Source: Daily Worker, September 25, 1929
Transcription/Markup: Paul Saba
Copyleft: Internet
Archive (marxists.org) 2018. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons License.
The repercussions following the engineered “Communist plot” of the murderer, President Leguia, of Peru, far from bringing about the expected annihilation of the labor unions and the illegal Communist movement, has strengthened them. Furthermore, the present servile Government of Peru is being exposed for the shameless lies which it used in order to make another dreadful attack upon the militant workers and peasants.
In this alleged plot, Leguia issued false documents which were to prove that behind the attempt to overthrow the government, a Soviet agent was manoeuvering. The insurrection was to start on the day where all “anti-patriotic forces” were to gather in the churches and from there they would march on the government offices and make a successful “coup d’etat.”
With no further explanations, a reign of terror was initiated, hundreds of workers were jailed, workers and peasants organizations raided. For the last two months, the bourgeois press, in the service of Yankee imperialism, has been mobilized to hound the alleged plotters with the cry: “Save the Fatherland.”
The workers bravely resisted all attempts to crush them, together with their fighting organizations. A Committee of Workers Defense was immediately set afoot, whose investigations revealed the startlingly dirty machinations of the Leguia government.
The leader of the so-called insurrection, a certain Felipe Yparraguirre, was found to be non- existent. The language used in the engineered documents is foreign to Communist terminology. Naturally, the Communists would never attempt to make a united front with the church for such a coup d’etat, for the Catholic Church in Peru, as elsewhere, has always been an instrument of oppression against the workers, especially against the native Indians. The Communists are against such coup d’etat which, according to the Leguia press, was to substitute for the present government clique, another petit-bourgeois clique.
In a manifesto issued by the militant workers it is stated that Communism “represents the movement of the masses and leads them to an armed insurrection for the conquest of power.”
The real motive behind Leguia’s invented plot is the deep unrest through which the country is now going. There have been of late constant and spontaneous upheavals of Indians in the oil fields owned by American imperialist interests. The workers and peasants are suffering from the terrible disease of unemployment which has reached proportions unprecedented in the history of the labor movement of Peru.
The Communist movement and the revolutionary local trade unions have been forced to operate illegally due to the dictatorship exercised by tyrant Leguia.
The petty bourgeoisie is falling apart with the further penetration of the American trust combines. There is a deep-going discontent among the intellectuals and the petty bourgeois shop keepers.
In order to divert the growing antagonism of classes, especially the threatening militancy of the Indians, the lackey government of Peru has forged the documents with the hope to deal a death blow to the workers and peasants organizations.
But the maneuvers proved futile. Leguia is now compelled to silence his press. The workers assume as a result of the exposure of the forgery an aggressive attitude. The revolutionary tide in Peru is rising. The oppressed masses are preparing themselves for a mighty struggle and unlike the past, this struggle will be waged on the basis of class against class, under the leadership of the proletariat led by the Communists, and not by the petty bourgeois elements who are partly responsible for the present Leguia reign of terror.