"Maoism: A Global History" by Julia Lovell (5): Former French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) and Peru

The bulk of Lovell’s book includes accounts of Maoist revolutionary movements in various countries, including Indonesia, Nepal, Peru, Vietnam and Cambodia, various African nations, and in formerly-known-as-”First World” countries of the US and Europe.

In Nepal, the Maoist party named Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) “led a successful campaign to overthrow Nepal’s monarchy and replace it with a democratically elected government.” (1) The CPN (M) under the leadership of Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda), conducted a 20-year insurgency beginning in 1996. The end result was to estabish a parliamentary republic. Prachanda served as Prime Minister 2008-2009, again in 2016-2017, and has been the current Prime Minister since 2022. (2)

Other Maoist influences Lovell recounts had less Jeffersonian outcomes.

Former French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos)

The most notorious was the case of the cultish, homicidal regime in Cambodia led by Saloth Sar, better known as Pol Pot, head of the Khmer Rouge guerilla group and later head of government. Their program was heavily influenced by Maoist concepts of collectivization which lead to a particularly twisted-utopian dictatorship after they took power, with genuinely terrible results. (3) They were particularly supported by Gang of Four (Jiang Qing [Mao’s wife], Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, Wang Hongwen) group that was temporarily ascendent in the CCP after Mao passing in 1976 and who were known as a group committed to the Cultural Revolution brand of Mao Zedong Thought.

The Nixon Administration’s reckless policies played a huge role in destablizing Cambodia and opening the way to that outcome, as William Shawcross documented at some length in his book Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon & the Destruction of Cambodia (1979).

The Nixon Administration’s reckless policies played a huge role in destablizing Cambodia and opening the way to that outcome, as William Shawcross documented at some length in his book Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon & the Destruction of Cambodia (1979).

Lovell’s description of Mao’s longer-term position in the period of the Vietnam War is particularly interesting in describing the varied effects of revolutionary ideology, international power politics, and long-term patterns of national relationships. Both China and the Soviet Union both supported the Vietnamese War against the US, even during the period when China was aligning with the US against the USSR. She describes China’s influence on Vietnamese rural collectivization policies in North Vietnam after its 1954 victory over France. In Vietnam’s case, though, she describes serious that Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh had about them. The Vietnamese Communist Party had strong local roots and wasn’t willing to completely adopt Maoist ideas on domestic policy, even though their practice of “people war” was very much influenced by the success of the Chinese version.

Vietnam had been around long before it became a modern national-state and it was fighting China off an on for two millennia. overall gives a really helpful description of how Mao and his successors in this case pursued a pragmatic combination of “proletarian internationalist” solidarity, promotion of its own successful model of people’s war, and caution over relations with Vietnam. As she puts it, once the Americans were defeated, China easily moved into a longer-term policy of using Cambodia as a balancing force against Vietnam. China even conducted a month-long military intervention into Vietnam in 1979.

Peru

Most people in the Global North has probably heard of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerilla group in Peru as a murderous cult. Lovell’s description is unlikely to change the minds of those who have that impression.

But she gives an informative account of how Abimael Guzmán, who trained in China for a while, built a domestic guerrilla force based on Maoist concepts, and maintained an active armed struggle for two decades beginning in 1980. (4) Lovell describes how Guzmán organized a core group among indigenous people in the Ayacucho region that was able to mount successful operations against the Peruvian armed forces. The brutal actions of the Peruvian government - with assistance from the United States - in reacting to the Sendero Luminoso challenge is also an ugly part of the story. (5)

                                                Sendero Luminoso poster (1985) (6)

Miguel La Serna makes this judgment on the legacy of Sendero Luminoso:

From 1980 until his 1992 arrest, Guzmán headed a vicious guerrilla campaign to topple the Peruvian state and replace it with a Communist government built in his image. Of course, a guerrilla army fighting for a more just society was nothing new in Latin America in the 1980s. Throughout the region, young leftists took up arms against oppressive dictatorships and US imperialism. What distinguished Shining Path from these other groups was its extreme penchant for violence. (7)

Notes:

(1) Gupta, Dipak. Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre). Britannica Online 3/13/2023. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/Communist-Party-of-Nepal-Maoist-Centre> (Accessed 2024-28-02).

(2) Ex-Maoist rebel leader Prachanda becomes Nepal PM for third time. Aljazeera 12/25/2022. <https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/25/ex-maoist-rebel-leader-prachanda-becomes-nepal-pm-for-third-time> (Accessed 2024-28-02).

(3) Khmer Rouge: Cambodia's years of brutality. BBC News 11/16/2018. <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10684399> (Accessed 2024-28-02).

(4) Guillen, Noelia Torres (2023): Abimael Guzman: The Journey That Led to The Shining Path. StMU Research Scholars 05/10/2023. <https://stmuscholars.org/abimael-guzman-the-journey-that-led-to-the-shining-path/> (Accessed: 2024-28-02).

(5) National Security Archive (2023): Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: 20 Years Later 08/28/2023. <https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/peru/2023-08-28/perus-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-20-years-later> (Accessed 2024-28-02),

(6) File:SenderoLuminosoPoster.jpg. Wikipedia Commons. <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SenderoLuminosoPoster.jpg> (Accessed: 2024-28-02).

(7) La Serna, Miguel (2021): The Shining Path’s Abimael Guzmán Helped Keep Peru in the Past. Jacobin 09/15/2021. <https://jacobin.com/2021/09/the-shining-paths-abimael-guzman-helped-keep-peru-in-the-past> (Accessed: 2024-28-02). Spanish version: La muerte del líder de Sendero Luminoso. Jacobin 21.09.2024. <https://jacobinlat.com/2021/09/21/la-muerte-del-lider-de-sendero-luminoso/> (Accessed: 2024-28-02).