TUPAC AMARU CASES ~
[While in Montevideo, Uruguay, last December in connection with the campaign to win the release of Hugo Blanco, Juana Pereyra was asked to grant an interview to the weekly newspaper Epoca about her husband, Daniel Pereyra, who has been held in prison in Lima, Peru, since 1962. He and a number of his comrades belonging to the "Tupac Amaru" group, were charged with holding up a. bank to obtain funds for guerrilla activities; but their trial. did not open until last August, ~ only ‘to be postponed because of its relationship with the Hugo Blanco trial being staged then in Tacna. (See World Outlook September 9 1966, p.11.)
{In an editorial note, Epoca states that the prosecution is demanding a seven-year sentence for Daniel Pereyra. An Argentine Trotskyist, "who has nothing to do with the Posadas sector," Pereyra was not seeking money for himself, declares the editor. The Tupac Amaru group were trying to get funds to help the peasants in the Cuzco area, who were fighting for their freedom under the leadérship of Hugo Blanco.
(Juana Pereyra's account of this case as well as Hugo Blanco's case appeared in the December 17, 1966,. issue of Epoca. The translation is by World Outlook. ]
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Pereyra and his comrades have been prisoners in "El Sexto," in Lima, for five years. The judges do everything to present them as "common criminals." However, in a book on the guerrilla fighters published by the Ministry of War itself, Pereyra is described as an Argentine Trotskyist militant, proofs are cited of his activities as a member of the metal workers union and his running for office in Avellaneda as a candidate of the Partido Socialista Revolucionario Nacional. When the police arrested him, they held him completely incommunicado for fifty-five days and submitted him to brutal torture.
At present it is possible to visit him. But his situation, so far as his trial is concerned, has not changed.
When the prosecution demanded the death penalty for Hugo Blanco, Pereyra and his comrades conducted a hunger strike demanding that his life be spared.
Mrs. Pereyra explained Hugo Bianco's struggle, how he organized the Federacién de Campesinos in the valley of La Convenci6én and Lares with the aim of obtaining a genuine agrarian reform. In these zones, he built schools, health. centers; impelled respect for the peasants who were being treated like slaves by the "gamonales" (Peruvian landlords), and organized an armed defense for the peasantry.
When Hugo Blanco was arrested, they kept him locked up in the Arequipa prison, holding him completely incommunicado. They did not allow anyone to visit him. They kept him isolated from the other prisoners and for three years they did-not permit him to have books or newspapers. During this time he went on ten: hunger strikes in protest against the conditions inflicted on him.
Three and a half years after his arrest, they began his trial, holding it’in neither Arequipa nor Cuzco as was required legally. They held. the trial in the most distant town in Peru -- Tacna.
The trial, Mrs.. Pereyra explained firmly, was illegal. First, because the Tribunal acted as both prosecution and judge. Second, they denied the prisoners the right to call witnesses. In addition, they maneuvered £0 deprive Hugo Blanco of the attorney he designated and to substitute one named by the police. This oligarchical measure was defeated, inasmuch as Blanco's attorney, after much effort, succeeded in having his name put on the.list of lawyers in the locality and thus being able to practice in Tacna.
During the trial, the people in Tacna expressed their solidarity with Hugo Blanco and his comrades.. They turned the tables in the courtroom of the Tribunal and the trial they sought to hold for Blanco became in reality a trial of-the reaction.
All the peasants, when it came their turn, acknowledged Hugo Blanco as their leader. “Thanks to Hugo Blanco we learned what it is to eat"; "we learned that we were human beings."
The prosecution demanded twenty-five years in prison. The consulting judge advised the death penalty. The prisoner was sentenced to twenty-five years.
Hugo Blanco, who had refused to recognize the Tribunal due to its representing the oligarchy and therefore lacking the right to Judge a representative of the people, responded to the threat of a déath penalty by saying it should be carried out by the Tribunal and "not the police, who are part of the people." At the end of the trial, he turned to the crowd filling the hall and said: "The people of Tacna and Peru have absolved me. Land or death! We will win!" The crowd expressed their feelings by shouting back: "Freedom for Hugo Blanco. Land or death! We will win!"
In accordance with Peruvian military justice, every trial is. passed on to the Supreme Council of Military Justice. There the prosecution demanded that the death penalty be applied, alleging premeditated murder. _
In the face of this demand, a movement arose in Peru for the release of Hugo Blanco and against the death penalty.
First of all the political prisoners went on a hunger strike in El Sexto,. El Frontén, San Quintin and the Guardia Republicana. The peasants found guilty at the same time as he was, asked that they too be given the death sentence if it was applied to? Hugo Blanco.
The entire left in the country rallied behind the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights which is battling to save Hugo Blanco's life. The committee organized a meeting in the Plaza San Martin in Lima at which more than 20,000 persons turned out. Representatives of the Peruvian peasants, workers and students spoke.
The movement headed by Hugo Blanco urges the organization of defense committees throughout Latin America. It is confident that one will be organized in Uruguay, too. Petitions in behalf of Hugo Blanco have been sent to the Supreme Council of Military Justice from the most distant parts of the world: Cuba, the United Sates, Beligiun, Mexico, France, Argentina, the CGT in Italy, Japan, Iran, the USSR.
The voice of the people is different from that of the "Tribunal." Their voice is the voice of the future.