[The with Hugo
Blanco, a leader of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) of Peru, appeared in the June-July 1985 issue of the PRT's magazine Combate Socialista. The PRT is the Peruvian section of the Fourth International. The translation from Spanish and footnotes are by Intercontinental Press.]
Question. What is your assessment of the election results?
Answer. The results of the election' show, on the one hand, that the Peruvian people were already fed up with being governed by the right wing, whose aim is to serve the big imperialist companies. Serving those interests, the right wing was drowning the national majority in hunger and unemployment.
On the other hand, the APRA's wide margin of victory shows us that the great majority of Peruvians still do not see that the only real solution to the crisis in which imperialism has sunk us is to energetically challenge im-
Although a run-off election between García and Barrantes was scheduled, Barrantes withdrew from the race, stating that the run-off would be too costly and divisive. García was declared president-elect on June 1.
perialism and break our dependency.
The Peruvian people have voted for change, but not radical change. The APRA government's administration will show them that superficial reforms will not end the growing state of misery of the Peruvian masses.
Q. What should be the left's attitude toward the new APRA government?
A. The left makes up a significant minority of our people. Its obligation is to lead the great majority toward the understanding that deepgoing, even costly and painful, transformations are necessary to end the situation of growing hunger and repression our people are suffering.
In order to fulfill this task, we must take several things into account. First, that the APRA will try to carry out superficial reforms. Second, that the majority of the Peruvian population have placed their confidence in APRA.
These points lead us toward independent activity by the left, aimed at consistently defending the interests of the masses of people through thoroughgoing reforms. Therefore, the left must clearly show itself as an alternative to the APRA's ineffective reformism. It should not support a government that it knows will not decisively confront the people's enemies in order to solve the people's problems, a government that will instead capitulate to those enemies.
However, this independent activity does not imply sectarianism toward the reformist measures of a government that has popular support. Not to recognize that there has been any change from the previous People's Action Party-Christian People's Party government would cause the masses, who believe in the APRA, to have contempt for us and would needlessly alienate us from them.
We must try to march with these masses to make the reforms meaningful and deepgoing. The more advances in these reforms, the more advances for the people. When the APRA stops, the masses, if correctly oriented, will confront it.
Practice will quickly provide us examples of nonsectarian methods of working-class political independence.
Under this new government, one important question presents a serious challenge for the left: how to maintain the independence of the mass organizations from the bourgeois state.
The APRA is the oldest party in Peru, with broad experience in winning and holding onto the leadership posts of the mass movement. It knows how to combine peaceful, even democratic methods, with use of the club, chain, and pistol. Now it has the added advantage that many sectors of the people will think that the government will look more favorably on requests made by a pro-APRA leadership. The APRA also has the advantage of being in charge of the government, with a ministry of labor and police force that see to it that the mass organizations are in APRA's hands.
The left will be unable to protect these organizations from the APRA's appetite if it continues the competitive and divisive practices among left parties and if it continues to show very little respect for the democratic will of the masses.
Only by correcting these methodological shortcomings can the left avoid the harmful consequences of the mass organizations becoming coupled to the bourgeois government's engine.
Q. There are many who place sole responsibility upon you for the breakdown of the ARI? Five years later, what really happened in the ARI? Why the split?
A. The ARI reflected the desire of broad sectors of the revolutionary left to unify in a single front.
Unfortunately, those of us in the leaderships of the parties that made up this front did not know how to rise to the level required by the ranks.
Disputes over candidacies led to an insoluble confrontation between the UNIR and the UDP.3 The PRT's fundamental responsibility lies in not having ceded its candidacies in order to calm those appetites and salvage the front's existence, because the masses viewed the front as something much more than a simple electoral front.
Once the front broke down, the bourgeois press, the reformist press, and the press of the other sectors that had been part of the ARI began to place all the blame on the PRT and on me personally, creating the myth of "divisive Trotskyism." That myth is now spread even by some who had always been enemies of the ARI.
The weight of mythology among our people is still powerful. We should recall that there are sectors that do not vote for the left because they believe that communists kidnap children, kill old people, and collectivize women and toothbrushes.
Q. Your proposal for the left was identified with the formula "without bosses or generals." Do you think that is still valid? What do you think about the presence of businessman Gustavo Mohme on the Executive Committee of IU [United Left)? Is it true that the Sandinista revolution had an impact in changing your position regarding alliances?
A. In the first place, it should be noted that this formula does not refer to individuals, but rather to social sectors. We can find some bourgeois figures or high-ranking officers who, as individuals, might be revolutionaries.
The formula means that the bourgeoisie as a class and the high-level officers as a caste are incapable of solving our country's problems. Even the national sectors of the bourgeoisie and their counterparts in the military - although they also see themselves oppressed by imperialism and sometimes take some defen-
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*The Peruvian people were fed up with being governed by the right wing."
sive attitudes alongside the oppressed sectors - in the final analysis capitulate to imperialism. They understand that the dynamic of the anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation inexorably leads to socialism, which means the elimination of all the bourgeois sectors and their military institution.
The history of anti-imperialist revolutionary processes throughout the world provides countless examples, year after year and on all continents, of how bourgeois sectors who often call for the "unity of the entire people against imperialism" then use the people's strength only to negotiate concessions from imperialism for their own benefit and end up allying with imperialism.
We could cite the cases of Chiang Kai-shek in China, [Gen. Juan] Perón in Argentina, the Republican Party in the Spanish revolution, [Víctor] Paz Estenssoro in Bolivia, the [Gen. Juan] Velasco current in Peru, etc.
For this concrete historical reason it is necessary to educate the exploited classes — the working class, the peasantry, the urban middle class — around the axis of class political independence in order to liberate themselves from imperialism, not to serve as a tool in the hands of bourgeois sectors. This concept remains valid.
However, without trying to negate this assertion, we have seen cases of revolutionary processes, such as the ones in Cuba and Nicaragua, in which, due to special conditions of strong imperialist oppression, including against bourgeois sectors, these sectors, in their hopelessness, have for a time been drawn along by the anti-imperialist struggle of the impoverished sectors.
Of course, even in those cases the bourgeois sectors have ended up in the expected place: alongside imperialism. That is the case with people like [Alfonso] Robelo and [Violeta] Chamorro in Nicaragua, who wound up being part of the government junta that arose from the revolution. Now they militarily attack Nicaragua, putting themselves in the service of imperialism.
What these cases teach us is that that we must strengthen ourselves by marching together with the oppressed sectors who still believe in these bourgeois leaderships, going through their experience with them, as happened in Nicaragua, where the people's disenchantment with Robelo and Chamorro took place as a process.
One thing we must bear in mind is that the Cuban and Nicaraguan processes were armed. This means that the revolutionary sectors did not yield to the bourgeoisie's methods. The bourgeoisie found itself drawn toward the methods of the exploited. This marks a fundamental difference with the daily capitulations of the reformists in the cases mentioned earlier.
It is one thing for the revolution to march at its own pace while the bourgeoisie stays in the middle of the road. It is another thing for the leaders of the masses to march at the bourgeoisie's pace.
Regarding the case of Mohme, naturally, if the left allowed his current to determine the IU's path, that would be one more repetition of the history of processes held back by the bourgeoisie. But if the IU follows a revolutionary pace, Mohme will be the one who has to decide how far he will accompany it.
l. How do you assess your own intervention as a member of parliament? Do you feel satisfied? Based on your experience, what should be the role of left-wing members of parliament?
A. I feel that at this stage it is correct for the left to participate in the parliament. I feel that participation in parliament is a very important task that complements the struggles of the Peruvian masses.
Unfortunately, although most of the left groups say they agree with this, in reality they place central importance on the parliamentary activity and use extra-parliamentary struggles to further their electoral and parliamentary interests. I think that this is a dangerous deviation that we must guard against.
Parliamentary work is important as a complement to the mass struggle. It is a platform that we should pay attention to. And we must give it the necessary technical and propagandistic support.
The members of parliament must reflect both the deepgoing needs of the popular sectors and the whole country, as well as the dayto-day struggles of our people, which they must take part in, sharing all the ups and downs.
In terms of my own experience, the fact of being a member of a weak party without the necessary infrastructure of technical and propagandistic support has very much reduced my ability to function in parliament.
Another cause of weakness in this task was
673 673
the fact that this was not my only task as a party member. I think that my role is not in parliament but rather as a mass leader through being a leader of the peasant movement. Being a member of parliament very much weakened my work in that field.
Q. What is your opinion regarding the IU? Do you think it should be transformed into a single party?
A. The IU brings together the majority of the activists, the militants who work day in and day out representing the immediate interests of the various sectors of the people (unions, neighborhoods, peasants, students, etc.).
Those militants not only reflect our people's most deeply felt needs today, but they also are clear that the only solution for our country is socialism.
This activist layer, these thousands of activists who have sprung up throughout the country, are the ones who are leading and are going to lead the Peruvian revolution.
Unfortunately, the leadership of the IU has a long way to go to reach the level required by this broad vanguard. Up to now the IU has been scarcely more than an electoral front with a profoundly antidemocratic method of functioning.
In terms of whether the IU should change from a front to a party, I think that the first task should be to try to make it into the front that it claims to be and that the broad vanguard hopes it will be. A front that provides orientation for the day-to-day struggle of the masses, that places itself at the head of that struggle, unifying and centralizing it. A front that practices the most thoroughgoing internal democracy and that presses democracy within the mass movement.
If that happens, we could then think about the possibility of it becoming a party. Meanwhile it is not worth worrying about.
Q. Do you think that it is possible for what are called the revolutionary sectors of the IU to come together in a single party? If so, who would you include and what conditions would have to be met to achieve it?
A. I think it is possible and necessary.
The APRA will have to try to take control of the mass organizations and place them at the service of the government, a bourgeois government that fundamentally accepts the imperialist order.
Reformist currents within the left are already providing plenty of examples of capitulation toward the APRA.
It is urgent that there be a unified resistance by the revolutionary left in order to maintain the independence of the mass movement and lead its ensuing struggle. This is a gigantic task, which goes beyond the powers of a single party.
I think that the PUM, the UNIR, plus sectors of the IU that are not part of the national leadership, such as the PRT and Voz Comunista, must get together to work out a close revolutionary alliance to struggle for the IU to 674
take on the role that the ranks hope for and that I mentioned previously.
If this alliance reaches convergence around program and convergence around important actions, we will have established the basis for the formation of a strong revolutionary party.
Q. What do you think of SL (Shining Path] and MRTA [Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement]?
A. Peru is a country with a long tradition of mass movement organized in all spheres and with broad experiences in struggle, with developed democratic practices.
Taking this reality into account, the revolutionary task is to develop this movement while trying to improve it.
What SL and MRTA do is act without regard to this movement. This is an attitude that has no justification.
We cannot speak about SL and MRTA without mentioning the fierce bourgeois repression against these movements and against a great part of our people, using terrorism as a pretext. It is our obligation to develop a vast mass movement organized to stop this repression. Unfortunately, up to now, the revolutionary left is not taking on the task of encouraging the organization of this movement, which goes beyond solely denouncing the repression.
O. Why did you move to La Convención?
A. I think it is healthy for us revolutionary activists to have a social base so that we can better understand and interpret the various needs of our people and can more precisely determine their opinions, their level of consciousness, and their level of combativity. That social base can be a work arena among workers, peasants, street vendors, or office workers. It can also be a residential area such as a shantytown. It can be a study center, such as a high school or university.
Only a party rooted in the varied environments of the masses of people can draw out and develop a correct political line. Of course, having such roots is not sufficient in and of itself, but it is necessary.
Although the vicissitudes of my political life have led to my being part of other spheres of society, such as a worker in Lima, Argentina, and Sweden, a member of an organized neighborhood community in Chile, etc., undoubtedly the social base with which I have had the most interaction and where I have been able to be most effective has been the peasant movement of La Convención.4
I have been a peasant in La Convención and a member of this movement at the most critical points in its history, when these peasants confronted the hacienda owners and eventually drove them off and took the land for themselves. This epic was the starting point for the elimination of the system of large-scale estates. on a national level.
It pushed the peasants of La Convención into the vanguard of the country's exploited layers and had an international impact. It is natural that those of us who took part in this process should remain linked by deep ties.
Presently the movement in La Convención is going through a different stage. The basic problems pertain to commercializing produc-
Blanco's experiences in the peasant movement in La Convención are described in his book Land or Death (Pathfinder Press, 1972).
Hugo Blanco addressing rally during 1980 election campaign. Hugo Blanco addressing rally during 1980 election campaign.
tion and improving living standards through roads, schools, medical posts, satisfying the need for potable water and electricity, and so on. It is the continuation of the struggle for the land. Of course the national problems of the rising cost of living and repression are also problems facing La Convención.
Fortunately, the level of organization, the internal democracy, and the consciousness that the fundamental form of struggle is the broad mobilization of the masses continue to characterize this movement.
For these reasons, I feel that despite its deficiencies it continues to be, fundamentally, a model of organization and struggle. I feel that this increases this movement's responsibility to see that this methodology is spread on a national level.
From this vantage point, membership in La Convención is important, not as a romantic nostalgia for past struggles, nor with the intention of mechanically and naively reproducing attitudes of struggle that corresponded to a specific reality, but rather to take up the present tasks of La Convención for itself and for the country.
My role as a political leader is not separated from my role as a trade union leader. The PRT must establish itself as the standardbearer and spokesperson for this disciplined organization of the masses, for thoroughgoing internal democracy, and for collective struggle.
The PRT must work so that in practice, and not just verbally, the IU takes on the task of spreading this revolutionary methodology.
My return to La Convención does not mean abandoning my political responsibilities on a national level. Quite the contrary. Bearing in mind that Peru is not Lima, this return to my base strengthens my political functioning on a national scale. I don't think that the fundamental thing in the Peruvian revolutionary process takes place in the corridors of the parliamentary chambers or in Lima's intellectual circles, although these also fulfill a function.
I am a national political leader of my party as a peasant militant from La Convención.
It should be remembered that my prolonged absence from La Convención was not voluntary. So the question ought to be formulated in another manner: "Why did you only recently move to live in La Convención?"
My response is that my absence was due to my being jailed for nearly eight years. Then I was given my freedom but was not permitted to leave Lima. Within a few months I was deported.
When I was allowed to return from deportation in 1975, I was constantly followed and was captured after a trip to La Convención and deported a second time.
I was able to return to the country as a candidate for the Constituent Assembly. They only allowed me to stay in Peru 40 days before deporting me for the third time.
They had to let me return because I was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly. My later situation as a member of parliament prevented them from again deporting me.
Now, with my period as a deputy ended, I
think that the political situation in the country does not lend itself to their deporting me once again. It is true, as we all know, that the repression is taking on other features that are stronger than deportation. But the obligation of activists is to continue carrying out our tasks in our respective fronts whatever the dangers that brings.
Q. What would be your message for the left in this new period?
A. I think that in the previous answers you find the basic points. However, it is still necessary to stress our tasks:
• To work for the unification of the mass movement. For example, it is unacceptable that there continue to be three national peasant union federations led by the left, rather than a single federation.
• To really push for the centralization of the mass movement into a powerful, all-encompassing coordinating committee that answers the desires of the ranks, as shown through the National United Struggle Command, People's Assemblies, the Meeting of Defense Fronts, etc.
• To maintain and strengthen the indepen-
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dence of the mass movement with regard to the APRA government.
• To channel the combativity of the masses that is expressed in a thousand forms, taking into account that the central tool for our liberation is these actions of struggle.
One aspect, sometimes the most forgotten or underrated, the most underestimated by the left, is the deepgoing respect the masses have for democracy, for not imposing cadres as "leaders" of the mass organizations. Such cadres may be loyal to their party leadership but, not being leaders recognized by the masses, they voluntarily or involuntarily frustrate the development of these organizations.
The use of maneuvers to impose executive bodies is an illness that greatly weakens the movement. We must fight this bureaucratism. Gaining access to the political leadership of the mass movement must take place by convincing the masses, not by bureaucratic and administrative measures and maneuvers.
We must confront these gigantic tasks in a united and coordinated manner. This must be the IU's fundamental function. Therefore, we must establish and strengthen it in the most farflung places in the country.
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Notes
1. In the April 14, 1985, first-round presidential election, Alan García Pérez of the American People's Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) won approximately 48 percent of the votes. The first runnerup, with 22 percent, was Lima Mayor Alfonso Barrantes Lingan, who ran as candidate of the United Left (IU) coalition. The candidate of out-going president Fernando Belaunde Terry's People's Action Party (AP) won only 5 percent of the vote.
2. The Revolutionary Left Alliance (ARI) was organized on Jan. 18, 1980, as an electoral coalition of a wide range of Trotskyist, Maoist, and centrist forces, all supporting the presidential candidacy of Hugo Blance in the May 18, 1980, election. The coalition fell apart just before the February 28 filing deadline for its slate.
2. Date of filing: September 30, 1985.
3. The Revolutionary Left Union (UNIR) and the Democratic People's Union (UDP), a coalition of centrist organizations, each tried to increase their share of spots on the ARI slate at the expense of each other and the PRT.
4. Blanco was a leader of the peasant unions in La Convención, in the department of Cuzco, from 1958 until his arrest in May 1963. He was tried in 1966 by a military court and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 1970 Blanco was freed under the pressure of an international campaign.