Letters
A year ago NACLA published an article by Peruvian feminist Virginia Vargas, "Women: Tragic Encounters with the Left" [Vol. XXV, No. 5]. It featured the assassination of Villa El...
...It featured the assassination of Villa El Salvador's lieutenant mayor, Maria Elena Moyano, and the electoral Left's "half-hearted" support for her in her "defiance of the Maoist guerrillas...
...But our resources, our imagination, our creativity and our love were insufficient, because they are of different world...
...But the first step is awareness, and Latin America seems to have already taken that step...
...She welcomed the deployment of troops in Pachacamac, an outlying shantytown that served as a base of active support for Shining Path...
...Undoubtedly more, and perhaps much more than we did, because we knew, because it had been foretold...
...She had accused Shining Path of the act...
...I wrote that a year ago, just a few days after the assassination of Maria Elena...
...Those who attended her funeral were mainly government functionaries and supporters of electoral parties that had been calling for collaboration with the government in forming neighborhood paramilitary organizations...
...She did organize soup kitchens, lead marches, and join forces with other feminists in promoting the empowerment of women...
...The day before Moyano's assassination, she had been confronted at a big community meeting, and accused of hiring people to blow up the community warehouse in order to discredit the Shining Path...
...The march not only denounced the government, but specifically denounced corruption in the Glass of Milk program which Moyano headed...
...That is our difference...
...Latin America is changing, however, and it is good to read about the steps that the people there are taking to open up the closet doors and debunk the machismo mystique...
...We are of the world of life, and not the world of terror and of death...
...It took a while in the United States-it's been 25 years since the Stonewall riots in New Yorkand we have much left to do...
...Moyano can hardly be held up as a shining example of a "non-violent grassroots community organizer" for attempting to perpetuate a politics of external commodity aid as a substitute for structural change in Peru's economy...
...When Moyano took the position that the inhabitants of Villa El Salvador should provide the Fujimori government with information about the identity and activities of Shining Path sympathizers, and when she refused to recognize Shining Path sympathizers as legitimate elected leaders in the community's three most powerful organizations (including the women's federation), she was defying widely accepted norms and acting out of desperation...
...It will take time...
...The tragedy is that she betrayed her community in the end, and that revolutionaries felt they had no alternative but to end her life...
...I have neither the desire nor the energy to reply to Carol Andreas' letter because it will simply mean we are playing with the logic of death and terror...
...What else could we have done...
...Gay Rights in Latin America The article on gays and lesbians by James Green and Enrique Asis, "The Closet Door Swings Open," which you published in your February 1993 issue [Vol...
...We are of a world of living energy-personal and social...
...The machismo mentality so prevalent throughout the hemisphere is a major force behind Latin America's widespread homophobia...
...CarolAndreas University of Northern Colorado Greeley, CO Virginia Vargas responds on page 46 Virginia Vargas responds: "The assassination of Maria Elena Moyano is truly 'the chronicle of a death foretold.' I have tried to find explanations for it that I do not have...
...In an action which has since been described by the mainstream press as "courageous," she walked out of the meeting with 38 supporters, defying a strike which paralyzed the entire city on that day...
...Jorge Martinez New Orleans, LA...
...Since the Moyano case has become the focus of campaigns against the Peruvian revolution, I would like to add my voice to those who---whatever our views of the tactics engaged in by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, or Shining Path)-do not eulogize Moyano...
...Attempts to dishonor Maria Elena will remain unsuccessful precisely because, as Carol Andreas herself acknowledges, it was Maria Elena's assassination, more than any other terrorist action undertaken by Shining Path, that galvanized the growing popular repudiation of this group which arrogantly claims to be the only bearer of the truth, and assassinates all those who disagree with it...
...Moyano refused requests to open up community accounts for inspection and refused to resign her post...
...In fact, the Catholic Church had already removed itself from the program because of scandals over the administration of aid...
...4] is very timely, because the question of gays in Latin America is one that most people choose to ignore...
...To perpetuate this machismo, Latin American men have constantly felt compelled to prove their masculinity not only by exerting their dominance over women, but by putting down homosexuality as well...
...It is true that Moyano did not want government troops occupying Villa El Salvador...
...XXVI, No...
...Shining Path led a march of some 30,000 women on the government palace a few months before her death...
...She was, however, no pacifist...
...Those of us who respond to Shining Path not with the weapons of terror, but with the weapons of democracy and the defense of human rights would defend its captured leader Abimael Guzman if the government called for the death penalty-this despite his moral, political and historical responsibility for this dirty war...
...Months after Moyano's death, several of her associates were arrested on charges of corruption...
...As for Shining Path's justifications for the assassination of Maria Elena, that she was corrup tand a traitor-accusations which Andreas supports-it is difficult for me to begin to affirm the contrary, and furthermore, I don't think it is worth the effort...
...Add to this the homophobic stance of the Catholic Church-we all know the great influence the church has historically exerted throughout Latin America-and what you have is complete repression of individual sexual preferences...
...This mentality is based, in great part, on the age-old feeling of male dominance and the perception of women as weak and subservient to men both in family and community...
...This label of "weak" is also attached to men who act in nonmacho ways, including homosexuals...
Vol. 27 • July 1993 • No. 1
