Iln its January 18-28 issue, the Lima mass-circulation magazine Caretas published an interview with the Peruvian revolutionary leader Hugo Blanco, who was released from prison December 22.
[ Caretas ran the three-page interview under the headline, "The Famous Hu- : go Blanco." The introductory note read: "This is an unprecedented dialogue in which Blanco talks intensely about his ideology - Trotskyist in essence, with reminiscences of the old anarchist Peter Kropotkin. In a Spanish with the rhythm of Quechua he shows us that seven years in prison have done nothing to tame this fierce labor agitator."
¡The editors explained that Blanco had agreed to grant the interview in order to make a plea for the release of Eduardo Creus and eight peasant leaders still held in jail despite the junta's proclamation of a general amnesty for political and social prisoners. Creus was released January 20 and deported to his native Argentina. Many political prisoners remain in jail, however, in Lima and in the provinces.
(Our translation of Hugo Blanco's interview with Caretas follows.]
Question. What does it feel like when you come out of prison after seven years?
Answer. You have many strange feelings. It hits you very strongly. There is a feeling of being maladjusted to the outside world. Unfortunately, another journalist misinterpreted me when I explained this; he thought that I was bewildered by the national political situation. That was not what I wanted to say. It is one thing to feel disoriented, not to be able to cross the street through traffic or find the bus lines I last used ten years ago. Changing my opinions or feeling confused about the character of the government is quite a different thing.
Q. What is your view of the character of the government?
A. You don't have to be on the spot in the Plaza San Martin to get an idea of what the government is like.
Q. Do you think it is a revolutionary government?
A. I think it is a desarrollista [proindustrial development] bourgeois government. I don't think it is even anti-imperialist. I do believe that transformations have occurred, based on the interests of the desarrollista sector of the bourgeoisie, not on the interests of the workers.
Q. How do you explain the fact then that there has been a very definite withdrawal of investment?
A. The government represents the general interests of the bourgeoisie. This doesn't keep individuals or sectors in the bourgeoisie from feeling insecure or distrustful about this process of change. The frictions between the government and the industrialists arise precisely from this. The government safeguards and defends the historic interests of the bourgeoisie, while the capitalists take care of their immediate individual interests on their own.
Q. Leaving the bourgeoisie out of it, can we still talk about an oligarchy in Peru?
A. That depends on what meaning you give the word. If we equate the oligarchy with the big landowners, we could say that this sector has been displaced from its old position.
It has not been crushed, but it has moving its capital been displaced, partly voluntarily and partly under compulsion into the industrial sector. While before, these magnates were slowly changing over to the industrial form of exploitation, now the agrarian reform law is forcing them to do this. They have not been crushed as an exploiting class. They retain this character. But they have been forced to change their methods.
Q. Doesn't the term "oligarchy" imply power?
A. Power, yes. But basically the bourgeoisie as a whole, including the imperialists, continues to hold power. We must understand that within the imperialist camp, there are also contradictions. There are component bourgeois sectors with differing interests. Some elements have an interest in maintaining the old system of exploitation.
But the sectors that favor new methods are constantly gaining in strength. They understand clearly that if the old forms are maintained, the conditions will ripen for a socialist revolution. But this is not the only reason for their orientation. They are on the side of new methods because they have an economic interest in seeing changes that fit in with the new forms of exploitation.
The machinery-producing sectors of the U.S. imperialist bourgeoisie are steadily increasing in importance as exporters, surpassing producers of manufactured goods. It is this wing of the U.S. bourgeoisie that is pushing industrialization in the underdeveloped countries out of a need to sell its machinery. It is a matter of indifference to them whether these factories are American-owned, Peruvianowned, or owned by the government itself. What they are concerned about is unloading their goods.
Q. Are you saying that the industrialized countries have a stake in the economic development of the third world?
A. Yes, in the industrialization of the third world and, in a certain sense, in its economic development. But the want to keep the third world depen dent and develop its economy only as it suits imperialist interests. And cre-
HUGO BLANCO
ating layers of small agricultural proprietors also fits in with this objective.
Because of the absence of world wars in the latest period, there has een no massive destruction of fac- Tories. The second world war gave a certain respite to world capitalism. By destroying the installations in Ger- February 22, 1971
many, Italy, and all of Europe, the war opened up a field for development and for the sale not only of manufactured products butmachinery.
But now this process has ended, and what they call a crisis of overproduction is occurring. They have to sell to someone. Since there are no areas of the earth left to conquer, they have to develop sectors already won in the colonial and semicolonial areas, and create petty-bourgeois strata, small agricultural proprietors, that can absorb the products of industry.
Q. In other words, are you also saying that this neocapitalism has a stake not only in industrializing the third world but also in processes of social reform?
A. That follows logically. The imperialists have an interest in seeing an agrarian reform carried out, but on their own model and in accordance with their own interests. There must be no doubt left that this is not calculated to serve the interests of the peasants. The best evidence of this, I think, is the case of the Huando ranch. In Huando there was no reform based on giving the land to the peasants who worked it.
The land was parceled out privately among the relatives and friends of the landlord. This gave rise to a layer of small proprietors, which is what the imperialists and the industrial bourgeoisie in general want. They do not want to give the land to those who work it.
Q. In Puno, for instance, can you carry out an agrarian reform based only on giving the existing cultivated land to the peasants who work it? In other words, is minifundism a sensible solution in terms of the welfare of the peasants themselves?
A. In terms of the economic wellbeing of the peasants, minifundism is not a correct solution in any sense. We socialists are aiming for socialist ownership and a socialist method of cultivating the land, of operating industry. If in some cases we proceed by parceling out the land - not in a private way, as is being done, but through a division carried out by the peasants themselves in a democratic way-it is precisely because we believe that agrarian reform and all reforms must be carried out by the people themselves.
It may happen that backward sectors of the people, like the peasants in Cuzco, will insist on dividing up the land. I can talk best about Cuzco because that is where I am from, and I worked in the countryside there. In that region the peasants live in a stage of development that has important feudal characteristics. The products of La Convención, for example- which was my area-are destined for export. It forms part of the world market and the capitalist world. From that point of view you cannot say that it is a feudal region. But the serf system, which is a feudal feature, survives in the mountains. There you see a combined form of development. It has semifeudal, precapitalist, and capitalist aspects.
We as revolutionists, who base ourselves on the interests of the workers and on mobilizing the workers, must understand that some sections of the peasantry have capitalist-type aspirations. That is, they want to own the piece of land that they are working. For centuries the peasants have worked these plots of land to maintain themselves, but they had to pay for using them by going to work free for the landowner. Today these peasants' greatest aspiration is to own the land they are working and not to have to do unpaid labor for the landlord, to be able to devote their full time to getting the maximum production out of their plots.
We cannot go against this desire of the peasants, even though they have a bourgeois aspiration in relation to their semifeudal environment. They must, because they want to, pass through this capitalist stage. We think that collective ownership would be much more positive, and we will tell the peasants that. But revolutionists are basically democrats and we must accept the will of the majority, because it is the peasants who are going to carry out the agrarian reform.
If in carrying out this reform, the peasants take bourgeois-type measures in some areas, they will quickly learn better. Before long they will see that collectivism is in their interest, if we show them that other sectors where work is being done collectively are reaping more benefits. They will see cooperativism is in their interest, that socialism is in their interest. And then by their own will and as a result of the vanguard's work in propagating socialist ideas, they will agree to join in cooperatives and to collectivize.
Q. It is being said now that the ratio between the population and the amount of arable land is such that if the agrarian reform law were applied over all the national territory, an appreciable percentage of the peasants would be left without land. This reality is supposed to override the question of whether the form of landholding is private or collective. The claim is that the problem is bound up with the reasonable minimum amount of land a family needs for making an adequate living and with the need to eradicate minifundism. How would you deal with this dilemma?
A. I think that the great solution for all these problems is to have the peasants themselves decide what measures are to be taken. The peasants may agree, precisely for reasons like those you mention, to work collectively, and that way they would produce more than working individually. Moreover, the peasants are going to try to bring new land under cultivation. They will also learn that there is no reason to let land lie fallow as is now being done on a grand scale. With techniques like crop rotation, fertilization, and so forth, they can raise agriculture to much higher levels.
Q. Do you mean intensifying agriculture?
A. Exactly.
Q. Isn't that, after all, an economic problem, a matter of huge investments and of education?
A. This problem can be largely overcome by mobilizing the peasants. If the peasants understand that they are working for themselves and if they know they can play an active role, they will overcome all these problems. The problem of education is misunderstood. It is not only that the peasand ants must know how to read write. Above all, the peasants must realize that they have to use certain techniques. But if it is the enemy that is trying to force them to do this, the peasants may distrust these methods.
Q. Can you cite me a case where a socialist agrarian reform has been carsocials agrarian rejorm nas 158
ried out without great problems with the peasants and without imposing the principle of hierarchical authority?
A. There is a very bad interpretation of the character of our revolution.
Q. What do you mean by "our"?
A. What?
Q. What do you mean by "our"?
A. Our revolution, the revolution of those ..
Q. Those who what?
A. Those who struggle for a revolution of the workers and the peasants. Let us say, the leftists ...
Q. Do you mean the Trotskyists?
A. The leftists. There are some who revolution must be a think that our bourgeois one. Many leftists even support this government, thinking that it is making a bourgeois revolution, the type of revolution that corresponds
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to the stage the country is going through. "Our," then, refers to all of the left, including the opportunist sectors.
Another sector of the left thinks that our revolution must be purely socialist. We think that the reality of the country is primarily capitalist but with many precapitalist features characteristic of our underdevelopment. That is, we think that the situation of the country is one of combined development. From this flows the character of our revolution, which must be socialist fundamentally, but also must carry out a number of bourgeois-democratic tasks along the way. These are tasks the bourgeoisie should have completed but has not. This is precisely what distinguishes the agrarian reform we advocate. We do not push an agrarian reform that would be socialist at the outset because that would get a strong negative reaction from the peasants. We base ourselves fundamentally on peasant democracy, in letting the peasants decide :..
Q. Would every valley decide what kind of landholding system, what kind of system of subdividing the land, and how large the plots should be?
A. Every valley, every communal village, every ranch union.
Q. Wouldn't this consolidate min fundism in the vast areas where exists?
A. It might, it might consolidate minifundism. And this would lead these compañeros in a few years to realize that they were mistaken, because the socialist revolutionists would definitely be on the spot explaining the disadvantages of this system and carrying out a propaganda campaign for the adoption of collectivist-type systems. When we socialists are in power, we will educate but we will not force any section of the peasants to collectivize.
Forced collectivization is counterproductive. You can run up against a boycott by the peasants that way. For example, although a cooperative would be much more productive from the technical standpoint than private plots, it would have negative results if the peasants were opposed. It is much better to let the compañeros go through their experience and for us to go through it with them. But at the same time we have to carry out a systematic propaganda campaign in favor of collectivism, until we reach a point where the majority of the compañeros agree to collectivize. Our revolution is a profoundly democratic one, not in the electoralist sense, but because the people themselves, the masses themselves will decide by majority vote what measures are to be taken.
Q. If the vote were given to illit.. erates, would you still think that a process involving force was inevitable? Or would you come to believe in the electoral road?
A. Giving an electoral voice to the illiterates would be a great step forward, but I do not think the dominant forces, the ruling and possessing classes, will ever surrender power willingly. History has shown that no class gives up power on its own, that it uses force against the underclasses which the latter must repel. I think that the workers of Peru are going to have to meet violence with violence
Q. Won't the idea of applying a system of direct democracy in the valleys, ranches, etc., lead in most cases to solutions that are reactionary from a technical standpoint? Take a valley, for example, where 1,000 peasants possess minifundia of three-fourths of _a hectare (1 hectare equals 2.47 acres] and a hundred families have more reasonable-sized holdings of three to four hectares. Wouldn't such a system result in the viable farms being swept away for the sake of giving a little extra land to the smallest plots, which would still be minifundia?
The mentality you say prevails in Huando is not, after all, characteristic of the rest of the country. Moreover, wouldn't it be very difficult to administer an agrarian reform process whose forms varied from valley to valley, from ranch to ranch, and from communal village to communal village?
A. In the first place, the peasants' attitude to the country's situation is antifeudal and anticapitalist in combined form ...
Q. But with a sense of private property...
A. With a sense of private property. But let's look at each case closely. Let's consider the case of Chaupimayo and how the peasants there carried out the agrarian reform. In the first place, they got rid of the obligation of work on the land belonging exclusively to the landlord. This established every peasant as the de facto owner of the plot he had been assigned, since he no longer had to do labor to pay for the use of it. Then, the land that had been worked for the benefit of the landlord was collectivized. On one ranch and in one union the two aspects of the Peruvian revolution, its socialist and bourgeois-democratic aspects, were combined.
In various parts of the highlands and the lower slopes of the Andes, and also along the coast, there are great extensions of uncultivated land that could be brought into agriculture. They are being left uncultivated because they are being monopolized by landgrabbers.
Q. Do you really think that that sort of thing is going on?
A. I think that it is going on virtually throughout the Ceja de Montaña [the mountain-forest belt along the middle slopes of the Andes] and February 22, 1971
in large sections of the highlands. I think also that if this land were divided among the peasants as was done in Chaupimayo, it would be intensively cultivated.
Q. Don't you think that in view of the provisions of the present agrarian reform law that systems of unproductive land-hoarding are at least condemned to die out in a short time?
A. The fact is that the law is not being carried out.
Q. You have to understand that the law has only been on the books for a year and a half...
A. You also have to understand the internal contradictions of the governing sector. The law was decreed with the intention that at least its main features would be carried out. In fact, the landgrabbers have maintained great influence, including in the bureaucratic machinery entrusted with carrying out this law.
And since the peasants are not allowed to mobilize, despite the fact that they are the only force that can effectively counterbalance this bureaucracy and these landgrabbers, in reality the government, in spite of itself, is permitting many reforms to remain a dead letter.
Q. If Hugo Blanco were running the government, do you think things could have gone much more quickly?
A. All right. I would never have been running the government. I would have been governed by the workers and peasants movement. We do not advocate government by one man or a team of persons. We call for a government representing the workers directly through workers' delegates subject to recall at any time. The workers must determine the direction of our entire economy, the branches of industry that need to be stimulated, the manner of the agrarian reform.
Q. Can you tell me any place where a system works that way?
A. Well, Russia at the beginning and, logically, before the bureaucratic degeneration. I cannot cite another example.
We started to do it in La Convención. There it was the peasants who decided things. The bourgeois press and people said, some with good and others with bad intentions: "Hugo Blanco did this and Hugo Blanco did that. Hugo Blanco divided the land." It was not Hugo Blanco that did it. It was done democratically by the mobilized peasants. I might have been opposed to some of the attitudes they took, but they made their decisions in a democratic way and I had to accept the rules of peasant democracy.
Q. According to your own definition, the imperialists seem to be basing their domination today on maintaining a technological type of dependence in the third world. Do you think that your system of direct democracy is consonant with the demands of production that must be an increasingly complex and specialized process? Take for example running an advanced industrial enterprise which requires very precise decisions.
A. In reality our revolution is only part of the world socialist revolution, as Mariáteguil said. In that regard we still agree with El Amauta.2
We do not believe in a socialist revolution in one country. We are absolutely opposed to this absurd and anti-Marxist concept. This is a fairy tale invented by the bureaucracy for the express purpose of sabotaging the world revolution and subordinating the international revolutionary movement to the layers that usurped power from the Russian working class.
What is required is a revolution on a world scale. The Peruvian revolution is only part of this revolution. That is why we are organized as an international party, the Fourth International. We do not believe that Peru is going to solve its problems alone. We think that if Peru faces hostile pressure, a blockade, that it cannot find a solution through deals with imperialism or even capitulation to the Soviet bureaucracy, but only in an extension of the world revolution.
Q. Is the Soviet Union part of this world socialist revolution?
A. The Soviet Union, yes. But the Soviet bureaucracy is against world revolution. Therefore ...
Q. Czechoslovakia? ...
A. The Czechoslovaks wanted a real socialist revolution and they wanted socialist democracy. That is why the Soviet tanks crushed them. It was the Soviet bureaucrats' fear that this spirit would spread to the workers in their own country and inspire them to revive the traditions of the revolution led by Lenin.
Q. How do you explain the growing concentration of American investment in Europe and Japan, and its consequent withdrawal from the third which is presumed to be the world, area of imperialist exploitation?
A. In fact, imperialism is being unified on a world scale. The big trusts that exist now are multinational. There is also another phenomenon. Big Japanese and European exports to the United States are capturing the market from many companies based in that country. Logically, the Yankee capitalists invest where it is most profitable, and if it is more profitable to invest in Europe or Japan, they invest there.
Q. How can this be reconciled with the idea of imperialism exploiting the third world, if it is now more profitable to invest in the developed countries. Present-day capitalism...
A. Does that stop them from exploiting us?
Q. Let us say that it would seem that this exploitation has less importance for these countries, in terms of their own welfare or survival.
A. World imperialism wants to continue dominating all sectors of the world. The fact that the imperialists are investing more in Europe does not mean that they are abandoning Latin America, Asia, or Africa. Otherwise, they would have gotten out of Vietnam some time ago.
The imperialists' stubbornness in Vietnam indicates not only that they want to make people think they are invincible. It also testifies to the economic interests they have in this entire region as well as in Latin America.
The fact that the American imperialists want to dominate the other industrialized countries does not mean that they do not want to dominate ours, dominate not only our production but our consumption. This is one of capitalism's great contradictions. Capitalism seeks to exploit the workers. But on the other hand it needs buyers, it needs workers getting higher wages in order to buy goods. The fact that it has one kind of interest in Europe and another in Latin America is only another indication of the contradictory character of capitalism.
Q. Do you think it would suit the United States to see Peru today in a position like France, for example?
A. As long as Peru can be industrialized in dependency and not in an independent form like France. Development in a dependent and semicolonial country cannot be mechanically compared with this process in highly developed countries, which industrialized along almost totally independent paths.
Q. The claim is made that Peru's immediate development is tied to a natural necessity of exploiting the min-
No More Profitable Losses eral wealth of the country. Cuba in the same way, despite the political and social changes, has remained tied to sugar production. Exploiting our mineral resources requires a lot o investment. What would you recommend if the socialist world did not offer the kind of help necessary?
A. We do not say that we couldn't gain technical advantages from dealing with the capitalist world. We are prepared, even when the government is socialist, to trade with every country in the world, to do business with the Yankees themselves. Castro has made this point clear, and we agree completely with him.
There is no difficulty about doing business with the United States, as long as they don't attach political strings. If natural conditions so dictate, then it is all right for Peru to promote mining. Precisely because we don't believe in socialism in one country, we don't think that Peru has to do everything. Peru is part of the world economy. There is no country in the world that can supply all its own needs. This was one of capitalism's great contributions to humanity, unifying the world economy. Socialism is not going to do away with this economic unity but to the contrary take advantage of it, advance it, and intensify it.
Notes
1. Jose Carlos Mariategui (1891-1930), essayist who founded the revolutionary Marxist movement in Peru. - IP
2. "Amauta" is an old Quechua term for "philosopher." Mariategui was very much interested in the status of the Indians in Peru. - IP