PRESSURES.GREECE TO STOP TRADE WITH CUBA
On October le the U.S.State Department confirmed :that it had put fresh pressure on the Greek government to compel all ships flying the Greek flag to halt trading with Cuba. A report from Athens had said that Washington "cautioned" Greece that unless the demand was complied with it could mean the cutting off of all military and economic aid.
Th response to a previous demand from the State Department, the Greek government issued a decree, effective in September 1963, banning all trade with Cuba. Ships that were already under contract were exempted until their contracts expired.
One shipowner, Achilles Franghistas, has continued to send ships to Cuba. The Greek government took legal action against hin, but the recalcitrant shipowner, who apparently believes in free trade, is fighting the action. He maintains that the ban is unconstitutional and that he intends to challenge its validity before the Greek Supreme Court.
The State Department, of course, is uninterested in whether ‘the decree is in violation of the Greek constitution. It is uninterested in whether the Greek government itself conforms or does |. not conform with the constitution it has sworn to uphold. The State Department is interested only in tightening the blockade of Cuba in hope of bringing down the Castro government.
AT HUGO. BLANCO'S. COURT-MARTIAL
[The following interview with Doctora Laura Caller, attorney for Pedro Candela, Hugo Blanco's co-defendant in the court-martial staged: in Tacna, ‘appeared in a:recent issue of the Lima magazine Gente under the title "Hugo Blanco, ‘a Copy of Fidel?" Our correspondent failed. to, indicate the exact date.
F(The: editors attached ‘the following editorial note: "The Magazine GENTE does not agree with the appreciations made by Doctora Laura Caller in the article below. All the opinions of this outstanding attorney, as well..as those of the persons who, for one: reagon of another are mentioned, are to us opinions worthy of attention which the. public should know in order to draw its own conclusions concerning the trial of Hugo Blanco and 27 Cuzco peasants."
LThe translation of the interview is by World Outlook. ]
x OK OX
The hacendado [big ranch owner] Angel Paullo raped the wife and daughter of Tiburcio Bolanos, a local union leader. When Paullo also tried to get him jailed, Tiburcio asked Hugo Blanco. for help.
This was the beginning of the tragic events that ended with three policemen losing their lives and that have now culminated with Hugo Blanco and Pedro Candela sentenced to jail for 25 and 22 years respectively.
The crushed. and outraged Tiburcio Bolanos was released to return home, not knowing yet whether his shack is still standing, whether his) wife and daughters are alive, or if other Paullos have assaulted then. :
And with Tiburcio another 20 peasants went home, the 20 — who were with Hugo Blanco in the jails of Cuzco, Arequipa and Tacna for three years ‘and four months.
"What: was never more than a union movement has been depicted as a:mass:-guerrilla action inspired by Peking and Havana," said Doctora. Laura: Galler, Pedro Candela's attorney.
Nevertheless those really guilty for this fratricidal struggle, the:cunning.wolves in sheep's clothing, like the Paullos, the Romainvilles, the Arellanos, were not present at the trial. It was a mock trial from beginning to end, the police sitting as both prosecutors and judges," said Dra. Caller.
The trial attracted national and international attention. Both Radio Peking and. Radio Havana broadcast full accounts of the case to the world at large.
~1O-
Hugo, who is already in El Frontén prison, was the center of attention for the magistrates, journalists, and the public who attended the trial.
He became so popular that the Tacna schoolgirls put on long skirts "to look old enough to get into the courtroom to see hin."
Women managed to send him various presents. In some of the. packages of cigarettes they tossed to him, they included inspiring letters. A photographer set up a small business, selling pictures of Hugo. And the public fought to get him to autograph them.
"within days after the prisoners arrived in Tacna, people sent them all kinds of clothing, food and gifts. This included 15 liters of milk a day and 100 loaves of bread. One man came each morning with his quota of milk, bringing it 6 kilometers," the lawyer said.
Vendors in the market place sent large boxes of fruit; and the Hotel Workers union of Tacna paid all of Dra. Caller's traveling expenses.
"Solidarity was very high," she said. "One rainy night, a man stopped me on a corner. He took off his leather jacket and said, 'Please take this to Hugo. He needs it more than I do.'"
The Trade Union Coordinating Committee of the South and the Arequipa Federation of Labor, on learning that Hugo Blanco and his companions were to be tried in Tacna, protested the decision and made a legal move to have the trial transferred to the Misti city.*
(The Mistianos considered it insulting that a trial of such importance should be held in a city smaller than their own. )
But to get back. Why was Hugo Blanco, along with 27 peasants, in the dock of the Third Zone Police Court, facing a military tribunal?
The 140 union locals that Hugo Blanco organized in La Convencion offer part of the answer in the following communiqué:
"Ca) The hacendado Ramén Marin Moreno, the owner of a teaprocessing plant, pays neither a living wage to his workers nor part of the product. He seized the plots of the peasants Rita Tito, Oscar Valencia, Mariano Santillan, Lucila Pastor, Silvestre Villacorta, Andrés Auccapuma, Cancio Paredes, etc., by ‘brute force,' without paying them a single cent for the improvements they had made. —
"(b) Among many outrages, Anselma Marquez, the owner of the
Misti, a volcano vying in appearance with Fujiyama, stands” over Arequipa.
-ll-
Hacienda San Lorenzo, ordered the local school bull-dozed and humiliated the teacher by converting her into his cook.
"(c) The chief and boss of all the gam amonales Llocal strong men] of La Convencién and Lares, Alfredo :‘Romainville, has committed many. crimes, thefts and rape without spending a moment in jail. Among other atrocities, he had the peasant Melquiades Bocangel strung up to a mango tree for an entire day. When he was near death, he had him jailed. Gabino Guzman, for failing to find a mule; was forced to get down on all fours. Romainville then put a bit and “bridle on him, harnessed him to 150 pounds of coffee, made him pull it (like pulling a wagon) and lashed him with a whip.
"He forced Esteban Gongora to violate his aunt dona Justina Gongora, while he enjoyed the scene. Then he violated her, too.
"He submitted Julio Bohdérquez to the whip until blood flowed. On others he mangled their arms, feet and fingers..."
"(d) There is no justice for the peasant, there is no law, ‘which protects his life or property. We live:under. the’ rule of the whip, slavery, humiliation, poverty, chronic: illiteracy."
The prosecution points out in its brief: "In 1959, in La Convencion, a campaign to unionize the peasants was begun with the object of changing property rights in the land, which, it was claimed, was badly distributed and under the control of a few hundred hacendados, which gave rise to an endless number of abuses against the peasants and tenants, a trade-union movement that... operated outside the law and by direct action. " This union. activity was inspired by Hugo Blanco. .
"Par from Chaupimayo, where Blanco was working, the peasant Tiburcio Bolano Davalos, the general secrétary of a Peasant Union was | assaulted by: the hacendado Angel Paullo," Dra Caller said.
"Paullo raped Bolanos' wife and daughter. And when he couldn't.get at the other daughter, he used a whip on the peasant. Paullo wanted to terrorize Bolafios and he accused him of theft and of threatening to kill him. He placed charges against him at the police post in La Pucyura. When he did not appear, Sergeant Pacheco Bustamente ordered him arrested.: The guards Bricefno and Fuentes, accompanied by Angel: and Alejandro Paullo, went in search of the peasant. On the way, they stopped at Eduviges Morveli's house and sent a boy, Santos Huaman, to notify Bolanos to. appear . the next day at the police: post. On returning from his mission, the boy was stopped by Faulto, who made him get off ts horse and fired a- ‘shot at him.
nA little later, " continued Dra. Caller, "Bolanos appeared in Quillabamba to file a complaint against Angel Paullo for having fired at the Santos boy and-to lodge a protest with the Provincial Peasant Federation."
"These facts," said the lawyer, "show that a group of men — with the mentality of the Paullos consider themselves masters of both lives and haciendas. And to maintain their reign of terror, they not only utilized the police with incredible audacity, but they waged a silent and sinister struggle against the peasant leaders, who, in spite of everything, have lived and still live, in some areas of Peru under conditions of terror, without protection, the victims of all sorts of abuses."
Bolanos went to Hugo Blanco, who, in this lawless world, had become the protector of the peasants. Hugo called a meeting of the Chaupimeyo union locals. They agreed to send a commission to Cayara, to investigate the incident.
} There were 25 men in the Commission in addition to Hugo and Pedro Candela, who headed it.
According to the prosecution, Blanco and his men attacked the police post at Pucyura. Blanco gives a different version, Since his mission was only to investigate. "However, they were forced to defend themselves," said Caller, "and they shot and killed three policemen." A manhunt followed until Blanco was taken one May morning in 196% in Chaupimayo Chico.
"That was how it happened that ‘Blanco and his men came to be in the dock.
"Thus they were not guerrillas but unionists," Caller explained. "Blanco is not a Trotskyist, not pro-Peking, prow foscow, a MIRista [a member of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left]. is, first of all, an idealist rebelling against injustice. He is 5 feet, 11 inches tall, is 41 years old, was born in Cuzco, in Paruro, studied in Argentina to be an enginéer. He speaks Quechua perfectly. He is dignified and energetic and at the same time serene and good—humored, with a profound knowledge of the national reality and clear in what he proposes should be done. He would never agree to lying. For this reason, he called us lawyers together before the trial and told us: 'No lies. Truth only; the bare facts, nothing but the truth.' ae
"On the first day, at the end of the session, amid tense expectation in the courtroom, Hugo Blanco shouted, 'Land or Death!' and the 27 peasants answered in chorus, 'Venceremos!" (We will win. ] The people of Tacna had never heard this slogan before. But on the following. day when Hugo shouted ‘Land or Death,' the women responded in a resounding chorus , 'Venceremos!'
"Hugo Blanco did not take part in any bank holdups. Nonetheless, the chairman of the tribunal," continued Doctora Caller, “asked Blanco:
Wy Me11 me, why are you on trial for holding up banks?!
"And his answer was 'Because that's the way justice operates
in Peru.'
"The trial revealed that not one of the peasants had performed military service, nor attended any school. They seemed to have been born and- grown up in a different world. (The hacendados issue their own money, levy. tolls, set boundary lines, they violate the whole legal code.) None of them speaks Spanish. And in the trial, only a few points in the actual testimony of the peasants was understood by the-court, since a faithful. translator was not provided. The lieutenant of the Republican Guard who acted as translator omitted everything that dealt with police abuses. For example, 'asaltocuna' means to the peasant ‘assault- -guards. The interpreter translated it as 'guards to be attacked.'"
"The police," said Candela' s attorney, "arrested a small gamonal along with his ‘peasants. His crime was his name, Quispe. The prosecution asked him once:
"tWhere were . you | on the day this happened?’
"In "New York, Wg sirs' | a
"The prosecuting attorney repeated the question several times, and the answer was always the same. It turned out that 'New York' is the name of: the gemonal ' s small. hacienda. :
"They believed that the peasants were intimidated by Hugo Blanco. That they were only his tools; but they themselves took it on themselves to set this straight.
"Because of: Hugo Blanco we now: ‘know how to. get pure water,' one of them said. we
"'Because of:him, we know how to build. Good: ‘roads, proper houses and schools," another said.’ ia
"'Because of him, ‘we know that we. are human beings and not animals,’ a third one Said. 2
"An 15-year- -ola boy said: o'Tft it: were not for Hugo, I would never have known what a football is.'
"One of the oldest of the defendants began to weep. We lawyers thought that it was because he was afraid of the tribunal. These people have never been at a trial and have never seen so many overwhelming things.
"Later the*man told us that he had wept because during the three” years ‘he was in prison, his father and his son had died and he” didn’ t. know if his. wife was still alive or if he still had a home’. '
“The prisoners were subjected to such bad treatment," said Doctora Caller, "that the poor men, as soon as they sat down in
the dock, automatically crossed their wrists as if they were handcuffed.
"Some of them replied, 'Manan,' 'Manan,' 'Manan'’[no, no, no] to all the questions they were asked, to the point that one was given the name Fortunato Manan and a psychiatric examination was requested, for others:
“"T wanted to fina out why Fortunato said only "Manan! and I spoké to him in his language. And he told me, 'Because every time I téll them the truth, they string: me up. Now, I don't want them to string me up.
"In the face of violence like this and the violence inflicted on them from one year to the next, Hugo Blanco raised a-cry in the region: ‘These murderers can never pass themselves off as the — judges of the people's defenders.'" oO
In conclusion Doctora Caller said, her voice choked with emotion, "Do not make the land of Zela and Pallardeli, the heroic capital of Peru, into a hanging ground for the innocent."
CAMPAIGN IN. ITALY FOR HUGO