer accept the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
As Shining Path began to lose ground in the Andes to the Peruvian state and the rondas, it decided to speed up its overall strategic plan. Shining Path declared that, in Maoist jargon, it had reached "strategic equilibrium" and was ready to begin its final assault on the cities of Peru. In 1992, Shining Path set off a powerful bomb in the Miraflores District of Lima in what became known as the Tarata bombing. This was part of a larger bombing campaign in Lima.
On September 12, 1992, Peruvian police captured Guzmán and several Shining Path leaders in an apartment above a dance studio in the Surquillo district of Lima. The police had been monitoring the apartment, as a number of suspected Shining Path militants had visited it. An inspection of the garbage of the apartment produced empty tubes of a skin cream used to treat psoriasis, a condition that Guzmán was known to have. Shortly after the raid that captured Guzmán, most of the remaining Shining Path leadership fell as well. At the same time, Shining Path suffered embarrassing military defeats to campesino self-defense organizations — supposedly its social base — and the organization fractured into splinter groups. Guzmán's role as the leader of Shining Path was taken over by ?scar Ramírez, who himself was captured by Peruvian authorities in 1999. After Ramírez's capture, the group splintered, guerrilla activity diminished sharply, and previous conditions returned to the areas where the Shining Path had been active.
The ranks of the MRTA were decimated by both an amnesty program for its members and the jailing of several of its key leaders. In late 1996, the MRTA seized the residence of the ambassador of Japan to Peru, starting a 126 day-long during which the MRTA demanded the release of their prisoners. Ultimately, none of the MRTA's demands were met, and the crisis ended when the Peruvian armed forces and freed the hostages. All of the MRTA members involved in the crisis were reportedly killed during the raid; however, it is alleged that several of the aforesaid members had survived the initial raid and were hours after the raid began.
Alberto Fujimori resigned the Presidency in 2000, but Congress declared him "morally unfit", installing Valentín Paniagua into office. He rescinded Fujimori's announcement that Peru would leave the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and established a to investigate the war. The Commission found in its 2003 ''Final Report'' that 69,280 people died or between 1980 and 2000 as a result of the armed conflict. A statistical analysis of the available data led the the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to estimate that the Shining Path was responsible for the death or disappearance of 31,331 people, 46% of the total deaths and disappearances. According to its final report, 75% of the people who were either killed or spoke Quechua as their native language, despite the fact that the 1993 census found that only 20% of Peruvians speak Quechua or another indigenous language as their native language.
Nevertheless, the final report of the was surrounded by controversy. It was criticized by almost all political parties , the military and the Catholic Church, which claimed that many of the Commission members where former members of extreme leftists movements and that the final report wrongfully portrayed Shining Path and the MRTA as "political parties" rather than as terrorist organizations.
Since the capture of Guzman, Shining Path has greatly declined in strength. It no longer conducts any operations in Lima, and has only been able to mount sporadic small-scale attacks. Nevertheless, Shining Path continues to occasionally kill Peruvian security forces. For example, on June 9, 2003 a Shining Path group attacked a camp in Ayacucho, and took 68 employees of the Argentinean company Techint and three police guards as hostages. They had been working in the that would take natural gas from to Lima. According to sources from Peru's Interior Ministry, the hostage-takers asked for a sizable ransom to free the hostages. Two days later, after a rapid military response, the hostage-takers abandoned the hostages. According to rumor, the company paid the ransom.
The group now appears to be led by a man known as Comrade Artemio. Rather than attempt to destroy the Peruvian state and replace it with a communist state, Artemio has pledged to carry out attacks until the Peruvian government releases Shining Path prisoners and negotiates an end to the war. These demands have been made in various video statements made by Artemio. The vast majority of Peruvians continue to hold the Shining Path in low regard. On October 13 2006, Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism.
On the 27th anniversary of the Shining Path's first attack against the Peruvian state a homemade bomb in a backpack was set off in a market in the southern Peruvian city of Juliaca killing 6 and wounding 48. Because of the timing of the attack the Shining Path is suspected by the Peruvian authorities of holding responsibility for the attack.
A great many of the victims of the conflict were ordinary civilians. All of the armed actors in the war deliberately targeted and killed civilians, making the conflict more bloody than any other war in .
National situation before the war
Peruvian history has long been plagued by coup d'états and military dictatorships. General Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a coup in 1968 and led a -leaning military government until he was thrown out of power by in 1975. Francisco Morales Bermúdez was installed as the new in 1975, and allowed elections to be held in 1980.
Rise of Shining Path
During the dictatorships of and , Shining Path had organized as a political group based at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in Ayacucho Region, Peru. The group was led by Abimael Guzmán, a professor of philosophy at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University. Guzmán had been inspired by the Cultural Revolution, which he had witnessed firsthand during a trip to China. Shining Path members engaged in street fights with members of other political groups and painted graffiti exhorting "armed struggle" against the Peruvian state.
Outbreak of hostilities
When Peru's military government allowed for the first time in a dozen years in 1980, Shining Path was one of the few leftist political groups that declined to take part, instead opting to launch a guerrilla war in the highlands of the province of . On May 17, 1980, the eve of the presidential elections, it burned ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho. It was the first "act of war" by Shining Path. Nonetheless, the perpetrators were quickly caught, additional ballots were brought in to replace the burned ballots, the elections proceeded without further incident, and the act received very little attention in the Peruvian press.
Shining Path opted to fight their war in the style taught by Mao Zedong. They would open up "guerrilla zones" in which their guerrillas could operate, drive government forces out of these zones to create "liberated zones", then use these zones to support new guerrilla zones until the entire country was essentially one big "liberated zone." Shining Path also adhered to Mao's teaching that guerrilla war should be fought primarily in the countryside and gradually choke off the cities.
On December 3, 1982, the Shining Path officially formed the "People's Guerrilla Army", its armed wing.
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
In 1982, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement launched its own guerrilla war against the Peruvian state. The group had been formed by remnants of the in Peru and identified with guerrilla movements in Latin America. The MRTA used techniques that were more traditional to Latin American leftist organizations than those used by Shining Path. For example, the MRTA wore uniforms, claimed to be fighting for true democracy, and complained of human rights abuses by the state, while Shining Path did not wear uniforms, abhorred democracy, and rejected the idea of human rights.
During the internal conflict, the MRTA and Shining Path engaged in combat with each other. The MRTA played a small part in the overall internal conflict, being declared by the to have been responsible for 1.5% of deaths accumulated throughout the war. At its height the MRTA was believed to consist of only a few hundred members.
Government response
Gradually the Shining Path made more and more violent attacks on the National Police of Peru, and the Lima-based government could no longer ignore the growing crisis in the Andes. In 1981, Fernando Belaúnde Terry declared a State of Emergency and ordered that the Peruvian Armed Forces fight the Shining Path. Constitutional rights were suspended for 60 days in Huamanga Province, Huanta Province, Cangallo Province, La Mar Province and Víctor Fajardo Province. Later, the Armed Forces created the Ayacucho Emergency Zone, in which military power was superior to civilian power, and many constitutional rights were suspended. The military committed many human rights violations in the area where it had political control, including the famous Accomarca massacre. Scores of peasants were massacred by the armed forces. A special -trained counterterrorist police battalion known as the "Sinchis" were particularly notorious for their human rights violations.
Escalation of the war
The reaction of the Shining Path to the Peruvian government's use of the military in the war was not to back down, but instead to ramp up the level of violence in the countryside. Shining Path attacked police, military, and civilians that it considered to be "class enemies", often using particularly gruesome methods of killing their victims. These killings, along with Shining Path's disrespect for the culture of indigenous peasants it claimed to represent, turned many people in the sierra away from the Shining Path.
Faced with a hostile population, the Shining Path's guerrilla war began to falter. In some areas, peasants formed anti-Shining Path patrols, called ''rondas''. They were generally poorly equipped despite donations of guns from the armed forces. Nevertheless, Shining Path guerrillas were militarily attacked by the ''rondas''. The first such reported attack was in January 1983 near Huata, when some ''rondas'' killed 13 ''senderistas''; in February in Sacsamarca, ''rondas'' stabbed and killed the Shining Path commanders of that area. In March 1983, ''rondas'' brutally killed Olegario Curitomay, one of the commanders of the town of Lucanamarca. They took him to the town square, stoned him, stabbed him, set him on fire, and finally shot him. As a response, in April, Shining Path entered the province of Huancasancos and the towns of Yanaccollpa, Ataccara, Llacchua, Muylacruz and Lucanamarca, and , many of whom were children, including one who was only six months old.
Additional massacres by Shining Path occurred, such as one in Marcas on 29 August 1985.
The Shining Path, like the government, filled its ranks by conscription. The Shining Path also kidnapped children and forced them to fight as child soldiers in their war.
The administration of Alberto Fujimori
Under the administration of Alberto Fujimori the pace at which the armed forces committed widespread atrocities such as massacres was slowed. Additionally, the state began the widespread use of intelligence agencies in its fight against Shining Path. However, atrocities were committed by the , notably the La Cantuta massacre, the Barrios Altos massacre, and the Santa massacre, all of which were committed by Grupo Colina.
On April 5, 1992, Alberto Fujimori ordered the military to occupy the Congress of Peru, declaring the Congress dissolved and the Constitution abolished, initiating the Peruvian Constitutional Crisis of 1992. The pretext for these actions was that the Congress was slow to pass anti-terrorism legislation. Fujimori set up military courts to try suspected members of the Shining Path and MRTA, and ordered that an "iron fist" approach be used. Fujimori also announced that Peru would no longer accept the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
As Shining Path began to lose ground in the Andes to the Peruvian state and the rondas, it decided to speed up its overall strategic plan. Shining Path declared that, in Maoist jargon, it had reached "strategic equilibrium" and was ready to begin its final assault on the cities of Peru. In 1992, Shining Path set off a powerful bomb in the Miraflores District of Lima in what became known as the Tarata bombing. This was part of a larger bombing campaign in Lima.
On September 12, 1992, Peruvian police captured Guzmán and several Shining Path leaders in an apartment above a dance studio in the Surquillo district of Lima. The police had been monitoring the apartment, as a number of suspected Shining Path militants had visited it. An inspection of the garbage of the apartment produced empty tubes of a skin cream used to treat psoriasis, a condition that Guzmán was known to have. Shortly after the raid that captured Guzmán, most of the remaining Shining Path leadership fell as well. At the same time, Shining Path suffered embarrassing military defeats to campesino self-defense organizations — supposedly its social base — and the organization fractured into splinter groups. Guzmán's role as the leader of Shining Path was taken over by ?scar Ramírez, who himself was captured by Peruvian authorities in 1999. After Ramírez's capture, the group splintered, guerrilla activity diminished sharply, and previous conditions returned to the areas where the Shining Path had been active.
The ranks of the MRTA were decimated by both an amnesty program for its members and the jailing of several of its key leaders. In late 1996, the MRTA seized the residence of the ambassador of Japan to Peru, starting a 126 day-long during which the MRTA demanded the release of their prisoners. Ultimately, none of the MRTA's demands were met, and the crisis ended when the Peruvian armed forces and freed the hostages. All of the MRTA members involved in the crisis were reportedly killed during the raid; however, it is alleged that several of the aforesaid members had survived the initial raid and were hours after the raid began.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Alberto Fujimori resigned the Presidency in 2000, but Congress declared him "morally unfit", installing Valentín Paniagua into office. He rescinded Fujimori's announcement that Peru would leave the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and established a to investigate the war. The Commission found in its 2003 ''Final Report'' that 69,280 people died or between 1980 and 2000 as a result of the armed conflict. A statistical analysis of the available data led the the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to estimate that the Shining Path was responsible for the death or disappearance of 31,331 people, 46% of the total deaths and disappearances. According to its final report, 75% of the people who were either killed or spoke Quechua as their native language, despite the fact that the 1993 census found that only 20% of Peruvians speak Quechua or another indigenous language as their native language.
Nevertheless, the final report of the was surrounded by controversy. It was criticized by almost all political parties , the military and the Catholic Church, which claimed that many of the Commission members where former members of extreme leftists movements and that the final report wrongfully portrayed Shining Path and the MRTA as "political parties" rather than as terrorist organizations.
The war today
Since the capture of Guzman, Shining Path has greatly declined in strength. It no longer conducts any operations in Lima, and has only been able to mount sporadic small-scale attacks. Nevertheless, Shining Path continues to occasionally kill Peruvian security forces. For example, on June 9, 2003 a Shining Path group attacked a camp in Ayacucho, and took 68 employees of the Argentinean company Techint and three police guards as hostages. They had been working in the that would take natural gas from to Lima. According to sources from Peru's Interior Ministry, the hostage-takers asked for a sizable ransom to free the hostages. Two days later, after a rapid military response, the hostage-takers abandoned the hostages. According to rumor, the company paid the ransom.
The group now appears to be led by a man known as Comrade Artemio. Rather than attempt to destroy the Peruvian state and replace it with a communist state, Artemio has pledged to carry out attacks until the Peruvian government releases Shining Path prisoners and negotiates an end to the war. These demands have been made in various video statements made by Artemio. The vast majority of Peruvians continue to hold the Shining Path in low regard. On October 13 2006, Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism.
On the 27th anniversary of the Shining Path's first attack against the Peruvian state a homemade bomb in a backpack was set off in a market in the southern Peruvian city of Juliaca killing 6 and wounding 48. Because of the timing of the attack the Shining Path is suspected by the Peruvian authorities of holding responsibility for the attack.
Harry Haywood
Harry Haywood was born in South Omaha, Nebraska to former , Harriet and Haywood Hall. He was the youngest of three children. Named after his father at birth, Haywood Hall, "Harry Haywood" is a pseudonym adopted in 1925. Radicalized by the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, he was a leading African American member of both the Communist Party of the United States and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . He is best known for his significant theoretical contributions to the Marxist national question and as a founder of the Maoist New Communist Movement. In 's autobiographical novel ''Black Boy '', the character of Buddy Nealson represents Haywood.
Harry Haywood began his revolutionary career by joining the African Blood Brotherhood in 1922 followed by the in 1923. Shortly thereafter, in 1925 he joined the Communist Party, USA. After joining the CPUSA Haywood went to Moscow to study, first to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in 1925, then to the International Lenin School in 1927. He stayed until 1930 as a delegate to the Communist International . There he worked on commissions dealing with the question of African Americans in the United States as well as the development of the "Native Republic Thesis" for the South African Communist Party. Haywood worked to draft the "Comintern Resolutions on the Negro Question" of 1928 and 1930, which put forward the line that African Americans in the of the United States made up an oppressed nation, with the right to self-determination up to and including secession. He would continue to fight for this line throughout his life.
In the CPUSA, Haywood served on the Central Committee from 1927 to 1938 and on the Politburo from 1931 until 1938. He also participated in the major factional struggles internal to the CPUSA against Jay Lovestone and Earl Browder, regularly siding with William Z. Foster.
He was General Secretary of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. In the early 1930s while head of the CPUSA Negro Department, he was a leader in the movement to support the Scottsboro Boys, organized miners in with the National Miners Union, and was a leader in the struggles of the militant Sharecroppers Union in the Deep South. He also led the "Hands off Ethiopia" campaign in Chicago's to oppose the Fascist in 1935. When eleven Communist leaders went on trial under the Smith Act in 1949, Haywood was assigned the task of research for the defense.
Haywood's military career stretched through three wars, beginning with World War I where he served with a Black regiment. He fought for the in the Spanish Civil War with the of the International Brigades. With the Merchant Marines, he served in World War I where he was active with National Maritime Union.
During his four and half year stay in the Soviet Union Harry Haywood held dual membership in both the CPUSA and the CPSU. As a member of the CPSU, he travelled extensively through the Soviet Union's , and participated in the struggles against both the Left Opposition headed by Leon Trotsky and the Right Opposition led by Nikolai Bukharin. In these struggles and in others Haywood was on the side of Joseph Stalin.
With the Comintern, Haywood was assigned to work with the newly created Negro Commission. His major work regarding this, ''Negro Liberation'', argues that the root of the oppression of Blacks was the unsolved agrarian question in the . There he analyzed that the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution of had been betrayed through the - Compromise of 1877 and had thus left African Americans abandoned and thrust back on to the plantations from which they had been freed, now as tenant farmers and sharecroppers faced with the governments, the system of , and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan. According to Haywood, the rise of imperialism left Blacks frozen as "landless, semi-slaves in the South."
Through all of this developed a distinct African American nation which fulfilled the criteria laid out by Stalin in his ''Marxism and the National Question'': a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture.
Haywood saw as the correct response to this nothing short of the demand for self-determination of the African American people in their historically constituted national territory, the Black Belt South, and full equality everywhere else. Only with genuine political power, which from a Marxist point of view includes control of the productive forces, including the land, could African American's obtain genuine equality. This was seen as a prerequisite for broader working class unity.
Most of those in the CPUSA who disagreed with the analysis put forth by Harry Haywood and the Comintern considered the question of African American oppression in the United States simply a matter of racial prejudice with moral roots rather than an economic and political question of national oppression. They saw it as a problem to be solved under Socialism and in no need of special attention until after the institution of the revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat. To this charge Haywood countered that the category of "" is a mystification and that such policy can only alienate African Americans and inhibit working class unity.
Following urbanization and major from the South critics attempted to use statistics to counter the Black Belt theory. Haywood, in his 1957 article, "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question," responded that the question of an oppressed nation in the South was not one of "nose counting."
Following the death of Stalin in 1953 and Nikita Krushchev's rise to power, the CPUSA accompanied Moscow in Krushchev's policy of destalinization and "peaceful coexistence". Long an admirer of Mao Zedong, Harry Haywood was one of the pioneers of the anti-revisionist movement born out of the growing Sino-Soviet split. He was driven out of the CPUSA in the late 1950s along with many others who took firm anti-revisionist or pro-Stalin positions.
The CPUSA's decision to change its line on the African American national question was a central factor in Haywood's expulsion. Though it had not been a strong point for the CPUSA since the dissolution of the Sharcroppers Union, the demand for self-determination for African Americans in the South was officially dropped by the CPUSA in 1959 in favor of a "Melting Pot" position that as American capitalism developed, so too would Black-white unity. Haywood, no longer a functioning party member, attempted to intervene, writing "On the Negro Question" which was distributed at the Seventeenth National Convention in 1959 by and in the name of African Blood Brotherhood founder, Cyril Briggs. This was not effective, however, as most of Haywood's potential allies had already been removed in the name of combatting and dogmatism.
In Haywood's view, this change of line was based on longstanding "white chauvanism" in the party. He also argued that the change prevented the CPUSA from giving correct leadership during the and left the party to tail behind the NAACP and Martin Luther King. This further alienated the party from the militant Black Power Movement that was to follow.
After being isolated and driven from the ranks of the CPUSA, Harry Haywood became one of the initiators of the New Communist Movement, the goal of which was to found a new Communist Party on an anti-revisionist basis, believing the CPUSA to have deviated irrevocably from Marxism-Leninism. He was one of the founders of the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party , formed in New York in August, 1958 by eighty-three mostly Black and delegates from the CPUSA. According to Haywood, the POC rapidly degenerated into an isolated, dogmatic, ultraleft sect, completely removed from any political practice.
He went from there to work in one of the newly formed Maoist groups of the New Communist Movement, the . In the CP Haywood served on the Central Committee and published, along with his other major works, his 700 page, critical autobiography, ''Black Bolshevik''. This book became, because of its breadth and scope, an important document and through it and his other writings Haywood was able to provide leadership to the New Communist Movement. Haywood's theoretical contributions had a substantial impact on the major groups of the movement well beyond his own CP, including, for example, the , the early , the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters and the . Nonetheless, lack of experience, sectarianism, and voluntarism played a major role in keeping the young Maoist groups from taking a strong leading role.
Despite all of its changes, the Black Belt South is still considered relevant by many Marxists. The reason given by many revolutionary groups is because of the negative impact of conditions for African Americans in the South upon the US working class as a whole. Haywood's theoretical contributions to questions of African American national oppression and national liberation thus remain highly valued by the Ray O. Light Group, which developed out of an anti-revisionist split from the Communist Party USA in 1961, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which was originally formed from the mergers of several New Communist Movement groups in the 1980s, and the Maoist Internationalist Movement.
*Foster, William Z. ''History of the Communist Party of the United States''. International Publishers, New York: 1952. 600 pages.
*Foster, William Z. ''The Negro People in American History''. International Publishers, New York: 1954. 608 pages.
*Kelly, Robin D. G. ''Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression''. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill: 1990. 369 pages.
* Harry Haywood, ''Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist''. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1978. 700 pages.
* Harry Haywood, ''Negro Liberation''. International Publishers, New York: 1948. 245 pages.
* Harry Haywood, ''For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question''. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1975. 38 pages.
* Harry Haywood, ''On the Negro Question''. 1959 . Available in: ''Towards Victorious Afro-American National Liberation: A Collection of Pamphlets, Leaflets and Essays Which Dealt In a Timely Way With the Concrete Ongoing Struggle for Black Liberation Over the Past Decade and More.'' A Ray O. Light Publication, Bronx: 1982. pp. 383-403
=
Career with the Communist Party USA
Harry Haywood began his revolutionary career by joining the African Blood Brotherhood in 1922 followed by the in 1923. Shortly thereafter, in 1925 he joined the Communist Party, USA. After joining the CPUSA Haywood went to Moscow to study, first to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in 1925, then to the International Lenin School in 1927. He stayed until 1930 as a delegate to the Communist International . There he worked on commissions dealing with the question of African Americans in the United States as well as the development of the "Native Republic Thesis" for the South African Communist Party. Haywood worked to draft the "Comintern Resolutions on the Negro Question" of 1928 and 1930, which put forward the line that African Americans in the of the United States made up an oppressed nation, with the right to self-determination up to and including secession. He would continue to fight for this line throughout his life.
In the CPUSA, Haywood served on the Central Committee from 1927 to 1938 and on the Politburo from 1931 until 1938. He also participated in the major factional struggles internal to the CPUSA against Jay Lovestone and Earl Browder, regularly siding with William Z. Foster.
He was General Secretary of the League of Struggle for Negro Rights. In the early 1930s while head of the CPUSA Negro Department, he was a leader in the movement to support the Scottsboro Boys, organized miners in with the National Miners Union, and was a leader in the struggles of the militant Sharecroppers Union in the Deep South. He also led the "Hands off Ethiopia" campaign in Chicago's to oppose the Fascist in 1935. When eleven Communist leaders went on trial under the Smith Act in 1949, Haywood was assigned the task of research for the defense.
Haywood's military career stretched through three wars, beginning with World War I where he served with a Black regiment. He fought for the in the Spanish Civil War with the of the International Brigades. With the Merchant Marines, he served in World War I where he was active with National Maritime Union.
The Comintern and the Black Belt Nation
During his four and half year stay in the Soviet Union Harry Haywood held dual membership in both the CPUSA and the CPSU. As a member of the CPSU, he travelled extensively through the Soviet Union's , and participated in the struggles against both the Left Opposition headed by Leon Trotsky and the Right Opposition led by Nikolai Bukharin. In these struggles and in others Haywood was on the side of Joseph Stalin.
With the Comintern, Haywood was assigned to work with the newly created Negro Commission. His major work regarding this, ''Negro Liberation'', argues that the root of the oppression of Blacks was the unsolved agrarian question in the . There he analyzed that the unfinished bourgeois democratic revolution of had been betrayed through the - Compromise of 1877 and had thus left African Americans abandoned and thrust back on to the plantations from which they had been freed, now as tenant farmers and sharecroppers faced with the governments, the system of , and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan. According to Haywood, the rise of imperialism left Blacks frozen as "landless, semi-slaves in the South."
Through all of this developed a distinct African American nation which fulfilled the criteria laid out by Stalin in his ''Marxism and the National Question'': a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture.
Haywood saw as the correct response to this nothing short of the demand for self-determination of the African American people in their historically constituted national territory, the Black Belt South, and full equality everywhere else. Only with genuine political power, which from a Marxist point of view includes control of the productive forces, including the land, could African American's obtain genuine equality. This was seen as a prerequisite for broader working class unity.
Most of those in the CPUSA who disagreed with the analysis put forth by Harry Haywood and the Comintern considered the question of African American oppression in the United States simply a matter of racial prejudice with moral roots rather than an economic and political question of national oppression. They saw it as a problem to be solved under Socialism and in no need of special attention until after the institution of the revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat. To this charge Haywood countered that the category of "" is a mystification and that such policy can only alienate African Americans and inhibit working class unity.
Following urbanization and major from the South critics attempted to use statistics to counter the Black Belt theory. Haywood, in his 1957 article, "For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question," responded that the question of an oppressed nation in the South was not one of "nose counting."
Expulsion from the CPUSA
Following the death of Stalin in 1953 and Nikita Krushchev's rise to power, the CPUSA accompanied Moscow in Krushchev's policy of destalinization and "peaceful coexistence". Long an admirer of Mao Zedong, Harry Haywood was one of the pioneers of the anti-revisionist movement born out of the growing Sino-Soviet split. He was driven out of the CPUSA in the late 1950s along with many others who took firm anti-revisionist or pro-Stalin positions.
The CPUSA's decision to change its line on the African American national question was a central factor in Haywood's expulsion. Though it had not been a strong point for the CPUSA since the dissolution of the Sharcroppers Union, the demand for self-determination for African Americans in the South was officially dropped by the CPUSA in 1959 in favor of a "Melting Pot" position that as American capitalism developed, so too would Black-white unity. Haywood, no longer a functioning party member, attempted to intervene, writing "On the Negro Question" which was distributed at the Seventeenth National Convention in 1959 by and in the name of African Blood Brotherhood founder, Cyril Briggs. This was not effective, however, as most of Haywood's potential allies had already been removed in the name of combatting and dogmatism.
In Haywood's view, this change of line was based on longstanding "white chauvanism" in the party. He also argued that the change prevented the CPUSA from giving correct leadership during the and left the party to tail behind the NAACP and Martin Luther King. This further alienated the party from the militant Black Power Movement that was to follow.
With the New Communist Movement
After being isolated and driven from the ranks of the CPUSA, Harry Haywood became one of the initiators of the New Communist Movement, the goal of which was to found a new Communist Party on an anti-revisionist basis, believing the CPUSA to have deviated irrevocably from Marxism-Leninism. He was one of the founders of the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party , formed in New York in August, 1958 by eighty-three mostly Black and delegates from the CPUSA. According to Haywood, the POC rapidly degenerated into an isolated, dogmatic, ultraleft sect, completely removed from any political practice.
He went from there to work in one of the newly formed Maoist groups of the New Communist Movement, the . In the CP Haywood served on the Central Committee and published, along with his other major works, his 700 page, critical autobiography, ''Black Bolshevik''. This book became, because of its breadth and scope, an important document and through it and his other writings Haywood was able to provide leadership to the New Communist Movement. Haywood's theoretical contributions had a substantial impact on the major groups of the movement well beyond his own CP, including, for example, the , the early , the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters and the . Nonetheless, lack of experience, sectarianism, and voluntarism played a major role in keeping the young Maoist groups from taking a strong leading role.
Despite all of its changes, the Black Belt South is still considered relevant by many Marxists. The reason given by many revolutionary groups is because of the negative impact of conditions for African Americans in the South upon the US working class as a whole. Haywood's theoretical contributions to questions of African American national oppression and national liberation thus remain highly valued by the Ray O. Light Group, which developed out of an anti-revisionist split from the Communist Party USA in 1961, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, which was originally formed from the mergers of several New Communist Movement groups in the 1980s, and the Maoist Internationalist Movement.
Further reading
General
*Foster, William Z. ''History of the Communist Party of the United States''. International Publishers, New York: 1952. 600 pages.
*Foster, William Z. ''The Negro People in American History''. International Publishers, New York: 1954. 608 pages.
*Kelly, Robin D. G. ''Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression''. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill: 1990. 369 pages.
Selected writings by Harry Haywood
* Harry Haywood, ''Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist''. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1978. 700 pages.
* Harry Haywood, ''Negro Liberation''. International Publishers, New York: 1948. 245 pages.
* Harry Haywood, ''For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question''. Liberator Press, Chicago: 1975. 38 pages.
* Harry Haywood, ''On the Negro Question''. 1959 . Available in: ''Towards Victorious Afro-American National Liberation: A Collection of Pamphlets, Leaflets and Essays Which Dealt In a Timely Way With the Concrete Ongoing Struggle for Black Liberation Over the Past Decade and More.'' A Ray O. Light Publication, Bronx: 1982. pp. 383-403
=
Francisco Sarrion
Francisco Sarrión was a -born , mostly known as the leader of a small, short lived Maoist sect in Sweden in 1968.
Sarrión lived in the People's Republic of China for a while in the 1960s where he came in contact with group of Maoists visiting China. He decided to move to Sweden, where he in 1968 became the indisputable leader of a small extremist Maoist sect, called ''Rebellerna'' . The Rebels rebelled against the broader Leftist and Maoists movement, which they considered corrupted. They even went to the Chinese embassy in Stockholm were they demanded to become members of the Communist Party of China. When they were denied membership, because they weren't Chinese citizens, Francisco Sarrión declared that the embassy was under the control of reactionary bureaucrats who had betrayed Mao Zedong.
In Sweden, Sarrión sometimes used the pseudonym Fredrik Svensson.
Francisco Sarrión was a charismatic leader who could gather and control a group of young, dedicated followers around him. Witnesses have described Sarrión acting more like a fanatic religious preacher than a politician.
The Rebel Movement only lasted for a couple of months, but during this time, its members rapidly broke off all contact with the rest of society, including their families. The group of approximately 100 members was divided into smaller cells, living isolated in 7 apartments in Stockholm and one apartment in Uppsala, where they were to study the works of Mao and prepare for the coming ''World Revolution''. Only the leadership, the ''Central Committee'', with Sarrión as chairman, knew were the different cells were located.
Eventually the sect imploded and Francisco Sarrión, after having failed to obtain a Swedish citizenship, moved back to Spain and lived the last years of his life in the Canary Islands, working in the tourist industry until his death.
Sarrión lived in the People's Republic of China for a while in the 1960s where he came in contact with group of Maoists visiting China. He decided to move to Sweden, where he in 1968 became the indisputable leader of a small extremist Maoist sect, called ''Rebellerna'' . The Rebels rebelled against the broader Leftist and Maoists movement, which they considered corrupted. They even went to the Chinese embassy in Stockholm were they demanded to become members of the Communist Party of China. When they were denied membership, because they weren't Chinese citizens, Francisco Sarrión declared that the embassy was under the control of reactionary bureaucrats who had betrayed Mao Zedong.
In Sweden, Sarrión sometimes used the pseudonym Fredrik Svensson.
Francisco Sarrión was a charismatic leader who could gather and control a group of young, dedicated followers around him. Witnesses have described Sarrión acting more like a fanatic religious preacher than a politician.
The Rebel Movement only lasted for a couple of months, but during this time, its members rapidly broke off all contact with the rest of society, including their families. The group of approximately 100 members was divided into smaller cells, living isolated in 7 apartments in Stockholm and one apartment in Uppsala, where they were to study the works of Mao and prepare for the coming ''World Revolution''. Only the leadership, the ''Central Committee'', with Sarrión as chairman, knew were the different cells were located.
Eventually the sect imploded and Francisco Sarrión, after having failed to obtain a Swedish citizenship, moved back to Spain and lived the last years of his life in the Canary Islands, working in the tourist industry until his death.
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