CUZCO GENERAL STRIKE DEMANDS FREEDOM FOR HUGO BLANCO
Cuzco, Peruts 11,440-foot-high city which was the ancient capital of the Incas, was shaken by a most militant general strike December 20. The central demand was the immediate release of Hugo Blanco and some sixty other peasant leaders held prisoner by the government, Agence France Presse reported in a dispatch from ‘Lima.
Hugo Blanco is a Trotskyist leader whose role in organizing the peasantry into unions made him a national figure. Seized by government troops last summer, his renown has increased as he eee awaits trial at Arequipa ona charge that may mean his death.
Demonstrations in cities as widely separated as Tokyo, Rome, London, Toronto and New York have demanded freedom for him and the other peasant leaders,
Che Guevara, while visiting Algeria, joined in the campaign by praising Hugo Blanco'ts COMPARES as a revolutionist.
The Cuzco general strike is undoubtedly associated with a new rise in the Peruvian peasant movement.
In recent months peasants in various parts of the country have seized land long held by the ruling oligarchy, In some instances the Jandholders have responded with savage reprisals,
The Lima dispatch, as it appeared in the European press, is as follows;
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LIMA, Dec, 21 (AFP) -- A number of wounded, a priest listed as missing, railway and telegraph lines cut, the city of Cuzco completely in the hands of thousands of strikers -- that is the first balance sheet of grave incidents that happened Friday evening as part of a 24hour general strike that paralyzed Cuzco, third city of the country, and the surrounding area,
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The strikers, peasants, workers and students were demonstrating to obtain the release of some sixty extremists, including the guerrilla leader Hugo Blanco, jailed for some months for’ breaking the law, according to the authorities.
Thousands of peasants "marched" on Cuzco, while the city itself was conpletely isolated from the rest of the country and in the hands of thousands of other strikers who turned to pillaging. Offices and busi-~ nesses locked their doors wnile the police retreated to their barracks and the central prison in order "to avoid any bloodshed. tA thousand demonstrators nevertheless battled police in the Urumba area, leaving behind them a number of wounded. A-priest of this town "disappeared" during the encounter,
It is still not known in Lima what followed these happenings.