Dressed in blue jeans, an alpaca sweater, sandals and a large straw hat, Hugo Blanco stands outside the main doors of the Gran Hotel Bolívar in downtown Lima. He is holding up the latest issue of Lucha Indígena, just in case I miss him.
Peru’s rulers never liked him, Blanco tells me. But his followers adored him. As soon as he returned to Peru from exile in Sweden in 1978, Blanco was elected to Parliament. Soon afterwards he became a member of Congress – though that did not save him from police brutality. He was once beaten, for instance, when he attended a protest organized by Lima’s street vendors.
