HUGO BLANCO is 65. His world renown stems principally from having led a peasant guerrilla movement at the beginning of the
1960s in the south of Peru. He spent 8 years in prison but through international solidarity was freed and went into exile. He returned to Peru in 1978 and became a member of the Constituent Assembly
— he was subsequently a deputy and a senator until President
Fujimori closed the Peruvian parliament down in 1992. Today he again works the land and is a member of the peasant organization the Central Campesina del Peru (CCP) and the Partido Unificado
Mariateguista (Unified Mariateguista Party - PUM). Pedro
Brieger* spoke with him at the CCP headquarters in Lima, shortly before the Peruvian general election of April 9th - at which
President Fujimori was forced into a second ballot, to take place in early June. The interview has been abridged slightly for reasons of space.
OR a number of years you were a parliamentarian and today you again work the land as a farmer.
How have you experienced the change from parliamentarian, with a decent standard of living, to peasant?
I never had luxuries nor needed much to live, so the difference is not that great.
The money that I received as a parliamentarian I used to keep in touch with the grassroots. Today, I am a farmer and in the
Confederacion Campesina del Peru (CCP), trying to defend farmers who are dying of hunger as a result of neoliberal policies.
The peasantry is the most hard-hit sector because the neoliberal policy has allowed the entry of cheap industrial goods and this has closed the Peruvian factories. The workers have been sacked, those who remain are full of fear that if they try to increase their wages they will be sacked.
As a result of unemployment and low wages the urban population cannot afford to buy the products of the countryside.
• At the political level is there a big difference between being in parliament and being out of it?
Sure, when you are in parliament you are always in the media and today I do not have coverage in the press. But this is a secondary thing because I have always worked in a social function. Sometimes the press gives me attention and sometimes not; sometimes I am a parliamentarian, sometimes not, sometimes I am a prisoner, sometimes not... I am a social fighter who has been obliged by circumstances sometimes to be a guerrilla and sometimes to be a parliamentarian. When we suffered repression from the government and big landowners we defended ourselves with arms. Then with time we had the possibility of doing parliamentary work and then I was in parliament in opposition to the probig business right wing majority, not simply Fujimorism... It is true also that this got media coverage and I participated as a parliamentarian in popular struggles.
Paradoxically I received the most beatings of my life when I was in parliament. Parliamentary immunity is a pure myth, because on a number of occasions I had to go to hospital after having been beaten by the police. Then in 1992 Fujimori dissolved the parliament with his "autocoup" • Why was there so little resistance to Fujimori's autocoup?
Because parliament did not deserve the
So when it was said "we have to privatize" people felt happy. "Good, they said, this will put an end to this corruption in the state enterprises". Also Fujimori was supported because Sendero Luminoso had terrorized so many people. This terror ended because Fujimori crushed Sendero and people can now breathe more easily. This also helped Fujimori. Then there was the problem of inflation. One can say that in the past the people voted for Fujimori, but I do not believe that would be the case today were it not for electoral fraud. Also the people do not have a valid alternative because the opposition is dispersed. If we were united, the people would vote for the opposition. Some will vote for one or another, some will spoil their votes, others will not vote, but with the discouragement of knowing that Fujimori will win. • What is the current situation of the Peruvian left?
It is very atomized and weakened, and for this reason will not even present a candidate for the April elections. The PUM still exists, fundamentally at the level of peasant work, but as a party does not have much profile. The PUM had a good parliamentarian in Javier Diez Canseco, who is honest, combative, and intelligent, but is not on the list this time. Javier is the ideal candidate to be a member of parliament because the militancy in which he believes is located at the level of parliament. But this is not so for me. Always I was more linked to the mass movement. This is my place. • What is your analysis of the indigenous and popular uprising that overthrew the government of Jamil Mahuad in Ecuador?
I believe that revolutionary processes take place in two stages. In "soviet" terms this compares to the February revolution and the October revolution. In Chile, for example there was the February revolution with the coming to power of Allende in International Viewpoint #321 May 2000 19
* Peru 1970, but Allende held back the advance of the process and this is why the coup succeeded in 1973. If the process does not advance, it goes backwards.
But in Ecuador less than 40% of the population is indigenous. What success can a movement enjoy when it does not represent the majority of the population?
In reality they were the vanguard of the struggle because the urban population also participated in their support. Now, the movement had the removal of Mahuad as its objective; but it had not envisaged what to do then. For this brought it up against something much bigger, that it had not discussed and for which it had not prepared. Perhaps it was an error to negotiate to form a junta with the military... One has to be very innocent to be betrayed by the Armed forces, knowing that they are the enemies of the people and that they are with the oppressor sectors.. It would be one thing to set up a junta of colonels supported by the people, but this was not the case, it was a triumvirate formed by the joint command. It is absurd to think that the peasants can govern with them. • In the 1960s and 1970s there was a very significant process of migration from the countryside to the city that changed the social structure of the majority of the countries in Latin America. Today we see the importance of the social weight of the peasantry in Ecuador, in Chiapas, in Peru...
That's right. But it seems to me a posi20 International Viewpoint #321 May 2000
### Voting in Peru tive step. Because I am one of those who struggle for the defense of cultural identity that does not exist in Peru like in Bolivia, Ecuador or Mexico, where there is a strong pride in cultural identity. In the CCP we are majority indigenous but sometimes it seems to people that we discriminate against non-indigenous peasants because the secretary general was an Aimara Indian, then a Quechua Indian. In our secretariat over the past period the majority were Quechua. There are demands which are ours, indigenous, that we raise as general demands, like for example the defense of coca, of the peasant communities and of our form of social organization. But this is done at the level of the CCP. Indigenous and non-indigenous peasants alike, we defend the peasant communities. • What is the relationship with the urban sectors, what is the situation of the workers' movement in Peru today?
The workers' movement is very much weakened because the factories have been closed as a result of neoliberalism - and those who remain in the factories are afraid of losing their jobs. They are very much weakened. The only strong sector is in civil construction - this is the most combative sector and it is indigenous in its majority. But factory workers are very much weaker - like the CGT-P - and are not combative. • You lived in Mexico for several years and have followed the Zapatista uprising closely - what does Chiapas mean to you?
FUJHO
Unhappily, Chiapas is alone because in Mexico the social movement is more uneven than in Peru. It is true that Mexico City elected a leftwing governor. But there is not the kind of relative uniformity that exists in Brazil, Peru or Ecuador. The important thing is that they seek to break out of their isolation using the Internet and linking up with all progressive movements or political currents anywhere in the world. These things reflect very well on the Zapatista leadership and it pleases me very much that indigenous identity is one of their themes, because the indigenous movement of Latin America integrates other struggles, it considers itself part of all the exploited sectors, stressing its identity and its own struggle, but not feeling itself superior to the other exploited sectors, fortunately. • What future will there be for the Zapatista movement if it does not pose the seizure of power and is concentrated in one region?
It depends on the development of the whole social movement of which they are not the vanguard, as they themselves emphasize. Everything depends on the development of the struggle in this country, sadly Chiapas is very isolated and I do not know what the future holds. In truth, I thought that they were going to be crushed but happily this has not yet happened. • Doesn't this raise the necessity of a revolutionary party that can centrali struggles? Or do you no longer beli in the necessity of building rev
ary parties?
I don't now believe in the "vanguard" role of political parties. They should exist as centers for discussion, debate and reflection on social problems and take it to the social movements. The trauma that we have suffered with the USSR shows us that so-called democratic centralism became deformed and turned into bureaucratic centralism with Stalin at its head.
Obviously this is the worst example, but I have not seen any more positive example in the development of struggles. I don't believe that there are two kinds of people, some who are the elect of God, those inside the party and others who are outside. I agree with democratic centralism inside the CCP, for example when it is necessary to support a march. But this is democratic centralism by action, not in terms of ideas. • What meaning does it have to be in a party then, why stay in the PUM?
Because it is an important forum of debate. I don't believe I will be thrown out for saying outside the party what I say inside. • You were well known for openly defining yourself as a Trotskyist. Do you still do so today?
I think so. It depends. I would call myself a Leninist, but not with respect to democratic centralism. If Lenin came back, he would be disappointed at the way we have copied the Bolshevik movement. We boast of being "Bolsheviks". But this was a movement that was effective in Russia in 1917 and there is no reason it should be effective in Peru in the year 2000. It seems to me that this is completely anti-dialectical. We quote Mariategui when he said that the socialist revolution in Peru would be neither tracing nor copy. We keep saying it but we also continue to copy.
Lenin was a heretic because Marx thought that the revolution would take place in England, the most developed country and Lenin said rather that it would happen in the weakest link of capitalism. This heresy is what makes one authentically Marxist. So we must be heretics in order to be Marxists, but not "Bolsheviks" The essential of Marxism is the analysis of reality and paying appropriate respect to that reality. In this sense I continue to consider myself a Marxist, and a Trotskyist, but if you form a party of the Leninist type, you will form a bureaucracy and I am against this type of party.
Fujimori has crushed Sendero Luminoso; for the mass movement is the disappearance of Sendero a positive thing?
You bet!!!! Today the CCP can go forward because Sendero does not exist. They would kill peasant leaders - including some who had been prisoners for being Senderistas — as "traitors" to the peasant movement because they advocated other roads than the armed struggle. This weakened the mass movement. Also because the army used Sendero as a pretext to repress us, and killed us in the name of the fight against Sendero. There were people who were killed by the army and then they would say it was Sendero. The armed forces killed us claiming that they were actions of Sendero and repressed us saying that we were Senderistas or things of this kind. These things don't happen now. • And the MRTA?
The MRTA were not like Sendero because they were more respectful of the mass organizations and of the CCP. But I do not agree with them because they substitute the action of the population in general with the audacious action of a vanguard and this method does not seem to me correct however much I respect them. I don't agree with this vanguardist methodology in any sense, and much less in an armed sense. • Are the popular forces demanding the liberation of the Sendero leaders?
No, in no way. They remain a marginal sect. • And you?
Me, yes because I am in favor of amnesty for political prisoners although one can do nothing in common with Sendero because even on demonstrations for human rights they come with their banners calling for the armed struggle and impose it on everyone else.
Given the deindustrialization throughout Latin America and the weakness of the trade unions, how do you see the recomposition of the popular camp?
History will tell us. You have to open your eyes and see how the popular movement is recomposing. The CCP gets
Peru * stronger all the time. From having been smashed by repression, by war — because we were fired on by both sides, Sendero Luminoso and the army — today we are coming back. I believe that in quality we are better than before because we have learned much with experience.
There are distinct opinions in the CCP because there are people who take the CCP as the pillar which is going to head the struggle and others - like me - who believe that we are a force but that the regional movements are another increasingly vigorous force.
On May Ist last year I was in Cusco and there were no proletarians there, it was the itinerant peddlers who were there on the demonstration. This means that it is the peddlers, the students, the professional layers or the popular neighborhoods who are coming forward. • You mentioned the peddlers as forming part of the social struggles although they belong to a fairly marginal social sector. It is a very different scenario from that of 30 or 40 years ago when one looked to the working masses to mobilize for sectoral or more general demands.
Yes, that's true. I believe that aspects of the Communist Manifesto are still valid now, like the concentration of capital or the internal contradictions of capital. I believe that today this is taking place in a much more acute manner than Marx ever imagined. Nowadays some are very happy because the working class is disappearing little by little and being replaced by the machine... Yes, but the machine will not buy commodities.
But, as to this question of the working class vanguard... in Latin America now I do not think that it is thus, because of the organic weakening that the working class has undergone and because there are other social sectors that are coming into struggle. This is not the time to speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat, not even in the sense that Lenin used it, of democratic government, a dictatorship against the bourgeoisie, because I don't believe that this is the time to speak of dictatorships. Now the people are mistrustful of dictatorships. I believe in a future government composed of distinct sectors, peasants, workers, employed and unemployed, neighborhoods, regions, professionals, and so on. We'll see in the course of history. * * Argentine sociologist, journalist and writer International Viewpoint #321 May 2000 21