FILLED AT LIMA RALLY FOR HUGO BLANCO
[In our issue of December 16, we published a December 1 dispatch from Lima stating that a rally was scheduled the following day in the main square of the city, the Plaza San Martin, in behalf of Hugo Blanco. Unhappily, we have been unable up to now to report the results due to an interruption in communications. The January issue of La Quatriéme Internationale, however, reports that some 15,000 persons turned out for the rally, making it the biggest assembly seen in Lima in years. The Paris newspaper also printed a letter from a correspondent in Lima describing the rally as follows.]
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Friday the meeting took place that we had been preparing for during the past month. We were very surprised that they permitted us to use the Plaza San Martin, the most favorable place for such a demonstration. Then we thought that they had authorized it to make us look ridiculous because of the small number of demonstrators in such a huge place...
But the plaza was filled to overflowing with people. The meeting was enthusiastic, warm, the people of Lima were offering us their support and solidarity. It was moving to hear these cries and these "vivas" for our dear Hugo. The order of speakers was first Jacqueline [Lobatén], then Ledesma, the deputy of the Communist party, a representative of the engineering students at the university, a representative of the naval construction workers, a delegate of Hugo's peasant group, then me...
Also very moving was the greeting given by the people to the wives of the guerrilla fighters...
There were shouts to "hang" the butchers of the people, Beltran, Belatinde Terry, Ruiz de Somocurcio and the "gorillas"...
We had put up an enormous photograph of Hugo in back of the rostrum, and below it a whole row of photographs of guerrillas, dead, persecuted or imprisoned and also imprisoned students...
After the meeting, the demonstrators went toward the municipal park, shouting slogans, then along the Avenue Abancay, toward the parliament, and, finally, they stopped in front of the government palace to shout, "Freedom for Hugo Blanco," until the police dispersed them. In short, it was a triumphal meeting...