Proletarian Art: The Spirit of Chairman Gonzalo
By David Martinez
Tribune received an art submission from illustrator Reed Everson, titled “The Spirit of Chairman Gonzalo” made to commemorate Chairman Gonzalo (Abimael Guzman Reynoso), head of the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, Partido Comunista del Perú) and the People’s War in Peru, who died four days ago on September 11.
Everson writes:
Revolutionaries, proletariat, and allies of the working class, let us carry the spirit of Chairman Gonzalo within us. We will unite across borders, across continents, and continue the fight without hesitation. That is the message I convey to you with this art—it is up to us to carry out this message with our actions.
Chairman Gonzalo is the greatest Communist of the contemporary era, who developed Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the highest stage of the proletariat’s ideology through his application of the lessons of Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, and Chairman Mao to the reality of Peru.
For his leadership of the People’s War, he was captured on September 12, 1992 and illegally condemned to solitary confinement for 29 years. His death was not “natural” but the culmination of a prolonged process of assassination carried out by the Peruvian state, backed by US imperialism. The reactionaries purposely allowed his health to deteriorate, maintaining Gonzalo in conditions of physical and psychological torture. Read Tribune‘s editorial linked below for more on Chairman Gonzalo’s death and his seminal importance to the World Proletarian Revolution.
