I spoke to many Peruvians regarding the Miraflores massacre and it did not sound like bourgeois propaganda (as Maoists like to claim) to me.

I identified as a Maoist as the time. The people I spoke to were usually sympathetic to leftism.

My tour guide who has lived in the area his entire life identified as a “social nationalist” (not a “national socialist”, a socialist and Peruvian nationalist) and he said he respected me for my revolutionary anti-imperialist worldview. He called the Shining Path cowards, fools, terrorists, and hypocrites, claiming they stand for indigenous rights while constantly using them as human shields.

I am aware that one person’s “terrorist” is another person’s freedom fighter. The PCP is hated by almost everyone in Peru. Peasants. Other communists. Many indigenous groups. Their idea of “revolutionary violence” included murdering leftists, unionists, and indigenous rights activists that they disagree with.

May Gonzalo burn in hell. He was no revolutionary. He was a petit-bourgeois cult leader willing to send anyone and everyone to their fucking death while he was kicking back and writing “theory” that included little more than narcissistic ramblings about his own brilliance.

I spit on the “Fourth Sword of Communism”. As for the rest of the guerillas in the party, I am sure many are well-intentioned and there is no denying that Peru is controlled by little more than a fascist led U.S.-comprador state that deserves all the violence it can get.

Not peasants. Not the indigenous. Not other communists. Not random fucking people in the middle of Lima.