LIMA-On January 18, as night was falling, an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand people from the factories, the university, and the "pueblos jóvenes,
" the immense belt of impoverished shantytowns surrounding the Peruvian capital, gathered in front of the National Election Court in downtown Lima. They had come to show their support for a new electoral bloc, made up of nearly all of Peru's revolutionary and class-struggle forces, that was registering for the coming May 18 national elections.
With chants of "a government without generals or bosses," the crowd greeted the representatives of virtually the entire Peruvian left who had come to file the papers to register the ARI (Revolutionary Left Alliance) only moments before the legal deadline.
ARI, which means "yes" in the Quechua Indian language of Peru's highlands, is
Hugo Blanco for persident. running Blanco is a leader of the PRT (Revolutionary Workers Party), the Peruvian section of the Fourth International, and is the best-known and most respected figure on the Peruvian left.
Blanco's candidacy has the support of the forces in the workers movement and in the peasant organizations that have carried out the mass struggles of recent years that forced the military rulers to begin to prepare for their return to their barracks. He is the candidate of those who are actively fighting for the political and organizational independence of the workers movement.
The fact that Blanco's campaign has received nearly unanimous support from the left and from much of the organized labor movement is of tremendous significance for all the workers and exploited of Peru. It is also a major breakthrough for the Peruvian left, which has been characterized by a long tradition of being extremely divided-even atomized-and sectarian.
Because of the breadth of the forces united behind his election campaign, Blanco's candidacy will undoubtedly be a decisive factor in accelerating and deepening mass struggles in the period now opening up. This is a point that all the Peruvian bourgeois commentators immediately, and nervously, stressed.
Just a few short weeks ago, when all the workers organizations were still debating what tactic to adopt for the May 18 elections, even the most determined supporters of broad unity behind Blanco's candidacy would not have dared predict this degree of success. It even seemed, in fact, that the gains that had already been made in the elections for the Constituent Assembly in 1978, with the establishment of FOCEP and the UDP!-two left fronts-might be in jeopardy.
Those elections took place on June 18, 1978, in the wake of a huge May 22-23 general strike and other major struggles by the Peruvian masses. In those struggles there was a high degree of unity on the left. A large segment of the working-class and revolutionary organizations in Peru were able to partially overcome their extreme atomization and their traditions of sectarianism in order to set up these two electoral fronts. The FOCEP and the UDP were, in a sense, an extension onto the political arena of the unity that had been achieved in the mass struggles.
The focus of the FOCEP's program was to struggle for the unity and political and organizational independence of the working class and other exploited layers, by deepening and extending the mass struggles that were already taking place.
Blanco, who ran at the head of the FOCEP slate and received the highest vote of any left candidate, was the spokesman for this orientation, as well as its symbol in the eyes of the masses, despite the fact that he had spent most of the previous fifteen years in prison or exile. In fact, Blanco had been again deported from Peru just prior to the elections.
In the country as a whole, despite the undemocratic character of the election, the FOCEP won nearly 12 percent of the vote. It outpolled all other slates in three of Peru's fourteen departments (provinces), running especially well in the mining districts. In Lima the FOCEP ran first in four districts and second in two districts. It would undoubtedly have done even better if illiterates and Indians who spoke no Spanish had been allowed to vote, if the
UDP-Democratic People's Union. The UDP was composed of a number of centrist and Maoist groups, some with considerable influence in the unions and other mass movements.
left had had equal coverage in the mass media, and if leading leftist candidates had not been deported prior to the election.
The UDP received a little over 4 percent of the vote, while the Communist Party (Unidad) received nearly 6 percent. The three working-class slates, therefore, received 22 percent of the total vote.
The FOCEP experience, as the expression of the Peruvian masses' desire for unity and for a class-struggle orientation, continued beyond the 1978 election campaign in numerous mobilizations and struggles, and in the activity of those elected to the Constituent Assembly.
FOCEP made a deep impression on the most advanced sectors of the workers movement and the organized peasant movement, which continued to support it and identify with it after the elections.
was clearly demonstrated in the This massive size of meetings called in the name of the FOCEP.
But the FOCEP was an electoral front that never developed much of a structure. There were numerous local committees, but almost no coordination among them. As a result, the FOCEP never became what the exploited of Peru had hoped and expected it would become-the embryo of an independent mass workers political party.
On the contrary, the preparations for the upcoming presidential election led to a de facto split in the FOCEP. Several months ago one of the FOCEP's best known figures, Genaro Ledesma, together with a small group that called itself FOCEP. Independiente, began negotiations to form an electoral slate with the CP (Unidad) and the bourgeois-nationalist PSR (Revolutionary Socialist Party), which is the party of the so-called "progressive" generals who base themselves on the populist reformist tradition of Gen. Velasco Alvarado, who ruled Peru from 1968 to 1975.
These negotiations led Ledesma and his supporters to break with FOCEP's line of working-class independence from bourgeois political forces and to consummate an electoral alliance with the CP (Unidad), the PSR, and several smaller groups that have no real political weight.
A small portion of the Cuzco crowd that came to hear Alfonso Barrantes (third from during their swing through southern Peru.
This alliance, in which the CP (Unidad) was politically and organizationally dominant, although Ledesma was its candidate for president, proposed only a few timid reforms within the framework of maintaining the system of capitalist domination. It was a classic example of class collaboration in the service of the bourgeoisie.
Within the FOCEP only a small minority supported Ledesma in this splitting action, which betrayed the entire political basis on which the FOCEP had been formed, and the whole struggle it had waged. But Ledesma was able to make use of a judicial trump card. In the eyes of the Election Court Ledesma had the sole "legal right" to the FOCEP designation, which was registered under his name. Because of this Ledesma was able to sign his alliance with the CP (Unidad) and the PSR in the FOCEP's name.
Through this maneuver Ledesma was hoping to use the confusion this generated to draw some of FOCEP's prestige and political capital among the Peruvian masses into this alliance.
In return for this "service" and not on account of the small forces he represented, the CP (Unidad) made Ledesma the gift of the slate's presidential candidacy.
Despite its limited impact within FOCEP itself and within the sectors that support FOCEP's struggle, Ledesma's splitting operation could have had very serious consequences. By throwing into question some of the gains toward unity that were made in the 1978 election campaign for the Constituent Assembly, it could have been the beginning of a return to the complete division of much of the Peruvian left.
Already several Maoist groups, both outside and inside the UDP, had come out in favor of a "Marxist-Leninist" candidate who would narrowly represent their current alone. In addition, a segment of Peruvian Trotskyism, the PST (Socialist Workers Party), was actively campaigning for a Trotskyist candidate.
Faced with this situation, the PRT and Hugo Blanco came out for setting up the broadest possible electoral front, within which each organization would have the right to present all its positions. But this front would have to be explicitly, and in practice, a vehicle for expressing the need
Amauta left) and Hugo Blanco (fourth from left)
for political independence of the working class. And it would have to be an instrument that would make it possible to move toward concrete realization of that objective in the present period.
Such an electoral front, the PRT felt, should not try to use muddled compromises to revolve the deep programmatic differences that separate the various Maoist, Trotskyist, and centrist organizations and currents making up the front. Instead, they argued, the front should recognize that these differences exist and should allow each of the organizations in the bloc to put forward its whole range of positions.
The front itself, however, would be based on an action program that responds to the immediate needs of the masses and to their desire for united struggle.
Being the electoral expression of the independent class mobilization of the masses, the front would have to exclude any bourgeois organizations from participating in it, no matter how small they might be. And it would have to reject any accord with bourgeois sectors or forces, however marginal they might be.
This conception of the electoral front, which was ratified at a January 13 national conference of the PRT in Lima, is based on an analysis of one of the basic features of the present situation in Peru. Although recently several important strikes, such as the 118-day national teachers strike, have ended in partial defeats, the level of struggle and militancy of the exploited masses, and their desire for unity, has remained high, and if anything has even deepened, in the period since the June 1978 Constituent Assembly elections.
In this context, and in face of the reformist and class-collaborationist alternative that Ledesma, the CP (Unidad), and the PSR generals are putting forward, revolutionaries have a responsibility to create a situation where these mass struggles can find consistent and unified political expression on the electoral level.
The PRT's proposal was, in fact, a response to concrete demands by the masses for unity. These demands have been expressed with growing force in recent months. In late November and December a successful speaking tour through southern Peru was organized by the PRT and several groups in the UDP. Meetings in Huancayo, Cuzco, and Arequipa each attracted tens of thousands of partici pants.
In Cuzco and Arequipa the central plazas were totally jammed with supporters of a united left ticket. As the Peruvian weekly Marka noted, these were "the most spectacular meetings that have taken place in recent times in these cities."
At each stop along the tour the crowds broke into chants in favor of "left unity for a workers government, without generals or bosses," and for Hugo Blanco to be the presidential candidate.
Because the proposal of the PRT was rooted in the present reality of the class struggle, it made rapid headway. Very soon there was an initial discussion between the PRT and the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left, one of the main groups in the UDP, to lay the basis for a draft platform for an electoral alliance. This was then followed by discussions with all the component groups in the UDP, again at the PRT's initiative.
In the meantime a national general assembly of the UDP was held. At that meeting there was a last-ditch attempt to block unity, with an attempt to get all the Maoist currents to line up behind the candidacy of Alfonso Barrantes Lingán, the UDP's president. But the acclamation with which the assembly greeted Hugo Blanco, who was literally carried around the hall on the shoulders of the crowd when he arrived to bring greetings from the PRT and express his party's position on the elections, showed how isolated these sectarian tendencies were. The rank-andfile UDP delegates had dramatically expressed the desire of all the Peruvian masses for unity.
Finally, on January 17, the day before the final deadline for legally registering slates for the election, an agreement was concluded between the PRT and all the components of the UDP, establishing the ARI.
This agreement, which is based on the draft platform previously worked out by the PRT and the MIR, follows the PRT's conception of what an electoral front should be, which was outlined above.
The agreement specifically stipulates that "no bourgeois formation can participate in the alliance." The ARS, a small group that the PRT characterizes as bourgeois, and that was part of one of the Maoist fronts, has been excluded from ARI. The agreement does not, however, include a governmental slogan or formula.
Candidacies for parliament were divided 50 percent for Maoist and centrist currents and 50 percent for the "Socialist Bloc," which basically means the forces who describe themselves as Trotskyist. The accord also ratified the selection of Hugo Blanco as the presidential candidate of ARI.
Almost immediately, those Maoist and centrist forces organized in UNIR and FRAS, two fronts that had not been part of either the FOCEP or the UDP, joined in the agreement, without asking for any changes in the platform or the candidates.
The POMR (Revolutionary Marxist Workers Party), a Trotskyist organization affiliated to the Organizing Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International, also ratified the agreement between the PRT and UDP, and is thus now part of ARI.
The only revolutionary organization that refused to become part of ARI is the PST, the Trotskyist organization in Peru that supports the Bolshevik Faction, an international grouping that recently split from the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. The leaders of the PST are trying to justify their sectarianism by raising arguments that the agreement is "unprincipled."
According to them, a principled electoral alliance can only be concluded on the basis of a full program, which in practice means on the full program of Trotskyism. If the agreement is not based on a full program, according to the PST, it ends up on the road of class collaborationism and popular frontism. And that is the way they now characterize the ARI, the position of the PRT and Hugo Blanco, and the position of the POMR
This concept of an electoral alliance, which is completely new for the PST and the Bolshevik Faction, can only be understood in the light of the PST leaders' recent tactic of doing anything to obtain legal status for their party. In collecting the signatures required to achieve this, they have been falsely representing themselves as Hugo Blanco's party.
Since the PRT itself has not gained legal status, even though it collected 60,000
signatures while only 40,000 are legally required (for obvious political reasons the dictatorship is not anxious to give the PRT, "Hugo Blanco's party," legal status), and since unity would have been impossible to achieve on the sectarian basis put forward by the PST, that would have meant that the PST would have been the only possible legal framework for Blanco's candidacy.
This point was expressed in a none too subtle manner on the masthead of the December 1979 issue of the PST's newspaper, Bandera Socialista, where it said "we will put our legal status at the service of Hugo Blanco's candidacy," meaning that Hugo Blanco would become the candidate of the PST!
These sectarian maneuvers came to naught. They were too much in contradiction to the mass pressure for unity behind Blanco's candidacy. These maneuvers have now condemned the PST to remain in total isolation... or to carry out a sharp new political turn. In either case the PST will not be part of ARI since the legal deadline for joining an electoral alliance has already passed.
This secondary problem with the PST obviousiy does not change anything basic. And the basic fact is that for the first time there is unity of the revolutionary and class-struggle forces in Peru. And that unity has been achieved behind the candidacy of Hugo Blanco.
In several weeks the election campaign will start in earnest. It will be waged in a context where the crisis of the present dictatorship is forcing the military officers to relinquish their hold on the government at a time when the bourgeois alternatives are weak and divided.
The People's Revolutionary American Alliance (APRA), the main bourgeois party, which has historically had a big following among sections of the masses, still seemed strong and solid at the time of the Constituent Assembly elections. But it has suffered deepgoing erosion of its prestige and has gone through severe internal conflicts since the death of its historie leader Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre last August.
This is the context in which the ARI and Hugo Blanco will put forward the alternative of the working and exploited masses of Peru.
This alternative, developed through the election campaign and in close connection with the ongoing mass struggles that Peru has seen in recent years, represents a great step forward toward consolidating the political and organizational independence of the masses, and should provide an example of class-struggle politics for the Latin American masses as a whole.
Latin American revolutionists and internationalists throughout the world should support this campaign and give it the active solidarity that will enable it to develop to the broadest extent possible.
Notes
1. FOCEP-The Workers, Peasants, Students, and People's Front. FOCEP included most of the Trotskyist forces as well as the Communist Party (Bandera Roja), a Maoist group; some important unions and peasant organizations; the National Federation of Pueblos Jóvenes, an organization of shantytown dwellers; and three socialist youth organizations.
2. In January 1978 the Peruvian Communist Party split into two public factions which take their names from their newspapers. The old-line Stalinist faction publishes Unidad (Unity). The oppositionists, who have taken a verbally more militant stance against the government and who belonged to the UDP, publish Mayorla (Major. ity).