The following interview with Hugo Blanco appeared in the April 20 issue of the Lima weekly Marka. The translation and footnotes are by Intercontinental Press/Inprecor
With Hugo Blanco's return to the country, FOCEP' can play its electoral "trump card." In reality, Blanco is one of the bestknown and most prestigious leaders of the Peruvian left, inside or outside the country. In the following interview the author of Tierra o Muerte gives his opinions on the elections, alliances, and the constitutional program of his party, the PST.
Question. The PST was calling for elections long before the Morales regime convoked them; besides the Liga Comunista it was the only group that paid serious attention to this question. Why was that?
Answer. Because we in no way recognize the authority of a government that has come to power through a coup. We aren't fooling ourselves. The bourgeoisie never holds free and democratic elections. But with the elections a situation has opened up in which there is less repression and greater opportunities to discuss and act politically.
Q. How do you think the left has dealt with electoral matters up to now?
A. There are good and bad aspects. What is positive is that the majority of the left is participating in the elections; this means they understand that the masses are interested in this electoral process. Although the masses weren't concerned about it beforehand, once the elections were called they began taking interest. The left is showing that it has some Leninist experience-Lenin was a good organizer of election campaigns.
It also seems positive to me that part of the left is participating in the election campaign in order to move forward the
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HUGO BLANCO
working-class struggles that are going on. And it is good that the elections are serving to raise questions of principle.
Q. And the bad aspects?
A. Well, it seems to me-and in this I am in agreement with one of the Marka comrades, Martín Luna, I think-that there is still a vacuum in the electoral process; that we must not waste our opportunities in these elections. It is not every day that constituent assembly elections are held, and in general, elections in Peru are rare. Even as old as I am, I have never participated in one. The first time I could have done so I was studying in Argentina, and the second and third times I was being persecuted.
A constituent assembly election makes it possible to say many things. In ordinary elections many of the ideas that we raise have the problem of being far beyond the limits of the constitution in force. But now nothing we raise can be considered illegal, since it is precisely a question of formulating a new order-social, juridical, economic, and so on. Our obligation as revolutionists is to raise the socialist alternative, and not to stay within the capitalist framework.
Q. Do you think the workers' alternatives are not being presented clearly?
A. I think that is in fact part of the problem. Although we are certainly going to the heart of the question with a draft constitution that I have presented to my party. It still has to be submitted to a formal discussion, but I have yet to find any comrade who objects to it, because it isn't an invention of mine but simply involves systematizing Marxist-Leninist- Trotskyist ideas in constitutional form. The form is the only novelty in the document.
Q. And what does this document propose?
A. In the first place, that the government must be made up of democratically elected delegates from among the workers, peasants, employees, soldiers, and so onall the exploited sectors, in other words. In this we differentiate ourselves sharply not only from the bourgeoisie and the reformists, but I think also from the UDP3_ concretely, from the Maoist comrades and their call for a Democratic People's Government, which would include what Mao called "the four classes": besides the workers, peasants, and middle layers, the so-called "progressive bourgeoisie."
And on that point we are not in agreement.
We also differentiate ourselves from the bourgeoisie, the reformists, and the Maoist comrades in our economic slogans, since we call for expropriation not only of the imperialist enterprises but of the national companies as well. When we nationalize Moraveco without compensation, we won't ask Señor Drassinower for his passport to see whether he is a Peruvian or not. But this should not be misunderstood to mean that we want to expropriate artisans' shops, and so on—we make clear that those will remain in their owners' hands. Automobiles for public transport, for example, or stores tended by their proprietors, all those will remain the property of their owners. But we are certainly going to expropriate the bourgeoisie without payment.
Another thing we are raising with clarity is the problem of the armed forces. We are of the opinion that they should not be organized as they are now but rather as armed committees of workers, peasants, and other oppressed sectors. employees, On this point I suppose we are in agreement with the Maoist comrades. The same with the judicial power—we call for popular tribunals elected by the masses.
We raise our proposals on unemployment and other questions in the same way, trying to show that this country's evils have solutions, not under this system, but rather with socialism. We call for repudiating the foreign debt, and expropriating without compensation foreign and domestic commerce, land, and industry. The result of all these expropriations will be development-not as some bureaucrats talk about it today, but according to the decisions of the masses themselves.
This is the time to say all these things to the masses in a simple way, now that the people are considering not only their immediate demands but the question of power, since we are in an electoral period. Our constitutional program has been given to the other comrades in FOCEP so that it can be discussed, and to the UDP so that it can tell us where it agrees and disagrees. And here, through Marka, I want to call on the UDP and its parties to say what they think of my proposal for a constitution.
Q. Do you think the number of candidates from Cuzco, especially the PSR's,* will significantly affect FOCEP's electoral possibilities in that department?
A. I don't know what the situation is in Cuzco now. But regarding the PSR, I read a UDP document somewhere saying that their difference with FOCEP is that we speak of deepening the reforms made under Velasco while in their opinion nothing remains that is worth deepening. What is paradoxical to me is that the UDP holds that position yet is seeking a front with the PSR, the representative of the first phase. We, on the other hand, reject such a front.
Q. Do you think the CNA® has changed its character at all from the first phase to the second?
A. I think the regime's move to the right has forced the CNA to break with it, but in a certain sense the CNA remains the same. Although it is no longer an official organization, it is still an organization that puts confidence in "revolutionary generals"- who are now out of power. But they could return to power tomorrow, and then the CNA would again be an instrument of a bourgeois government-of a PSR bourgeois government, for example.
6. Confederación Nacional Agraria (National
Q. Why couldn't this electoral process restore the unity of July 19, 1977?
A. I was not in the country during that whole period so it is difficult to give an opinion. But it seems natural to me that the masses united and forced unity on their leaders when faced with the urgency of immediate needs. That is logical. It is also logical that the various strategies of the left are reflected in an election campaign that raises the question of power. These strategic differences must not keep us from uniting in joint actions in the rain struggles of the workers, however.
I am not talking about unity for unity's sake, either. It is logical in turn for two groups having different strategic positions to proceed separately. But in Peru this has been carried to exaggeration, and sometimes differences over details have divided organizations on the left.
Q. Is it true that for once in this part of the world the Trotskyist organizations are holding discussions about unification?
A. It is true. The Trotskyist movement at present is growing stronger internationally, and one of the symptoms of this strengthening has been the dissolution of the two big tendencies that had existed inside the Fourth International. That has resulted in the reunification of Trotskyists in such countries as Spain, Canada, Aus-
7. Date of a twenty-four-hour general strike and mass upsurge protesting regime's austerity policies. Nearly all Peruvian workers organizations united in support of the strike.
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tralia, and Mexico, where we have our largest Latin American party. The same thing is beginning to get under way in Peru.
Q. It caused great indignation here that a Peruvian literary critic played a provocative role at one of your meetings on the tour for the Committee of Solidarity with Latin America®....
A. Oh yes, now I remember. And I remember that it caused me pain, just as it is painful to see a prostitute. Prostitutes do not anger me-what angers me is the economic system we live under that forces some women into prostitution.
And the same thing happens with José Miguel Oviedo and other Peruvian compatriots, or Latin Americans, who have to talk and think like gringos in order to eat. I even spoke to him sympathetically on that occasion, since it makes me sorry to see the situation he and other people have fallen into. They end up being more papist than the pope, defending imperialism more than the gringos themselves.
But it was good that Caretas published Oviedo's article, since it showed that I had been to the United States. The theme of my talk was "Carter and Human Rights-
Myth Vs. Reality," to show that the great adversary of human rights in Latin America is Yankee imperialism, symbolized by its president, Carter.
8. The U.S. Committee for Justice to Latin American Political Prisoners organized a speaking tour of the United States for Blanco earlier this year. At Indiana University Blanco was confronted by Peruvian expatriate José Miguel Oviedo, who later wrote an article for the Lima magazine Caretas (March 7) taking Blanco to task for his "manichean," "simplistic and dogmatic" portrayal of U.S. imperialism's responsi bility for oppression in Latin America.
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Notes
1. Frente Obrero, Campesino, Estudiantil, y Popular (Workers, Peasants, Students, and Poor People's Front), coalition of workers parties and union organizations that includes Blanco's party, the Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (PST-Socialist Workers Party).
2. Blanco's account of the La Convención Valley peasant struggles in the early 1960s. Available in an English translation, Land or Death, from Pathfinder Press, 410 West Street, New
3. Unión Democrática Popular (Democratic People's Union), electoral coalition of Maoist and centrist parties and the main Peruvian miners union.
4. Partido Socialista Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Socialist Party), party formed by leftist military officers who had served in the Velasco military ollcers who had served in the velasco Alvarado government.
5. The nationalizations and limited land reform carried out under Velasco are referred to as the "first phase"; the "second phase" is the partial reversal of these policies that has taken place under Morales Bermúdez.
6. Confederación Nacional Agraria (National Agrarian Confederation), peasant organization set up by the Velasco government. It has partici pated in struggles against the Morales regime.