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.

Chairman Gonzalo is best known for leading a protracted people's war against the Peruvian old State and defining Marxism–Leninism–Maoism as the new, third and higher stage of Marxism. 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 city of Arequipa. He finished his Primary education in Callao and then started studying in Secondary. Regarding his memories of the initiation of World War II, Chairman Gonzalo remarked:

And going back even further in my memory, I believe that the 2nd World War affected me profoundly. Yes, I remember, if that’s possible, not very clearly — but as if in a dream — when the war began in September of 1939, the uproar and the news on the old radios. I remember the bombing, the important news. I remember the end of the war too, and how it was celebrated with the blast of ships’ horns, loudspeakers, a great clamor and happiness because the 2nd World War had ended.

When he was 16, Chairman Gonzalo had witnessed an uprising in Arequipa in 1950. Chairman 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.

Chairman Gonzalo, regarding the development of his interest in politics, stated:

My interest in politics began to develop at the end of high school, based on the events of 1950. In the following years, I remember forming a group with my schoolmates to study political ideas. We were very eager to study all kinds of political ideas. You can probably understand what kind of period that was. That was the beginning for me. Then in college, the struggle at the university, I experienced firsthand big strikes, confrontations between Apristas and Communists, and debates. And so my interest in books was sparked.

Adulthood and drift to Marxism

Chairman Gonzalo wrote two theses, "On the Kantian Theory of Space" and "The Democratic-Bourgeois State", both 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 Chairman 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 work Chairman Gonzalo read was, One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. Regarding the books he read early on in his political development, he stated:

And so my interest in books was sparked. Someone saw fit to lend me one, I believe it was “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back”. I liked it, I began to study Marxist books. Then the figure of Comrade Stalin made a big impression on me. At that time people who were drawn to Communism and those who became Party members were trained using “Problems Of Leninism”. It was our mainstay and I studied it as it deserved to be studied, seriously, given its importance.

Chairman Gonzalo admired and defended Stalin even defending him against Khrushchevite attacks in 1956, Chairman Gonzalo later joined the PCP around in the late 50's to the early 60's. Chairman 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 Chairman 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.

See also

• Gonzalo Thought
• Contributions of universal validity of Chairman Gonzalo