Ricardo Gadea entitled his letter, "Comandante Maximo Velando: Siempre Presentey The translation is by World Outlook.
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In the first part of December 1965, in Satipo, Comandante Guerrillero Maximo Velando was assassinated. Thus came to an end a heroic, self-sacrificing and intense life, completely devoted to the cause of freeing our people.
His death, which has not been completely cleared up to this day, came after he had been savagely tortured by agents of the PIP and the SIM [the political police and the military intelligence]. According to trustworthy sources he was finally thrown out of a helicopter. Nevertheless, in a way analogous to the case of Fabricio Ojeda [in Venezuela], the Joint Command of the Armed Forces issued its own version, claiming that Velando had committed suicide.
But our people, who have suffered in the flesh the most brutal repressions, massacres of defenseless peasants alleged to be linked with guerrillas, imprisonment of the wives of guerrilla chiefs -among others the wife of Comandante Velando -- the systematic physical elinination of wounded or captured fighters, understand only too well that the alleged "suicide" of our dear and exemplary conmrade, is nothing else than a trick to cover up the crime.
The heroic struggle of Maximo Ve-
lando is an example of history lived and
felt. Because after shaping himself for
a long period in accordance with the
scientific and professional disciplines,
he returned to our country following
years of study in Argentina; he took his
post in economic struggles of the peas-
ants in the central region and in the
revolutionary trenches; finally entering
completely into the armed struggle, he
placed not only his mind and his politi-
cal and organizational talents at the
service of the popular aspirations, but
also his great military abilities, his
immense passion for Peruvian and Latin-
American socialism, and his very blood.
Maximo Velando, together with
Luis de la Puente, Guillermo Lobatén,
Paul Escobar and many other fighters,
understood completely the necessity to
take up arms and to counterpose his own
example against the dirty politics of
the pseudo revolutionaries, their use-
less disquisitions, fear and cowardice,.
skepticism and temporizing.
And how right our heroes were!
The example of the comrades who have
fallen in combat is becoming more solid
and potent every day, a new generation
of revolutionary leaders and cadres
formed in the heat of armed struggle
is rising, and a new way of practicing
revolutionary politics and of strug-
gling for our definitive liberation is
becoming ever clearer.
Of course the revolutionary pro-
cess is inevitably prolonged and extreme-
ly difficult. We are still at the begin-
ning of the Peruvian and Latin-American
revolutionary war. But Comandante Velando
and those like him,who led our people in
the greatest revolutionary experience of
the present century, opened a new stage
in history -- the stage of the proletari-
an revolution. They opened a road and
created a shining perspective. They
launched a vanguard of irreversible his-
toric capacity, and demonstrated, as in
Yahuarina, that it is possible to over-
come our enemies, if an unyielding deci-
sion has teen made to fight to make our
country free or to die in the attempt.