HUGO BLANCO SPEAKS 13th Oct. at Shandon Lecture Theatre, Main Building, Cardiff University

HUGO BLANCO is a historic leader of the Peruvian peasant movement who has been politically active since the 1950s. In the 1960s he played a central part in the ‘Land or Death’ peasant uprising in the southern highlands of Peru. He was captured, and sentenced to 25 years.

He wrote the book “Land or Death: the peasant struggle in Peru” during this, one of his many periods in prison. In 1976 he was released and deported to Sweden. On returning to Peru in 1978, he was elected to parliament. He was a member of the Peruvian Senate until 1992, when he was forced to seek political asylum in Mexico following Alberto Fujimori’s “self coup”.

Hugo Blanco has been at the forefront of a huge struggle in the Peruvian Amazon, where the government has sold off the rain forests to the oil corporations and the indigenous people are resisting the devastation that brings. He is working around the newspaper “Lucha Indigena” (Indigenous Struggle). The indigenous organisation Aidesep have been intense conflict with the neo-liberal Peruvian government for several years, fighting to prevent the Amazon rainforest from being sold to oil and gas corporations: In 2009 Peruvian military police massacred indigenous activist at Bagua.

The struggle in Latin America today is an international beacon of hope for us all. The people’s summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2010 showed an alternative to the total failure of the world’s governments – especially those of the US and the European Union – to meet the challenge of climate change.

In a world where profit is the motor force rather than human need, it has been an inspiration that social movements in Latin America have won important victories.

Indigenous peoples have been key to the strength and success of those movements. Hugo argues that indigenous peoples across the planet are in the forefront of fighting climate change and conserving the global environment.

This is true of those struggling to preserve the lungs of the world in the Amazon, to defend the rainforests in Borneo or against the uranium mine in the Grand Canyon.