An important Marxist theorist during the Russian Revolution, Trotsky was the leader of the Red Army and had been exiled from the Soviet Union by Stalin. He formed the Fourth International as a global revolutionary party. The “Trotskyists” had little presence in Latin America, although they tended to be strongest in Argentina.
Hugo devoted himself to politics after leaving university, working in factories and organizing workers in Argentina and Peru. In Peru, he organized demonstrations against Richard Nixon and created trade union institutions.
One night, he found himself locked up in a police cell in Cusco. He was with three Aboriginal activists who persuaded him to help them fight for land rights.
After his release from prison, he joined indigenous farmers in areas near the Amazon River. They seized the land, but the landowners responded with violence. Indigenous communities are not protected by the police, who side with the landowners. So he helped them organize self-defense militias.
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A general uprising occurred that changed Peru’s history and inspired some degree of land reform in the country.
Hugo was tried and imprisoned. In 1970 he was released. However, the new government, resenting his support for the strikes and demonstrations, arrested him again and put him on a plane to Mexico.
As a result, he spent the 1970s in exile abroad, including in Argentina. He was nearly killed in Chile’s coup against Socialist President Salvador Allende. He was rescued by the Swedish embassy and spent many years in Sweden as a result.
At the end of the decade, Hugo returned to Peru, campaigned as a presidential candidate and eventually became a senator. He hated electoral politics, but his interest in the environment deepened during his tenure. He became a lifelong activist against mining projects that polluted and destroyed the environment and stripped people of their land.
He received death threats from the Shining Path and Peru’s internal security services, and found himself in exile once again. In the 1990s he lived in Mexico, where he was increasingly influenced by the Zapatista movement. Although he remained associated with the Trotskyist Fourth International until his death this year, his politics have become more Zapatista-like in the interim.
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Hugo was also greatly inspired by the struggle of the Kurdish people of Rojava. Zapatistas and Kurds and their allies in Rojava promote a feminist federal democracy—more in common with Green Anarchist ideologue Murray Bookchin than Trotsky .
he published native struggle, literally means “Native Struggle”. He sees capitalism as a “mode of destruction” and sees workers and farmers alike as being at the forefront of the fight to protect the planet.
In the final stages of Hugo’s life, he became increasingly concerned about climate change. He became a prominent advocate of the ecosocialist approach, arguing that capitalism tends to destroy the planet by promoting economic growth.
He saw how the environment in Latin America was damaged, and he also pointed out that in order to end climate change, we need to stop mining coal and oil. For him, a home-grown movement against extraction is crucial to stem the rise in carbon dioxide emissions. He supports the efforts of the people of the Peruvian Amazon to protect the rainforest from gas and oil exploration.
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Hugo has toured Europe several times and has spoken at the Green Party Conference in Birmingham. He also showed solidarity when workers on the Isle of Wight occupied a Vestas power turbine factory to prevent its closure.
Of course, in 2019 he met and supported Greta Thunberg in Stockholm. His last days of the year were spent in Sweden with his family.
Hugo Blanco is an inspirational green revolutionary who fights for fundamental change almost every day. Almost every waking moment is an episode of ecological activists and struggles for liberation. He supports a variety of causes.
As Che Guevara said, “Hugo Blanco set the example”. We can learn from him.
the author
Derek Wall is the former chief spokesman of the Green Party and the Hugo Blanco: A Lifetime Revolutionarypublished in 2018 by Merlin Press and Resistance Books.
