[The following interview with Hugo Blanco, obtained in Paris by Christian Parker, was published in the June 21 issue of Rouge, the French Trotskyist daily. The translation and footnotes are by Intercontinental Press/Inprecor.]
Question. Looking at the first partial results of the (June 18] elections to the Constituent Assembly, what can you tell us about their meaning?
Answer. Before anything else, I'd like to talk about the restrictions put on these elections. In the first place, illiterates did not have the right to vote, which excluded some of the most conscious sectors of Peruvian society, such as the Indian peasants who do not speak Spanish, the colonial language. In other words, those who carried out the agrarian reform, who have increased production and improved their standard of living, are treated like subhuman beings.
Second, soldiers do not have the right to vote, in a country where the military junta rules "in the name of the armed forces."
Finally, to obtain the right to run slates in these elections, you had to gather 40,000 signatures, a very high figure. You have to realize that the authorities did everything possible to obstruct signature-gathering by organizations belonging to the workers movement. They constantly arrested comrades collecting signatures on the street and stole their petitions. To top it all off, ten days before the filing date, they rejected half of the FOCEP's signatures, about 20,000, that is. With a great deal of determination, the comrades were able to gather 20,000 more in a few days.
Meanwhile, many people were being held, and the Jujuy Thirteen had already been deported.2 Nevertheless, the FOCEP was finally able to get on the ballot, and I
Students, and
People's Front, an electoral coalition of workers parties and union organizations that includes Blanco's party, the PST.
was able to run as a candidate.
As for access to the major means of communication-radio, television, and the press—it had been agreed that space would be reserved for each electoral slate. After having been able to judge our first appearances, the ruling military junta arbitrarily withdrew our right of access to the media, and then gave it back. For example, I was able to speak on television three or four hours before being arrested and deported to Argentina.
You must not forget that as of the eve of the May 22-23 general strike, the military had decreed a curfew, a state of emergency, and the suspension of constitutional guarantees. They even considered these measures to be retroactive up to forty-eight hours, claiming that they legitimized the repression that occurred just before the outbreak of the strike. Among those detained in this wave of repression were many candidates in the elections, as well as people with other responsibilities in the campaign.
After the general strike, which was an enormous success, the curfew and state of emergency were lifted, but not the suspension of constitutional guarantees. This meant that we could calmly hold meetings and rallies, but that just as calmly, we could be arrested, searched without warrants, and so on.
They insisted on prerecording television and radio programs, and that was how an entire speech of ours, and an excerpt from another by the UDP, simply got censored.
The FOCEP and the UDP held a final joint campaign rally in Lima the Friday before the elections. This proves that we are not electoralists, but that this campaign was a campaign to defend the masses. Since a permit for this rally was first refused, then granted, then refused again, the FOCEP and UDP tried to call a demonstration, which resulted in the sending of light armored vehicles, fire engines, and cops equipped with tear-gas grenades and clubs to break up the demonstration.
To give an idea of the disparity in resources between us and the parties of the right, you have to keep in mind the enormous resources at their disposal. They had no restrictions of any kind, and even went to the point of running advertisements on both television and radio during the broadcasts of the World Cup football matches.
This is what gives full meaning to the FOCEP's vote total, and, in a larger sense, to the vote for the other candidates of the workers movement, the UDP and CP.
Q. What were the central themes of the FOCEP's electoral campaign?
A. Within the FOCEP, my organization, the PST,* stressed the fact that the crisis Peru is currently undergoing is the crisis of a rotten capitalist system, that the country needs a social, economic, and political reorganization.
That is why we drew up a general draft of a constitution that includes nationalization without compensation or indemnity of all industrial enterprises, concellation of the foreign debt, and the planning of public works to be chosen by the popular sectors-workers, peasants, and shantytown dwellers-to solve both the question of unemployment and development.s
Of course, we explained that all these measures could be put into effect only by a workers and people's government, that such a government can be based only on and assemblies of workers', peasants' shantytown-dwellers' committees. We even added that the members of such a government should not earn more than a worker, and that they should be recallable at any time. The armed forces should be set up on the basis of committees to defend the workers, peasants, and so on. It was this draft constitution that was our central weapon in the campaign.
Furthermore, we constantly explained that these elections amounted to an electoral farce, and that there should be no illusions about them. Because in Peru, the tanks are the real voters, even though they are illiterate and do not speak Spanish.
Q. How was FOCEP's campaign carried out?
A. The recent, and even less than recent, history of Peru shows that all the gains made by the workers had to be won by their organizations in struggle. So each FOCEP committee had to be organized with this in mind. To take one example, in one shantytown the committee organized a struggle for drinking water, electricity, and transportation.
The FOCEP support committee in a factory would mobilize the workers for the general strike, around the specific demands in that plant, and for the rehiring of fired workers (5,000 were fired throughout the country after the general strike on July 19, 1977).
For this reason, we consider the vote for our slate to be a vote for socialism. for the our slate to be a vote for socialism, for the mobilization and organization of the masses to struggle, a vote against the electoral fraud.
Q. How were the FOCEP support committees set up?
A. A sympathizer would come to the headquarters, for example-not a sympathizer in the sense in which it is understood in France, in the LCR®-but someone who was interested in what they had heard about us. We would help that person to set up a support committee in their workplace or neighborhood. A comrade would be sent to give a hand, and a meeting would be called, which would lead, after discussion, to the election of two or three officers of the support committee.
Q. Why did the far left campaign within two electoral fronts instead of a single one?
A. As far as we were concerned, we were ready to join the UDP coalition from the start, but the Maoist comrades who dominate the UP made a precondition of accepting their governmental formula of a "people's revolutionary government,"
which in our understanding was nothing but a concretization of the Maoist concept of the bloc of four classes. In case we had not succeeded in gathering the 40,000 signatures, we would have given critical support to the UDP slate.
The FOCEP platform contained three central points-class independence, the struggle against the government, and giving an impulse to popular struggles. In addition, each organization taking part in the FOCEP could put forward its own program, which seemed to us a correct conception for carrying out an election campaign.
Several Trotskyist organizations took part in the UDP, not because they agreed with the governmental formula, but because they felt it was very important to establish a united front with the workingclass vanguard in the mines represented in the UDP. In my opinion, there is no need for an election campaign to put the revolutionary united front into practice. For example, in the leadership of the Peruvian Peasants Federation, I rub shoulders with comrades who are practically all connected to the UDP.
Our opinion is that the comrades in the leadership of the UDP are making eyes a little too eagerly at what they call the progressive bourgeoisie, and that they
6. Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire-
Revolution ry Communiet evolutiorench sec
Krench gec tion of the Fourth International.
Notes
1. Frente Obrero, Campesino, Estudiantil, y Popular-Workers, Peasants,
2. On May 25, Hugo Blanco and twelve other Peruvians were deported to an army barracks in San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina. As a result of international protests, Blanco was released and allowed to return to Sweden, where he has been granted political asylum. Ten of the twelve other political figures, trade-union leaders, and journalists were also given asylum in countries of their choice. The cases of two others are still pending. See Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, June 26, 1978, p. 756.
3. Unión Democrática Popular-Democratic People's Union.
4. Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores- Socialist Workers Party, a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International.
5. For an English translation of the draft constitution, see Intercontinental Press/Inprecor, June 19, p. 750.