Green Left and Socialist Resistance are organising a national tour of Britain with Hugo Blanco, a historic leader of the Peruvian peasant movement, during September and October 2010. Details of events in a dozen towns and cities will be posted shortly.

There are two chances to hear Hugo in London this week.

‘The Rise of The Green Left: Derek Wall Book Launch’

14 September · 19:30 – 22:00
Bolivar Hall,

54 Grafton Way, London

Speakers To include Derek Wall, Jeremy Corbyn and Hugo Blanco. For more info please email events@plutobooks.com

‘Latin America and the ecosocialist alternative’

18 September · 10:30 – 17:30
University of London Union
Malet Street, London WC1H

Buy you ticket online in advance and save £3

Workshops:

• The struggle of indigenous peoples.
• The significance of Cochabamba
• Food sovereignty
• Water resources in Latin
• America
• The struggle of Latin American migrants
• Women’s struggles in Latin America
• Marxism, ecology and
• Latin America
• Latin America — the politics of oil

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 struggle in Latin America today is an international beacon of hope for all socialists including ecosocialists.

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.