Blanco died of serious health problems at the age of 88 and recounted that when he was very young he saw a landowner branding a farmer with his initials, the hot iron he used to brand his cattle, what made him aroused feelings of solidarity and rebellion.
Born on November 15, 1934 in the southern Andean region of Cusco, he began his political activity in his youth, first organizing peasant unions in Peru in 1962 and 1963 in Cusco’s La Convención province and promoting the occupation of large estates.
For this reason he was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but released in 1969 by an amnesty for guerrillas and other political prisoners.
In 1978 he was elected a member of the Constituent Assembly that drafted a new Magna Carta, which was completed in 1979.
He was also a member of parliament between 1980 and 1985 and was elected senator in 1990 as representative of the United Left, a position he gave up in 1992 following the self-coup of then-dictator Alberto Fujimori.
He was deported several times and lived in exile in Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Sweden. In his fall years, he added environmental protection to his fight for social change. “I used to fight for the peasants and workers, now for humanity,” he said.
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