STUDENT unrest in Cezco, Southern Peru, came to a head during the sinal acck of May. Protest acaust the Entation of places in higher education showed itself in the streets with marches and one-day srikes by all school children and students.
The strungest of these protests hegan over twp weeks ago as 40 youre men and women attended mass at the church of the Tempio de le Companis de lesus on the Plaza de Anas, After the service diey barricades themselves in the church and declared a hunger strike in support of student demands.
Sixteen days later sis people had been evacunted and hospitalised. The strength of the student fecling for their cause was illustrated by senes we witnessed when two more of the hunger strikers were dramatically brought out.
At the church bells toiled, cach of the sick students, seemingly unconscious from Lack of food, war strapped to a pew and precariously lowered some 30 feer into the waiting arms of friends an supporters packing the square below. They were hurriedly rushed off in a nearby medical post. where their condition was said to be serious. The hunger strike contimes in carnest as negotiations with universits officials have failed so far to satisfy the scudents" demand:.
democratic leaflets associated.
because Section. committee, a division of labour and of responsibility.
We were very much against spontancism but we didn't yet make any attempt centralism. We were about 10 people. We had a clandestine journal and in thi autumn of 1969 we were able to distribute Bur the political situation was generally ver unfavourable. Because we were clandestine we were penetrated by the police. Soon 19 out of 100 were in prison. I gor four years. What kind of balance sheet would you make now of the MRY experience?
was a vcry positive experience. i was ale year of concentrated political acti political activity in a froe movenient, freely This was something extremel important for us. All our organisations before that were controlled by the state, Just as they are now once again Nevertheless, it was wrong to found thi endestine organisatio August 1969, andestini can only lead to sectarianists, passivity, and isolation.
I don't say that clandestinity is wrong in general, or that it is always wrong in the states of the Eastern block. Bur clandestinity is a phenomenon linked to retreat or defent of the revolutionaries Positively, it can conserve revolutionary consciousness. But in the 20th century, in the bureaucratised and degenerated states Fastery Europe, it is not possible to wage an effective strugale againse the political system if we crist in clandestinity In the MRY in 1969 you were no longer, shall we say, of the pro-Italian" tendency of 1965, but a Trotskyist, a revolutionary Marxist. How did you come to Trotskyiam?
Already duringthe Prague Spring in 1968 1 was a revolutionary Marxist and T said so openly in the club. I wasn't a member of the Fourth International but I received ail the documents of the Fland my best friends were in the French Also, shortly before 1968, Czech. I read The Revolution