Peru: The Left Gathers Force
Bollinger, William
The popular mood in Peru has become more volatile with each passing month. Three successful nationwide general strikes in the last year - the first since 1919 - have emboldened workers,...
...In addition, the austerity program radicalized the PCP-U's own rank-and-file, stirring disenchantment with Del Prado's conservative leadership...
...State Department and CIA appear to be quite alarmed at the insurrectionary mood of workers and peasants...
...Maverick Los Angeles oilman Armand Hammer, one of the military regime's strongest U.S...
...Most of these organizations cooperated closely to lead the recent general strikes...
...The new "rules of the game" under the military promised stability and a growing middle-class consumer goods market...
...it also mirrored the uncompromising mood of increasingly wellorganized workers and peasants...
...The government responded by imposing a state of siege and suspending constitutional guarantees...
...Oil companies squandered a fortune doing exploratory drilling in the Peruvian jungle and came up dry...
...to be concerned...
...Pacific anchovy were overfished, nearly bankrupting the country's important fishmeal industry...
...Ironically, one of the casualties of the economic crisis has been Peru's pro-Moscow Communist Party (PCP-U), a longtime supporter of the military regime...
...And as the Constituent Assembly elections approached, they formed two united fronts - the U.D.P., a predominantly marxist-leninist grouping that won more than 4% of the vote, and the predominantly Trotskyist FOCEP...
...And the ambitious plans for the Andean Common Market became bogged down in squabbles reflecting narrow national interests...
...As Hugo Blanco was sworn in as an Assembly deputy, striking school teachers battled police and Aprista thugs in the streets surrounding the Legislative Palace...
...Wells Fargo Bank had the dubious honor of actually precipitating the latest violence when in mid-May it declared the government in default on payments due on the foreign debt...
...Recognizing its own failure to create a popular base of support, the military did all in its power to assure the triumph of APRA, which it views as the only political force capable of ruling Peru and preventing a socialist revolution...
...A TURNING POINT...
...Betrayers of the working class...
...In addition, profits must be remitted in dollars to the multinational parents of Peruvian subsidiaries, machinery and raw materials for industry must be imported, and the army must pay the U.S...
...supporters, had his Occidental Petroleum Co...
...The contradictory responses of the military regime of General Francisco Morales Bermudez - ranging from repressive attacks to conciliatory retreats - are an indication of its weakening hold over the country...
...Revolt within the party broke out into public view last January 23 when President Morales personally asked Del Prado to abort the second nationwide general strike (finally held one month later...
...Led by Jorge del Prado, the PCP-U had abandoned revolutionary politics in the 1950s in favor of a more comfortable role as mediators between capital and labor...
...The party's seasoned labor bureaucrats still hold tenuous control over Peru's largest labor confederation, the Confederaci6n General de Trabajadores del Per6 (CGTP), but they have been routed from many key unions...
...International Monetary Fund (IMF) negotiators were rushed to Peru to devise an emergency austerity program, which has plunged the nation into a depression...
...It was a show of defiance that not only reflected the left's strategy of turning the Assembly into a popular tribune...
...Designed by the military to placate its foes of both the right and left and to serve as a transition to civilian rule in 1980, the assembly is seen by the 30 leftist deputies as a forum from which to agitate for the workers' and peasants' demands...
...The scene at the opening of the constituent assembly captured the mood in Peru today...
...The biggest block of seats in the assembly is held by the APRA Party, led by its founder, populist Victor Haya de la Torre, who still has eyes on the presidency at the age of 85...
...In the wake of these measures, spontaneous insurrections broke out in 28 cities, lasting for over a week and culminating in the May 22-23 general strike (the third and most successful in the space of a year...
...Wages were frozen, the prices of basic necessities skyrocketed, social services were curtailed, and Peru's progressive labor legislation was dismantled...
...Three successful nationwide general strikes in the last year - the first since 1919 - have emboldened workers, giving them a heightened sense of their own power...
...That evening the PCP-U's own worker members stood in front of CGTP headquarters in Lima shouting, "Traitors...
...The miners, school teachers, steel workers, and most of the key industrial unions in Lima are now under revolutionary leadership...
...As the Carter Administration saw it, there were "unfortunate social consequences" in order to make the IMF policies stick...
...These include outright repudiation of the foreign debt, an end to austerity, and reinstatement of the 6,000 workers fired in the wake of the first general strike...
...1978 45update * update update update A STRONGER LEFT The growing strength of left forces in Peru's trade unions is good reason for the U.S...
...And each round of price increases has brought on a more organized popular uprising and government repression...
...AIFLD is working with the Confederacion de Trabajadores del Peru (CTP) which is dominated by the once-powerful APRA party (a self-styled "nationalist" party which has turned anti-communist...
...Inside, as wafts of tear gas drifted through the galleries, Blanco took the oath by raising his fist and shouting: "For the working class, for the world socialist revolution, for the blood that was shed this morning - yes, I swear...
...Although the military agreed in principle to the IMF austerity program, implementing it is another matter...
...But the U.S...
...As AIFLD explains it, their program is "aimed at the rank and file in key unions being threatened by the communists...
...Although the state of siege has since been lifted and some political exiles have been allowed to return to the country, the government's more conciliatory stance could change at any signs of a new popular outburst...
...In this volatile atmosphere the future of the Constituent Assembly is uncertain at best...
...U.S...
...The government's sweeping repression forced thousands of leftists and labor leaders underground, and a dozen prominent leftist leaders were deported...
...Sept./Oct...
...In the street fighting that ensued, the military left scores of workers dead, and hundreds wounded and arrested...
...1. The quotations and budget data are from an AIFLD document, "Country Labor Plan: Peru, 1977-1978...
...Today Peru's debt service alone requires about $1 billion a year, which amounts to over 55% of the country's export earnings...
...The country's international bank creditors were so pleased with the government's determination to impose fiscal austerity that they decided on July 20 to defer Peru's payments on loans due for the rest of 1978...
...Within four months most of the party's base in the labor and students movements had split to form the PCP-M (for majority) which is working with other revolutionary forces...
...Without a NACLA Reportupdate * update * update . update penny of foreign exchange in the Central Bank, the government has turned to the IMF...
...With the return from exile of charismatic Trotskyist leader Hugo Blanco (leader of the peasant insurrections of the mid-sixties), FOCEP was able to capture almost 12% of the vote...
...The APRA electoral triumph, however, was a fluke, won only 46 because of the last minute withdrawal of Peru's main liberal party from the elections...
...The parties of the revolutionary left made an impressive show of strength in last June's constituent Assembly elections by banding together in unprecedented united fronts...
...THE CRISIS ERUPTS But one-by-one, the banks' investments went sour...
...The prices of copper and sugar - two of Peru's major exports - plummeted...
...and international response to the Peruvian situation has been mixed...
...Under the regime first led by the late Gen...
...The populist military reformers were wiping out the last vestiges of feudalism and paving the way for expansion of industry...
...and Soviet Union for the massive armaments it has acquired...
...Although leftist leadership of the labor movement has been growing for a decade, the current popular upsurge was precipitated two years ago when Peru's creditors - 150 international banks - became alarmed over a possible default on Peru's staggering $8 billion foreign debt...
...But to please its creditors, the government was forced to decree price increases and other measures which reduced the standard of living of most Peruvians by about 60% overnight...
...Juan Velasco Alvarado, Peru looked like a solid and highly-profitable investment to foreign bankers...
...rush in to pay Wells Fargo...
...Although the Peruvian left is divided ideologically, one union after another has thrown out the APRA leadership and elected members of such marxist-leninist organizations as Vanguardia Revolucionaria, Partido Comunista Revolucionario, Patria Roja, MIR, and several Trotskyist groups...
...The Left captured 30% of the seats in the assembly, inaugurated on July 28 with the purported aim of developing a legal framework for a transition to civilian rule...
...An indication of this concern is the $182,650 covertly budgeted for Peru this year by the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), an AFL-CIO supported agency with long-term ties to the CIA...
...Foreign subsidiaries are able to weather the economic crisis caused by the program, but the depression is bankrupting many of the Peruvian industrialists who were the regime's original allies...
Vol. 12 • September 1978 • No. 5
