[The following is the text of the speech given by Hugo Blanco at a rally of 15,000 in Taena, Peru, August 25. The translation is by Intercontinental Press/Inprecor.]
[Applause, shouts of "Hugo Blanco to Power!"]
Compañeros, we see each other again for the first time since 1966. It was then I made my first acquaintance with Tacna. Today is my second visit. When I first came here I was in handcuffs [shouts of "No!"] and being escorted by the repressive forces. I could not walk through the streets then because I was locked up in a jail, which I had the good fortune to be able to visit again today. [Laughter and applause.]
And this time again, I have been greeted with affection by the town of Tacna. I am glad that compañero Narvartel is here tonight, because for me he symbolizes the affection that the people of Tacna showed at that time to the peasant fighters from the valley of La Convención.
And why were we brought here to be tried? Why did the controlled press-which was not as controlled then as it is todaysay that we were murderers?
The peasants of La Convención, like the peasants throughout our country, had been crushed under the weight of oppression for centuries, serving the big landlords. They had been working for years for the benefit of others. In La Convención, the peasants were given a piece of land to work for themselves, and in exchange for this they had to work for two weeks for the landlord without getting a penny in wages.
And when a piece of land that had been given to a peasant began to produce coffee or tea or fruit, the landlord kicked him off the land and kept the coffee trees, the tea bushes, the cacao and fruit trees. That was the way of life in the province of La Convención.
And who had given the land to the landlords? Some of them were foreigners, as the peasants in La Convención said, and they did not bring in the land in packs on their backs. There was no reason the land should belong to them.
The land had been there before the landlords were born. And it had been made productive by the peasants who were working it, or by their parents or grandparents. There was no reason why the landlords should become owners of the land. It was as if they took out a title to the air we breathed. It was as if they made themselves the owners of the roads, of the sea. They did not make this land, and so they could not own it.
Nonetheless, they used the land to enslave the peasants. And that was not all. The peasants suffered many other forms of exploitation besides.
For example, the women and children also had to work without pay for the landlord. The landlords did not allow any schools on their haciendas. They would not let the peasants wear shoes, saying that shoes were only for the bosses. On one occasion, a landlord took a peasant's shoes away from him because he had the audacity to hire a teacher to teach his children how to read.
On another occasion, this same landlord, Romainville, who was the landlord of the hacienda covered by the union I belonged to, ordered a peasant to fetch a horse to carry six arrobas [150 pounds] of coffee. And when the peasant could not find a horse, he came back to say: "Father, I could not find a horse." He had to call the landlord "father." [Shouts of "Down with him!" "Down with him!" "Down with the landlords!"]
The landlord told him, "Oh, you couldn't find a horse? So, you get down on all fours." And he ordered the overseer to put a pack and bit on him and load him with six arrobas of coffee, and he had to crawl around the patio on all fours.
That's the way the landlords treated the peasants. These worthy gentlemen, the noblest families in the country, the gentlemen who stand out on the society pages, that's the kind of moral sense they have.
And what were the compañeros of the peasant who was being treated that way doing? They were looking on in fear and trembling; they didn't dare say a word. They didn't dare protest.
On another occasion, for a minor infraction, another peasant was stripped and hung up naked on a mango tree to be whipped by an overseer. And since the overseer couldn't get himself worked up enough to do the job with the kind of enthusiasm the landlord wanted, the landlord himself took away the whip, saying: "You idiot, you can't even be trusted with a job like this. Watch me, and I'll show you how it's done."
He began to whip the peasant, who was hanging from the tree, and kept it up all day long. From time to time, the landlord took a break, taking out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and then went on beating him. He did this also in the presence of all the peasant compañeros, who didn't dare open their mouths to protest and remained in a cowed silence, trembling.
But everything on this earth comes to an end. And the fear of these peasants also came to an end. One day they joined together to raise a very loud outery. And it was precisely the peasants on this hacienda, the peasants in the Chaupimayo union, who raised their voices the loudest. Today the name of Chaupimayo is known throughout the world. Today this name is associated with courage, and not with the cowardice from which we suffered before.
[Applause, shouts of "Bravo!"]
All the peasants in the valley of La Convención united. In the beginning there were only a few peasants. In the beginning, it was only the peasants of eight or nine haciendas. They began to organize, to form unions, to present lists of demands. It was the same story we all know so well. Form no. 5, form no. 6, the inspector of labor, the judge, the court clerk, the notary, the higher court, the supreme court, and on and on. [Laughter.] The same story as always. [More laughter.]
So, what was the result of all this? The same as always. [Laughter.] The landlord committed abuses against the peasants, and when the peasants appealed to the courts, they were the ones who ended up in jail. The landlords got the peasants' land and the fruit of their labor.
This is what always happens. This is what you have just complained about with regard to your local policeman, for example, what you have just complained to the courts about. That is, it was business as usual in Cuzco. The courts, the labor department authorities, the PIP [Policía de Investigaciones del Perú, the political police], the Guardia Civil, they were all doing the bosses' dirty work. They were all trampling on the law, and not just on the law but on the peasants, who were like the serfs of the landlords.
And the press, of course, was saying bad things about agitators, who were supposed to be disrupting production. It was saying good things about the landlords, who were supposed to be building the good name of Cuzco and increasing the productivity of our land.
But the peasants got tired of so much paper shuffling. They got tired of making complaints to judges and courts and finding that they were the ones who had to go to jail. They began to hold meetings like this one. They began to use the microphones to sing about their lives and their landlords. They began to tell about all the crimes that had been committed against the peasants.
A landlord was denounced for mistreating peasant women, for raping them, and then drowning his illegitimate children in the river. His name was Márquez. I name him today as I did then. He hasn't dared to sue me for libel, and if this were an untrue accusation he certainly would have.
These were the sort of outrages that were being committed by the landlords in La Convención, and they were denounced in meetings such as this one. The peasants began to develop a feeling of power, the peasants who could not vote in these last elections because they are not supposed to have any civic consciousness.
But they have enough civic consciousness to end this exploitation. These peasants didn't need to know how to speak Spanish, they didn't need to know how to read and write. They began to denounce these crimes in our language, in Quechua, which is the language of the peasants in Cuzco.
And so, these peasants began to develop a feeling of power, because they saw that they were multitudes. They saw that they did not have to remain on their knees. They saw that they could raise their heads. They saw that they could tell the truth in Quechua. They saw that they didn't need to know how to read and write. They saw that they didn't need any form no. 5, or 6, to tell their exploiters the way things really were. Telling them didn't settle things, but it started things moving toward a solution because the people were beginning to feel their power.
We are going to see this process repeated
We are going to see this process repeated many times, compañeros.
Just as there have been denunciations here, we are going to hold a lot of other rallies. And from this or other platforms in the new towns [the slums ringing the big cities], you yourselves, the workers, and every section of the exploited people, are going to speak out against the abuses that are being inflicted on them, as you have just denounced this cop. We are going to continue exposing these injustices, we are going to begin to make people conscious of them, and that was the way it started there [in Chaupimayo].
So, what happened after that in the valley of La Convención? Strikes began. The whole province was paralyzed. Because by holding rallies the peasants gained a feeling of strength. And when the peasants marched through the streets, everything had to be shut down. Nothing moved on the roads. Nothing moved over the bridges. There were peasant picket groups throughout the province, and they made sure things were shut down. Both men and women stood guard in these picket groups under the heavy rains that fall at the jungle's edge.
When anyone said, "You poor peasants, your wicked leaders have made you stay out here in the rain," they replied: "We
Notes
1. A previous speaker at the rally, who had helped defend Blanco in 1966.—IP/1