Tomás Ó Flatharta

Article Source : https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article66912

Hugo Blanco, the Peruvian revolutionary, peasant leader, former member of parliament, fighter for the rights of indigenous people and for the environment, has died after a short period of acute illness. [1] He was born in 1934 in Cusco in Peru, in the indigenous heartland, and he constantly returned there. At the same time, throughout his life he was always on the road, living in several countries, repeatedly deported by those in power whom he criticised. As late as in March he arrived once more in Sweden, yet again because of political turmoil after a coup in his home country. He died, as he had wished to, close to his two daughters in Sweden, Carmen and Maria.

For many years, Hugo was a member of organisations affiliated to the Fourth International, first in Argentina where he arrived as a young student and then after his return to Peru in the late 1950s. That is where he participated in and played a leading role in the campesino movement against the cruel, neofeudal latifundista reign in the Peruvian Andes. The peasants’ demand for land was met with brutal repression. Hugo took part in the forming of armed self-defence. In one confrontation a policeman was killed. Hugo was put on trial in a military tribunal and the prosecutor argued for a death sentence, but in the end he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.