GUNDER FRANK SPEAKS FOR HUGO BLANCO AT TORONTO RALLY
By Ross Dowson
Toronto
One of the worst blizzards in years kept the attendance down to 85 or 90 persons but failed to cool the spirit of the meeting called in solidarity with the imperilled Peruvian peasant leader Hugo Blanco here on January 27. The rally was sponsored by a group of leading figures in Toronto university circles, including Professor C.B.Macpherson and the militant business agent of the Toronto Labourers' Union, Gerry Gallagher. It follows up a widening demand from intellectuals and unionists in this country that Blanco and his comrades be granted amnesty.
No sooner had the meeting been adjourned than a telegram, which had been delayed, arrived expressing solidarity with its purposes. It read: "We support all your efforts to save Hugo Blanco. He must not die." It was signed by Neil Reimer, the Alberta leader of Canada's labor party, the New Democratic party, and a score of faculty.members of the University of Alberta, including C. Brant, head of the anthropology department; A. Mardiros, head of the philosophy department; and C. Bay, head of the political science department. Just a few days earlier some 35 members of the faculty of Toronto's York University signed an amnesty appeal.
The featured speaker at the Toronto solidarity meeting with Blanco and his imprisoned comrades was Professor André Gunder Frank, author of Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, and a world renowned authority on Latin America, presently visiting professor in economics and history, Sir George Williams University, Montreal.
Ken Golby, Spanish department, York University, and a member of Amnesty International, chaired the meeting and introduced the supplementary speakers: Professor Ken Walker, University of Toronto; Ross Dowson, editor of Workers Vanguard; and Joe Meslin, Ontario Regional Director of the United Hat, Cap and. Millinery Workers Union.
Professor Frank opened his contribution with the comment, "Tierra o Muerte! -land or death -- the slogan of Hugo Blanco; Patria o Muerte! -- fatherland or death -the slogan of Fidel Castro; and, I should add the end: Venceremos! -- we shall win -express the same aspirations and the same reality. Essentially their reason for being is created by the same cause -- the growth and development and continued existence of the capitalist system, the imperialist system, of which we here in Canada are as much a part as the peasants led by Blanco or the peasants led by Fidel.
"Already, by the time of the Spanish conquest, the peasants of Cuzco had been incorporated into the development of then, commercial capital, later, industrial capitalism, and today, monopoly capitalism. Their fate and their liberation tomorrow will be the necessary consequences of the development of this imperialist system." .
Professor Frank, in placing the struggle led by Hugo Blanco in the wider context of Latin-American and international politics, made the case with facts and figures that the liberatory struggle in Latin America, such as ‘that led by Blanco, are integrally con-
nected with the anticapitalist struggles of the workers in North America. He showed that the struggle against the latifundists (big landowners) who are part and parcel of the national bourgeoisie, who in turn play no independent role but are junior partners of American imperialism, can only be anti-imperialist and socialist.
He contrasted the strategy of the Communist parties, which he said- could only by the wildest stretch of the imagination be called revolutionary, with the guerrilla foco strategy of the Fidelistas and the policy of Hugo Blanco and Juliado in Brazil.
He warned of the Vietnamization, the wiping out with the most complete forces of destruction, of the outbursts of popular struggle by American imperialism and expressed the opinion that solidarity such as was being expressed tonight with Blanco will have to be repeated, enlarged, and deepened in the future.
He ended: "The more. we can attack this system here, the more we will be helping the peasants led by Hugo Blanco, the more we will be helping Hugo Blanco, if he survives, or those who'will necessarily follow him and who will in his words gain Tierra o Muerte, or in the words of Fidel, Patria o Muerte, and who will win.-- Venceremos!.""
Professor Walker gave a short résumé of certain sociological surveys of student bodies in Latin-American universities and concluded that Blanco, who left his studies on agronomy and went into the labor movement and finally amongst the peasants, whose language he knew and amongst whom he lived and worked at great risk, displayed unique and singular heroism. He closed by quoting an article by R. Debray to the effect that "Hugo Blanco did more in a few years' work by forming unions of ‘arrendires' in the Valle de la Convencién than all the left-wing parties together in the last thirty years."
Trade-unionist Meslin expressed regret that the union movement in North America had not yet firmly identified itself with the cause of Blanco and his comrades as their struggle was in the best tradition of the union movement. He compared Blanco's intransigeance with the principled stand taken by Paddy Neale and his four comrades who were thrust into a British Columbia jail for their resolute struggle against injunctions. We here in Canada are going to be required to stand up and be counted and that is why we should stand behind Hugo Blanco now, he said.
The chairman in his closing remarks informed the audience that the Toronto Branch of Amnesty International has protested to the president of Peru and the Peruvian ambassador in Ottawa that in their opinion Blanco's "arrest and imprisonment are in conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which we believe Peru to be a signatory. We therefore. urgently request that you use your authority to see that clemency and justice are meted out in this case."
Bob MacArthy, leading initiator of the protest, announced that the $130 collection, after deduction of expenses, would be forwarded to Blanco's lawyers to.aid in the defence. ; : ;