Left voice worthy of our respect

In 1963 the great Che Guevara praised a guerilla leader from Peru. Nothing unusual in that you might think, after all he was himself an Argentinian who helped to liberate Cuba, fought in Africa and died attempting to free Bolivia.

However only once did Che praise a leader of Trotsky's Fourth International. Daggers were drawn between two sides of the fallout among the Soviet leaders of the 1930s and to praise a Trotskyist was heresy for followers of the Cuban revolution.

Che said: "Hugo Blanco is the head of one of the guerilla movements in Peru. He struggled stubbornly but the repression was strong.

"I don't know what his tactics of struggle were, but his fall does not signify the end of the movement. It is only a man that has fallen, but not the movement. "One time, when we were preparing to make our landing from the Granma, and when there was great risk that all of us would be killed, Fidel said: 'What is more important than all of us is the example we set.'

"It's the same thing, Hugo Blanco has set an example."

However the story did not end here. While tragically Che is no longer with us, far from having fallen Blanco survived. I know because he emails me most days.

It's the most astonishing feeling to receive an email from a contemporary of Che, a man whose story of struggle continues today.

When I wrote a book on anti-capitalist economics I had no idea who Blanco was, but I came across a wonderful quote from him.

"At first sight environmentalists or conservationists are nice, slightly crazy guys whose main purpose in life is to prevent the disappearance of blue whales or pandas.

"The common people have more important things to think about, for instance how to get their daily bread ... However there are in Peru a very large number of people who are environmentalists ... they might reply, 'ecologist your mother,' or words to that effect ...

"Are not the town of Ilo and the surrounding villages which are being polluted by the Southern Peru Copper Corporation truly environmentalist?

"Is not the village of Tambo Grande in Pirura environmentalist when it rises like a closed fist and is ready to die in order to prevent strip-mining in its valley?"

A friend noticed the passage, told me he knew Blanco and gave me an email.

We have been in almost constant communication ever since.

Blanco was politicised at an early age, he remembers: "I was only a child when I heard that a landowner had branded an indigenous man by applying a red-hot iron to his buttocks."

He was involved in school strikes against then-dictator Odria, went to Argentina to study agronomy, got caught up in resisting a coup and then returned to Peru.

The peasants formed a union and were repressed. Blanco became one of their leaders when they occupied land and attacks from the owners resulted in the formation of self-defence units.

Resistance led to both victory as the Peruvian government realised that the country's feudal conditions had to end and defeat as Blanco "fell." Captured by the state, he was sentenced to death.

An international campaign of solidarity saved his life and he was exiled, eventually returning to became a socialist senator.

His struggles continued however, with both the Peruvian Intelligence Police and Maoist guerrila group Shining Path sentencing him to death he moved to Mexico and "was fortunate to be there when the Zapatista rebellion exploded."

Today Hugo publishes the newspaper Lucha Indigena (Indigenous Fight).

I guess it is sold on demonstrations and at rallies like the Morning Star, the difference being that many of its readers live deep in the Amazon rainforest.

Peru's President Alan Garcia, who has drifted from social democracy to something like Blairism, is privatising the rainforests so that they can be sold to oil, gas and biofuel companies.

The Amazon indigenous, previously marginal to Peruvian politics, are linking with workers at the cutting edge of opposition to these plans.

The people in Aidesep are not "backward-looking" in doing so, they see communal ownership of land based on respect for the environment as a necessity for their prosperity. Equally they embrace the web and modern technologies in their struggles.

And Blanco has worked with astonishing energy to raise international awareness of their struggle, to get medical aid to the injured and legal help for those wrongly imprisoned.

He argues that indigenous people in Latin America have historically embraced collective ownership and are at the forefront of struggles to protect the global environment.

An ecosocialist, Blanco believes capitalism is destroying our planet and that unless we remove the rule of the multinationals, our very survival as a species is threatened.

He argues that an alternative to capitalism based on collective democratic ownership is necessary and that it is a task for workers and indigenous people. I think we can learn from Blanco. I am biased because of shared friendship and commitment to ecosocialism, nonetheless all on the left should engage with progressive Latin American thinkers and activists.

In Latin America, during the 1990s the left was defeated but since 2000, launched by the Zapatista rebellion, a diverse and sometimes contradictory left has regained the political initiave across the continent.

In Britain we are a long way from the Amazon, but when Greens and environmentalists talk of climate change I often hear warm words rather than calls for focussed action.

Our left is weak but with a new assault on society by a neoliberal government we need to find new resources for resistance.

Blanco, has I think we can agree with Che, set the example.

Hugo Blanco will be visiting Britain and speaking at the Green Party Conference on September 11. He will also be speaking with Jeremy Corbyn at Bolivar Hall on September 14. He is taking part in a day school at ULU on September 18 and will speak at events in Brighton, Manchester, Cambridge and elsewhere. More details at another-green-world.blogspot.com.html