Background
Hugo Blanco Galdós was born on 15 November 1934 in Cuzco.
Hugo Blanco Galdós was born on 15 November 1934 in Cuzco.
He studied at the Colegio Nacional de Ciencias of his hometown, and then his family sent him to Buenos Aires to study agronomy in 1954.
As a student he joined the Trotskyist Partido Obrero Revolucionario (Revolutionary Labor Party).
After his return to Lima, Blanco helped organize Trotskyist cadres and joined the San Marcos University protest against Vice President Richard Nixon in 1958. Blanco soon moved to Cuzco, where he was jailed for supporting workers’ and peasants’ strikes and clashes with the police, but was released when he declared a hunger strike.
In May 1963 he was captured and tried by a military tribunal. International pressure from parliamentarians, labor leaders, and intellectuals prevented his being condemned to death, but he received a 25-year sentence. President Juan Velasco Alvarado set him free in 1970, but in September 1971 he was deported to Mexico. He finally settled in Sweden where he was granted asylum.
Hugo Blanco was elected to the Constituent Assembly of 1978 with the highest number of preferential votes obtained by any radical leftist candidate. In 1980 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies with considerably fewer votes. After serving five years as senator, and when he was prevented from joining the United Left coalition, Blanco decided not to run for public office in the general election of 1985.