Peruvians look at Hugo Blanco. Last.year Hugo Neira, who is on the staff of the Lima daily Expreso, published a book of reportage (Cuzco: Tierra y Muerte ) on the peasant movement that swept the Cuzco area from December 1963 to March 1964. This began, Neira. states, when "the city of Quillabamba was taken by unions carrying out an order to go on strike issued in Cuzco by the Federation in order to win the release of imprisoned union leaders, among them, Hugo Blanco."
_ Neira travelled throughout the region, making a first-hand investigation of-this novel turn in Peru's peasant movement. (The movement was put down by a massive "operation" of the government's armed forces in which hundreds of arrests were made, including the entire leadership of the peasant federation.) Among other things, Neira indicates the imprisoned Hugo Blancots role:
"Pought by the right, his image distorted by prestige due to erroneous reports about him being a guerrilla fighter, injured by the silence, if not sabotage, of the traditional, bureaucratic groups of Communism, extolled by the FIR (Frente de Izquierda Revolucionario), feared and hated by the unorganized yanaconas and the hacendados, admired by the union ranks, Hugo Blanco looms over the whole South,
"This is the straight truth, without falsification, of what this man, who is a prisoner today in Arequipa, means to the peasant masses....'We owe him everything,! say the peasants. In fact every
change in Convencién and elsewhere in the country, was accelerated due to the danger they saw in the peasants having no hope other than hope in the revolutionary unionism of Blanco.
_ "Devotion to Blanco is total; they don't dare bring him to trial. I am referring to the unionized peasants. ‘He is our chief,' they say....And in every peasant's home there is an empty bed. Tt! s the one that was waiting hopefully for the leader when he was. going around the region organizing or when he was passing during the night, under the stars, fleeing from the police...."
At the moment, the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionario), as Mr. Belfrage reports, is leading a guerrilla struggle, which the government is trying to suppress, as in previous operations, with napalm and bombs. The guerrilla fighters undoubtedly enjoy wide sympathy in Peru, although the tactical wisdom of the initiative taken by the MIR and the attitude of the other sectors on this is not yet clear. Neira had the following to say in his book concerning the leadership of the peasant movement:
"For the moment no party as yet holds a monopoly on this network of realities. The leaders come from various groups. It seems that those with the most weight are from the FIR, the MIR, Trotskyist people. But there are also peasant leaders of great capacity linked to the PCP (the Peruvian Communist party)...’
All of these groups, as well as the unions, student organizations and broad intellectual circles are at present the target of a massive nation-wide witch-hunt mounted by the Belatinde government inconjunction with its effort to stamp out the guerrilla movement, Fresh fears have been expressed for Hugo Blanco's life in view of the announcement by the Peruvian Minister of the Interior July 4 (as reported in the Paris Le Monde July 6) that the operation of the armed forces was aimed "at eliminating subversive extremism once and for all" and that instructions had been given to the army "to give no quarter and not to capture any heroes."
It would seem that the Peruvian authorities now regret not having summarily dispatched Hugo Blanco and that they have decided not to repeat the "error." That they may well take advantage of the current antiguerrilla operation to do away with Hugo Blanco is obvious.
A word should also be said for Hugo Blanco's sister Luchi,. According to a-February 11, 1964, Prensa Latina dispatch from Lima, she was arrested among hundreds éf Others when 8,000 peasants engaged in land seizures at Sicuana, during which 17 were killed by government forces. Of those arrested, 18, including Luchi, "were sent to the grim Sepa prison in the Loreto Department in the ” Amazon jungle," Prensa Latina reported. No further word has been received as to her fate or that of the seventeen others.
Sincerely,