Local analysis by anarchists in Peru, published by anarchists in Olympia, WA.
To this, we can add the memories of the behavior of many people from Lima who rented rooms, apartments, or houses to people from the provinces, and who did not want to forgive them the rent (or lower the cost or postpone it) during the first phase of the pandemic, and began to evict them from their homes, causing an exodus of people from the Andes and the jungle back to their places of origin because of the quarantine. Likewise, some people were expelled from their homes “for fear of infection,” because the press (irresponsibly as usual) spread fear about COVID-19. On top of that, as they traveled in large groups on foot because transportation was prohibited for fear of contagion—and they were not even permitted to use their own transportation—police began to repress them at every checkpoint on the road. In addition, the inhabitants of some places, fearing exposure to the virus, also participated in this repression and in closing the roads through their territories
Jesus Christ
The same thing happened in a lot of developing countries, it was especially bad in India.
Although some of the political parties have contributed to organizing the protests through their bases of supporters, they are trying to position themselves as the vanguard; this is no longer sustainable, as people no longer accept the calls for non-violence coming from these parties. That’s why people have burned state buildings, including police stations.
When it says the non-violent parties trying to vanguard are being rejected because of their opposition to violence it makes it sound like a revolutionary vanguard is on the table.
Yeah, but it seems unlikely to come from established political parties, since Castillo's party is calling for a return to rule of law. It seems that if a vanguard is going to emerge, it will emerge out of relationships formed on the streets these past months.
Since an anarchist is saying this, I doubt that's what they'd like to see happen but it's certainly an implication.
I'd guess the writer means this as a critique of vanguardism in general. Some anarchists I've spoken with irl see vanguards as necessarily deradicalizing the demands of the masses.
But I hope your implication is the correct one, guess we'll have to see if a vanguard or party emerges/develops.
I think you've got a good understanding of the anarchist position.
I think there's something else going on, which is a bit of a semantic mix up. Anarchists often support something leninists would recognize as a vanguard: an organization of concious members of the working class leading the proletariat to seize their farms and factories.
The debate isn't over whether or not there should be a vanguard, but what form the vanguard should take, with anarchists being insistent on vanguardist organizations prefiguring communist relations.
That opposition to vanguardism is precisely why I find it an interesting part. It implies that a vanguard willing to use violence is viable from the very people that would usually oppose such a thing.
They're obviously not calling for it, but they're probably right that the current parties are out of touch with the current anger and willingness to use violence among the masses. Those existing parties will be built around the prior conditions, they have not adapted to the new ones yet and their very structures may not allow them to.
Thing is you need to first make de-radicalization via meeting demands something those in power want and that first requires violence or serious threats that are received.
Example: legalized unions were made to protect capitalist classes from labor organizations they couldn't pin down with laws and so also led to the possibility to having a bosses house burned down in the middle of the night.
I honestly do not see any way forward for Peru except first escalation and then an actual capitulations from the capitalist class cuss as it is what has been offered to the masses is nowhere enough to motivate any change from the current protests.
