ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, December 27, 1996 TAG: 9612270081
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: EDWARD A. LYNCH
THE TUPAC Amaru Revolutionary Movement, author of the hostage crisis in Lima, Peru, styles itself a band of young idealists striving to give voice to the oppressed Peruvian poor. The mainstream American media has bought into this characterization. One National Public Radio reporter described the group with the stunning non sequitur, "They are fighting for justice, for socialism."
In fact, Tupac Amaru is a relatively small group of mostly affluent Peruvians and foreigners, with the latter holding a disproportionate share of the leadership posts. They are not fighting a repressive dictatorship, but a democratlc government that has provided greater economic opportunities for poor Peruvians than they have seen for centuries.
Tupac Amaru did not even appear until 1982, two years after Peru restored democracy. The leftists have used violence against innocent people to gain a place in the Peruvian political system that the Peruvian people have emphatically and repeatedly denied them at the polls. If the mainstream American media were interested in fair play, they would refer to Tupac Amaru as a left-wing militia.
Like most Latin American communist movements, Tupac Amaru has no connection whatever with Peru's poor. The movement's violence has claimed the lives of almost 300 Peruvians since 1980, most of them the poor people Tupac Amaru purportedly represents.
The movement attracted the attention of many Americans in February, with the arrest of a 26-year-old New York woman who was masterminding an attack on the Peruvian Congress. The woman, now serving a life sentence, undoubtedly believed her MIT education qualified her to decide what is best for Peru.
Like the larger and even more violent Shining Path movement, the Tupac Amaru is reeling from President Alberto Fujimori's popular anti-terrorist stance. Most of its leadership is in jail.
It was to force the Peruvian government to free that leadership that the group decided upon the noble action of threatening hundreds of innocent people at a Christmas party. It was a desperate act, by a desperate group of people.
Their desperation, however, does not constitute justification. In Peru, there is little justification in attacking anyone in the name of political or economic liberty: Both are well-advanced in Peru, as they are in every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba.
Peruvians cast off a leftist military regime in 1980. Since then, they have held four consecutive free and open presidential elections. In 1995, President Fujimori, who had used extraordinary means to combat the terrorists, won re-election easily. Peruvians desire an end to their terrorist nightmare.
In the economic realm, freedom is also coming rapidly to Peru. Under Fujimori, the bloated, arrogant and ineffective socialist government apparatus has been largely dismantled. Peruvians have more freedom to work, and to keep their own money than they had under the Incas, under the Spanish or under any previous Peruvian regimes. The Fujimori government has been particularly friendly to small capitalists, creating opportunities for Peru's poor to cease being poor.
To advance their hate-filled and discredited ideology, Tupac Amatu's leaders put all this progress at risk. It is not just a group of party-goers that they are holding hostage; it is a nation.
Tupac Amaru desires that the Peruvian government have to choose between respecting democracy and fighting terrorists. They wish to frighten foreign investors away, and to induce Peruvians to invest outside their own country.
This would short-circult the economic progress that makes Tupac Amaru superfluous. It could even force many Peruvian farmers back into the cocaine trade, which is lucrative only when there are no alternatives.
Politically, Tupac Amaru is also attractive only when there are no alternatives. This, then, is their policy - to deny economic and political alternatives to the Peruvian people. Because it is led largely by foreigners, Tupac Amaru is little more than another imperialist movement coveting Peru.
Besides our inherent love of freedom, Virginians have particular reasons to desire the total defeat of Tupac Amaru. A growing Peruvian economy is a potential market for manufactured goods from the commonwealth, including mining equipment, electronics, clothes, processed foodstuffs and chemicals.
A Peru populated by prosperous farmers and small businessmen is no longer a haven for drug traffickers. This means a reduction in the amount of dangerous drugs coming to Virginia. Tupac Amaru, however, has its own reason for wishing to see the drug trade revive: Much of their funding comes from an unholy alliance between these "idealistic" revolutionaries and the drug lords.
This is the true nature of the group that American leftists, from The New York Times to National Public Radio, insist on portraying as visionary fighters for justice.
President Fujimori should give the group no quarter. Virginians should give the group no sympathy.
Edward A. Lynch is an associate professor of political science at Hollins College.
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