APPEAL OF
FRENCH INTELLECTUALS IN BEHALF OF HUGO BLANCO
{When the Supreme Council of Military Justice met in Lima last October and rejected the appeal of Hugo Blanco, the well-known Peruvian Trotskyist peasant leader, and confirmed the savage sentence of twenty-five years in El Frontén because of his revolutionary political views and activities, the French Committee for Solidarity with the Victims of Repression in Peru sent a letter to Belaande, the president of Peru, stating their views on the case.
[The following is a translation of this letter as published in the December issue of the committee's bulletin, Solidarité Pérou.]
Mr. President,
Upon learning of the decision of the Supreme Council of Military Justice, which just confirmed the sentence of the peasant union leader, Hugo Blanco, to twenty-five years in prison, the undersigned artists, writers, intellectuals, university members and trade unionists, wish to convey to you their deep feelings.
It may surprise you, Mr. President, that we hold the condemned Hugo Blanco in such esteem and that we are so deeply concerned about his fate. It is because we see in him one of the men who most highly honors Peru today. He dedicated his life to helping the landless peasants, who are seeking to free themselves from the centuries-old, quasifeudal oppression crushing them to this day. He sacrificed his freedom to enable them to gain the human dignity inevitably denied them by lack of culture, by misery, by hunger.
Through this combat, Hugo Blanco served the social and human ideals to which the undersigned are also attached.
It may surprise you, Mr. President, that, despite the legal forms which the judicial apparatus resorted to, we hold the very spirit of the trial to which your fellow citizen was submitted to be iniquitous. In short, we are convinced that the cause of democratic rights thenselves is under assault in Peru. The most elementary right in any democracy -- the right of the peasants to attempt to change the intolerable conditions of their lives by organizing into their own unions -has been gravely circumscribed.
This, in our opinion, is the real significance of the trial, the real meaning of this terrible sentence.
It may surprise you, Mr. President,
that we are worried over the fate that
may still befall Hugo Blanco, although
the death penalty demanded by the prose-
cution was rejected by the jucges of the
Supreme Council of Military Justice. But
we have reason to fear that the twenty-
five-year sentence imposed on the peas-
ant union leader may well turn out to be
only a deferred death sentence. How, in
fact, can one conceive a man surviving
for a quarter of a century under condi-
tions of incarceration like those in
the penitentiaries of Peru? We learned
with angered amazement what the condi-
tions are in particular On the prison
island of Frontén where Hugo Blanco is
held with the ordinary criminals. Dangers
of all kinds face him and, up to now, his
survival has been assured only thanks to
the fraternal vigilance and devotion of
other political prisoners. Everything is
perilous for him. He has to be suspicious
of the food served him and engage in
laborious work to get the means to buy
something safer. Last spring, a disci-
plinary incident, which strongly resen-
bled a calculated provocation, could
have cost him his life if it were not
for his awareness of the situation and
his coolness.
Finally, in view of the fact that
political prisoners like the student
Enrique Amaya Quintana have “disappeared"
without leaving a trace after being ar-
rested by the army and the police, it is
understandable, we think you will agree,
Mr. President, to feel grave alarm over
Hugo Blanco's future.
That is why we call your attention
to this with the greatest insistence.
At a time when your government ap-
pears to be seeking to win public esteem
and sympathy in France, the signers of
this letter feel it their duty to warn
you of the immense damage it would deal
to the credit of your government if any
"accident" were to happen to Hugo Blanco,
which would not fail to involve your
personal responsibility in their eyes.
In addition, they cannot but help
wishing that the Peruvian government, in-
cluding you yourself, would open the way
to alleviating and ameliorating his pres-
ent conditions and reconsidering his
future position.
We should like to velieve, Mr.
President, that you will understand our
appeal against this flagrant violation
of democratic concepts and that you will
respond to our hopes.
Cordially ,
Laurent Schwartz, professor at the
"POLITICA"