[The following is an interview with Hugo Blanco, a central leader of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), Peruvian section of the Fourth International. It was obtained by Gerry Foley in Paris on May 26, a few days before the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency. It is taken from the June 13 issue of International Viewpoint, a fortnightly magazine published in Paris under the auspices of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. |
Question. What sort of impact is the world economic crisis having on Peru?
Answer. The economic situation in our country is disastrous. To give you an example, at the beginning of the year, the exchange rate was $1 to 1,000 soles. Now it is $1 to 1,500 soles. That amounts to a devaluation of the Peruvian currency by 50% in less than six months.
According to the government itself, the present economic situation is the worst in the country's history since it lost the Pacific War [1879-83] to Chile, when the economy collapsed
Moreover, we have not yet reached the bottom of the present decline. The government's policy is clearly aggravating all the problems. Instead of taking defensive measures, introducing some protectionism, as Mexico has done and as the imperialist countries have done, the Peruvian government has done exactly the opposite. It has opened up the country wide to foreign products, which are crushing Peruvian industry.
The govenment is taking the taxes off the oil and mining companies and thereby robbing the public treasury. They are putting public money in banks that are on the verge of bankruptcy in a futile attempt to save them. That is, they are subsidizing the families that own these banks and who are robbing them from within.
Another policy of this govenment is to attack the cooperatives that exist both in the cities and in the countryside. It is out to reprivatize everything that was nationalized. One of the harmful effects of this is the present shortage of sugar, of which, until recently. Peru was an exporter.
The sugar shortage, fundamentally, is a result of the fact that the government destroyed the sugar cooperatives that distributed sugar in an organized way to the entire country and thereby created chaos in distribution.
The disasters caused by the bourgeoisie and its government have been aggravated by a whole series of natural catastrophes, droughts in some areas, floods in others.
The hardest hit region is the north, where the conditions are the worst in a century. The immediate effects of this are bad enough, but the longer-term ones will be still worse.
With the destruction of the crops, the people in the north have nothing to eat. Obviously a lot of children and old people are going to die. But the bulk of the people will emigrate to other areas, increasing the scarcity of food and general poverty.
Q. What has been the response at the political level to these economic disasters?
A. The main bourgeois opposition party is the APRA [American People's Revolutionary Alliance], which has certain tendencies to be a bit less proimperialist than the government. It doesn't call for a break with imperialism or anything like that, but for some protectionist measures.
Naturally, some sections of Peruvian industrialists, traders of the national bourgeoisie, including the agrarians, are opposed to the completely proimperialist policy of the government. But this opposition is only verbal and parliamentary. That's as far as it goes.
However, the parliament is totally dominated by the government party [People's Action Party - AP] and its ally, the People's Christian Party [PPC], which is still further to the right.
e. What about the left parties and the workers movement?
A. The dominant force on the left is the Izquierda Unida (United Left, which is a front including a whole range from the Revolutionary Socialist Party (PSR), which is the political heir of the Velasco Alvarado dictatorship, to the Communist Party and Maoist groups.
Unfortunately, this front has an electoralist policy. It is mainly concerned with presenting itself as an alternative in the municipal elections in November and in the presidential elections and general elections that will be held in 1985.
The forces in the Izquierda Unida see that this government, as a result of its policy, is rapidly becoming discredited. So they think that if the left shows that it is an alternative with a perspective for protecting the national economy, people will vote for it, and the left can actually win the elections. Therefore, they are completely absorbed with the elections.
Even forces such as the UDP [Democratic People's Unity] and UNIR [Revolutionary Left Union], which played a progressive role before, have been caught up in this logic. The result of all this is that the masses have to all intents and purposes been abandoned.
Naturally, the Peruvian people are fighting back against the terrible situation that has been imposed on them.
One example of this is the protest of the workers at the Canarias mine. They marched to Lima across the Andes, 700 kilometers. Miners died on the march, children died, women died. Today, the miners and their families are still in Lima, supported by public solidarity. They keep demonstrating, demanding that they be paid 10 months' back pay.
The miners say they know the mine is productive, and that they could run it. But the government is answering them only with repression.
In come cases, such as Cristal Ferran, workers have taken over factories to keep the bosses from closing them down.
In state-owned enterprises such as Sucareps, a trading company, and Moraveco, the country's biggest engineering enterprise, workers have been fighting against reprivatization.
There have been marches and demonstrations by workers in the automotive industry.
Recently, there was a general strike in the department [province] of Puno, which was a success as a mobilization. This is an example of the struggle against the neglect of regions such as Puno by the government, which is very centralist.
As much as the government neglects Lima, its neglect of the provincial towns is much worse. Its only interest in the interior is to take out taxes. It has not undertaken any public works in these areas either to develop them or to better the conditions of those who live there.
In this last period, regionalist struggles have been common. The Puno strike is only the latest.
There have been two peasants strikes, which paralyzed Peru's main internal highway as well as its main thoroughfare for international traffic — the Pan-American Highway.
Then, in March, there was a national general strike, which was called by the main labor confederation, as well as by other unions. It was a success as a mobilization, although it did not gain its demands.
The problem is that when leaderships such as the CGTP [General Confederation of Peruvian Workers], the national labor confederation that called the March strike, do mobilize for actions, it is only to avoid becoming discredited. It is to maintain their credibility and support and in order to be able to direct it into electoral channels this November and in the 1985
elections. The CGTP, for example, is controlled by the Izquierda Unida, specifically the Communist Party.
When people call for continuing the struggles, when they demand a plan of struggle, which would be the first step for a generalized fight against the government, the bureaucratic leaderships put the brake on, because of the electoralist line of the parties they follow.
The example of the Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path] guerrillas shows that people want to fight and the dangers that arise when they find no effective alternative. Many people have been driven to desperation by the economic situation. Despite its limitations, therefore, Sendero Luminoso has not yet been crushed.
Q. What is the PRT doing to help build an alternative for the masses?
A. We are trying to group the forces that want to force the bureaucratic leaderships of the working class to carry the struggles forward and to do this without dividing the workers organizations.
In this work, we are collaborating with the POMR-PST [Revolutionary Marxist Workers Party-Socialist Workers Party] and some sections of the MIR, which divided into various sections some time ago. One such section, led by Comrade Benitez, favors giving impetus to the struggle.
At the same time, we are trying to push union leaderships such as those of the miners union, the municipal workers, the Puno regional leadership that led the strike I mentioned, to link up with other local and sectoral leaderships to make a more serious effort to unify the struggles.
However, we have not made significant progress so far. I think that the main reason for this is the electoralism of the Izquierda Unida, which has caught up a lot of the forces we used to work with in the unions and for the time being left us relatively isolated.
Q. Is this absence of a mass alternative opening up more space for Sendero Luminoso?
A. We think that Sendero Luminoso's orientation is wrong, because our people have a long tradition of struggle through their trade unions and other mass organizations - not just unions but peasant communities, and neighborhood organizations as well. For example, neighborhood associations have been very active in the Northern Cone, that is, the northern part of Lima.
For the moment, our people are not being attracted by the actions of Sendero Luminoso. An indication of this is that the area where Sendero Luminoso has influence, where it has been carrying out actions, where it has not been crushed, is the area where those involved in this group did mass work before in the unions and peasant organizations.
Some leaders of Sendero Luminoso were leaders of the CCP [Peruvian Peasants Federation], the main peasant confederation, and
Fred Murphy/1P
Hugo Blanco's return to Peru from exile in 1978.
have support in the area, for example, Compañero Mesich. That is why they have support, not for their armed actions.
These actions have not spread to any other part of the country. There have been some sporadic actions outside Sendero Luminoso's home area, that is, Ayacucho and a bit of Apurímac, but they have not been significant. So, Sendero is not spreading, but it is not about to be crushed right away either.
The problem is that if the situation continues as it is today, the repression of the government is going to grow. It has already been very brutal. For example, government agents have taken patients from hospitals and killed them outside the door in front of doctors and nurses.
There have been cases of wholesale slaughter in villages with incendiary bombing and strafing. This has happened in Ayacucho. And there was the well-known case of the brutal murder of the eight journalists. In this instance, it seems that the government did not act directly but through peasant auxiliaries. The government is offering the peasants all sorts of bribes. Of course, this has some effect among desperately poor people. The government has been promoting clashes between groups of peasants. Peasants paid by the repressive forces have been attacking other peasant communities.
The danger is that if the struggles remain as isolated as they are now, the various vanguards will be repressed one after the other, and that nothing will come out of these struggles.
Q. Could you describe what the PRT is doing in the unions?
A. The PRT is a very small party. The prestige that it has is out of all proportion to its actual size. We are active, for example in the Moravecos enterprise, where we have comrades in the leadership. This is one of the reasons why the Moravecos union pushed for joint actions involving the unions of other workers in the state enterprises against reprivatization.
The Moravecos union has also built common demonstrations with workers in the automotive industry. A comrade of ours who is in the leadership of a factory union local was jailed in connection with the March general strike.
We have comrades in the leadership of the municipal workers union, the shoe workers union, and also in the Puno regional leadership. We were able to play a role in the Puno strike.
Q. Is the PRT doing work among the peasants?
A. Yes, but the work is not well organized. We are active in Cuzco, Puno, and Catamarca, and we have sympathizers in other areas.
Q. Is there a possibility for uniting the peasants and workers as in Bolivia, where the peasant organizations are part of the national labor confederation?
A. The CGTP does not want to accept the CCP as a member organization because it is not controlled by the Communist Party. It tries to substitute for the CCP and other genuine peasant organizations with a fake CP-controlled peasant union. For these sectarian reasons, the CGTP refuses to allow the CCP to affiliate.
The CCP and the CNA [National Agrarian Federation], which are the big peasant organizations, have participated together not only in the farmers strikes but in the March national general strike, and they participated in the United Command that the CGTP set up to lead that strike.
In the regional struggles, the peasant unions are the most important organizations, more important than the workers organizations. To take the case of the regional strike in Puno, the majority of the population there are peasants.
e. So, the CP control of the labor movement is still strong?
A. Yes, maybe stronger than before. During the military dictatorship, the Maoist currents and centrist ones such as Vanguardia Revolucionaria [Revolutionary Vanguard] opposed the reformist and capitulationist CP leadership. But now they are in the Izquierda Unida and being carried along by its electoral logic. So, they are not putting up any consistent fight against the CP leadership. They just fight a skirmish now and again.
Q. What about the Castroist organizations?
A. I don't know what those would be. Maybe, the Vanguardia Revolucionaria and the MIR. But I don't know to what extent you could call them Castroist. When Cuba supported Velasco Alvarado, they did not go along. Now they are up to their necks in electoralism. I can't think that that is the Cuban line, although Cuba maintains good relations with the Izquierda Unida.
e. There is no sign that the Cubans are trying to encourage the development of any definite political tendency in Peru?
A. I don't see any.
Q. What are relations like between the PRT and POMR-PST, the other main group that claims to be Trotskyist?
A. Naturally, we want to unite as many forces as possible that want to advance revolutionary struggle. We work with the POMR- PST and there is a broad area of agreement between us today on domestic questions in Peru. But that is not the whole story.
For example, we in Peru realize how important the struggle is in Central America and the Caribbean. We know that Yankee imperialism is escalating its intervention. We know that it could intervene directly at any time.
We have decided to begin preparations now for recruiting international brigades to fight in defense of Nicaraguan sovereignty. We are participating in the provisional committee for building such brigades. Of course, they will fight under the command of the FSLN, which is the leadership of the Nicaraguan revolution.
In this, we have a strong disagreement with the comrades of the POMR-PST, who continue to accuse the Nicaraguan leadership of being bureaucrats, capitulators, and I don't know what else.
We cannot consider for a minute collaborating in this work with the comrades of the POMR-PST; they are the very last people we would work with in this.
Q. What sort of solidarity movement exists in Peru?
A. The main organization is the Committee in Solidarity With the Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. Of course, we work in this committee. It does not do much ongoing work, but sometimes it organizes important demonstrations.
Q. Does the POMR-PST participate?
A. Yes, it goes to the demonstrations. But that is one thing, and going to Central America to fight is another, because the latter has to be done under the command of the FSLN.
2. What do you think about the level of international solidarity with your own struggle in Peru?
A. The government is very sensitive to protests about human rights violations in Peru.
[President Fernando] Balaúnde Terry even claimed there was an international plot against his regime because the French Committee for Solidarity with Human Rights in Peru pushed a campaign for sending letters of protest.
I think that journalists'
organizations everywhere have an interest in demanding that the case of the eight murdered journalists be cleared up. Those who were killed were not just leftists.
We have a thousand political prisoners in Peru now, who include people from most tendencies on the left — as I said one PRT union leader — and many peasant leaders. There are solidarity organizations in New York City, Paris, Vancouver, and in some parts of West Germany that provide support for the families of prisoners, medicines, etc.
We think that it is essential that this work be extended.