Ecuador: MILTON REYES PRECURSOR OF MAOISM IN ECUADOR, IN THE HEART OF THE PROLETARIAT, PRESENT IN THE STRUGGLE
We hereby publish an unofficial translation of another article by the FDLP-EC.
It has been 54 years since the vile assassination of our comrade Milton Reyes, “El Zurdo” [Translator’s note: the Leftist] as he was affectionately called by the comrades and the Ecuadorian people. However, who maintains that he is dead? Imperialism, bourgeoisie, big landlords, reactionaries and revisionism. Nevertheless, the matter is transformed, the heart stops beating, but the ideas remain in the minds of the comrades and the people.
On the 12th of April 1970, after days of university protests against the government of Velasco Ibarra, Milton was tortured, later murdered and his body thrown into the ravine “La Chilena”, in the populous neighborhood of San Juan, in the city of Quito. But, why this macabre fact? It is not because of the mere name of Milton Reyes, but because of his political ideology, his accumulated struggles and experiences, all that he represented in the struggle of Ecuadorian communism, then Mao Tsetung Thought, today Maoism.
Imperialism, mainly Yankee, saw that “El Zurdo” from a very young age was a leader, in Riobamba he was president of the Student Council of the Pedro Vicente Maldonado College and under his guidance he fought against the anti-popular measures of the comprador bourgeois-big landlord government of Camilo Ponce. Reaction informed Yankee imperialism that Milton in 1962, organized the Toachi guerrilla, in what is today the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, and for this he was imprisoned in the García Moreno prison along with his comrades, he was also persecuted by reaction which led him to migrate.
While revisionism, called cabezón (PCE-pro Khrushchev) knew his mettle, because “El Zurdo” fought the traitors, together with young comrades built organizations of a new type that fought bureaucratic capitalism and revisionism. That is why they do not forgive him, Milton is a referent who swept away the colossal heap of garbage.
Also, they do not forgive him for having spent two years in the People’s Republic of China, for having known first hand the Great Cultural Revolution, for having graduated as a Maoist in the best Communist University and for having had as a professor Chairman Mao Tsetung, with whom he had the great opportunity to meet and share.
Then he returned to Ecuador with that expertise, he began to translate it into living matter, in unions of newspaper vendors, with traders, with peasants. Comrade Milton, who would become the president of the Federation of University Students at the Central University of Ecuador-Quito.
Our comrade, with the task of building the instruments for the revolution of New Democracy, organized the Communist Party of Ecuador Marxist Leninist, at that time, Mao Tsetung thought (today Maoism). The precise leadership of Milton Reyes is felt by the most retrograde sector of Ecuador, since the advance of the formation of generated organizations, which served to be close to the Ecuadorian peasantry, the radicalization of the university students who made the governments of the day tremble, was a concern that kept the imperialism, mainly Northamerican, the bourgeoisie, big landlords and revisionists awake at night.
In the government of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie of Velasco Ibarra, who together with US imperialism planned and executed the assassination of the most important Ecuadorian revolutionary of that time, our zurdo, our precursor of Maoism in Ecuador. The most needy, the peasants, the popular neighborhoods, the students, the women and men from the people, in short, the proletariat mourned you and we mourn you, not only on that April 12, but until now. We dry our tears and remember your words “to struggle and study together with the people for the revolution”, undoubtedly, that is the best tribute “to struggle, struggle, struggle, is our happiness”, is what brings us closer to Milton, to struggle brings him to life, it is his legacy, to struggle against imperialism, bourgeoisie, big landlords and revisionism, to struggle against those electoral parties and their outdated representatives to whom you pointed your Beretta and called them cacasenos [Translator’s note: popular way to say awful coward].
As is well known, the PCMLE, in 1978, left the red path, deviating to the cliffs of treason, according to them, “self-criticizing”, to become Hoxhaite revisionists, participating in bourgeois elections, creating electoral parties such as the Popular Democratic Movement today Popular Unity (MPD-UP), supporting and being part of governments like that of Lucio Gutiérrez, Rafael Correa, carrying out an electoral campaign for the banker Guillermo Lasso, that is, “dancing to the tune of the one of the day”, imperialism and the governments of the day. The PCMLE is an antithesis of the struggle of Milton Reyes and his ideology, that somber 1978, could give birth to the beginning of the revolution, but the communist effort fizzled, they left of their agenda the construction of the three instruments for the revolution Party, Army and United Front.
Today, not only imperialism and reaction are trying to erase his memory, but the PCMLE (MPD-UP) is trying to assassinate Milton Reyes for the second time, they are looking for a thousand ways to liquidate his legacy, his ideology, his struggle, they are trying to make him look like a fighter who due to circumstances of life was assassinated. Therein lies the answer, why vindicate the Maoist Milton Reyes, why revive his legacy; revisionism wants to usurp our red flags, emblems, hymns and appropriate our popular heroes, it is a communist duty to rescue them from the muddy revisionism, in this case, it is a communist and revolutionary duty to revive the true Milton, “El Zurdo”, the Maoist.
