Of Chairman Mao and the Witches of Cachiche
“Will all great Neptune’s
ocean wash this blood
clean from my hand?”
Macbeth, Act II, Scene II
Mao Zedong appeared in all his might and splendor and Abimael Guzman watched him from a distance. The Great Helmsman was the undisputed ruler of seven-hundred million people, master of vast lands. A man who had begun as a librarian was now an omnipresent dictator whose word had to be followed to the letter throughout China under pain of death. Abimael visited the Middle Kingdom during the heyday of the Cultural Revolution and saw its effects firsthand. Never mind that millions of people perished, were starved or executed to achieve the orders of Chairman Mao. What amazed Abimael was that a single man had the power to transform an entire country on a whim.
Abimael had admired the Great Helmsman from distant Peru, had memorized The Little Red Book, but now he was seeing the Chairman in the flesh, visiting China to learn Maoist doctrine and the use of weaponry and explosives. Mao was dressed in the traditional Mao suit in a muted blue, a loose tunic buttoned to a high collar and baggy trousers. Everyone in China had to wear the Mao suit, lest they be punished for being members of the bourgeoisie. What most astounded Abimael was the surreal cult of personality which the Chinese leader inspired among the country’s peasants. It was on display as Mao greeted the masses congregating in Tiananmen Square with Abimael Guzman like an ant among them, all ears bent on listening to the sage. Mao had often said that the revolutionary was not bound by moral codes, a lesson which Abimael would eventually learn too well. And seeing Mao venerated by the multitudinous crowds led Abimael, a thirty-five-year-old small-town professor at the time, without an army or a rebel base, to a zany and quixotic thought, that one day he would rule Peru. Yes, he would rule Peru, and he would do so under the banner of Mao Zedong Thought. All reactionaries would have to be exterminated.
His young bride Augusta La Torre, no older than twenty-one, was standing at his side among the massive crowds, dressed in a long-hemmed blue skirt and a simple white blouse as she marveled at the vast Tiananmen Square and all its magnificent structures: the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China and seven other massive “Great Constructions” built to commemorate the ten years since the triumph of the revolution. In all her travels, she had never seen such a sight, a fitting tribute to a man who despite being dressed like a humble militant reigned as the undisputed king.
“See,” she said, as if she could read her husband’s mind. “All this could be ours if you only have the courage and the discipline. It could be ours if you set your mind to it, Abimael.”
Augusta was a lovely girl, with soft hazel eyes and auburn hair falling to her shoulders, a white woman who was fluent in quechua, daughter of a wealthy landowner who happened to be a Communist and decried the conditions of the Amerindians in the highlands of Peru. She had married Abimael not because he was handsome or rich – he was neither – but because she believed he was the man destined to lead the peasants of the Peruvian sierra in a grand Maoist revolution. She never wore makeup and was bothered when people told her she was pretty. That was a bourgeois vanity; women should not be admired for their beauty but for their intelligence and revolutionary fervor. Didn’t Mao insist that women should also dress in Mao suits? Still, she loved to sing, particularly the sad ballads of the Andean highlands she had learned from the Indians who worked at her father’s hacienda. When Abimael met her, she was just sixteen and already a radical atheist and a Communist, even though she had studied in a school run by nuns and had received her best marks in the course on Catholic religion.
“I think you’re jumping the gun,” Abimael responded to her comments about seizing power in Peru. “It’ll take at least a dozen years for the conditions to be ready for an uprising in the Andes.”
“Patience attains all,” Augusta replied, quoting Saint Teresa of Avila. She was fascinated by the Spanish mystic even though Augusta had long since left the faith. Saint Teresa had not been just a nun, she had been a woman who knew how to wield political power. When Augusta founded Socorro Popular, a feminist organization meant to organize women joining the armed struggle, she thought of Saint Teresa of Avila and the women’s orders she had founded. And from a very young age, Augusta was willing to bear any Cross for the revolution, just like Saint Teresa of Avila had demanded more and more crosses from the Christ.
“Before you can make it a reality, you have to envision it, Abimael.” continued Augusta. “Just look at everything Mao has achieved. You can do the same thing in Peru.”
There must have been more than half a million people in the vast Tiananmen Square that afternoon, soldiers, peasants, workers, women, youth, all listening to the words of Mao and often interjecting, “Down with Yankee imperialism!” or “We support Vietnam!” There was a sea of red flags with hammers-and-sickles lifted by the multitudinous crowds, the throngs focused on Mao as he addressed them in his slow, parsimonious voice. Abimael had never visited Cuba, but he had heard Castro’s fiery sermons on tape and Mao’s speech was nothing like them. The Great Helmsman spoke gently, like a calm teacher instructing his students, and often Abimael’s interpreter was unable to hear the master’s words and could not tell Abimael what he was saying.
Mao spoke in front of the deep dark red façade of the Great Hall of the People built during the Great Leap Forward, an immense structure located at the west end of the magnificent square, which had a white obelisk in the center, proclaiming, “To the heroes of the people,” written in Mao’s own calligraphy. On either side of the square, there were two ancient, massive gates which contained the throngs. The adoring crowds were like those who congregated in Saint Peter’s Square to listen to the Pope, but their God was not a man that had died two-thousand years ago. It was the Great Helmsman, a man of flesh and blood, still alive and kept in power by his Red Guard and by the numberless masses who fiercely followed and enforced his dictates. Abimael saw Mao’s limitless power and delighted in it. Like Simon Bolivar when he witnessed the coronation of Napoleon, Abimael swore to himself that he would one day achieve the same glory as the man being venerated by the Chinese masses.
Mao was speaking about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in his low, gravelly voice. Abimael had already seen some of it in action, had seen acts of revolutionary violence perpetrated by Mao’s loyal followers – not just the People’s Liberation Army – and Abimael had witnessed the “purifications” in Shanghai where books were burned by ordinary people at the master’s orders. He had seen the class struggle with his own eyes: the marches, the gongs, the ardent slogans and the meetings where the grim fates of revisionists, discredited party officials and fallacious “academic authorities” were decided by the peasants and the students.
He had seen the great January proletarian storm in Canton and Shanghai and had personally met with the Shanghai Revolutionary Committee. He had seen students in red armbands beating up and murdering supposed reactionaries, anyone who was dressed like a member of the bourgeoisie instead of a Mao suit. He had even heard the tales of massacres in Guanqxi, where thousands of victims of Mao’s decrees had been cannibalized after being tortured. In his heart of hearts, Abimael approved of everything he saw and thought Mao was making great strides in the never-ending people’s war. What did the death of millions mean if you could achieve and maintain revolutionary glory for so long? Abimael failed to see any irony in the fact that Tiananmen meant Gate of Heavenly Peace in Mandarin.
Abimael derived a special pleasure from hearing the Great Helmsman describe the Cultural Revolution in his own words. Abimael’s satisfaction was that of a faithful Christian who could hear Jesus’ parables directly from His mouth and at the same time that of a madman who believed he could become the Christ Himself. Everything was possible in the mind of Abimael as he listened to Chairman Mao. He learned at the foot of his master that merciless brutality and a single-minded vision without scruples could lead to revolutionary triumph. His pretty twenty-one-year-old bride Augusta learned the same lesson, perhaps better than he did. Everywhere they heard the students singing songs praising the Great Helmsman who was replenishing the well of justice with a river of blood. And the young Latin American couple began to think the same thing could be done in Peru.
Mao’s speech began by addressing his faithful followers in the same square where he had announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China so many years earlier.
“Here I want to say that I myself, as well as my numerous comrades in arms, all take the same attitude. No matter where they are, in Peking or anywhere in China, I will give enthusiastic support to all those who take an attitude similar to yours in the Cultural Revolution. We must purify the ranks of the Communist Party. Like the red sun rising in the East, the Cultural Revolution is shedding it revolutionary light on all of China and beyond.”
And then Abimael’s ears perked up. Chairman Mao started to talk about the international struggle and Abimael could not help but think of the conditions in his own country.
“If I cannot emancipate all mankind, then the Chinese proletariat itself will not be able to achieve final emancipation. Comrades, please pay close attention to this truth too. We must imagine Communist victory all over Asia, Africa and Latin America. As in China itself, all remnants of feudalism and colonialism must be destroyed through the relentless and unremitting violence of the peasants.”
After three months of training in Mao Thought and the use of firearms and explosives, the couple returned to Peru, transformed by what they had seen. The theoretical lessons had been very useful – later they would allow Abimael to formulate a detailed and “scientific” theory in support of the revolution he sought to ignite in the highlands of Peru – but it would be the figure of Mao himself who would be the greatest inspiration for them. He taught them that in the people’s war there are no limits or bounds, no morality other than whatever serves the triumph of the revolution and of the man who leads it.
Augusta was able to do what Abimael himself couldn’t do. She could visit the peasants in their Andean hamlets and communicate with them in quechua about the need for a people’s war. The embryo of the Shining Path cadres was being formed and gestated by a woman who couldn’t give birth to a human child, for the doctors had declared her sterile soon after she married. And the runa people were seduced by her, this gentle misti who spoke their language and often settled marital disputes, counseling men not to abuse their wives or spend their meager earnings on liquor. For it was an axiom of Mao Zedong Thought that women should not be mistreated by their husbands and that alcoholism was a trap prepared for the peasants by the bourgeoisie.
Augusta had been patient – it had been more than a decade since the couple’s visit to China – but her patience was wearing thin. Sure, Abimael had trained a lot of his university students and they had gone to the peasants in order to proclaim the coming revolution, but Abimael always seemed to have an excuse when she asked him when the armed struggle would begin.
“The conditions aren’t ripe,” he would repeat. “Look at what happened to Hugo Blanco in the 1960’s – his group was decimated by the military because he didn’t have peasant support. Look at what happened to Che Guevara in Bolivia – a catastrophic defeat. All because the rural folks weren’t ready for the revolution.”
“I think people are ready,” Augusta answered. By then, she had already taken on the nom de guerre Comrade Norah, after Eleonora West, a woman willing to die for her ideals depicted in a novel whose title Augusta had forgotten.
“What makes you think that?” asked Abimael. “Why do you think the peasants are prepared for war?”
“I’m out in the field, unlike you. You don’t want to get your shoes dirty by walking in the mud. And you don’t speak a word of quechua. How would you know when the conditions are ideal? The peasantry is ready. Sometimes I think you’d rather talk about theory than get into the nitty-gritty of the armed struggle.” “I just don’t want to act before it’s time.”
“I didn’t marry you because I thought you’d be a bespectacled professor all your life. Have you forgotten that glorious day when we heard Chairman Mao speak? Do you have the courage to follow through with what you dreamed that day? Are you going to be the master of a new Peru, or are you content with your anonymous academic perch?”
“Your words remind me of a dream I had a week ago,” Abimael responded. “Las brujas de Cachiche appeared to me, all clad in black with their long gray beards.”
“The witches who died four centuries ago? What does that have to do with anything?”
“During the time of the Holy Inquisition, many Spanish brujas were burnt at the stake in Spain. So a great number of them fled to Peru during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and moved to Ica, where they were famous for their ability to prophesy. They cured some and cursed others, but they were feared and respected by all. There is a palm tree in Ica which the locals say is where the old brujas congregate in the shape of crows.”
“What did they tell you? Witches are women with fantastic powers, not unlike the women whose blood will irrigate the revolution.”
“Over the centuries, witches could always be found in Ica, even to the present day, performing their miraculous trabajos and telling people about their futures.”
“So the witches tell people how their lives will turn out?”
“Yes. Congressman Fernando Leon de Vivero swears that when he was an adolescent, he was unable to speak without stuttering. He visited a witch and not only did she cure him, but she prophesied that he would become a great orator and a successful politician.”
“Did it happen?”
“He became President of the Chamber of Deputies. Later he returned to Ica and ordered a statue to be built in honor of the witch who had saved him. On her right side, there is an owl, on the left a skull, signifying wisdom and evil both at once.”
“What did the witches tell you in your dream, Abimael? Did they tell you about your future? Did they confirm the dreams we have?”
“They spoke of blood. They told me that even though I would never take a life myself, I would be responsible for thousands of deaths. And that I would be hailed as Presidente Gonzalo by all Peru.”
“I think that is a portent,” said Augusta. “Already your followers call you Presidente Gonzalo but not all Peru.”
“I’m not sure I believe in witches.”
“How did you learn about them?”
“My father took me to Ica when I was an adolescent and everyone in the village said Ica was the epicenter of brujeria in all Peru.”
“I thought you and your father didn’t get along.”
“I detested the man. He never let me forget I was a bastard. Just like Chairman Mao hated his father.”
“I think the dream is good news. I don’t necessarily believe in witches, but you never know. At all events, it’s a sign from beyond that should make you redouble your efforts to bring the revolution to Peru.”
“The part that troubled me was when they said I’d be culpable for thousands and thousands of deaths. I don’t know, Augusta. I didn’t study law and philosophy to become a murderer on a massive scale.”
“Have you forgotten?” asked Augusta. “The millions that died at the orders of Chairman Mao? The lessons you learned at his own feet? Of course there will be deaths in a revolution. You shouldn’t be so weak. Don’t you teach your students about Macbeth to show them that in the pursuit of power everything is permissible? Be bold. Be brave. Otherwise you’re destined to be no more than a small-town academic for the rest of your days.”
“Don’t forget in the end Macbeth was doomed, as was his wife.”
“Oh, don’t bring up religious scruples now, thoughts of an afterlife. Only a seven-year-old fears pictures of the devil. And you wouldn’t be fighting only for yourself. You’d be fighting for all the Indians of Peru. They will call you the new pachacuti, their divine savior, the earth-shaker, the man who built the Indians’ empire through acts of war. The masses shall assemble at your feet to bless and venerate you just as Mao was venerated before the reactionaries took over China.”
“The brujas never said that I’d ever assume power. And I’ve heard pachacuti was consigned to the underworld. That’s not a fate I desire to share.”
“I shall never let you touch me again, you underling, unless you act. Everything you told me when I was an adolescent was a lie. If the witches told you the whole country would call you Presidente, what do you think that means? But you’re afraid to take the dagger in your hands and start the revolution. If you don’t, I intend to do the deed myself.”
“All right,” responded Abimael. “We’ll start the revolution next May, during the national elections. That should be a propitious time.”
The elections came and went, and Augusta was uninspired by the actions of her husband. A few stray dogs had been hanged from the lampposts in Lima and a small group of Shining Path guerrillas had attacked the small municipal building in Chuschi, a tiny Andean village in the department of Ayacucho, and burnt the ballot boxes to demonstrate the Shining Path did not believe in popular elections. There had been no deaths, not even any struggle. The newspapers barely mentioned the two acts and certainly didn’t see them as the heralds of a nationwide revolution. When Augusta confronted her husband, she was furious.
“Is this what you think will cause the new pachacuti, the complete uprising of the world? A few dead dogs and some ballot boxes burnt in Chuschi? Do you think anyone will be afraid of you? Do you think anybody will speak about you? You were the one who taught me Marx said violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. But you know all the theory and practice none of the action. You must be a phallocrat, Abimael. Do you know what that means? You must lead the people of Peru through your manhood.”
“It’s only the beginning,” said Abimael. “Come, let’s go to bed.”
“Don’t touch me, you weakling. Next month I’ll show you what a revolution is.”
Less than two months after the elections, Augusta – now Comrade Norah – showed her husband Abimael exactly what she meant when she told him it was necessary to begin the armed struggle. She told him she had decided that Cesar Parodi, owner of the Hacienda San German, had to be “ajusticiado” – in other words, he had to be brought to justice because he was an abusive landowner and the peasants detested him. Initially she asked Abimael to launch the attack – it would be the first violent act performed by the Shining Path, after all, and she felt he should lead it – but he had responded that the head of the movement should never risk his life in discreet revolutionary actions. At first, Comrade Norah thought he was a coward, unwilling to have any blood on his hands, but ultimately she decided he was right. Since then, even though Abimael ordered thousands of actions which resulted in death, he would never kill anyone himself. But Comrade Norah was all too willing to shed blood at his direction, for her faith in him had been restored.
On a wintry evening in July, Comrade Norah arrived at Cesar Parodi’s hacienda and quickly gathered together about thirty quechua peasants, armed with sticks, knives, stones and huaracas, similar to slingshots. She guided them herself to the main house on the property where the gamonal resided while his cholos lived in small thatched huts across the countryside. Although Comrade Norah had said he would be given a juicio popular – a people’s trial – the result was preordained. He was found cowering in a bedroom together with one of his servants, a man of Amerindian blood. Although Parodi was armed with a rifle, the campesinos easily overpowered him and he failed to discharge a single shot. Then Comrade Norah, the only one armed with a pistol, told the doomed hacendado that he would be tried for his abusive behavior toward his cholos.
Although the peasants were giddy with anger and all too willing to finish him off then and there, Comrade Barbara told them to wait. Then she read a litany of charges and asked the campesinos to say yes or no. They all agreed with each and every one of the charges brought against the hacendado and Comrade Norah gave the order. The terrified gamonal then was mobbed by the crowd, who tore him to pieces and even cut off his tongue, before punishing his unlucky servant in similar fashion. Then Comrade Norah, who had been watching everything in silence, paused and looked at the dying man. She steeled her nerves and gave the landowner the coup de grace, shooting him once in the forehead. Then she shot his servant. Somehow, as she was leaving, she touched Parodi’s body and some of the man’s blood covered her hands. That night, she looked for a bucket of water to wipe off the man’s blood, but try as she might the stains wouldn’t disappear.
“I have the smell of blood on my hands,” she told her husband that night as she tried to sleep. “Not even the waters of all Lake Titicaca can wipe it out.”
It was her first murder, and she felt revolted and pleased at the same time. She had finally done it, what she had planned for years, and it was not a time for second thoughts. And yet she was perturbed.
“I’m proud of you,” said Abimael. “Who would have thought that a young woman in a floral dress would be the hand of Mao’s justice?”
“The next time it’ll be easier,” Comrade Norah said, as if trying to reassure herself. “And the time after that, easier still. Each time it will be easier until the day when killing a revisionist will be like drinking a cool glass of chicha. But I want you to remember one thing, Abimael.”
“Yes?” he asked.
“That it is you who is doing the killing. That this red stain I can’t wipe from my hands is a stain on your own soul, assuming that you have one. But don’t worry. You shall be hailed as the President of all Peru. Didn’t the witches of Cachiche say so?”
And that night the witches visited him again, even though Cesar Parodi had not died by his own hand. He saw them laugh, old white-bearded hags full of warts on their faces, and they stated another prophecy.
“The one who did the killing won’t be killed by anyone else, not even if she kills time and again. No rifle will finish her, nor hail of gunfire stop her, not even the noose made of woven llama wool shall cause her death.”
“So Comrade Norah shall live to her old age?”
“No disease shall kill her, nor rumbling earthquake, nor even the hand of God,” the witches cackled.
Then Augusta woke him up.
“I can’t sleep,” she muttered. She rose from the bed and went to the closet, put on a nightgown and started rubbing her hands together as if she was still washing them.
“I killed two men tonight,” she added. “I killed two men. I can’t wipe off the blood.”
And Abimael wondered what the witches meant when they presaged she would not be killed at the hand of another, not even by the hand of God.
Once the insurrection started, Presidente Gonzalo – for now that was his name – didn’t vacillate and Comrade Norah fell in love with him again. After all, he had been right. All those years of patient waiting were necessary to prepare the revolution. Now, in a couple of months, the Shining Path cadres had inundated the departments of Ayacucho, Apurimac and Huancavelica, laborious as ants, sowing terror among the police and the local governmental authorities wherever they went. Presidente Gonzalo never hesitated, either to order his men to kill or to send them on missions where he knew they would be killed. Whenever he mentioned the least of scruples – and this happened seldom – Comrade Norah would remind him that Chairman Mao had ordered the assassinations of millions of people, the massacres of entire villages, and that as a reward he had been crowned as king.
“If he hadn’t done so,” said Comrade Norah, “he wouldn’t be more than a mere footnote in history. Your role is to emulate the Great Helmsman’s great gesta and achieve in Peru what Mao accomplished in China. You don’t want to be a footnote.”
From the outset, Comrade Norah had insisted that the Shining Path militants strictly enforce Presidente Gonzalo’s Eight Warnings, particularly those having to do with sexual morality. She had learned from the nuns to despise adultery and prostitution, even pornography. So she made sure to tell her husband that adulterers, wife beaters, homosexuals, prostitutes and their johns should all be punished. At first, they should be given a warning in the plaza, as well as a public flogging, but recidivists should be hanged, just like anyone accused of rape or child molesting. Sexual immorality eroded the peasants’ ability to become the “new men” envisaged by the revolution.
When Presidente Gonzalo complained that he saw no reason why men who visited prostitutes should be punished, she quoted the Mexican seventeenth century nun and poet, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. For she still remembered what she had been taught by the Carmelites.
“Who is more to blame, though either should do wrong, she who sins for pay or he who pays for sin? Who has embraced the greater blame in passion? She who, solicited, falls, or he who, fallen, pleads?”
Presidente Gonzalo acquiesced with reluctance to Comrade Norah’s demands, though in some ways he was as much of a puritan as his wife, particularly when it came to homosexuals, whom he detested for some unknown reason. Eventually even cusswords were prohibited by Gonzalo Thought.
Soon the Shining Path achieved de facto control of much of the department of Ayacucho and the Peruvian government responded by naming the entire department an “emergency zone” and sending in the military. The army was at first swift and effective. They captured hundreds of guerrillas and incarcerated them in the central prison of Huamanga Gagliani in the capital city of Ayacucho. Many of them were squad leaders indispensable to the struggle such as Comrade Barbara, a favorite of Comrade Norah. Presidente Gonzalo was disheartened and told his wife that the revolution was at a minimum stalled, if not dead in its tracks. But Comrade Norah didn’t see it that way. She saw it as a great opportunity to show the strength of the Shining Path.
“What if we liberate them all?” she asked, with a coquettish grin that reminded Abimael of when she was a cheerful and innocent eighteen-year-old without a care in the world.
“What if we send our militias and we overpower the guards to rescue all our captured comrades? It would be an unmatched act of boldness, sure to make the front headlines of every newspaper. The authorities in Lima will realize that Presidente Gonzalo isn’t just an empty title.”
Presidente Gonzalo mulled it over. He was no longer a Catholic – in his youth he had been educated by the Jesuits – but still he wanted some sort of sign. And las brujas de Cachiche were only too happy to oblige. In the middle of the night, he woke up sweating, having once again seen three witches in his dreams.
“You will liberate the prisoners in the prison of Ayacucho,” said one of the hags. “Of that you can be assured. But at some point more than two-hundred of your men shall die in a prison raid and you will be able to do nothing to control it.”
“But it won’t happen this time,” another witch assured him.
“You are protected by great dark powers,” the third one added.
After discussing it further with Comrade Norah, Presidente Gonzalo decided to give the order. Snipers were sent to shoot the prison guards from a distance, dynamite was obtained to blow open the main area of the prison, and the prisoners were instructed to riot in order to distract any policemen. But the operation was a resounding failure. Somehow the military had been forewarned and they were ready for the imminent Shining Path attack. Many senderistas were killed during the rout.
“It is finished,” said Presidente Gonzalo to Comrade Norah. “Even the witches of Cachiche got it wrong.”
“No, they didn’t,” Comrade Norah objected. “Send the senderistas in again, but this time do it with massive power. The army won’t be ready because they’d never dream that after such a defeat the Shining Path would return within two weeks.”
“The witches did say we would prevail, didn’t they?” mused Abimael.
“You have to do it,” insisted Comrade Norah. “Never mind the witches. Otherwise last week’s failed prison raid will be seen as a great setback for the people’s struggle. Follow the dictates of Chairman Mao. ‘Through the efforts of the revolutionaries a difficult situation yields place to a favorable one.’ I tell you they won’t expect another attack so soon. They’ll be wholly unprepared.”
So Presidente Gonzalo gave the order a second time: Liberate the prison of Huamanga Gagliani now!
This time the attack by the Shining Path was brutal and ubiquitous. The power stations of Ayacucho were bombed to envelop the city in darkness. The senderistas attacked not only the prison, but also the headquarters of the police and military. Snipers shot some of the prison guards from the roofs of buildings close to the prison. As Comrade Norah had predicted, the authorities did not expect another attack so soon. The Shining Path guerrillas then placed dynamite to gain access to the prison itself. Others climbed into the prison with ladders and ropes, where the imprisoned senderistas in the prison joined in the attack. Overpowered, the prisons guards surrendered without further resistance and seventy-eight Shining Path guerrillas escaped. The senderistas had not only liberated their comrades, they had gained control of the entire city. The government in Lima was informed of the great defeat and the following day news of the prison escape was reported on the front pages of every newspaper in the country.
“See?” Comrade Norah said in a mirthful voice. “Now all of Peru is on notice. There is a violent revolution going on in this country and Sendero is not playing games.”
Mao Zedong was the greatest mass murderer in the history of the world. Slowly Presidente Gonzalo was walking up that selfsame path, persuaded to do it by none other than his faithful and lovely wife. According to Comrade Norah, anything that Mao did was fair game, even the massacres of entire villages. Weren’t three-hundred-thousand people killed in massacres during the Cultural Revolution? Didn’t a hundred-thousand people die in the Guangxi Massacre alone? So what did it matter that a few hundred peasants would have to be killed due to their failure to follow the Shining Path? When the rondas campesinas – the local self-defense committees – started to be formed by the peasants who opposed Sendero, Comrade Norah forcefully told Presidente Gonzalo that he had to crush them with all his might.
“They are vile worms,” she said. “The worst of the worst, peasants who oppose the liberation of their own people.”
She didn’t see the irony in the fact that she, a fair-skinned white woman raised in comfort, felt she knew more than the Indians themselves about the path that they should follow.
And so it happened that in the town of Cajabamba, a town occupied by Comrade Carlos, a ronda campesina was formed to oppose the Shining Path and oust them from their village. At some point the peasants – armed only with stones, knives and huaracas – killed three senderistas in the middle of the night as they were approaching the main plaza in the darkness. Soon the rest of the villagers joined in and began to resist the Shining Path, using their simple weapons to combat their would-be saviors. Comrade Carlos sent a desperate communiqué to Presidente Gonzalo and Comrade Norah.
“We are being overrun by Indians who forcefully oppose Sendero. How do you want us to respond? I think if we don’t act fast, Cajabamba will be lost. I’m afraid the peasants have formed an alliance with the Peruvian military. But to maintain control of Cajabamba, many Indian lives will be lost. Do we abandon our post or respond with overwhelming power?”
Presidente Gonzalo initially wasn’t sure how to proceed, not for moral reasons but because he felt that if the Shining Path attacked Indian campesinos, Sendero could lose their support forever.
But Comrade Norah was emphatic.
“You have to follow the example of Mao,” she told him. “You must be ruthless. You can’t allow a few recalcitrants to interfere with the grandiose plan of the Shining Path or with your own ambitions.”
“Poor country then,” said Presidente Gonzalo. “What an unfortunate Peru. It can’t be called our mother but our grave. Groans will fill the air as we kill the very Indians we have sworn to help.”
“Give Comrade Carlos the order,” Comrade Norah commanded. “Remember what Mao said. Blood nourishes the revolution. Was your hope drunk when you swore to achieve victory come what may? Now that the challenge arises, have you decided to cower? Are you weak now that you face your strongest test? Will you forget the mastery of Peru you want so badly? Your hands are already bloodied. Why worry about bloodying them a little more?”
Presidente Gonzalo looked at Comrade Norah. She was still a young woman, still a beautiful woman, but she had a heart of stone. Her breasts had gall instead of milk, though her hazel eyes still seemed lovely and kind. Now she was telling him to massacre the very quechua peasants she shad so loved as an adolescent. It was truly a new pachacuti, a complete upturning of the world.
“Killing Indian peasants in large numbers will completely change the course of the armed struggle. I’m not being timid, Augusta. I just think any such action could result in unexpected reactions. All of Peru weeps and bleeds and each new day a wound is added to her body. If we start to kill the peasants, the entire country will rebel against us. We could end up failing grandly.”
“You’re forgetting your master Mao. Didn’t he say if we have a correct theory but merely prate about it and don’t put it into practice, then that theory however good is of no significance? You must fearfully punish anyone who deviates from the shining path, Indians, white men or mulattos. You must follow what Mao did and tell Comrade Carlos to be merciless. If I were in Cajabamba, I could do the deed myself. After all these years, tell me Abimael, do you have what it takes to seize power?”
“Very well then,” said Presidente Gonzalo as if he could wash his hands of the deed like Pontius Pilate. “Send the order to Comrade Carlos. Tell him to annihilate the rebellious peasants.”
“Good,” replied Comrade Norah. “Once you’ve made your decision, forget about it. To overthink it could make you go mad.”
And that night the bearded witches of Cachiche again visited Presidente Gonzalo in his dreams, surrounding a boiling cauldron.
“All hail, Presidente Gonzalo,” they cried out in unison. “Everyone in Peru shall shudder at his power.”
“Am I meant to kill the peasants? Will that lead me to ultimate power? Speak, I command you, instruments of darkness.”
“Let the blood broth boil and bubble. The more you kill, the more you will be feared. Be bloody, bold and resolute. Laugh away any scruples, for you shall immerse Peru in a great chaqwa of mythical proportions. There will be no limits to your power, from the Andes to the jungles, from Ayacucho to Lima. You shall be one of the greatest historical figures in all Peru, though history and God shall treat you just as Chairman Mao has been treated.”
The massacre in Cajabamba happened just as Presidente Gonzalo had ordered it, an entire village decimated, two-hundred Indian peasants killed. That night Comrade Norah couldn’t sleep. She vaguely felt an instinct to wash her hands, for she had the strange idea that they were stained with blood. Presidente Gonzalo faced no such instinct, for in all the years of the armed struggle he had not murdered a single human being with his own hands.
As the chaqwa continued and intensified, the time of suffering and chaos, Comrade Norah found it harder and harder to sleep and when she slept, she had strange visions. Meanwhile, Presidente Gonzalo slept in peace, for he had long ago abandoned any scruples and had learned to suppress his conscience. The armed struggle continued to succeed and the Shining Path was active in every corner of the country. He could not understand why Comrade Norah found it so difficult to rest given that the complete domination of Peru – the dream they had nurtured for decades – seemed to be so close at hand.
“Comrade Norah has killed sleep,” she told him one restless night as she frantically rubbed her hands together as if she were washing them, “and so Comrade Norah can sleep no more.”
“Why do you find it so hard to sleep?” asked Presidente Gonzalo.”Don’t tell me that after all these years you are beginning to feel the pangs of conscience.”
“My dreams have been unruly. I hear the lamentations of quechua women over their aborted children, aborted so they would never be forced to join the Shining Path, also strange screams of death and terrible prophesying about my own death and horrific events in the future – not that events could get more horrific than they are now.”
“What’s done is done. You’re still a very young woman, but you’re no longer young when it comes to violence. The witches once told me that no man born of woman would ever hurt you, so don’t worry on that score.”
“Oh, your famous witches! Your witches of Cachiche! Don’t you understand they’re just your dreams? I have the blood of thousands on my hands. How can I sleep? Full of scorpions is my mind. Don’t you understand? All your crimes are on me. If you had never met me, you’d still be an innocent academic with outlandish and impossible ideas. The Shining Path would not exist. Peru would not be bleeding.”
As the months and years passed, Comrade Norah’s condition worsened. She would sleepwalk every night holding a candle and saying, “I am responsible for all the deaths at Cajabamba. For the massacre at Lucanamarca. For the two-hundred prisoners who died when they tried to take over their prison at my behest.”
Even as Presidente Gonzalo tried to wake her up, she would continue to sleepwalk and complain, rubbing her hands.
“Erase yourself from my hands, damned stain of blood! What need we fear when no one can challenge the power of the Shining Path? Yet who would have imagined that so much blood could be shed in Peru, that this country would become a never-ending river of crimson blood? Out, I say, out again and again, damned stain of blood! Will these hands never be clean? What’s done cannot be undone. Peru is an endless chaqwa. Or is it I?”
Comrade Norah scarcely ate. She spent her days in a stupor and became disinterested in the machinations of the Shining Path. During the day, she stayed in her bed and at night barely slept. At some point, Presidente Gonzalo decided she had to see a psychiatrist. A physician was recommended to him by a fellow Shining Path guerrilla who assured him the psychiatrist would maintain absolute confidence and not divulge anything he heard. At the end, Doctor Alcantara told Presidente Gonzalo that her condition was more spiritual than physical.
“Unnatural deeds cause unnatural troubles. People like Augusta will only confess their sins to their pillows. She needs a priest more than a doctor. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for her.”
“Isn’t there some medication you can give her? Or some sort of therapy? Maybe some daily exercises, something with which to busy her troubled mind?”
“In these cases, the patient must desire to heal herself. But your wife is weighted by anxiety and despair. Like I said, she could only find comfort in religion.”
“She’s not religious,” Presidente Gonzalo responded.
“I realize that,” said the doctor. “Otherwise she wouldn’t be in such a condition.”
The following week, Presidente Gonzalo found that Comrade Norah had slit her wrists in the bathroom. The witches’ prophecies had come true, but not in the way he had understood or imagined them. She did not die of a gunshot wound or the stabbing of a knife, not even through an act of God. Comrade Norah died by her own hand. And there was nothing he could do about it other than curse the night. His lifelong comrade was dead, a ghost lost to eternity, and he felt like rending his garments, for such was his endless sorrow.
The week after her death, Presidente Gonzalo and a small group of guerrillas gathered in the home where Comrade Norah had lived with her husband. She was on a large table, covered by a red hammer-and-sickle flag. As soon as everyone filled the room, Presidente Gonzalo began to speak.
“Comrade Norah was capable of annihilating her own life in order not to lift her hand against the Party. In the lamentable confusion of her nervous solitude, she preferred to self-annihilate, to extinguish herself, all for the Party.”
Without saying it explicitly, Presidente Gonzalo was suggesting that his wife had committed suicide because she felt her nervous condition was undermining the Shining Path, that she couldn’t be second in command given her clinical depression. Of course the reasons for her self-immolation were a lot more complicated. Comrade Norah had finally looked in the mirror and detested what she saw. Having dedicated her life to the revolution, she didn’t realize there was a way out, that there were alternative lives to live, that she could end her life of violence by making a decision to change.
In the end, Presidente Gonzalo quoted from Macbeth as he often did while speaking to his cadres.
“Out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more…”
But Presidente Gonzalo learned nothing from his wife’s fate. He persevered on his road to ruin and eventually, like Macbeth himself, he, too, was crushed by his enemies, left to rot in a prison at a naval base for decades, never to achieve the glory of Chairman Mao.
And the witches laughed.