[The following interview with Hugo Blanco was obtained before his arrest and deportation. It was published in the May 26 issue of Internationalen, the weekly newspaper of the Kommunistiska Arbetarförbundet (Communist Workers League), Swedish section of the Fourth International and is preceded by Internationalen's introduction. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/Inprecor.]
Since his return to Peru [April 12], Hugo Blanco has begun to play an active role in politics. He has spoken before unions, at universities, and on TV. He has been interviewed in a multitude of publications. Thus, it has become clear that he is still regarded as one of the most important political leaders in Peru.
At the beginning of May, Internationalen's reporter Lasse Palgren interviewed Hugo Blanco in Lima. The interview deals mainly with the situation in the working class and the role played by the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
Question. The May Day celebrations here in Lima were rather confusing. There were two small rallies marked more by internal conflicts than by unity and a determination to fight against the government's austerity policy. But at the same time, in the past year there have been a large number of major strikes. Some of these have been for higher wages, but there have also been strikes in solidarity with the 5,000 militant workers fired after the general strike in July 1977.
Moreover, most of the organizations on the left outside the Communist Party have been able to unite in two fronts for the constituent assembly elections. But the combativity shown by the strikes and the experiences of unity represented by the electoral fronts were not reflected in the May Day celebrations. What is the explanation for this?
Answer. It is true that the situation is a contradictory one. But there is a feeling of weariness among large sections of the working class today. This is a result of the fact that many of the strikes have been relatively isolated and have suffered from fragmentation, and at the same time have failed to lead to any real victories.
Along with this, the split in the Communist Party and the CGTP* have had a demoralizing effect.
Q. What lies behind these splits?
A. The reason for them lies in the CGTP's reluctance to take the initiative and fight for the reinstatement of the 5,000 fired workers. Most of these belong to the new generation of militant working-class leaders who have come out of the struggles in recent years. Moreover, many of them were members of the CP. When the CP and the CGTP took no real initiative but even backed out of actions that had already
*Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú (General Confederation of
Peruvian
Workers). The Communist Party, which has controlled the CGTP, split in January into two factions, which take their names from their newspapers. Unidad (Unity) is published by the old-line Stalinist leadership and Mayoría (Majority) by the oppositionists.-IP/I
other means of reaching people. And today one of our main tasks is to fight for the unity of the CGTP. That means fighting for the reintegration of those who have been expelled. We have to fight as well to bring the unions outside the CGTP into it. It is only inside the CGTP that we can build a strong class-struggle tendency capable of challenging its bureaucratic leadership. We have also put forward a concrete proposal for how this should be done.
Q. But if the situation in the working class is confused and at the same time the government and the bourgeoisie are on the offensive, putting through price increases and changing laws to prepare the way for new mass layoffs, isn't it possible that the election campaign can increase the confusion among the workers? Might it not divert forces away from the struggle that is necessary today?
A. No, not the kind of campaign we propose to run. What is important for us is to take part in the day-to-day struggles and use the election campaign to show that the elections are not the solution but that it lies in the workers' own struggles. In addition, it seems that the contradictory experiences of these last years have also created an awareness of the need to seek more general solutions.
Moreover, since this election is to a constituent assembly that is to draw up a constitution, it offers all sorts of opportunities to show what sort of a society we are fighting for and how it is to be achieved. This is what I did in my constitutional proposal. It was an attempt to show what a soviet socialist republic would look like. However, the only way to make this clear is to link it to the struggle that is being waged today and to the experiences of the Peruvian masses. This is what I have done in speaking on TV. In this way, the election campaign can help to give a concrete political perspective for the struggle that is being conducted today.