That is the irony. This poverty is what led to Shining Path, but then they turned on the poor. It was the poor that they were killing,
Quote from a Peruvian farmer.
It used to be said that communists didn't love the poor so much as hate the rich.
Their modern ideological descendants are even more twisted than that. They truly do seem to hate the poor for failing the ideology that seeks to appropriate their voice.
Already Shining Path members had decimated the interior of the country, their terror sparking a brutal government response, which was characterized by a wanton disregard for the rule of law or basic human rights, and whose victims, once again, were primarily the rural and indigenous poor.
This is probably the worst thing about communists. Because they regard any shred of civilised behaviour as a weakness to exploit, they invariably draw an excessive response that harms those they claim they wish to protect.
The truth is, of course, that living workers aren't of all that much interest to any communist.
Dead ones, though ... those can be turned into martyrs, and those martyrs can be used to create even more dead workers, to be made into yet more martyrs.
Quote from a Peruvian farmer.
It used to be said that communists didn't love the poor so much as hate the rich.
Their modern ideological descendants are even more twisted than that. They truly do seem to hate the poor for failing the ideology that seeks to appropriate their voice.
https://archive.ph/Mkp9e
This is probably the worst thing about communists. Because they regard any shred of civilised behaviour as a weakness to exploit, they invariably draw an excessive response that harms those they claim they wish to protect.
The truth is, of course, that living workers aren't of all that much interest to any communist.
Dead ones, though ... those can be turned into martyrs, and those martyrs can be used to create even more dead workers, to be made into yet more martyrs.
That's all communists seem to know.