Henceforth we share the (unofficial) translation of the important article "Sobre la Selva o Amazonía: Tratar el problema nacional para todo el país no sólo para los selvícolas" that was sent to us

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On the Jungle or Amazon: Addressing the National Problem for the Whole Country Not Just the Forests

Bagua-Amazonas (Peru) around twenty-five natives were assassinated on June 5, 2009 in the Curve of the Devil for protesting against the handing over of the Amazon to the big imperialist companies and the big bourgeoisie.

About the Amazon.

Brazil has the largest extension of the Amazon Rainforest followed by Peru and then Bolivia and other countries.

Those who struggle for the democratic revolution in our countries to break with the three mountains: imperialism, semi-feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, need to develop the potential of the Jungle in order to develop our politics through New Power in that region and, on the other hand, to know what approaches reaction and imperialism have, to unmask them.

For imperialism, this immense region which makes up a large part of South America, has a lot of importance and they conceive it as an oxygenation lung, "great reserve"; but they see that it takes time to exploit the many riches that exist in the Amazon, they see it in perspective. In their meetings and declarations they show their particular interest in the jungle, entering into a struggle with their rivals.

The old landowner-bureaucratic states that posses territory in this zone have agreements for developing it, that is to say for the greater penetration of bureaucratic capitalism in the Amazon region. Logically this occurs in collusion and struggle between the ruling classes of these countries to make the maximum profit. For example, the old Brazilian state has great plans to go through the Amazon to the Pacific, as shown by the construction of the inter-oceanic highway that connects the Peruvian coast with Sao Paulo; apart from the plans of imperialism that aims to use all that wealth.

In addition, all of the Amazon presents border conflicts. Also keep in mind that imperialism aims at these riches, see for example the privatizations and concessions made by governments during these last decades to the big imperialist companies in forestry, agriculture, mining, oil, tourism, biodiversity, etc... So the problem is not simple and will become more complex.

Another question to take into account is the performance of drug trafficking, it has to do with the need of the peasants to cultivate coca in order to be able to live, which serves as a pretext for Yankee imperialism to intervene behind its programs of control and combat of drug trafficking.

The greater penetration of imperialism and bureaucratic capitalism intensifies the class struggle in the region.

On this, keep in mind the latest events denounced by the journal A Nova Democracia and its Director on the forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon region promoted by the landowners and which count on the encouragement and support of the fascist president Bolsonaro himself to strip the peasants and natives of their lands and territories, to try to kill at their origin the great peasant and peoples rebellion and by developing the militarizing of the region as shown in the article we published yesterday by AND-Brasil. The sharpening of the class struggle has been expressed in the massive participation of the populations of the jungle of Brazil,

Peru, etc. in the national and regional strikes and work stoppages, in the struggles of the natives against the great plunder paid by the deaths of their fighters equipped with bows and arrows against the contingents with deadly modern weapons of the forces of reaction, as in Bagua Peru at the end of the last decade.

In the sharpening of the class struggle between revolution and counterrevolution in the Amazon jungle is therefore the clash of two systems, of two forms of production, the semi-feudal and even the primitive communal forms in disintegration and that of bureaucratic capitalism.

In these immense territories there is the presence of both the Communist Parties that struggle to lead the struggle of the settler and native peasants, as well as the opportunists that are acting as always at the tail of the army and other repressive forces of the old state in Peru as well as in Brazil and others.

This whole process of intensification of the class struggle by the clash of modes of production received a strong impulse with the process of transferring the mountain population to the high jungle, especially to Jaén, Huánuco, Perené, Oxapampa and Madre de Dios, in Peru in the 1950s and 1960s and in Brazil with the transfer of the peasant population from various areas of the country by the military government in the 1960s to Rondona and other places in the jungle. Colonization then intensified, beginning with an emphasis on the region's agricultural possibilities and those of reducing population pressure in the sierra. Then the big mining, oil, agro-extractive, pharmaceutical and tourism companies came in.

Conflicting images of the jungle

 In the official, business, academic, etc. media, two opposing images are projected on the jungle, that of a promising future and that of an uncertain one, that of a developmental versus conservative image. But neither of these two visions of the Jungle belongs to the people; these two images are not the only ones, because there is also the position of the proletariat, which after all is the only truly scientific one.

 Of the visions that do not belong to the people of seeing the Jungle: one is that of the specialists, who as we know, are paid by foreigners or are foreigners and that of the State that represents the exploiting classes, thus both criteria are of the ruling classes; in addition there are the criteria of imperialism (also contradictory because imperialism is not a single entity, as can be seen in Macron's interference denounced by the Director of AND, see video); Those of the foresters themselves, those of the native communities, those of the migrant populations of the Sierra, plus there are the spontaneous positions of the masses to whose understanding comes the position of the proletariat. This has to be further developed because of the need to develop the democratic revolution through people's war, for which an exhaustive analysis of the region is needed.

How these two positions see the Jungle in the geographical Field. There are no differences between the various global images managed by the State and the national political organizations, but there are differences in the priority they give or demand for investments in the jungle. An image, the one of the State, is "developmental" and sees it as one of unlimited fertility, therefore there would only be a lack of capital, modern technology and entrepreneurial population, this would serve to develop the region and develop the State itself; it is a futuristic vision, for example when thousands of hectares of land are incorporated into agricultural production for every kilometer of highway built. It is a sample of how the State conceives the Jungle as a remedy to alleviate the country's problems, and its proposals insist on strengthening the migratory flow to stop the peasant struggle for land and apply modern advanced technologies, monoculture and traditional forestry activity; they see it as a simple and short-term problem. They see it as a kind of "Dorado".

The specialists, anthropologists, ecologists, use criteria opposed to those of the State and national political organizations, starting from the fragility of the ecological environment, which must develop a technology but not indiscriminate as proposed by the State but dosed, adequate to prevent ecological deterioration and to allow a sustained use of its resources. The truth is that it is not how it is believed that the jungle has an unlimited value, a fertility that never ends, the humus is thin, demands different forms of work, for example, in checkers, as in chess, this has been applied in other countries. Adequate non-indiscriminate techniques are required.

For the old State the natives are like "the dog of the gardener".

The Latifundista movement started in Novo Progresso, inside the PA, linked to the extreme right and in support of the government in the economic field. (AND Brazil) For the State the problem is to expand the agricultural frontier of the Jungle, it seeks to curb the explosivity of the Sierra with the migration to the Jungle in the Andean countries that have access to the region; but for the Serrano peasants it implies a series of changes, starting with food, for that reason it is not possible to send the population to the Jungle like that anymore, it is necessary to create a series of conditions, diverse plans, what happens is that the State applies what imperialism sends it, to curb the explosivity of the Sierra applying this measure, among others; In addition, what the State wants is to bring bureaucratic capitalism into the jungle as well, as it is already doing, for example, along with the oil palm of the Romero family in Peru, we see the state-owned company Acetera Palma de Espino.

We know that for the specialists, the images are pessimistic, the available schemes only assure short results, they are short term, but of destructive impacts in the long term; the traditional native systems of exploitation of the forests are unviable with a greater population concentration; it is necessary to work at reduced scales. There is work by a Mr. Chirif of 1983, who maintains that the jungle is seen as an "export of misery" and that the new development is at the expense of the settlers already settled and the native population, and that the region constitutes an internal colony for the country, which reproduces the historical schemes of exploitation, destruction of resources and regional subordination.

One of these scholars or specialists, in the ethno-social field, states that the State sees the riparian and native masses as not interested in progress and that therefore they contribute little in economic terms, that their land and resource requirements are restricted, that it is necessary to develop mechanisms to integrate them into national life and the market economy. Let us remember what the fascist and genocidal Alán García said before murdering the natives in Bagua, that they were like "the dog of the gardener", that is to say that they did not want and that they could not and did not let work those who wanted to do so, that is to say the big companies.

In short, the State sees the masses with prejudice, as ignorant, who are against progress, who are incapable of assuming national sentiments, and what they want is to exploit them more and introduce their plans for a market economy; but how to ask the indigenous populations for national sentiments if they have been kept isolated, if nothing or almost nothing has been done to integrate them and obviously within the conditions in which they live it is very difficult for them to spontaneously integrate; for the State the question is to sow "national spirit and patriotic sentiment" hence its civic action, but not to transform the economic base, the relations of production, the relations of exploitation.

To conceive them as distinct ethnic realities undermines national unity. Treating the national problem for the whole country not only for those living in the forests.

 

Also, wanting to conceive of them as different ethnic realities is risky because it attacks national unity, for revolutionaries it is a national problem from the point of view of Marxism, take into account their peculiarities and national reality, they cannot be conceived simply as nations, with their culture, with their language because this is to conceive in a reduced and totally erroneous way the national question, that is to recognize only a part of them and to subdue and oppress them in the substance.

For the Maoist what is needed is to concretize the Program of the Democratic Revolution and to deal with the national problem for the whole country, not only for the jungle. Marxism teaches us that these groupings should develop as nations in the full sense of the word, in all its content; apply the thesis of comrade Stalin on nation, who states that to define a nation 4 characteristics should be seen: unity of language, unity of territory, unity of economy and unity of psychology, the latter is concrete in culture; for Marxism, capitalism is the process that drives nations. A very clear example is the process that took place in Eastern Europe, those nations have been formed, they extend their domains and group others that did not come to fruition and the problem of subjugated nations arises. Marxism gives them the right to be autonomous, but this can remain in words if they are not given the right to separate.  Marx analyses the Austro-Hungarian empire, sees concrete facts and raises the right to separation. In comrade Stalin we also find the right to separation. But it also implies the right to unite freely and obviously this is linked to a united economy that sustains it, an economic base that allows it to unite and not an economy that serves to exploit them. Lenin therefore said that the right to autonomy means the right to separate freely.

There is a lot of agitation for the recognition of their rights, but they don't have the right to have a territory of their own, this means that in substance they reduce nation to culture, national problem to cultural identity. One of the expressions of reducing the national problem  to culture  in Peru is Velasco, who "recognized" Quechua as another official language and published the newspaper La Crónica in Quechua, but if the peasants do not know how to read or write how they were going to read in Quechua, it is not written language, it is only spoken, it has been a group of scholars at an event who gave it that structure that Quechua did not come to maturity, they gave it a spelling that it had not yet achieved. Here we have a case of reducing nationality to language, culture and at the same time a demagogic traffic. How is the use of a language of a minority group  guaranteed?

That is not achieved with a law and Peru has demonstrated it, the case we have mentioned proves it, just as a law will not respect customs; with that type of law, comrade Stalin said, nothing is resolved; Reducing the national problem to the granting of a series of laws by the State does not solve the problem, it must be linked to the unity of language, to that of territory, to that of economy and to that of psychology concretized in culture, otherwise it is reduced to "respect for their language and their customs" by decree law and they are converted to "ghetto"; it is an opportunistic way of seeing the problem, it is a formal respect for their language and customs and a real submission to the State that rules. For this reason, minorities must be recognized their full and true rights, to everything and freely; the central problem is to recognize them and that the equality of rights and freedoms really governs, to apply the principle of territoriality and its organic form, the region, where these minorities develop and can, therefore, create autonomous regimes that freely decide to unite or separate from the State in which they live; also to think that autonomous regions imply certain commonmodalities.

The revolution is aimed at unitary and decentralized states.

The clear thing is that we are countries with a nation in formation and that, in each of them, the historical tendency is to unite; the revolution points to unitary regimes, to each country constituting a single Republic, but at the same time decentralized in broad strategic groupings; unitary and decentralized States, unitary because it makes us stronger and decentralized since, as in the People's War, we apply a single centralized plan for all the work fronts, we make, for example, unique economic plans, applicable in the different regions. In this way, the same plan is applied in each region and it can greatly enhance the initiative to apply it and specify it to each specific situation, even. The same planning principle applies to everyone; we speak of realities, but what is the experience of the USSR, and of China if not reality, a material fact from which many lessons can be drawn. Planning, the creation of socialism, allows us to manage the contradiction between necessity and freedom in an essential question: to manage the relations of production, to order them and to direct the transforming action of human, not a total submission to the laws but a concrete expression of freedom; to plan allows the economic and social management, to unite the transforming action of humans massively. For Marxism, freedom is not only understanding the need but, understanding it, acting to transform it since human beings are the creators of social relations, executors of those laws that exercise them consciously and freely, conscious of the whole process of humanity that becomes objective laws; so planning is extremely important.

We, in the state we build, apply centralization on the basis of real, true democracy, not that which we see here or on the international plane in the imperialist countries; We apply a strategic centralization and a tactical decentralization, thus a State with strategic planning and tactical planning, decentralized for the great regions in which our State is organized, obviously they will not be like the regions that exist in the old State, but regions in which tactical decentralization is exercised, where initiative is promoted, where men can freely exercise their transforming action at all levels, where, in short, democracy can be exercised; even, if necessary, to introduce autonomous regimes for minorities, which will decentralize in their general scope, the centralized by the State.

 

Against the rightist deviation of reducing the national problem to culture

A right-wing deviation is to reduce the national problem to culture, to reduce the national question to culture, to respect for cultures, only their language and customs, this is an opportunist thesis that was combated in the Communist International. Back then, the debate was about this question and the outlook of Marx was dealt with; In the Austro-Hungarian Empire the matter was reduced to respect for language and customs and nations were subjected by force of arms to political and economic domination, to authoritarianism; This is an example of an authoritarian State, ours, contrary to what we are accused of, is not an authoritarian State, it is a State in which democracy is exercised as in no other system, control is exercised from below and from above and humans freely exercise their transforming capacity. In the case of that reactionary state they were subjected to its imperial order.

Today, among us, that deviation is being expressed in reducing nation to culture and on the other hand, generating divisions to curb and hit the democratic revolution, that is what the ILV (Summer Linguistic Institute) does in Peru, what the armed forces do and what many intellectuals see.

Our position on minorities is to recognize their right to separate freely but that unity is more convenient.

Our position on minorities is, in short, to recognize their right to separate freely, but as communists we propose to them that unity is more convenient. We consider that the language that is going to unite us is Spanish, not only us but all Latin Americans, but we are not opposed to it being spoken in native languages or dialects; that the national process that is being expressed aims to have a common economic base, to have a territory that is even delimited, to have a common psychology from which a common culture derives. That is the course that is unfolding and that the proletariat continues and will continue, in the new State of a democratic republic of a new type of and the dictatorship of the proletariat, for the definitive conformation and development of the Peruvian, Brazilian, Ecuadorian nation, etc. but within proletarian internationalism.

Guaranteeing societies not set in their social process is the historical direction, there is no other and we are against the opportunistic deviations of reducing nation to national identity or culture; We are also against the imperialist manipulation of going against the revolution by using the nation problem to divide the people and isolate the proletariat. We are for the conformation of the Peruvian, Brazilian, Ecuadorian nation, etc., depending on the specific case, and this process of a nation in formation will be developed by shaping the revolution. In synthesis, the formation of the nation is in transition and is achieved with revolution.

It is important that we address this issue because every democratic revolution has to solve the national problem and the land problem.

This is broadly how we conceive the problem, we must see the situation of the natives, the inhabitants of the forest, settlers, but in general we must deal with the national problem. Also, keep in mind that international experience always demonstrates this to us, reactionaries use minorities against revolutionary processes, Guatemala, Viet Nam, among others. Behind these ethno-social images elaborated by the State and by scientists, it is obvious that they are ideological representations, because nothing can be done outside of ideology, of politics; Thus, behind the State we will find the position of the landowners and the great bourgeoisie and behind the specialists we find imperialism, the big bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie or persons of the people who do this kind of study consciously at the service of imperialism or letting themselves be used unconsciously. In this field as in the others, the aforementioned people also do not make an analysis from the point of view of the class struggle that is the guiding thread of history. From what we are seeing in the Jungle, as well as in the Sierra and on the Coast, there is an ongoing process of land dispossession, so the eagerness of the rulers to give titles to the peasants, is to legalize land market , buying and selling and new concentration; Greater penetration of the big bourgeoisie through commercial banking, therefore see the relationship title, rating, usury, mortgage, dispossession and new concentration.

Need to unite the native masses

The problem of the integration of the native communities will not be through the bureaucratic path, but the democratic path, the incorporation into the people's war to build the new State, meanwhile, fighting for its economic, social, etc. integration, not consenting to be used or belittled; It is part of the problem of a nation in formation, we are a nationality and we must incorporate less developed societies. In the Jungle, most of the small farmers in the Jungle are not sufficiently organized; the real and concrete question is that the bulk of that mass is not organized nor is their organization developed therefore it has no way to defend itself, it reflects the same problem as at the national level, there are only scabs that traffic and bulge the little and deformed that they do. Here, then, there is an immense mass to organize and defend, defend their property, the prices of the products they sow, the freedom of cultivation and commerce, etc., etc .; Here the motto “Land for those who work it” is in force, but we must also consider raising the price of the products, the price corresponding to the cost of production, to the workforce invested; pay on time and avoid monopolizing trade; combat food importation, exemption from taxes or import tariffs on food they produce; demand improvement of transport, of the road and water network; finally see, then, their specific needs. We must push the class struggle further, specifying the struggles of the regions points to this need: to move the regional struggles as part of developing the revolutionary situation. The main sources for this article come from AND-Brazil and the Document of the II Plenary of the PCP.