(The following article appeared in the June 5-11 issue of the French Trotskyist weekly Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.
In the May 1980 general elections, Fernando Belaúnde's People's Action Party (AP) reaped the benefits of the deep antidictatorial sentiment among the Peruvian people.
The bourgeois Christian People's Party (PPC) was too openly proimperialist to attract much of the popular vote, and the APRA.* a declining old bourgeois-populist formation. was largely discredited by its earlier policy of collaboration with the military.
Belaúnde carried out an ultrapopulist campaign, even promising to create 2 million jobs in a country where 60 percent of the active population is either without work or underemployed. But the AP's support began to decline after Belaúnde took office in July 1980. It became clear that he was not going to keep such promises.
Hugo Blanco, a member of the Peruvian parliament and a leader of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT-Peruvian section of the Fourth International), explained to us the effeet that Belaunde's policies have had on the masses of people. Belaúnde's regime has taken on a more and more authoritarian character.
The antiworker offensive of the Beläunde government has meant cuts in social-service spending, price increases on basic consumer goods (more than 60% since the beginning of 1981), opening the economy to foreign capital. and a series of minidevaluations of the currency. Over a period of just a few months this devaluation reached 36.5 percent, a record for Latin America. A law reducing the subsidies for municipal governments was aimed at punishing the left for its victory in local elections in November 1980.
So, as Hugo Blanco pointed out, "the Belaúnde government, which in political terms represented a certain step forward after twelve years of military dictatorship, has in fact brought setbacks economically. It has even retreated from some of the reforms introduced by the military dictatorship."
"In the mining industry." Blanco said, "Belaúnde has thrown open his arms to the multinational corporations." A law on petroleum development granted tax exemptions to foreign companies, which means a US$3 million loss for the state.
In agriculture, the regime is pressing for a
*American People's Revolutionary Alliance, also known as the Peruvian Aprista PartyIP
restructuring to benefit capitalism. "One of the means employed." Blanco said, "is to allow the peasants to mortgage their land in order to obtain credit. So, naturally, when one cannot repay the loans owing to a bad harvest, the land is taken over by the banks." Then the peasant is forced to join the ranks of the desocupados (unemployed) crammed into the shantytowns of Lima and other cities.
"And now that the unemployed have tried to make a living as street vendors, the mayor of Lima banishes them in the name of beautifying the city." Blanco said.
Taken as a whole, these measures fall "within the framework of a deteriorating political situation," the PRT leader explained.
"In theory, Peru is a country where laws originate in parliament. Belaúnde, in alliance with the PPC, controls a majority in both chambers. But even though they could pass all the laws they want, they are afraid to even discuss the country's acute problems. So the parliament has voted to give extraordinary powers to the executive branch to adopt laws of its own choosing."
'Antiterrorist' law
The taking of "full legislative power" by Belaúnde's government has reinforced the regime's authoritarianism.
A repressive, so-called "antiterrorist" law has been decreed, and a number of trade-union and political leaders have already felt its effects.
This law, legislative Decree No. 46, calls for prison sentences for anyone "disturbing public order" or attempting to do so, an accusation that could even be applied to participants in a strike. Persons demonstrating in solidarity with El Salvador could be charged with using "means capable of affecting international relations.
What is worse, Article 5 of the law calls for prosecution of every member of a party that makes reference to "violence" or to "armed struggle." Thus, for instance, if our comrade Hugo Blanco recounts the history of the peasant revolts he led in 1962, he risks being charged with justifying violence-as would every member of his party, even those who were not yet born in 1962!
Repressive acts have grown more and more numerous, and even have reached into parliament itself with the suspension of two leftists deputies for "irreverence toward the president." Also, Blanco said, "right-wing propaganda calling for reinstituting the death penalty" is another sign of a hardening of the government in face of popular discontent.
Blanco pointed out that "there are bourgeois economists who are saying that Belaúnde's economic policy—comparable to those of the
Chilean and Argentina regimes-can be applied by a military dictatorship but not by a democracy."
At present, the Belaúnde government is trying to resolve this contradiction by stepping up harsher repression and moving toward a civilian-military dictatorship. The first stage involved relaxing the constraints, however modest, implied by the existence of bourgeois-democratic forms such as parliament. The next stage will mean calling into question the right to strike and launching a frontal attack on freedom of expression and the public activity of trade unions and political parties.
But that will entail a sharper confrontation with the workers movement. As Hugo Blanco told us, "despite the initial economic blows, the masses of the people have not been defeated. On numerous occasions they have demonstrated their combativity. They have still to make their voices heard."
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