Abimael Guzmán

Abimael Guzmán
Portrait of Chairman Gonzalo.
Born	Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reinoso 3 December 1934 Mollendo, Peru
Died	11 September 2021 Callao, Peru
Nationality	Peruvian
Ideology	Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Gonzalo Thought Anti-revisionism
Political party	CPP

Abimael Guzmán (3 December 1934 – 11 September 2021), also known as Chairman Gonzalo, was a Peruvian communist leader who was Chairman of the Communist Party of Peru from 1969 until his capture in 1992.

Gonzalo is best known for leading a protracted people's war against the Peruvian comprador government and synthesizing the contributions of Mao Zedong into the modern framework of Marxism–Leninism–Maoism. For these reasons, he is upheld as a foundational theorist of Marxism by many Maoists.

Early Life

Chairman Gonzalo was born on the 3rd of December 1934. He was born in the province of Islay, Peru. He learned to read at a state school in Mollendo, in his youth he had taken a series of relocations, this eventually landed him a visit to Sicuani with his mother, where he got to know the fairs, the wool business, and the indigenous peasants located in Sicuani. Gonzalo's mother decided that he would study in Callao.

Gonzalo finished his Primary education in Callao and then started studying in Secondary. Gonzalo as a kid was also attracted to the sport Football and played it intensely; little by little he started to give it up, although as an adult he retained some fondness for it. At the end of World War 2 Gonzalo had read on the newspaper, the capture of Berlin by the Red Army, the celebration of Victory Day after Germany's defeat, the newspapers that headlined images of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Comrade Stalin. Chairman Gonzalo had grown emotional admiration to Comrade Stalin and the Soviet Union from the Soviet film 'Long Live Youth!' Gonzalo later learned from a Chinese merchant, that in China there was a great revolution and that the true figure was not Chiang Kai-shek but Mao Zedong who led a Communist Party like Stalin in the USSR. This started the awakening of Gonzalo's class consciousness.

By age fourteen Gonzalo had finished Secondary School and had moved into his father's home, an atheistic and intellectual setting focused on conversations and discussions about books, theories, and ideas in general, though little was talked about politics, when he was 16 Gonzalo had witnessed an uprising in Arequipa in 1950, Gonzalo later commentated about the event during an interview:

I'd say that what has most influenced me to take up politics has been the struggle of the people. I saw the fighting spirit of the people during the uprising in Arequipa in 1950--how the masses fought with uncontainable fury in response to the barbarous slaughter of the youth. And I saw how they fought the army, forcing them to retreat to their barracks. And how forces had to be brought in from other places in order to crush the people. This is an event that, I'd say, has been imprinted quite vividly in my memory. Because there, after having come to understand Lenin, I understood how the people, how our class, when they take to the streets and march, can make the reactionaries tremble, despite all their power. At age 18, in 1952 Gonzalo had finished all of his studies, Gonzalo received medals upon graduation.

Adulthood and Drift to Marxism

Chairman Gonzalo originally had aspirations to become a soldier in the Peruvian Army, however decided to become a lawyer, Gonzalo was enrolled in the University of the Great Father San Agustín of Arequipa in 1953, Gonzalo's Father primarily funded his education. After he graduated, he earned a degree in Philosophy and law, after graduating he became a clerk then finally landing on the job as a university lecture and becoming financially independent, no longer requiring his father's economic aid. During his time at the University Philosophy and Science became the center of his studies; in terms of theory, they led him to Marxism.

Chairman Gonzalo wrote two theses, "On the Kantian Theory of Space" and "The Democratic-Bourgeois State". When he was 26. The first aimed to demonstrate the unsustainability of Kant's subjective idealist position on space and, conversely, to reaffirm the Marxist philosophical position of space (and also of time, although this thesis does not address time) as a manifestation of matter in eternal movement, based on current science. The second aimed to demonstrate the obsolescence of the democratic-bourgeois state, and bourgeois in general, based on how its practice proves the negation of its own principles and how it has plunged the world into the greatest exploitation and oppression, while simultaneously giving rise to its gravedigger, the proletariat, a class that has opened a new chapter in history. Two political events, alongside the aforementioned, mark the development of Gonzalo's class consciousness, the earlier mentioned uprising in Arequipa in 1950, and another not yet mentioned event of class struggle in the same area in 1956 which brought down Esparza Zañartu, and initiated the end of the Ochenio.

The first Marxist works Gonzalo read were, the Communist Manifesto, and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, he received them shortly after the death of Comrade Stalin in 1953. Gonzalo admired and defended Stalin even defending him against Khrushchevite attacks in 1956, Gonzalo later joined the PCP around in the late 50's to the early 60's. Gonzalo first worked with workers and students, then in organization where he came to know the party's structure and how it functioned, he attended important events such as a regional meeting with comrades from Cuzco and Puno. Subsequently, he was involved in the preparation of the so-called 'National Liberation Front,' but Gonzalo was among those who opposed using this name for electoral purposes, as its outlook was the elections of 1962; a good part, if not the majority, took such a position in the most important internal struggle of the moment against a backdrop of the fight against revisionism that, years later, would ultimately lead to its expulsion from the Party in 1964. He first went to Tacna to promote his party work then later when to Lima where he participated in the national formation of the 'FLN,' where he met prominent leaders of the Party and figures from the colorful Peruvian left. During his time as a begginer Marxist he read Stalin's, "Questions of Leninism", "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", "What is to be done?", "New Democracy" and other works.

See also

• Gonzalo Thought