South America

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Oct 26, 2021 3:21 pm

New day of mobilizations against the Government starts in Ecuador

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Several social movements in Ecuador ratified their participation in the demonstrations on Tuesday. | Photo: @eluniversocom

Published October 26, 2021 (4 hours 18 minutes ago)

The protests on October 26 aim to be the largest since Guillermo Lasso took office in May.

Social and indigenous organizations, workers' unions and unions in Ecuador began in the early hours of Tuesday a new day of protests against the economic policies of President Guillermo Lasso.

The demonstrations were called by the Unitary Workers' Front (FUT), the Popular Front (FP) and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie).


Organizations such as the Federation of University Students of Ecuador and the National Confederation of Peasant, Black and Indigenous Organizations, among others, joined the call.


The president of Conaie, Leonidas Iza, said that the mobilizations will begin at midnight on Tuesday throughout the country.


According to the convening organizations, the day of protests is in demand of just economic and social policies for both workers and lower income sectors.

Among the claims are freezing the price of fuel and support for the Labor Code project recently presented to the Legislature by the FUT and rejecting the proposed Law for the Creation of Opportunities.

Faced with the rejection of the increase in the cost of fuel, last Friday, Lasso froze the new prices and suspended the monthly increases, however he could not reduce popular discontent.

The protests on October 26 aim to be the largest since Guillermo Lasso assumed power in May and will take place under the 60-day state of exception decreed a week ago to support police officers in the fight against crime.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/arrancan ... -0004.html

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 29, 2021 2:03 pm

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‘How to Prepare a Coup d’État’—the Latest Recipe of the Peruvian Right-Wing Parties
October 28, 2021
By Marcos Maranges – Oct 26, 2021

This last week was one of the most tense since Pedro Castillo became Peru’s president last May. The Congress, with a right-wing majority, is eager to disarm the executive branch so they can technically annul Castillo’s electoral triumph over the extreme-right candidate Keiko Fujimori.

For those who do not follow the South American country’s internal policies, this may seem like a last-minute move by right-wing sectors, but it is not. The coup was immediately set into motion once Castillo won the presidential runoff early this year.

The first step was to cast doubts over his electoral victory, and clearly and strongly divide the country over this issue. To do so, Keiko Fujimori spread accusations of systematic fraud in the polling stations where Castillo won, and filled the media with this argument to poison the public opinion against the leftist candidate. At the same time, she filed appeals to throw out 200,000 votes, mainly in impoverished rural areas, before the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) to delay Castillo’s legal victory as long as possible. However, they could not succeed, which does not mean that they were not able to cause damage to the reputation of the recently elected president in the process.

The Perú Libre candidate began his term forming the new cabinet with a strong leftist presence, which unleashed the right’s powerful machinery made for politicians. The first one to fall was the Foreign Affairs Minister Héctor Béjar, an openly communist intellectual and politician. The media crucified him due to some statements he had made in which he reproached the CIA-trained National Navy for fostering terrorism in the country. Béjar stepped down in order to avoid problems for Castillo’s formation of a government, and was replaced by a traditional diplomat.

Next on the list were Labor Minister Iber Maravi and the Prime Minister Guido Bellido. Despite the parliamentary vote of confidence for Bellido’s cabinet in late August, the Congress continued to question him and some of his ministers for their past actions as leftist militants. Bellido and all the ministers had to resign after Castillo asked him to do so, evidently under pressure from the opposition, which was ready to place obstacles before every executive proposal in a Parliament where they were, and still are, the majority.

These actions were aimed to make the first days in office unbearable for Castillo—who also had to deal with the pandemic, an earthquake, and a wobbling economy. The president ended up by appointing a new cabinet with wider opposition participation, but this was not enough either, since the real objective was not to have more participation in the government, but to destroy it once inside. And they have certainly made some progress with all these maneuvers which have dynamited the relationship between the president and his party, Perú Libre .

As of today, the new cabinet has not received the parliamentary vote of confidence yet, and the opposition is about to disarm the president even more, by abrogating his right to dissolve the Congress if it repeatedly impedes his executive proposals. This right is known as “matter of confidence” in Peru, and it was created as the counterpart to the Congress’ ability to declare a presidential or ministerial “vacancy.” After losing the presidential elections, Parliament remains under the control of the right-wing forces, and they need to keep it that way to make the presidential vacancy happen and finish the coup d’état they started the minute they knew they lost the presidential election. Right-wing sectors are fearful that Castillo could use his “matter of confidence” prerogative to dissolve parliament, just as Martin Vizcarra did in September 2019 due to the Constitutional Court judge’s order. This is the reason why Congress passed a law reinterpreting the “matter of confidence” prerogative.

The new law limits the scope of the prerogative by reducing its application to general matters of government, which means that it cannot be summoned when constitutional reforms—or any other procedures or processes exclusively exercised by Congress—are on the floor. However, Castillo sent an appeal demanding the Constitutional Court declare the new law unconstitutional. According to the executive, the law transforms constitutional aspects; therefore, it should not be passed with less than two-thirds of the votes, something that was not taken into account by the head of Parliament and the right-wing congresswoman Maria del Carmen Alva. Moreover, the law breaks the balance of power between the Legislative and the Executive and violates Article 102 of the Constitution regarding the ability of Congress to reinterpret the Constitution, which is a matter concerning only the Constitutional Court.

At the same time, Congress sets apart the bills sent by the President, aiming to clarify the reasons for a presidential vacancy to be decreed. Castillo proposes to specify that it is only possible if “mental and/or physical disability” is duly certified by doctors. If this amendment is passed, Congress would not be able to move ahead with another legislative coup based on “moral disability,” as it did with Vizcarra just a month after he tried to dissolve the parliament. The bill was also intended to regulate motions of censure against ministers by limiting the causes to the time they have been in office.

Castillo knows that Congress is his Damocles’ sword and he is trying to shield his administration against attacks in this scenario, as has happened during these first months. But his chances of succeeding are limited. To dismiss the aforementioned law, five out of six of the Constitutional Court magistrates would need to accept the President’s demand, which seems difficult since they were elected by the same right-controlled Congress.

On the other hand, according to the website El Foco, there is a group pushing for the presidential vacancy called “Pisco Guild,” which is linked to the National Society of Industry (SNI). They seem to be led by former Foreign Trade Minister Jose Luis Silva Martinot, and have declared themselves ready “to pay for news and road cutbacks to bring the country to chaos and rid it of communism.” After all this, it is evident that a coup d’état is underway, even more so if we take into account the last call issued by Keiko Fujimori for protesters to march on October 26 under the slogan “Keiko won.”

Castillo’s struggle in Peru is not only about parties fighting for power seats, but rather the struggle of Latin America’s leftist movements in defense of democracy, which has been virtually kidnapped by the most powerful economic interests. The regional right has rehearsed this screenplay over and over again with some circumstantial changes whenever they lost a presidential election. After Fernando Lugo in Paraguay and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Castillo is just one more leader in the coup lab of the regional right sectors.

“And last but not least, to give the final tune up to this project, you have to throw in some charges of corruption or abuse of power,” according to the recipe.


Featured image: Support of Castillo’s Perú Libre Party. Photo: Andrés Bernal

(Resumen Latinoamericano-English)

Translation: Resumen Latinoamericano-English and Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/how-to-prepa ... g-parties/

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Peru Opposition Enraged by Gas Nationalization Promise
October 1, 2021

Peru’s opposition parties in Congress, Renovación Popular and Avanza Pais, have released a joint statementcalling for the resignation of Prime Minister Guido Bellido for saying that the country’s natural gas reserves will be nationalized.

The statement reads that public control of the country’s own natural resources is an “authoritarian attitude that puts at grave risk our legal security of investments in the country”. The text goes on to say that the opposition will use Congress to “stop and defeat every threat of nationalization because they drive away foreign and national investment”.

Bellido’s comment which sent Peru’s elites into a fight of rage, read, “We summon the Camisea gas operating and trading company to renegotiate the distribution of profits in favor of the State, if that’s not possible, we will opt for the recovery or nationalization of our resources”.

Bellido’s Peru Libre party has long looked to Bolivia’s successful model for nationalization, in which state ownership provides the government with revenues with which to invest in infrastructure and public services, which in turn attracts foreign investment as the economy grows.

The results of Bolivia’s sweeping nationalizations under Evo Morales have been praised around the world. A 2019 report by the research institute CELAG found that Bolivia had the lowest unemployment in the region (3.2%). Poverty dropped from 59.6% in 2005 (When Evo won his first elections) to 16.8% in 2015.

Nevertheless, Peru’s opposition has stubbornly defended the interests of foreign corporations over the national state and has vowed to block in Congress, despite nationalizations being a central pledge of the winning candidate.

During the campaign, Pedro Castillo told supporters in his native Cajamarca region; “We ratify our demand that in the new constitution, we rescue the strategic resources of Peru. The gas in Camisea must be for Peruvians. We have to nationalize gas, gold, silver, uranium, copper, we have to nationalize the lithium that they’ve just sold to other countries. That has to be for Peruvians because it’s necessary that the mothers who carry their children no longer have an uncertain future.”

https://orinocotribune.com/peru-opposit ... n-promise/

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REFLECTIONS FROM PERU
Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein

28 Oct 2021 , 2:49 pm .

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Today, the complexity of the situation derives from the impact that for the first time a representative of that deep Peru came to occupy the political scene (Photo: Paolo Aguilar / EFE)

On my first trip abroad since the onset of the pandemic and the closure of airports in March of last year, I visited Peru to do field research for an upcoming book I have in the works. I took advantage of my stay to present the Peruvian edition of my work China in the 21st century. The awakening of a giant that was suspended in 2020 when international movements were interrupted.

Returning to airplanes and airports was an adventure in a scenario in which humanity once again built a new bureaucratic "Tower of Babel" for some vaccines to work and others not and for each country to establish its own rules, its own, health requirements and their own travel documents that are added to those of immigration and customs so that the possibility for human beings from different civilizations, regions and countries to meet, share and coexist, is more difficult.

In what has been called the "new normal", there is now a new hell in which getting a PCR test at least 72 hours before traveling is an odyssey that means that until the last minute it is not known if you can board the plane or not. As this happens, millions of undocumented migrants cross borders fleeing the wars, economic crises and poverty that capitalism has generated without contemplation for human life. These illegal migrants, under very difficult conditions, move without being vaccinated, without getting PCR tests and without having to fill out the evil documents that make bureaucrats and corrupt happy, who in times of ultra-modern communications and super-advanced technologies could make things easier. .

When CELAC is fully operational, it should aim to unify documents and travel requirements for citizens of countries in the region at least in health matters, since the political idiocy of the Latin American and Caribbean right prevents accelerating the operation. integration mechanisms that give us a voice and presence on the international scene.

In the first stage of my trip I visited the city of Huamanga, capital of the department of Ayacucho and the Pampa de la Quinua, a specific site where the patriotic forces formed by Peruvians, Argentines, Chileans, Colombians and Venezuelans under the command of General Antonio José de Sucre staged the decisive blow to Spanish power in America.

During the tour of the Sanctuary and the monument that commemorates the battle, I approached two guides, humble workers of evident indigenous origin whom I consulted about some aspects of the battle, knowing that the oral tradition of the peoples usually keeps secrets that often do not They are known to writers and scholars of encyclopedic knowledge. Once again, this hypothesis was confirmed and I had access to important information that I will have to confirm and that I hope to translate into the book that I will write for this purpose.

Upon hearing the tone of my voice, Juan José and Gregorio asked me about my origin. When told that he was Venezuelan, the surprising immediate questions were: "How is President Maduro?" and "How is Venezuela?" After thanking the president for his concern for the health, my answer was explanatory of the situation in the country, without omitting details regarding the unilateral sanctions and the blockade to which the United States and Europe are subjected, in addition to expressing the conviction that we will leave forward for the inveterable decision of our people to overcome adversity and give continuity to the process that has begun to develop since 1999 by choice.

I told them that before coming there, some of the men who participated in that battle, including Antonio José de Sucre and Jacinto Lara and hundreds of Venezuelans, had given us a homeland and freedom and that in Ayacucho a brotherhood had been sealed between Peruvians and Venezuelans. that no oligarchy was going to be able to break.

His answer was simple: "We know that", to then affirm with full conviction: "They want to do the same to our president Pedro Castillo as they did to President Maduro." Then my new friends gave me an extended and illustrious explanation of the political situation in Peru from their perspective of humble men, children of excluded, marginalized and humiliated peasants for centuries. Exponents of a natural intelligence, they illustrated me with simple words that account for the real contradictions of class and race that still corrode Peruvian society as if we were still living in the 18th century. After listening to such a brilliant speech, I asked the Ayacucho colleague who was accompanying me in a humorous tone if she knew if ever in life,


Two days later, already in viceregal Lima overwhelmed by the destructive propaganda of the media against the government, I was able to understand the unfathomable gulf between the capital and that deep Peru that elected Castillo. At the height of despair and hysteria, a pickup truck drove along José Pardo Avenue in the Miraflores district openly calling for Castillo to be overthrown for being a communist.

The Lima of the early nineteenth century has not changed much. The treacherous spirit of their oligarchy has remained unscathed since the days when San Martín and Bolívar understood that the stability of Spanish power in South America fell - due to its wealth, authority and the realistic sentiment of its upper classes - in this city.

At that time, the Torre Tagle and the Riva Agüero sowed a line that made betrayal the way the elites do politics in the country of the Incas. Two hundred years later and from 1990 to the present, five elected and two appointed presidents have betrayed the citizens from the Pizarro Government Palace (note that even today it bears the name of the conqueror and murderer who decimated the native peoples) by carrying out actions and making different decisions than the ones they promised in their campaigns.

Today, the complexity of the situation derives from the impact that for the first time a representative of that deep Peru came to occupy the political scene. A rural teacher from a peasant family, one among the many millions who had never been heard, one of those who do not exist for the sweetened Lima upper class that breathes colonial and viceregal airs, the same one that would have liked that San Martín and Bolívar never lead the troops who expelled the Spanish from America, faces all the brutality of that high classism and racism that still exists.

They would have preferred to reissue the Fujimori dictatorship, with its burden of human rights violations, its attachment to State terrorism to confront the Shining Path terrorism and the high levels of corruption that have its leader about to return to jail with her dad. That political class that does not care that Peru is governed by a criminal delinquent before giving Castillo the opportunity, in the face of defeat, has concentrated all the fire of his stupidity and his will to circumvent the laws if they are not used in his favor , to prevent the president from exercising his functions with minimal governance conditions.

They bet on that: chaos, anarchy, ungovernability so that the armed forces intervene in their favor to come to power through violence when they have not been able to do so within the framework of the laws.

Other unfortunate factors contribute to creating that situation of uncertainty and anguish that is breathed in every corner of the country: the disunity of the left and the democratic and progressive sectors, the immobilization of the social forces that support Castillo, the inexperience of government officials to carry out an activity that they never did before and the corruption that always haunts like a ghost among career public employees who think more about personal income than about serving the people.

It is to be hoped that the political forces that support President Castillo will bring together the necessary rapprochement to sustain him in power and that the indigenous and peasant people, those from the marginal areas of large cities, workers and students will raise their levels of organization and training. unity so that in the event that the Fujimori right wing and its minions raise the battle in another scenario, they will be able to defend President Castillo with the same unity, strength and conscience that allowed them to take him to the government.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/reflex ... de-el-peru

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Nov 07, 2021 2:57 pm

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Ecuador’s Neoliberal Government Announces State Emergency to Impose Austerity
November 6, 2021
By Vijay Prashad and Taroa Zuniga Silva – Nov 3, 2021

The declaration of a state of emergency by Guillermo Lasso is more likely about quelling opposition than guaranteeing security for Ecuadorians

On October 18, 2021, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency for 60 days. This declaration led to the constitutional rights of Ecuadorian nationals being suspended and heavily armed troops flooding the streets in Ecuador. The immediate reason for the declaration was the murder of an 11-year-old boy named Sebastián Obando, who was killed in a crossfire between “an armed robber and a police officer” on October 17 at a cafeteria and ice cream parlor in the Centenario neighborhood in Guayaquil.

The boy, who was shot three times, was shot in the heart, right arm and his back, said his father Tomás Obando. Lasso’s declaration of emergency built on the public outcry relating to this murder. The president said that he needed to suspend the constitutional rights of the people of Ecuador to confront the grip of the drug gangs on the country.

On October 19, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Quito to provide US support for Lasso. Blinken met with Lasso, affirming the close ties between the United States and Ecuador. At a press conference held by Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Mauricio Montalvo and the US Secretary of State, Blinken said, “in democracies there are times when, with exceptional circumstances, measures are necessary to deal with urgencies and urgent situations like the one Ecuador is experiencing now.”

Lasso, who was elected in April, has presided over one extraordinary moment after another. The economy of Ecuador splutters as the government struggles to respond to an increase in violent incidents in the country. In September, a prison riot in the Litoral Penitentiary (Guayaquil) resulted in the loss of 116 lives. Earlier, in February 2020, a coordinated series of riots in four prisons led to the death of 79 inmates in Ecuador. Responding to the recent incident in September, Lasso declared a state of emergency inside Ecuador’s prisons, which was a precursor to the national emergency.

Structural problem, not extraordinary moment

Lasso’s decree suggests that there is something pressing taking place in Ecuador that requires action. Nela Cedeño, a youth leader of the Citizen Revolution of Ecuador, told us that Ecuador has been in a long-term crisis. Just this year, she says, there have been 1,213 murders, many of them unrelated to the drug trade. “The decree [state of emergency] is not justified,” Cedeño said. The data shows an “increase in violence in the country over the past six years, which we understand as a structural problem and not an exceptional situation,” Cedeño added.

Out of Ecuador’s approximately 18 million people, 5.7 million live “in poverty,” and out of “these 5.7 million people, about 2.6 million” Ecuadorians are living “in extreme poverty,” according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses. UNICEF calculates that three out of every 10 children in Ecuador under the age of two suffer from chronic child malnutrition. “The country is the second with the highest proportion in Latin America and the Caribbean, after Guatemala,” according to UNICEF. Everyday life in Ecuador deteriorated sharply ever since the implementation of an International Monetary Fund-driven austerity program under the previous President Lenín Moreno. Moreno’s agreement with the IMF in March 2019 resulted in widespread protests across the country.

As part of Moreno’s deal with the IMF, he cut government funding for health care, including firing 3,680 health care workers. As a result, in Guayaquil—where the prison riot had taken place and where Sebastián was murdered—dead bodies were left on the streets during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic because the health care system was underfunded and overwhelmed. Guayaquil was the “epicenter of the outbreak” during April 2020 and Ecuador had one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in Latin America as a result of the broken health care system. Lasso, whose party only has 12 of 137 seats in the National Assembly, wishes to deepen the austerity program of Moreno; this program includes tax cuts for the wealthy and withdrawal of rights for workers as well as the allowance for foreign companies to continue to operate in Ecuador’s mining sector.

Lasso’s austerity agenda, Cedeño told us, does not solve the problems of the people. There is no agenda to tackle the precariousness of employment, the need for a minimum support price for farmers, the need for subsidies for fuel, the exploding social crisis in prisons, and the general problem of violence in society. The Lasso government is “politically incapable” of dealing with the real problems, so it takes refuge in the militarization of a social crisis, Cedeño said.

Militarization of a social crisis

Lasso’s emergency, Cedeño said, has not calmed a “terrified and worried citizenry.” In fact, it was even more frightening when Lasso fired his Defense Minister Fernando Donoso and replaced him with a former general, Luis Hernández. Putting the military on the streets of Ecuador and pushing for laws to allow them to operate without scrutiny (and to give them immunity of action) creates the conditions for a military dictatorship with a civilian fig leaf of a government. Lasso’s emergency decree gave amnesty to the security forces who, he said, are “unjustly condemned for their work.”

Since 2019, Ecuador’s social movements, including the Indigenous movement, have frequently taken to the streets to demand an alternative path. This year, Cedeño said, “we have had several stoppages and protests against the various measures adopted by the government of Lasso. Farmers, teachers, and transportation workers have been in the lead. Teachers [even] went on hunger strike.”

The decree by Lasso came, Cedeño pointed out, just when the people’s movements gave a call for social mobilizations against the rise in fuel prices and Lasso’s austerity proposals. “It is easy for us to assume that the state of exception [was] declared at the convenience of Lasso,” to protect his policies, and “not because of the violence that plagues the country.”


Protests against the emergency decree began on October 26. Led by the United Front of Workers (FUT), the National Union of Educators (UNE), the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), and the Citizen Revolution, the protests took off in earnest. While these protests were met with stiff resistance from the armed forces, they did not fade away. Roads were blocked in key areas in the Sierra and the Amazon and mass demonstrations gathered in front of the Carondelet Palace, the seat of the president in Quito. After a few days of protest, on October 28, CONAIE leader Leonidas Iza called for their suspension to honor the Day of the Dead holidays. Iza said that the protests will start-up again after the celebrations.

https://orinocotribune.com/ecuadors-neo ... austerity/

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Assembly in Ecuador denounces that Lasso violated the ethical pact of 2017

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The commission requested that President Lasso appear before the National Assembly within a maximum period of eight days. | Photo: @AsntaciónEcuador
Published 6 November 2021

The government of President Lasso issued a statement to reject the conclusions of the legislative commission.

The Constitutional Guarantees Commission of the National Assembly of Ecuador approved this Friday the report on the investigation that it made to the president of the country, Guillermo Lasso, by the so-called Pandora Papers.

The report, which received six votes in favor, two against and one abstention, determines that Lasso did not observe the ethical pact of 2017, which prohibits Ecuadorian public and popularly elected officials from having accounts in so-called tax havens, thus not he respected the law when registering his candidacy for the 2021 elections.

This observation constitutes non-compliance with the provisions of Article 130 of the Constitution of Ecuador, generating internal commotion and affecting a popular mandate, which could be grounds for dismissal.


The commission, among its non-binding recommendations, asked the plenary session of the Legislature to verify this non-observance of the ethical pact.

It also suggested that President Lasso appear before the National Assembly within a maximum period of eight days, to explain his situation.

The Commission on Constitutional Guarantees, Human Rights, Collective Rights and Interculturality was mandated by the National Assembly to investigate the case called the Pandora Papers.

That international journalistic investigation revealed -based on official documents- that several rulers, leaders and personalities of the world -among them Lasso- hid assets in tax havens.

The legislative commission recommended sending the report to the Attorney General's Office, the State Comptroller's Office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Superintendency of Banks, so that they may proceed in accordance with their constitutional and legal powers.

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The Ecuadorian government, reacting to the document of the legislative committee, issued a statement to reject the content of the report.

He affirmed that the approved text "against reason and the law, has suggested that the President of the Republic did not observe the law when registering his candidacy."

"The national government warns that the Commission has disrespected due process and that its action lacks legal validity," the official statement said.

https://www.telesurtv.net/videos/ecuado ... -0001.html

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:38 pm

Death of activists in prison massacre in Ecuador denounced

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The country's prison system has been under a state of exception since September 29 after the worst prison massacre recorded in the country, which took place in this Guayaquil prison. | Photo: EFE

Published 14 November 2021

The massacre in Guayaquil, with 68 deaths, also claimed the lives of detained activists, some without convictions.

Ecuadorian human rights organizations denounced this Sunday that among those killed in the context of the massacre in Guayaquil, with 68 dead there would be activists and human rights defenders.

According to the Alliance Against Prisons, of Ecuador, they have confirmed the murder of the activist for water, Víctor Guaillas, in the massacre on Saturday, who was also a person with a disability and had been denied habeas corpus.

The alliance itself denounced that several of the deceased did not have a sentence and also, a trans person who should have been in a women's ward was murdered.


For its part, the Alliance for Human Rights, reiterated in a public complaint that in prisons people are deprived of liberty without sentencing, for committing minor crimes or poverty and even human rights defenders and groups that are criminalized and persecuted for their legitimate work.

In this sense, they emphasize that the death of any person deprived of liberty, and in a particular way of these people, aggravates State responsibility and evidences without a doubt that the disproportionate use of criminal law is harmful, irrational and perverse.


The complaint by the human rights organizations recalls that on October 24, they alerted that inmates, family members, the media and civil society denounced that new violent acts were about to occur in the penitentiary, in response to which they claim state responsibility for these new events.


However, the Ecuadorian government said on Sunday that, at this time, the situation is under control in the entire penitentiary after control operations involving 900 police officers, while the military maintained controls outside the prison.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/denuncia ... -0011.html

Google Translator

Geez, like 'collateral damage'...or something.

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Peruvians demand justice for deaths in the repression of 14N

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The march went through downtown Lima demanding justice for the death of the students who were killed by the Police. | Photo: @cniezen
Published 14 November 2021

The march expressed the protesters' outrage at the impunity that persists a year after the events.

Thousands of Peruvians participated this Saturday in the march 'A year without justice' that commemorates a year of the death of the young Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado due to the repression of social protests that forced the conservative president Manuel Merino to resign.

The protesters marched through the center of the capital, Lima, demanding justice for the death of the students who were killed by the Police.


After almost two hours of marching, the protesters reached the place where Inti Sotelo was assassinated, where they observed a minute of silence in memory of the young man.

The demonstration also demanded reparations for the families of the victims and wounded of the repression.

The march expressed the protesters' outrage at the impunity that persists a year after the events, since an investigation of six police officers, including four generals who were identified as responsible for the deaths, led to the closing of the case.


When confirming the current situation of the case, the Minister of the Interior, Avelino Guillén, noted that the investigation passed to a higher police body that reviews the previous decision.

Also, an investigation by the Peruvian prosecutor, Zoraida Ávalos, culminated in an accusation against former President Merino and his prime minister, Ántero Flores-Aráoz, and Interior Minister Gastón Rodríguez, for the dead wounded in the repression of November 2020 .

The protests against Manuel Merino and his cabinet were unleashed after he assumed the presidency, on November 10, 2020, replacing the dismissed Martín Vizcarra, amid denunciations of a coup conspiracy by that political sector.


Merino resigned five days later under the pressure of large demonstrations against him throughout the country and denied responsibility for the repression that had its most virulent day on the 14th, when Sotelo and Pintado died.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-exi ... -0003.html

Google Translator

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SPAIN: NEO-COLONIAL AMBITIONS OF THE FASCIST ULTRA-RIGHT
Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein

12 Nov 2021 , 11:24 am .

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Europe seems to be shaping a new policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean and gives the impression that it is doing so from two points of view that point the way. First, from the perspective of Spain, to whom they give a sacrosanct reason in a supposedly privileged relationship with the region and, secondly, they are building it from an ultra-right and fascist ideology that takes up old concepts superseded by time and modernity. and for the creation and advancement of free countries that broke away from the European monarchies, beyond the course they have followed in the last two centuries.

It is known that the oligarchies, which emerged from the implantation by force of the colonial system from the repression, violence and genocide of millions of original inhabitants of these lands, would have preferred to remain subject to the metropolises. But, it is also true that at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, a plethora of men and women rose up and fought to emancipate and make the nations that had emerged from the colonial past independent. However, once independence was obtained, these oligarchies appropriated the new states to impose neocolonial models that with the passage of time led to the supremacy and control of the United States over the region, which was also well received by these surrendering elites and subordinates.

The advances of recent years (beyond the electoral swings imposed by representative democracy) marked by the struggles of the peoples to generate autonomous governments, defenders of sovereignty and territorial integrity and who claim their political, economic and social self-determination , have sounded a warning bell in old Europe and, particularly, in Spain, whose elites - regardless of their political orientation - have proposed to recover lost space in any way.

This is what emerges from the Proposition No of Law (PLN) presented by the deputies of the Francoist party VOX before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Spanish Congress of Deputies, on October 26. This instrument was put to debate in said Commission, after which a vote must be taken and although it has no formal consequence, it positions the political parties on the matter. In this case, VOX forces the other parliamentary groups to demonstrate on an issue that is related to a supposed identity of the Bourbon kingdom and seeks that the ultra-right is the one who sets the policy of the Spanish State towards Latin America and the Caribbean, taking advantage of the attitude cowardly and tortuous of the Pedro Sánchez government in this matter.

On this occasion, in the explanatory memorandum of the document in question, the fascist party exposes what they pretend to be definitions of the international order based on the fact that the current one - which has emerged from the triumph of the West and which it characterizes as liberal - is In crisis. Using Henry Kissinger as a paradigm of the contradictory condition of a world that is simultaneously fragmenting and integrating, they come together with him to the conclusion that the international system will be multipolar and that Europe will not play a relevant role in it.

So far, one could agree in the analysis, only that it is used to affirm that "Ibero-America is one of the main stages of global competition between the United States and China" and then launch into a long tirade about the presence of China in Latin America in what they characterize as "a disturbing geopolitical factor in the region."

In the same dynamic of analysis of the multipolar system, it values ​​the AUKUS Treaty very positively, which marginalizes Europe from any role in the West's fight against China, cataloging the role of the Old Continent as irrelevant based on the consideration of the unpunished dispossession of which it was France object of an important business already concluded for the manufacture of submarines.

In a second recital, the document goes on to make sweeteners praise to British politics as the main ally of the United States on the continent, based on the "most momentous political event in the United Kingdom so far this century, which is its departure from the European Union". According to the document, Britain's position allows it to "claim its status as a power." It is evident that the ultra-right is betting on the fragmentation of Europe based on a nationalist and xenophobic discourse typical of fascism.

However, all this widespread invective in favor of the United Kingdom is an instrument to "demonstrate" that to a large extent, this condition of power is given by having created the Commonwealth which it calls "family of nations" which allows it to have an effective presence all over the planet and, for example, being a leading actor in the gestation of the Aukus Treaty, with Australia, a former British colony, which it values ​​at the same level as Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

All this argumentation only serves as support to the real proposal that is to be made, which is to recover the concept of Ibero-America and transform it into the axis of Spanish foreign policy towards Our America as proclaimed in article 56.1 of the Constitution of the Spanish monarchy and It is confirmed by the "Strategy of Political Action of Spain" based on a supposed conjunction of values, interests and priorities. It is worth saying that this strategy aims to "capitalize on its historical, human, economic, political and solidarity ties with all Latin American countries to reinforce its presence and actively contribute to the development of the region." In other words, recolonize our countries with other instruments and by other means.

To achieve this, they propose to revive the Ibero-American Conferences through Summit meetings and meetings of Ministers of Foreign Affairs. The Spanish ultra-right complains about the ineffectiveness of these mechanisms in terms of cooperation that is at the same level as the European and Spanish economic and commercial presence in the region. Curiously, it is regretted that "cooperation in security and defense matters is not contemplated, which practically strips them of any geostrategic relevance."


All of this leads them to conclude that this occurs due to a lack of collective awareness about what Hispanidad is, highlighting that their country has not been able to fight against the "black legend" that has spread a speech aimed at "undermining our ties with those countries. brothers for their own benefit ". They say it, as if Spain had not wanted to establish those relations with the same objective. It then refutes the use of the concept "Latin America" ​​even in the official Spanish documentation itself, all of which is the result of internal partisan interests in the management of ties with the region, according to the libel prepared by VOX.

The Spanish fascists accuse of this situation Latin American personalities and authorities who, according to them, have denied the Spanish heritage and the construction of an "infamous speech of repudiation of the work of Spain" characterized by "demolition of statues of discoverers, conquerors and Spanish evangelizers, suppression of the October 12 festival, or crazy indigenous evocations, [which make up] several of the events that have marked this unacceptable trend. "

But, what they resent the most is "the current of expansion of regimes of the 'Bolivarian' model, a model incompatible with an Ibero-America that marches on the path of progress". Likewise, the irritation due to what he calls the potential political dominance that emerges from the growing presence in the region of China, which he describes as "a power tyrannized by a single communist party."

They conclude by proposing to promote Hispanism, establish an association with their allies in America, promote a cooperation plan with the so-called “Ibero-America” and return to the celebration of the Ibero-American Summits.

Faced with this new colonial attempt in the 21st century, it would be important to say a few things:

It is a total absurdity and a historical aberration to try to establish a parallel between the Iberian colonization of South America and that of the northern European countries in the northern zone. Although all were equaled in terms of barbarism, crime, genocide of native peoples and the implantation of slavery, the Spanish and Portuguese who arrived in America were adventurers, murderers, criminals and convicts who traveled to these lands only because of hunger. to obtain riches. They were overwhelmingly men who made rape of women a force-based diversion. They made no contributions to the economy, society, or the state. They were also Catholics at the time of the savage Holy Inquisition.

When more than 100 years later the European colonizers (mainly English, Scottish, Dutch and French) arrived with their families, they formed more stable societies. Europe was experiencing the prolegomena of mercantilism, so institutions such as banking, the market and customs were structuring the bases for the construction of institutionally sound states that laid the foundations of an advanced capitalist model for the time compared to a retrograde feudalism that it paralyzed the development of the productive forces and that was implemented by Spain and Portugal in the south of the continent.

Although after independence, the United States and Great Britain fought a war between 1812 and 1814, from there, harmonious relations that never existed between Spain and its former colonies were established to the point that in the middle of the 19th century Spain still did not recognize to the new republics that emerged from the wars of independence. To that extent, there is no Hispanic identity to promote, because in general Spain did very little for the peoples of America.
Although it is true that Bolívar's integrationist proposal aimed at the creation of a union of "formerly Spanish American republics", it did not do so out of attachment to an identity that he was suspicious of but because in that way he generated an identity of his own from which he excluded to the United States, for the imperialist ambitions that were already looming, and to Brazil, which was still a monarchy, a regime that Bolívar despised the most. Spain was definitively defeated militarily in South America in 1824 after a brutal war that lasted a decade and a half and after more than 330 years of savage colonialism whose greatest work is genocide and pillage. One can hardly speak of "Spanish heritage" and the work of Spain in America as something positive.
More recently, some of the Spanish leaders have become true thugs in the service of capital. I remember when I was working as Director of International Relations for the Presidency of Venezuela, former Spanish President Felipe González requested to meet with Commander Chávez, but asked to be received at night and by the back door (literally). It came from the Mexican millionaire Carlos Slim to make an offer for the Venezuelan telephone company, in the process of being recovered by the State. Chávez rejected the proposal and the messenger became a staunch enemy of Venezuelans, with the exception of some criminals like him, born in this country but living in his country. Nor is there an inheritance or work that anyone could be proud of in present times.
The 1999 Constitution of Venezuela, in its article 153, continues to mention Ibero-America as a region with which relations will be privileged. Although Latin America does not include Spain, such article entails a contradiction because in it - in one of its parts - it says that "the Republic will promote and favor Latin American and Caribbean integration", which is inconsistent with the above. Surely, that word was introduced surreptitiously by Miquilena and her minions, as denounced by Commander Chávez himself on January 10, 2007 in the Swearing-In Act before the National Assembly for the period 2007-2013. There were those who at the time, we detected and denounced this aberration, but we were not listened to.
In general, our economic, political and social model, by chance, is far from what is desired by the fascist ultra-right, among other things because we elect our Head of State every six years, which the Spanish have never been able to do, except in the short republican terms.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/espana ... a-fascista

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 23, 2021 2:32 pm

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The Situation in this Sunday’s Elections in Chile
November 21, 2021
By Resumen Latinoamericano – Nov 17, 2021

Chileans will go to the polls today to elect a new president against the backdrop of allegations of human rights violations by the government and the challenge of keeping the Covid-19 pandemic under control.

The elections, in which the entire Chamber of Deputies, part of the Senate and the regional councilors will also be renewed, will take place within the framework of the Constitutional Convention that arose from the social outburst of October 2019, which seeks for the country to abandon the remnants of Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

The exercise of the right to vote also occurs at a time when the Congress is holding an impeachment trial to know whether or not to dismiss President Sebastián Piñera for his involvement in the Pandora Papers scandal, a journalistic investigation that revealed that world personalities, including presidents, had taken their fortunes to tax havens.

Human Rights Violations

The government of President Piñera has been subject to constant denunciations of human rights (HR) violations, which increased during the social outburst, which began during the October 2019 uprising through which the population demanded greater social rights and an end to repression.

In January 2020 alone, Chile’s National Prosecutor’s Office documented 5,558 complaints from victims who claimed to have suffered violations of their individual guarantees during the Carabineros’ repression of the 2019 protests.

Last February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, criticized the Piñera government after analyzing a report by the Chilean Attorney General’s Office on the high number of serious human rights violations in the framework of the 2019 awakening.

The head of the OHCHR denounced a lack of cooperation on the part of the Government to fight against these police abuses, in which excessive use of force, arbitrary detentions, the targeting of eyes of protestors, torture and sexual violence at checkpoints were counted.

In this context, the National Human Rights Commission promotes bringing the State of Chile up to date with its international human rights obligations, and the historic opportunity lies in the ongoing process that will culminate in a new Constitution, which is now being drafted by the Constitutional Convention.

This Convention is the result of the social outburst of 2019, which foresees the drafting of a new National Constitution, to replace the current one promulgated since the period of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

The new Constitutions must be submitted to a plebiscite and it is foreseen that the president elected in this electoral process will implement it to bury the fundamental law still in force that should have been replaced long ago.

The electoral campaign has been going on parallel to Piñera’s impeachment process that began in Congress for his participation in the millionaire purchase and sale of the Dominga mining company in a tax haven, British Virgin Islands, which came to light as a result of the investigation known as Pandora Papers.

The Chamber of Deputies approved last November 9 an impeachment against the Chilean president, a decision which was passed on to the Senate, where the majority of the official senators rejected the constitutional accusation against the president.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-situatio ... -in-chile/

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Far-Right and Left to Face Off in Second Round of Presidential Elections in Chile
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 22, 2021
Tanya Wadhwa

José Antonio Kast of the far-right Christian Social Front and Gabriel Boric of the left-wing Approve Dignity coalition will face off in the second round of presidential elections on December 19. Photo: Prensa Latina

According to the results released by the Chile’s Electoral Service, the conservative candidate José Antonio Kast obtained 27.91% of the votes, while the progressive candidate Gabriel Boric followed him with 25.82% of the votes

José Antonio Kast of the far-right Christian Social Front and Gabriel Boric of the left-wing Approve Dignity coalition won the first round of the presidential elections held in Chile on November 21. They will now face off in the run-off on December 19. According to the results released by the Chile’s Electoral Service (SERVEL), with 100% of the votes counted, Kast obtained 27.91% of the votes, while Boric closely followed him with 25.83% of the votes.

Following the top two candidates were Franco Parisi Fernandez of the right-wing Party of the People with 12.80% of the votes, Sebastian Sichel of the ruling right-wing ‘Chile We Can (Do) More’ coalition with 12.79% of the votes, and Yasna Provoste of the center-left New Social Pact coalition with 11.61% of the votes. The remaining two contestants, Marco Enríquez-Ominami of the left-wing Progressive party and Eduardo Artés Brichetti of the left-wing Patriotic Union party, secured 7.61% and 1.47% of the votes, respectively.

With these results, some candidates have already announced their support for the candidate running in the second round. Sichel has expressed his support for Kast, while Provoste, Enríquez-Ominami, and Artés Brichetti have endorsed Boric.

BOLETÍN CON RESULTADOS PRELIMINARES

Con un total de 46.887 mesas escrutadas que equivale al 100% de las mesas instaladas, los resultados preliminares de las Elecciones Presidenciales 2021 son los siguientes 👇

Conoce los detalles en https://t.co/HNk8nnUmv5 pic.twitter.com/JAhtUctnlr

— Servicio Electoral (@ServelChile) November 22, 2021


Kast and the far-right proposal for Chile

The 55-year-old lawyer and former congressman Kast and the 35-year-old former student leader and current deputy Boric have diametrically opposed government programs.

Kast is a staunch defender of neoliberalism. He plans to lower public spending, lower taxes on big companies, and promote free market policies.

He has proposed strengthening support for security forces, particularly following the 2019 popular uprising, and creating stricter immigration policies, including digging a ditch on the border and creating a police force similar to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to control the increased immigration from the north.

He has said that he would continue the deployment of military forces in the Biobio and La Araucania regions, where Mapuche Indigenous communities have been in conflict with the government since last month and have demanded that the government return their ancestral lands. He has also stated that he would try to reverse a law, passed in 2017, which allows abortion in three conditions.

Boric bringing demands of protesters to halls of government

Boric has promised to increase state spending on social services, introduce progressive taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, and move towards a new fair and sustainable economic system. He has also pledged to replace the country’s pension system (AFP), which is managed by private insurers and has been a cause of dispute between the government and the population since last year, with a public alternative.

He has declared that he will reform the national police force, the Carabineros, which has been called out for its brutality countless times by organizations within and outside Chile since the 2019 protests. Regarding immigration, Boric has proposed to revise international agreements on the subject and increase cooperation between Chile and the countries of origin of the migrants and refugees.

Boric has also taken a stand against the militarization of the Biobio and La Araucania regions and promotes dialogue to find a solution to the historic conflict. He has also explicitly expressed his support for legalization of abortion, equal marriage and single-parent families.

Rising tensions

Following the announcement of the preliminary results last night, Kast, in his speech, advocated his heavy-handed policies. He even attacked his rival, Boric, and the left-wing forces he represents, for promoting “instability” in Chile with his government project.

“The only alternative that will put an end to terrorism is ours. There is no other. (…) Today those who wanted the State to handle everything and take away our freedom began to lose,” said Kast.

Meanwhile, Boric called for the unity of the working class to defeat fascism in the second round. He called on the Chileans who voted to replace the current constitution that was written and imposed in 1980 under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) to vote for him and continue on the path of change.

“We have to work for the unity of those [who support] democracy. (…) The path of change that we have proposed to the country is the only one that guarantees a way out of the crisis to which those who have governed these last four years irresponsibly led us,” said Boric.

Empieza la segunda vuelta y ganaremos con la inmensa mayoría que quiere cambios para Chile. Cambios para garantizar la seguridad, emprender y vivir mejor.
¡Nos necesitamos más que nunca para avanzar sin dejar a nadie atrás!
El 19 de diciembre votamos 1 ☝ pic.twitter.com/1UJJo9f1NX

— Gabriel Boric Font (@gabrielboric) November 22, 2021


Legislative elections

Sunday’s elections were also held to elect 155 members of the Chamber of Deputies, and 27 of 50 members of the Senate for the period 2022-2026.

With 99.99% of the votes counted, in the Senate, the right-wing forces controlled a half of the seats. The ruling right-wing Chile We Can (Do) More’ coalition won 12 seats and reached a total of 24 seats. The center-left New Social Pact coalition won 8 seats and reached a total 18 seats. The left-wing Approve Dignity coalition, which had only one seat earlier, won 4 seats. The far-right Christian Social Front won 1 seat, while independent candidates won 2 seats.

Meanwhile, in the Chamber of Deputies, the center-left and left-wing forces won a majority. The ruling coalition dropped from 72 to 53 seats. The center-left coalition also dropped from 44 to 37 seats. Boric’s left-wing coalition gained 12 seats (from 25 to 37 seats). Kast’s coalition and Parisi’s party also won 15 and 6 seats, respectively. The left-wing Green Ecologist Party won two seats, gaining one. The left-wing Dignity Now coalition won 3 seats, also gaining one seat. The centrist United Independents party won 1 seat and an independent candidate also won one seat.

More than 18 million Chileans were eligible to vote. SERVEL’s president Andrés Tagle reported that 47.34% of the registered voters participated in the elections.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/11/ ... -in-chile/

As posted earlier in this thread Boric is a sorry excuse for a 'leftist', a social democrat accommodationist from whom we can expect little other than betrayal.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:33 pm

PERUVIAN CONGRESS FORMALLY PROPOSES REMOVAL OF PEDRO CASTILLO
27 Nov 2021 , 8:52 am .

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Congressmen from three right-wing parties presented last Thursday, November 25, before parliament, a request for dismissal to remove the leftist president Pedro Castillo, who has barely four months in power, alleging alleged "moral incapacity" to exercise his functions. .

Details: With 28 signatures, two more than those required to start the process before the plenary session of Congress, the "vacancy" motion was presented by congressmen from the Avanza País, Fuerza Popular and Renovación Popular parties, representing a third of parliament. .

But his admission to debate in the plenary session is not guaranteed, since this step requires 40% of votes in favor among the attending legislators. And to remove a president, 87 votes of the total of 130 congressmen are needed, reports El Comercio.

Context: The probable removal of Castillo takes place in the fertile terrain of judicialization, overlapping powers and structural institutional conflict in Peru.

Peru's unicameral parliament is dominated by a right-wing opposition, while the ruling party Peru Libre (Marxist) is the first minority with 37 votes.

The opposition leader and former presidential candidate, Keiko Fujimori, announced last Friday that her party, Fuerza Popular, the second bench in Congress (24 votes), will support the impeachment request.

"At Fuerza Popular we believe that this government has been showing a permanent inability to lead the country," Fujimori had said on Twitter at the time.

The far-right Renovación Popular also supports the dismissal, for which it has called a march this Saturday.

Crisis: The possible dismissal of Castillo has been in the air since the day after his election, when the right-wing parties denounced fraud despite electoral endorsements.

Castillo, who assumed the presidency on July 28 and whose term ends in July 2026, is criticized for his lack of direction and constant ministerial crises. In less than 120 days in office, he has changed a dozen ministers and faces divisions in the coalition that supports him.

Why it matters: The moderate left tendencies in the coalition, who failed to achieve a presidential national leadership by their own means, formed an alliance with Peru Libre in support of Castillo and once he assumed power they pressed for several changes in the government to reach more quotas, taking advantage of the composition that resulted in parliament. In theory, to solidify the government and guarantee political stability from Congress.

Castillo has yielded to a great extent, changing ministers and changing positions in matters of domestic and foreign policy, but his future is in suspense, as the weak coalition in parliament will be tested against the possibility of vacancy that, if it fails, surely it will not be the only one.

To justify his measures, Castillo has alluded to "governability" and union between the forces of his coalition. But just months into his mandate, faced with a possible vacancy, his permanence lies in the dizzying and complex political picture characterized by divided forces, co-opted institutions and deep instability. And this is explained by multiple causes, such as changes in loyalties, corruption and fickle positions in all spectra of politics. On the other hand, the Peruvian people, who expressed their will at the polls, do not see their mandate represented in the course of parliament, nor in the maneuvers and interests of high politics.

Report of the Samuel Robinson Institute of 11/26/2021 .

https://misionverdad.com/congreso-perua ... o-castillo

Google Translator

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Pedro Castillo denounces destabilization attempts in Peru

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Pedro Castillo affirmed that sectors of the Peruvian right that insist on denying the electoral mandate. | Photo: @presidenciaperu

Published 27 November 2021

The Peruvian vice president described the motion that seeks the removal of President Pedro Castillo as an attempted coup.

The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, denounced on Friday the destabilizing actions promoted by sectors of the Peruvian right, in clear reference to the motion of censure against him presented by a group of legislators in Parliament to remove him.

Pedro Castillo affirmed that sectors of the Peruvian right that insist on denying the electoral mandate "have only dedicated themselves to undermining the institutionality and intend to destabilize the country."

The president added that these sectors want to regain power in order to continue tampering with and manipulating the country with the power groups.

For her part, the Peruvian vice president, Dina Boluarte, described the motion that seeks the removal of President Pedro Castillo as an attempted coup.

The also Minister of Social Inclusion pointed out as the perpetrators of the coup attempt the parties that did not accept the electoral results that anointed Castillo as president.


"This is a coup against a democratic government elected by the Peruvian people," which has said that it wants Pedro Castillo as president for five years, added the Peruvian vice president.

For Dina Boluarte, the motion of censure against Pedro Castillo will not reach the necessary votes to be approved.


The approval of the vacancy requires the votes of two-thirds of the total number of parliamentarians, that is, 87 out of 130.

The Peruvian parliament will discuss the admission of the motion on December 7 and, if it is approved, the substantive debate will be entered between the fourth and the tenth day following.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/pedro-ca ... -0002.html

Google Translator

***************************************

Peruvian Neo-Fascists Attack Ex-Presidential Candidate Lescano

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Keiko Fujimori's supporters linked to "The Resistance," Lima, Peru, Nov. 25, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @RosaTolerante

Published 26 November 2021

"As I was closing my garage to enter my house, these people beat me with sticks, blow up my cell phone, and broke into my home," Yonhy Lescano condemned.

On Wednesday afternoon, 30 members of Peru's far-right group "The Resistance" attacked the former presidential candidate for the Popular Action party Yonhy Lescano at his home in the Surco district.

"As I was closing my garage to enter my house, these people beat me with sticks, blow up my cell phone, and broke into my home. When my family came to help me, they insulted and hit them too," Lescano condemned.

"They attacked me for thinking differently from them. This position is not tolerable in a democracy. I demand that the Prosecutor Office immediately open a judicial investigation against them," he stressed.

Upon receiving his complaint, the Public Ministry opened a preliminary 60-day investigation and ordered to search the security cameras in the area, take statements of Lescano, his family, and the police officers who neutralized the attack.


On Wednesday, the violent group also broke into the presentation of a book written by former liberal leader Daniel Olivares, whom the President of the Council of Ministers Mirtha Vasquez was to accompany but could not make it at the last minute.

“The Resistance members insulted Vasquez and ruined the cultural activity,” rightist lawmaker Eduardo Salhuana condemned and questioned why the Police have not yet found the culprits of such attacks, which involve crimes against life, health, and public tranquility.

"Under no circumstances can we accept such violent behavior. In a democratic country, every citizen can express his ideas freely but always with respect," Salhuana stressed.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0009.html
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:41 pm

Latin America: Why the Elections in Chile, Brazil and Colombia are Crucial
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on NOVEMBER 29, 2021
Emir Sader

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Latin America has become the epicenter of the greatest political struggles of the 21st century because it was the epicenter of neoliberalism in the world. It was the region with the most neoliberal and radical governments. Therefore, it became the region where the anti-neoliberal governments developed, thus becoming the fundamental scenario of the most important disputes in the world in the 21st century.

The first decade of the century in Latin America was marked by the emergence of anti-neoliberal governments, which implemented a set of measures that attacked the main factor affecting the continent: social inequalities. The second decade saw the resumption of the right-wing initiative, which re-established neoliberal governments in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador, either through coups d’état, as in Brazil and Bolivia, or through elections, as in Argentina and Ecuador.

Even at the end of that decade, in some of these countries -Argentina and Bolivia- anti-neoliberal governments were reestablished through democratic elections. Meanwhile, Mexico joined the group of anti-neoliberal governments and other countries such as Peru and Chile began to experience open political disputes.

The continent is entering the third decade of the 21st century with an optimistic outlook, should Lula be elected in Brazil, allowing, for the first time, the three largest countries of the continent to have convergent, anti-neoliberal governments, which could resume the process of Latin American integration in a broader way than previous attempts.

Even if this projection is confirmed, the continent will continue to be a victim of the instabilities and hegemonic disputes that have marked it throughout this century. There are a number of reasons for this, both internal and external to the countries and the continent itself.

At the international level, the emergence of anti-neoliberal governments in Latin America has always had to coexist in an environment marked by the hegemony of neoliberal governments and institutions. This coexistence was always a factor of tensions and instabilities, which made their consolidation difficult. The policies of the IMF and the World Bank, among other influences, worked against the prevailing tendencies of the anti-neoliberal governments, in addition to the action of the United States, with all the weight it continues to have on the continent.

In a country like Brazil, there has been five years of instability and fierce political disputes, between neoliberal governments reinstalled through a process of hybrid warfare, as a new form of coup and rupture of democracy from within. The coming year promises the continuation of the weakened current government, coexisting with Lula’s popularity to be elected -even in the first round of the October 2022 elections-. As the saying goes, the country is likely to get even worse, until it can get better, from 2023 onwards.

Argentina, a country where a neoliberal government was resumed with Mauricio Macri, revealed gaps for reinstating the neoliberal model, with its inability to solve the country’s main problems and gain social and political support that would give it stability. He quickly weakened and was defeated in the first presidential elections and Argentina resumed the anti-neoliberal path.

But even the current government had a setback in the mid-term elections, losing an absolute majority in Congress, although it maintained a relative majority. This makes it more difficult for Alberto Fernandez to govern in the second half of his term, with the next presidential elections on the horizon.

In the case of Bolivia, although MAS won the new presidential elections in the first round, the coup action prevented Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera from running as candidates. Luis Arce, who had been Minister of Economy for 13 years, was elected, but without the political experience to assume the position of president and without the political weight of Evo Morales, who assumed as president of MAS. David Choquehuanca took over as vice-president, union leader and former foreign minister, with more political experience, but as a whole the new leaders with less experience to face the constant opposition offensive, which prevents the new government, although democratically elected in the first round, from enjoying the stability indispensable to confront the economic and social problems Bolivia is suffering.

Peru is experiencing the difficult conditions of a president elected by a narrow margin, relying basically on votes from the periphery of the country, while the capital concentrates the forces of the right. Pedro Castillo has not yet been able to form a government with stable forces that support him; he had to make concessions to the political center, losing the support of the same party that elected him. He faces a hostile Congress, which has a legal mechanism to impose an impeachment trial on the president, with which he is constantly threatened. The fate of Castillo’s government has not yet been defined.

Since 2019, Chile has experienced the most extensive process of popular mobilizations, which led to the conquest of a Constituent Assembly modality, for which it elected a majority of independent parliamentarians, followed by voters for the Frente Amplio, which represents the new left of the country. The Constituent Assembly began to function, with progressive decisions that permanently buried the surviving legacies of Pinochetism.

However, the first round of the presidential elections resulted in the leadership of an extreme right-wing candidate, José Antonio Kast, closely followed by Gabriel Boric of the Frente Amplio. The outcome of the second round is in dispute, with the main right-wing party supporting Kast and the Christian Democratic-Socialist Party alliance supporting Boric. It is an open dispute, but one that projects that the victory of either of the two will not resolve definitively the political instability that the country has been experiencing for the last two years.

The strength of the anti-neoliberal governments and parties in Latin America is still insufficient to impose a stable political and social majority, which would allow the implementation of an anti-neoliberal program, in alliance with other forces in the continent. Part of this is due to the lack of political experience – the cases of Bolivia, Peru and Chile -, others to very adverse internal conditions.

Among these are the hegemony of neoliberal values that survived an earlier period, including the consumerist style – based on the “American way of life” -, anti-political, anti-party and anti-state positions, among others.

The forms of judicialization of politics (lawfare) had a determining weight in countries such as Brazil and Bolivia, in addition to the permanent threat of using this mechanism by the right wing in several countries, reinforcing tendencies of political instability.

Another determining factor is the weight of the media, dominated by conservative forces and positions, which impose right-wing consensus in politics and in the general values of society.

The anti-neoliberal forces still lack both coordination among themselves and, above all, a strategic program -besides short-term emergencies, to attend to the urgent needs of the population- that projects structural transformations, a profound program of democratization of the country.

Until this is possible, Latin America will remain in crisis, with favorable trends for its third decade of the 21st century, despite coexisting with factors of instability. Its future depends mainly on the elections in Chile, Brazil and Colombia. It also depends on the evolution of the internal situation of the crisis in Peru and Chile, as well as the developments in Argentina. It also depends on the capacity of the anti-neoliberal governments to overcome the aforementioned issues, including ideological disputes and to overcome, furthermore, the determining weight of the media.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 02, 2021 2:29 pm

2021: POLITICAL TURNING POINT IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
Dec 1 , 2021 , 11:22 am .

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With the background noise of migrations to the United States and the recent victory of Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, Central America and the Caribbean are at a turning point that allows us to envision an important role in Latin America and the Caribbean in the years to come. .

The region comes from processes of civil wars, historical colonization and systematic impoverishment, however the events are woven with that historical thread in which democracy and human rights are used in the interest of the hegemonic story to intervene and capture geostrategic resources. Three of the many processes that occur are described below.

EL SALVADOR: BUKELE AND HIS TACTICAL TENSIONS WITH WASHINGTON

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has given something to talk about after two key events in his relationship with the United States: the removal of a third of the judges and magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of El Salvador and the presentation to Congress of a proposal of Law of Foreign Agents to supposedly avoid the "interference".

It should be noted that last May the New Ideas (NI) party, created by Bukele and the majority in the Legislative Assembly (Parliament), made a series of changes in the Judiciary, including the removal of the Attorney General, which were classified as "coup of State "on the part of opposition sectors and that were rejected by Washington. The statement from the United States embassy in El Salvador had mentioned that "the five previous magistrates were abruptly dismissed without legitimate cause after the new Legislative Assembly took office."

Previously, in February 2020, military personnel invaded the headquarters of the Legislative Assembly and recently, last July, a list of names of Salvadoran officials accused of corruption in the so-called Engel List was published from the United States .

In the economic sphere, the president established a framework agreement with China that facilitates the execution of several projects financed by the Asian government. In this regard, the Acting Deputy Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States, Julie Chung, wrote a tweet addressed to Bukele: "Mr. President, nothing from China comes without conditions", to which she replied through the same social network: "You they are China's largest trading partner. "

In addition, it approved the use of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as legal tender, which has generated protests in the population and curiosity from outside the Central American country. According to his government, the measure will help to recover the stagnant economy, dollarized two decades ago, by capturing the more than 400 million dollars in commissions generated by the remittances that Salvadorans send from abroad. Those shipments represent 22% of the country's GDP.

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Protests against Bukele in rejection of the implementation of bitcoin as legal tender and the grab of power by the president (Photo: File)

In a statement, the State Department included the new five magistrates and the new Attorney General on its list of Anti-Democratic and Corrupt Actors accused of "undermining democratic processes."

The tension in relations with Washington took a turn of the screw after Bukele declared that the United States finances social organizations that in his opinion are the "political opposition", hence his government introduced the aforementioned law to the Legislative Assembly with the objective of to "establish a legal regime applicable to natural or legal persons, national or foreign, whose activities within El Salvador respond to interests or are financed directly or indirectly by a foreigner."

Bukele's party, advised by Lester Toledo, a fugitive from anti-Chavez immersed in "humanitarian" scandals, directly points out organizations such as the National Development Foundation (FUNDE) and the NGO Cristosal to receive "millions of dollars a year without being known the origin or destination of the funds ".

At the beginning of last September the same Constitutional Chamber involved in the controversy issued a ruling that opens the possibility of Bukele's reelection for a second term by ordering the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to allow a person who exercises the presidency of the Republic, and has not been president in the immediately preceding period, participate in the electoral contest for a second time. The president assumed the presidency in 2019 and would end his term in 2024, but did not hold the position in the previous period.

Meanwhile, the United States' charge d'affaires, Jean Manes, announced on November 22 her departure from the Central American country without having appointed a new ambassador to a diplomatic legation that has been without this position for almost a year. The diplomat had already served as ambassador in El Salvador and, after Joe Biden took office, she was appointed acting charge d'affaires, pending the appointment of a new ambassador, which did not take place.

Manes had declared that relations were complicated after the White House sent "cooperation funds" to the country as a bridge to clarify the situation. However, the Bukele government decided not to accept it, which is why it stated that "new ways" are being sought to maintain cooperation with El Salvador.

The protests against Bukele have not stopped, last October thousands of Salvadorans took to the streets to demand his resignation, changes in favor of the nation, justice, decent wages, the human right to water, transparency, and a practical fight against corruption. .


Analysts such as the former president of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, Siegfried Reyes suspect that the sanctions announced from Washington are nothing more than "friction of a totally secondary nature" and that "Bukele will never fight thoroughly with Washington, much less Washington with Bukele "because between the two governments" there may be some discrepancies of a tactical nature, but they coincide on the strategic objectives. "

NICARAGUA: SOVEREIGNTY PERMANENTLY AT STAKE

The resounding victory of Commander Daniel Ortega on November 7, when he was reelected with 75.87% of the votes for a fifth five-year term, the fourth in a row, had the Renacer Law as a reaction from the Biden administration, even though The electoral contest was attended by six national parties, including the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), and many other regional parties.

Calls were immediately generated to ignore the elections, invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter (CDI) of the OAS to expel Nicaragua from this body and increase economic sanctions. Before the voting centers were closed, Joe Biden called the elections a "farce" and pointed out that "the Ortega and Murillo family rule Nicaragua as autocrats, not different from the Somoza family that Ortega and the Sandinistas fought four decades ago," as it is necessary those of Josep Borrell , diplomatic chief of the European Union, they did not wait either.

On November 19, through its Foreign Minister, Denis Moncada, the Nicaraguan government announced its withdrawal from the OAS, declaring that "its mission is to facilitate the hegemony of the United States; with its interventionism, over the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. ".

As a legacy of Donald Trump, the current US government has preferred to opt for unilateral "sanctions" to suffocate the Nicaraguan economy rather than enter the OAS debates.

The Renacer law (or law to Strengthen Nicaragua's Adherence to the Conditions for Electoral Reform), enacted a few hours before the elections, opens the door to tougher sanctions against the Nicaraguan people. Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Congressmen Juan Vargas and María Elvira Salazar, all with extensive interference files and even support for terrorism against Cuba, advocated the bill that was approved in early August by the Senate.

It is an instrument that allows requesting multilateral banks to restrict the granting of loans and even review Nicaragua's membership of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The United States is the main commercial partner of Nicaragua, since it imports 60% of its products. Other analysts predict that Biden would prefer not to drown Nicaragua economically so as not to provoke a new wave of migration that repeats the situation in Haiti or the "Northern Triangle" of Central America (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador). It is appropriate to recall the complicated migratory situation in the region in which Nicaragua contributes only 6.8% of Central American immigrants to the United States while 86% comes from those three countries.

The response of the government led by Ortega when withdrawing from the OAS takes the floor away from the officials and consultants of the organization, whose members had instructed the Permanent Council to appoint a commission to carry out diplomatic negotiations at the highest level and seek "a solution peaceful and effective to the political and social crisis in Nicaragua ". The plan included a report within a maximum period of 75 days that would generate the summons to an extraordinary session of the General Assembly and the invocation of article 21 of the CDI for their expulsion.

The different public powers and even opposition parties supported the government decision against the declarations and interference agreements of the OAS and last Monday, the 29th, the alternate permanent representative of Nicaragua before the organization, Michael Campbell, refuted the call of the Permanent Council in which reports were presented on before and after the elections.

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Both the Nicaraguan parliament and its highest court urged the Executive to initiate the withdrawal of the OAS (Photo: File)

The official described as "false" the reports presented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Regional Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, highlighting that they promote the "cruel campaign of aggressions" against the Nicaraguan people and division instead of "solidarity". He added that "they cover up the perverse attacks against the population victim of the coup plotters: humble Nicaraguans murdered, raped and wounded, their homes razed and burned, the pain of the families who suffered in vivid image the burning of their relatives by hordes encouraged and financed in 2018 by governments and foreign agents. "

He was referring to the violent protests financed from the United States in 2018 similar to the guarimbas orchestrated in Venezuela of which said reports serve as "resonance boxes."

That same year, China became the second largest buyer of Nicaraguan products after the United States, which does not seem like a coincidence. The Asian country increased its purchases of sugar in addition to mineral products, prepared bovine hides and skins, paper waste and gold coffee, among others that it already bought.

BARBADOS IS A REPUBLIC BUT THERE IS A SCAPEGOAT

In the first minute of November 30, when Barbados celebrates 55 years of independence from the United Kingdom, its new status as a Republic became effective. Its president is Sandra Mason, the 72-year-old ex-jurist who served as governor general since 2018, affirmed that the country will maintain its "traditions, heritage and heritage, won with the sweat of Barbadians and inherited from our ancestors" and insisted in the unity of his compatriots to advance the country as a Republic.

Little is said of its history, Barbados was built as a slave state to serve its metropolis. Slaves often rebelled against colonial rule, with very bloody results, and the island finally gained its sovereign independence from the Empire in 1966, when it became a constitutional monarchy.

It is the fourth country of the former British colonies in the Caribbean to remove the British monarch as head of state, after Guyana (1970), Trinidad and Tobago (1976) and Dominica (1978). Already in 1970 and in 1996 , an attempt was made to revise the Constitution for that purpose, but both attempts were unsuccessful, on the last occasion the initiative was approved and it was decided to hold a referendum that should receive the support of Parliament, but this was dissolved before the sanction final project.

In September 2020, the Barbadian government issued a statement saying that "the time has come to totally leave our colonial past behind," for which Prime Minister Mia Mottley said that Barbadians wanted a head of state outside of Barbados. He did this in the framework of the so-called Speech from the Throne, which outlines the government's policies for the new parliamentary year, it is a speech that the governor general reads, but is written by the head of the government.

For its part, Buckingham Palace, seat of the British crown, responded that it was a matter of the government and people of Barbados. The island will remain a member of the Commonwealth (Commonwealth of Nations) organization, as noted by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a statement.

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Statement by English Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the transformation of Barbados into a republic (Photo: @ 10DowningStreet / Twitter)

Where the decision has sparked controversy has been in Britain, where a scapegoat has been found: China. Conservative deputy Tom Tugendhat said that Beijing had tried to undermine the status of Britain in the Caribbean, as an article in The Telegraph that describes how thousands of millions of Chinese were buying the Commonwealth. In short: Chinese influence is responsible, directly or indirectly, for Barbados' decision.

This was also reflected by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, when referring to Asia, Africa and the Caribbean promising to "return the nations to the orbit of free market democracies" or, in other words, hegemony.

Mottley recently openly criticized the BBC for saying the country was in "America's backyard," as if it had no other position than to be dominated by English-speaking nations.

Even though the United Kingdom is assumed in the press as a righteous savior against the predatory "great and bad China", and attempts are made to sustain the story that the old Empire was not aggressive, exploitative or brutal, but acted out of moral altruism and doing a favor to the countries it colonized, Barbados is actually moving away from centuries of British influence that have defined its entire existence.

In full and frank decline, the UK has long refused to amend or even acknowledge its damage by building a country solely on slavery.

From the colonial mentality the idea is sold that Barbados, with a population of just under 300 thousand inhabitants and a territory of 267 square kilometers, needs the "help" of altruistic Great Britain to make the right decisions because it cannot be trusted to do it for yourself. Meanwhile for Barbadians there are other more pressing issues such as the economic crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic, which evidenced the high dependence of its economy on tourism, whose main client is British visitors.

At the ceremony held in Bridgetown on Tuesday, November 30, Prince Charles, heir to the British Crown, was present, causing annoyance to activists such as the secretary of the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration, David Denny, who affirmed that the new Status will not cause real changes in the economic program or in the commercial and financial relations that the Caribbean island maintains with the United States, Europe or the former British metropolis.

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Prince Charles, greeted by the president-elect of Barbados, Sandra Mason, arrives to participate in the events that mark the transition of the Caribbean island to the status of a republic (Photo: Reuters)

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness recently announced that in 2022 Jamaica will undergo a comprehensive review of its Constitution, which is largely based on British Law.

CATALYSTS AND DISPUTES

Some tensions, movements and changes indicate that the imperial desires in the region require further analysis because there are only nominal motions that make up the geopolitical reality, as is the case in El Salvador, while other motions will set precedents for the rearrangements to move towards levels of greater independence and popular sovereignty in countries that do not align with colonizing patterns.

A common factor in the detailed cases is the growing influence of China in the region and the actions and threats on the part of the United States to stop this advance.

Cuba's advances and its exemplary confrontation against the pandemic with the development of highly effective vaccines contrast with the protests in the French overseas departments Martinique and Guadeloupe that have resulted in an escalation of violence. The strike initially began in protest against the imposition of the health pass and has evolved into a comprehensive protest against the lack of water, electricity and basic products for life.


The crisis in Haiti persists, as do the waves of migration from that country and the "Northern Triangle." Just as the covid-19 or the interference against China invigorates these movements, also the aspirations of collective well-being and the impacts of the climate crisis enter the equation forcing no day to be like the previous one in the region.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/20 ... -el-caribe

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 09, 2021 6:34 pm

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New Clothes, Old Threads: The Dangerous Right-Wing Offensive in Latin America
DECEMBER 6, 2021

Dossier no. 47
As the old world dies, Antonio Gramsci said, it is in the ‘interregnum’ where monsters emerge. The images in New Clothes, Old Threads use satire and mockery to confront the monsters of the emerging fascist and right-wing movements in Latin America. Satire, after all, has been historically used as an art form of resistance to confront fascism. Using digital collages and stylistic mashups, photographs of contemporary right-wing leaders and movements are turned into a new tarot-like iconography of monsters: The Libertarian, The Anarcho-Capitalist, The Anti-Scientist, The Techno-Feudal Lord, The Anti-Communist Saviour, The Pacifier, and The Interventionist. Hovering above these figures is a caricature of the Right’s greatest fear – The Spectre – which for the rest of us is a symbol of hope and resistance that is ushering in a new world.

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Introduction
The Western world lives in discontent. Progressive models have failed to maintain the levels of politicisation, mystique, capacity to question, transformative purpose, and possibilities of concrete changes for the masses. At the same time, neoliberal projects systematically fail to fulfil their own aspirations: to take advantage of new technologies, develop entrepreneurial capacities, and achieve noticeable improvements in the population’s living standards.

Models of success linked to upward mobility through work or associated with people becoming their own bosses fail to meet expectations and place the masses in a situation of constant frustration and discontent. This is undoubtedly the breeding ground for a broad spectrum of new right-wing operations. This reflects the situation described by Mark Fisher in his book Capitalist Realism (2009), in which catastrophe slowly unfolds: the future only holds the same promise as the present, which is not encouraging.

The promises of the free world that were supposed to be realised after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and that inextricably linked economic progress to individual liberties and democracy have failed miserably. In Latin America, the neoliberal scorched earth could not prevent the resurgence of people’s struggles and the blossoming of new grassroots leadership, which reached their peak in the first decade of the twenty-first century.[1] This surge in popular governments and mass mobilisations managed to disturb the still waters in which neoliberal projects sought to submerge us. Renewed hopes, new myths, political identities, struggles, and tactics brought to the table a mobilising, mass, and popular sense of meaning for millions of people to fight and live for.

But the world is turning in a different direction. The break with neoliberal inertia allowed Latin America to rebuild links between peoples, include the excluded, and improve living conditions. However, this took place in the context of a trend towards the total precarisation of life, which could not be shaken from the roots of neoliberalism. This movement also came about in the context of the cultural triumph of neoliberalism, which radically changed the subjectivity of the majority of the population. This cultural hegemony has instilled deep roots that are based on individualism, consumerism, and a loss of the ability to imagine the future, which limits the horizon of what we believe to be possible. For the vast majority of humanity, this horizon is nothing more than the possibility of survival. As Fisher put it, ‘The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history’.[2] This is the cultural and political context of the West, and it is based on this decay that a new neoliberal offensive was launched from 2012 onwards, with Washington at its core. US hard power pursued different forms of hybrid warfare including ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ coups, lawfare, fake news, and armies of trolls, bots, and right-wing supporters spreading hate speech. [3] In just a few years, Washington increased its levels of intervention, sophisticated its methods, and achieved its goal of destabilising the progressive balance of power in Latin America.

The traditional right-wing formulas, tied to the programme of neoliberal globalism or to the more historically conservative views of the oligarchic elites, were of course unable to fulfil their anti-populist promises. On the contrary, these formulas are also part of the problem. The emergence of both former President Donald Trump in the United States as well as the COVID-19 pandemic swept away the few remaining certainties that remained up to that point. The right wing today adopts new faces that intermingle with the old at the same time as it breaks ties with them. The alternative right, neo-reactionaries, far right, post-fascists, religious fundamentalists, and anarcho-capitalists moved from the margins of the political system to positions of relative importance in the Global North. One of the most prominent examples is Steve Bannon, a white supremacist who manipulated social media data and became one of the Trump administration’s star advisors for eight months. After his departure from the White House, mainly because of his proven manipulation of Facebook user data for electoral purposes, he devoted himself to developing links between the different parties or experiences of the new nationalist right in all its variations in Europe. Together with Belgian Mischaël Modrikamen, in 2018 Bannon launched what they called ‘The Movement’, a space for coordination and support for new right-wing projects in the region. They strengthened links with far-right parties in different countries and leaders of the stature of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán; Matteo Salvini, who at the time was prime minister of Italy; Marine Le Pen in France; and figures linked to the Vox party in Spain and the Golden Dawn party in Greece, among others. Shortly afterwards, global events went into free fall. The pandemic that emerged in 2020 showed the profound decay of the capitalist West and the major crisis of its model of civilisation. This provided a wealth of possibilities for the initiatives of the extreme right, which assumed the role of condemning ‘the system’, voicing the need to break with inertia, and expressing the tedium and weariness caused by capitalist realism that does not offer alternatives that can be understood as ‘good sense’ in the hearts and minds the people, as Antonio Gramsci put it.

Latin America was not spared from this wave of new right-wing formations. From the election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil – the most important country in the region in economic and geopolitical terms – to the emergence of Nayib Bukele as president in El Salvador, different figures of the non-traditional right have gained political weight, visibility, and mass influence. At the same time, they have mixed up – or at least opened up – the spectrum of political discourse so that Latin America’s most conservative and traditional right wing can find echoes in the criticism of progressivism, the left wing, and national and popular projects.[4]

In dossier no. 47 of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, New Clothes, Old Threads, we present an analysis of these right-wing movements in Latin America. This is comprised of both an old right and a new right: its new clothes are woven with the same old threads of the past: racism, classism, homophobia, misogyny, authoritarianism, militarism, and repression.



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Big Business Oscillates between the New and the Old Right

Since the 2008 financial crisis, global capitalism has accentuated and magnified its previous tendencies. The financialisation of the economy accelerated after states in the North (especially the US) carried out multi-billion-dollar bailouts of investment banks whose portfolios largely consisted of the subprime market. This renewed wave of financialisation accelerated the pace of growth of new economic bubbles and leveraged the new and triumphant hi-tech and online platform mega-corporations. The world of work continued to exclude more than 50% of the population in the capitalist countries of the South, increasing both the offshoring of production and the creation of new linkages in global value chains, in which the middle positions continue to be occupied by the countries of the Global North, with the exception of China.[5]

These processes were undoubtedly exacerbated in 2020-2021 by the coronavirus pandemic, which acted as a catalyst for the economic tensions that had accumulated in previous years.[6] Above all, the crisis clearly showed a significant gap between national and global dynamics of capital accumulation, among which the power of online platforms and investment banks prevails. In the face of the exponential growth in the use of online platforms and events, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft, and Tesla are the big business winners of the new post-2008 bubble, especially in 2020 and 2021. Major financial companies operated as an indispensable mechanism in directing the dollars in circulation towards these vehicles for capital accumulation.

To a large extent, the relationship between technological developments in Silicon Valley and the emergent right wing is well known: Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, is a fervent advocate of alternative right ideology; cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are promoted by white supremacist Richard Spencer as the currency of the alt-right; and Oracle CEO Safra Catz donated some $127 billion to Donald Trump’s last election campaign, among other examples. Neo-reactionary sectors and philosophies based on uchronia, as advanced by ideologues such as Nick Land and Curtis Guy Yarvin (also known as Mencius Moldbug) and their followers, have reinforced the anti-statist and anti-globalist notions that fuel the new right-wing movements in the North. They have done this based on the latest developments in online platforms, social media, and cryptocurrencies.

The alternative right sees concrete ways of boosting private capital accumulation through the development of cognitive capitalism and the financial developments of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, in which national states have little or no capacity to intervene.[7] Programmers linked to the new waves of Silicon Valley have associated the latest developments of high-tech companies with the potential to solve the ‘problems’ of democracy and state intervention. This is what Cédric Durand calls the ‘Silicon Valley consensus’, which – rather than impacting solely this group of companies (known as start-ups) – seeks to conduct a hegemonic operation to produce a new cognitive map. This map puts the blame for entrepreneurs’ lack of productivity on the traditional conservatives of the Republican Party and progressive Democrats, who are said to promote ‘egalitarian, consumerist and multicultural mediocrity’.[8] This ideology was expressed in 1994 in A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age, produced by the Progress and Freedom Foundation.[9] This ideology failed to contest the brief period of neo-conservative hegemony at the state level, in which the Pentagon hawks set the pace. Big business adopted the same position that ‘Silicon Valley, or rather its enchanting representation, is the showcase of the new capitalism: a land of opportunity where, thanks to start-ups and venture capital society, ideas flourish freely, jobs abound, and high-tech developments benefit the masses’.[10]

After the failure of neoconservatism and Barrack Obama’s globalist initiatives, this ideological operation – which had been developing since the 1990s – went on the offensive, boosting its political agenda during Donald Trump’s government. The world’s richest one percent have taken on the idea that value creation in contemporary capitalism is increasingly immaterial and found in innovation (be it in information technology, finance, or in obtaining patents to develop physical production). As Mariana Mazzucato shows us, from Apple to PayPal, and from Goldman Sachs to Pfizer, the position is clear: these companies are the ones who create value – not ‘inefficient’ sectors, among which the state and the working poor are always cited as examples.[11] This is closely linked to the neo-reactionary movement, which is simultaneously ‘anti-modern and futurist, made up of disillusioned libertarians’.[12]

The key questions here are: how many of these elements have been behind the projects of the Latin American right wing? Is this ‘Silicon Valley ideology’ setting the pace for the demands and proposals of the ruling classes in the countries south of the Rio Bravo?[13] What link does this new emerging right have with local ruling classes? Though we will not be able to conclusively answer these questions here, we can at least propose some hypotheses.

Hypothesis one: Anti-populism is the main expression of big business in Latin America. Big business considers the diverse popular projects (which it disparagingly labels as populist) to be its greatest enemies. The reengagement of concentrated capital with the political right stemmed from the need to confront the governments emerging from the continental anti-neoliberal struggle since the first decade of the 2000s. As the two worked together more closely, they generated new processes ranging from soft coups to hard coups through a variety of reactionary electoral coalitions.

The region’s big business backed different right-wing coalitions and leaders based on core concepts such as the endless dichotomies associated with ‘populism’: republicanism versus institutional decline, the free market versus statism, and democracy versus autocracy, among others.

This coordination between business interests and right-wing political formations continues today. If we take Brazil as an example, it is clear that big business prefers to support Jair Bolsonaro, who could be defined as a neo-fascist. This support comes as his government faces the possibility of collapse and as a popular project could once again come to power, headed by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.[14] As a rule, Brazil’s economic elite tends to position itself within a more classical and globalist neoliberalism, which is somewhat represented in the figure of Paulo Guedes, Bolsonaro’s economy minister. Compared to the 1990s, today Brazil is witnessing a conciliation of the classic neoliberal economic programme and Bolsonaro’s neo-fascism in the political sphere.[15] Sectors ranging from agribusiness to banks now openly support the government.[16] They are united by their fear of the return of a popular government: if the reactionary bloc in Brazil does not succeed in preventing the return of a popular government, it is ready to carry out all possible regressive structural reforms in order to destroy the already reduced capacities of the state. The Brazilian bourgeoisie refuses to consider another possible project. Rather, it is committed to maintaining the neoliberal vision in the economic sphere while sweeping Bolsonaro’s fascist excesses under the carpet.

Similarly, big business in Argentina adopted an anti-populist stance from the very moment of Néstor Kirchner’s inauguration as president in 2003, taking increasingly firm steps to shape a project that would succeed in replacing Peronism in the government.[17] This was achieved through a political force headed by Mauricio Macri. While this force resembled the new right, it was closer to the conservative, republican, colonialist, and oligarchic right wing than a right wing which thrives on political incorrectness, extreme anti-statism, political mobilisation, and reactionary nationalism. In 2015, the Argentine Business Association (the most influential in the country), the major agribusiness players (represented by the Argentine Rural Society and other entities), and the main groups operating in the Argentine Industrial Union expressed their total support for Macri’s electoral campaign and policies, even though they did not actually benefit them substantially in terms of profitability. However, the need to sustain a neoliberal policy remained the core principle ‘in the face of the populist threat’.[18]

Big business in Argentina is clearly opposed to the government of President Alberto Fernández and Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The vast majority contributes to the right and centre-right coalition of which former president Mauricio Macri is a member. The new right phenomenon, led by Javier Milei, does not have a substantial impact on the business world. For the moment, the capital of the traditional oligarchy has opted for conservative neoliberals over ultra-liberals and anarcho-capitalists.

These cases demonstrate that the ruling classes in our region are at a crossroads: either they continue to sustain a model of bourgeois democracy in crisis or they make the leap to an authoritarian form of government. In both cases, the only point of agreement is an anti-popular economic programme. The variable is how much political violence to allow while permitting economic violence to go unchecked.

Hypothesis two: The new right does not actually have an economic programme that can be appropriated by the main types of capital. Specifically, most of the economic policy measures of governments considered to be of the ‘new right’, such as those of Bukele in El Salvador and Bolsonaro in Brazil, arguably follow the process of radicalising the Washington Consensus. This path is taken instead of offering novel initiatives to address the exacerbation of the knowledge economy – ‘Industry 4.0’ – or the adoption of the premises of the Austrian School. The central macroeconomic measures of these projects, like those developed by Sebastián Piñera in Chile and Mauricio Macri in Argentina, and those being implemented by Luis Lacalle Pou in Uruguay, are part of the programme of neoliberal globalism. Of course, the systematic exhaustion of this programme has been evident for decades, which is why the business community is beginning to sympathise with neo-reactionary approaches and the alternative right.

Perhaps the only deviation from this programme to produce new forms of a reactionary political economy that is appropriate today is El Salvador’s adoption of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency as legal tender. By promoting this law as a measure of great radicalism – which was approved by parliamentary majority – Latin America’s model neo-reactionary president introduced a very significant risk of instability. Freely converting dollars to Bitcoin can produce widespread speculative effects given the volatility of cryptocurrencies.[19] El Salvador already has a stunted monetary policy due to its dollarised economy, but the adoption of Bitcoin as legal tender directly pivots towards privatising the creation of money. Stripping the state of any capacity to intervene or regulate money is one of the great neo-reactionary dreams that seem to be coming true in the country.

With the exception of Nayib Bukele’s leap into the void of cryptocurrencies, the economic policy proposals of the region’s right wing are quite similar to classic neoliberal programmes. It is these economic proposals that big business advocates and upholds in order to oppose any programme of popular progress. In any case, it is clear that the different versions of the right are united by their fear and hatred of the working class.

Hypothesis three: The gap between the logic of capital accumulation and the political projects of the ruling classes is widening. Industry 4.0 dynamics of accumulation and extreme financialisation subordinate the ruling classes of the periphery to the dictates of global capital as never before. The response of big business in these countries, which seeks to survive the global competition that is increasingly tending towards techno-feudalism, is to resume the agenda of revived neoliberal reform. However, this agenda does not have the popular support that it had secured in the last decade of the twentieth century. The bourgeoisies of the Latin American periphery range from explicitly supporting traditional right-wing governments to increasingly sympathising with the still marginal sectors of the new right that promise new discourses, new reactionary utopias, and new forms of mobilisation to encourage a refoundation of capitalism.

A key point in this debate is to what extent today’s dynamics of global and national capital accumulation require domination through bourgeois democracy, and whether other models are being sought.

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Expanding the Discursive Boundaries to the Right

The offensive waged in the last decade by the region’s ruling powers has largely been geared towards the dispute over meaning. How are new discursive boundaries being forged by the actions of the right wing? As noted, in our region, this offensive is at its core a reaction to the progressive governments and the expansion of rights over the last two decades. Here, demonisation emerges as the guiding objective, and the issue of ‘corruption’ becomes a central feature of discourse.

The offensive of the 1990s was developed in the name of a market-centred utopia, which envisaged the logic of profitability and efficiency as a way of organising and modernising our societies and overcoming the problems faced by the former welfare states; however, this new offensive cannot be sustained by the same optimism. Following the economic crisis, the wave of protests against the neoliberal model, and the emergence of governments that expanded social inclusion, the ruling powers relaunched their project in the twenty-first century with a discourse that moved in two directions. On one hand, the origins of the neoliberal doctrine were re-examined to create its personification – the entrepreneur – based on the abstract and triumphalist macro-narrative about the virtues of the market. On the other hand, the dichotomy between freedom/democracy and authoritarianism remains, with its anti-populist and/or anti-communist variants, depending on the country in question. Faced with the weakening of this market-based utopia, a former golden age is evoked – generally linked to an oligarchic and free market order – rather than the vision of an imminent future. Consequently, this offensive is largely deployed in the name of traditional institutions and values – from the family and the ‘natural’ role of men and women to the army and even religion – which give meaning to this new crusade.

That said, there are three aspects that characterise this conservative reaction across the continent to varying degrees in terms of communication strategies and the construction of discourses.

The first characteristic is the revival of conspiracy theories and a narrative centred on the image of the dangerous advance of the left, driven by a supranational structure. This includes constructing an external and powerful enemy reminiscent of the anti-communist discourse of the Cold War. This enemy can be epitomised in a government (as in the case of Cuba and Venezuela), in a leader (Lula da Silva, Nicolás Maduro and Evo Morales), or in a platform where common political positions are advanced.[20] This construction of discourse holds more sway among sectors that include figures from the armed forces, but not exclusively. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these conspiracy theories appeared in other narratives. This threat was complemented by the nomination of strong political figures who personify salvation or protection in the face of danger.

Second, with the weakened possibility of mobilising citizens in pursuit of a market-centred utopia capable of offering a better future that could easily be envisioned, appealing to ‘sad passions’ became a strategic line of action.[21] The defence of personal freedom and private property appear as the central elements of a common sense that is also encapsulated in hyper-individualistic perspectives. Communication strategies are used to encourage indignation, for which all tools are on the table: smear campaigns, fake news, and messaging targeted according to the audience. Examples of this abound. Once again, the cases of Brazil and Colombia are paradigmatic due to the intensity with which these actions were put into play, and because they served as a reference for other contexts.[22]

Third, we are facing a conservative reaction that justifies and endorses neoliberal policy in the economic and social spheres while centring the issue of insecurity. This is why it promotes punitivism and repression. The defence of liberty to ensure individual and collective fulfilment goes hand in hand with control, stronger sentencing, and empowering security forces. This contradiction becomes palpable and includes a shift from focusing on crime against private property to criminalising social protest.

A brief look at several countries in the region will allow us to see how these discursive strategies and forms repeatedly appear across the board.


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The Peruvian Cold War

Peru is experiencing a protracted political crisis that is most noticeable in the fragmentation of the party system and in the existence of equally fragmented leaderships.[23] The right-wing camp has its ways of communicating, but it is also characterised by heterogeneity. There are sectors that can be defined more as classical liberals, others that are more populist, yet other sectors with nationalist roots, and there is also the far right. There are traditional parties and new parties, forces that emerged from Fujimorism, and less institutionalised groups that express themselves above all through social media and direct action.[24]

One of the results of the June 2021 presidential run-off was the support that Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force (Fuerza Popular) party secured from sectors identified with staunch opposition to the regime headed by her father in the 1990s. This shift was most illustrative in the case of writer Mario Vargas Llosa given his influence as a major public figure.[25] In a column published a few days after the first round of elections, the Nobel laureate did not mince his words when he associated Pedro Castillo with the idea of a ‘communist dictatorship’ that would bring more poverty to the country.[26]

It must be said that anti-communism is a central focus of the Peruvian right-wing discourse. This central discourse was strengthened by two factors: the revival of a conspiratorial narrative reminiscent of the Cold War at the continental level, and Castillo’s surprising electoral success. In the case of Peru, from the 1990s onwards, this anti-communism also became associated with ‘terrorism’; from there, it spilled over to the left wing and social protest in general. This was also a result of the repressive state policy under Fujimori, which had the Shining Path organisation as its primary target.[27]

In the run-up to the second round of elections, Congressman of the Popular Renewal party (Renovación Popular) Vice Admiral Jorge Montoya, who represented another right-wing sector more closely linked to the military, claimed that Peru was faced with a choice between ‘living in democracy or living in communism’. He linked Castillo’s success to ‘a plan by the São Paulo Forum’ and concluded: ‘we need an alliance between the right-wing parties of the entire continent to stop the advance of communism’.[28] Meanwhile, Keiko Fujimori referred to Castillo as the bearer of a class hatred that deepened the division between Peruvians while presenting herself as the ‘saviour’ and guarantor of ‘national unity’.[29]

These discourses converged in the construction of an enemy whose legitimacy to represent significant sectors of the population is not recognised. In doing so, these discourses fanned the flames of groups with an even more radicalised discourse, which went so far as to physically attack Castillo’s supporters. Among these sectors, two groups stand out: Coordinadora Republicana and La Resistencia.[30] Both have a strong presence on social media, a voice in the press, and devote their time to holding rallies to denounce journalists and civil servants. They preach anti-communism, have ties with religious fundamentalist sectors, and advocate ‘traditional family values’.

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El Salvador’s Neo-Reactionary Experiment

As we have mentioned, one of the great novelties of the continental right wing is the figure of Nayib Bukele, who has been the president of El Salvador for two and a half years. His arrival to government and his profile can only be understood in the context of a profound crisis of legitimacy of the parties that alternated in power after the 1992 Peace Accords: the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).[31] Bukele’s style – which is clearly reminiscent of Donald Trump – as well as his government’s political communication and his key measures, point to a way of constructing his image as a strong leader.

Bukele’s proposal has three clear symbolic pillars. The first is his differentiation from and systematic questioning of bipartisanship. He defines the country’s political leaders as ‘the same old faces’ and/or ‘the corrupt’.[32] He even referred to the civil war and the Peace Accords as a ‘farce’.[33] Secondly, Bukele presents himself as being capable of controlling insecurity and keeping organised crime – mainly embodied in las maras, the name given to gangs in the country – in check. To this end, his Territorial Control Plan is a legal tool to increase the resources allocated to state security forces and to militarise the daily life of the population.[34] Thirdly, Bukele constructs an image of himself as a strongman, a young politician, a successful businessman, and a guarantor of change; this includes a politically incorrect and informal religious component that is in line with the precepts of the US alternative right.

Another characteristic feature that identifies him as a representative of the emerging right is the mixture between the use of social media and certain actions that constitute major shows of strength and that are on the margins of democratic institutionality. There are several illustrative examples in this regard.

In early 2020, Bukele invoked Article 167 of the Constitution, which empowers the executive branch to convene parliament to meet on a single issue. In this case, the issue was a loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration to finance Phase III of the Territorial Control Plan. Faced with the refusal of the majority of ARENA and FMLN legislators to attend the session, Bukele sent troops into the Legislative Assembly and called on his supporters to gather outside the building. After an impassioned speech in which he sought to criminalise legislators, the president entered parliament and prayed in front of the empty seats.[35] On his way out, he said that God had asked him for patience and announced that he was giving parliamentarians a week to assent to the loan, which ended up being approved with the only opposition from the FMLN.

On May Day of 2021, the new Legislative Assembly took office; in its first session, it approved the dismissal of the members of the Constitutional Chamber and the Attorney General of the Republic – bypassing the mechanisms provided for in the Constitution – and replaced them with officials close to the president.[36] Bukele justified these actions on the grounds that they are part of a process of cleansing the political and judicial system through his leadership. This move received international condemnation and sparked tensions with the US government in particular, which even asked Bukele to reconsider the measure.[37] In light of this reality, a new element appeared as part of the Salvadoran president’s discourse characterised by pragmatism and an appeal to the value of national sovereignty. Bukele left behind the discourse that painted the US as El Salvador’s chief ally and began to talk about the foreign interference that his country was suffering. It was in this context that the Salvadoran government highlighted the importance of the vaccine supply that the country received from China as well as the broader cooperation that has been established between the two countries.[38]

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The Old and the New in Uruguay

Uruguay is witnessing an unprecedented coalition government that brings together the entire political spectrum to the right of the Broad Front.[39] The Multicolour Coalition is made up of the two traditional parties (the Colorado Party and National Party) and other forces with less experience in power.[40] Among them is Open Cabildo (Cabildo Abierto), led by retired General Guido Manini Ríos.[41] This new party took the political establishment by surprise in the 2019 elections, winning seats in the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate.

Both the main measures of the government headed by President Luis Lacalle Pou and his coalition’s discourse show elements of the most classical liberal ideology as well as other ideologies that update premises of neoliberalism. These include a range of punitive discourses and other ways of demonising the left wing, even justifying the role of the military dictatorships of the 1970s.

The hegemony of the National Party, led by President Lacalle, is indisputable. This gives the government a centre-right, clearly pro-business profile; it presents itself as being modern and well-prepared to govern. Lacalle’s style assigns a central role to social media and misses no opportunity to trivialise his own efforts leading the executive branch as a way of developing the image of a figure that is ‘close to the people’. This strategy once defined the construction of the public profile of former Argentinian President Mauricio Macri. In this context, the coalition’s most reactionary features are sidelined, but this does not make them any less relevant. The simple fact that Open Cabildo has obtained parliamentary representation and become a governing party legitimises these positions and places the larger forces of the coalition in the position of having to accommodate some of them, whether out of convenience or conviction.

The official discourse is constructed around criticism of the three previous Broad Front governments, whether explicitly stated or not. One of the core concepts of the official discourse is that of freedom and economic liberalisation as a vehicle of economic progress. This is complemented by the principle of fiscal efficiency, which is also one of the main bases for constructing this anti-Broad Front identity. Such elements can be identified in the criteria for managing the pandemic and are visible in Lacalle’s speech to the General Assembly (the two chambers of the legislative branch), given one year after his inauguration in March of this year.[42] Here, Lacalle highlighted liberty ‘as a central element of a person’s life’ and as a ‘necessary beacon for all of a ruler’s actions’. In this framework, he highlighted the strategy of ‘appealing to responsible liberty’ as the main tool to confront the pandemic, a principle that was combined with the premise of ‘taking care of resources in order to take care of people’.[43] Lacalle has also made a big deal of the fact that his government was able to meet the fiscal targets it set ‘without raising taxes, something it was said was impossible to achieve’.[44]

The other focus of this discourse, which can also be seen in the government’s key measures, is security. In fact, during the first part of its term in office, the government coalition promoted the Urgent Consideration Law (LUC), which was approved and led to substantive security reforms.[45] In his speech before the legislature, Lacalle himself highlighted the fact that the LUC developed the conditions to apply ‘legitimate self-defence, pickets were declared unlawful, the penalties for drug trafficking were increased, and the offence of resisting arrest was created’. All these measures add up to what he defined as ‘a major change of attitude regarding support for police work’.[46]

In this sense, in its almost five hundred articles, the LUC summarises the imaginary defended by the right-wing coalition that governs Uruguay. This includes:

*understanding insecurity as the central problem and presenting punitive measures as the solution, namely by increased penalties and by providing *greater legal support for the security forces
*deregulating economic activity and fiscal adjustment
*weakening the role of the public sector in producing goods and services
*concentrating previously decentralised powers in the executive branch
*weakening workers’ rights vis-à-vis employers
*criminalising protests

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Argentina and Twenty-First Century Anti-Populism

In the case of Argentina, it is very clear that the offensive of the ruling powers both in discourse and in praxis is to a great extent a reaction to the expansion of rights spearheaded by the Kirchner governments and to the process of regional integration led by progressive and popular governments that were in power in the first fifteen years of this century. However, this progress comes alongside the worsening of structural economic problems and the limitations that the Kirchner experience itself demonstrated in reproducing its ‘post-neoliberal’ political project.[47]

The last decade has been characterised by the growing imposition of an agenda rooted in two major cornerstones of the business sector’s agenda: the fight against authoritarianism, insecurity, and corruption and the drive to liberalise and deregulate the economy. The business elite, traditional factions of the political system, and new forces – together with the mainstream media – have converged in a cycle of growing confrontation. They have even managed to mobilise important sectors – chiefly the middle and upper classes in big cities and the most prosperous rural areas – around these issues. The deployment of this social bloc has created conditions that are conducive to advancing a new reactionary common sense.

In the more strictly political sphere, two elements are worth highlighting. In 2015, a coalition led by Mauricio Macri and his Republican Proposal party (Propuesta Republicana or PRO) came to power. Since its emergence – and later while governing the city of Buenos Aires – this party has been promoting an image of itself as the ‘modern right’, which has eschewed major ideological debates and has mainly drawn on political management vocabulary. From 2015 onwards, PRO and its main leaders brought into play an agenda and forms of discourse that are more typical of the classical right, combined with means of intervention that stretch the limits of political correctness. This process has only deepened during the pandemic and since the PRO was removed from the presidency in 2019.

The second element to highlight is the emergence of formations to the right of PRO that are characterised by political incorrectness as a distinctive style, much like the precepts of the alternative right in the United States and Europe. In this ‘right of the right-wing’ world, we find two extremes. On one side of this extreme are the followers of the liberal economists José Luis Espert and Javier Milei, who were elected as parliamentarians in the recent November midterm elections. On the other are those more closely linked to nationalist Catholicism and conservative evangelicalism, headed by figures who have a past in the PRO and who – for now – have only achieved minor prominence.

Although its influence is increasing, the radical right’s position in the local political scene may be more significant today for its capacity to impose a discussion of certain issues and for the impact it can have on the electoral performance of the majority right-wing alliance than for the amount of institutional representation it is able to achieve. As mentioned above, big business does not currently see a viable alternative in these groupings of the radical right.

These variations of the right find common cause in a number of strategies and devices while differing in others. They share an agenda that can be summarised in the catchwords ‘security’ and ‘anti-populism’. In the face of ‘insecurity’, they construct a punitive and increasingly xenophobic discourse, especially towards the sector of workers who are excluded from formal employment. This discourse seeks to legitimise and expand the security forces’ scope for action and constructs culprits in the same way that internal enemies were constructed in the past, and against whom the violence of the repressive state apparatus was directed. Depending on the circumstances, these culprits can be the poor, or immigrants, or indigenous peoples.

As has historically been the case, these right-wing formations strive to associate the term populism with other negative terms such as corruption and authoritarianism. The novelty here is the incorporation of the idea of privileges alongside these concepts. Populism is also presented as a synonym for clientelism and handouts, and a distinction is proposed between those who receive state assistance and ordinary people who ‘work and pay their taxes’. In this way, the right wing appropriates the discourse of condemning privileges – which has historically been part of the actions of the left – in order to crush the benefits of a section of working people. The ‘positive’ counterpart of this is the appeal to a common sense linked to individual effort and meritocratic criteria in order to simultaneously delegitimise the very idea of universal rights (to employment, housing, food, and so on) and collective organisation.

We must add an element to this common discourse, which is very significant in the Argentinian case, even though it operates in the background. This is the attack on the struggle of human rights organisations that stand against impunity for the crimes of the last military dictatorship. The variants of the domestic right, starting with PRO’s leading exponents, have tended to link these organisations to corruption. Although they have not gone so far as to propose explicit exonerations of state terrorism, as is the case in other countries, they have been silently complicit with the denial of these crimes.

The most radical formations distinguish themselves based on certain fundamental uses of discourse. On one level, there is a specific position that results from the combination of three elements: the figure of the new outsider to the political system; the idea that the real antagonism is that which exists between ordinary people and politicians; and – perhaps most importantly – the idea that an anti-system force is required. On another level, it is the discourse of the new right that has secured the most media coverage and electoral results and that explores the premises of economic ultra-liberalism in the greatest depth. The attack on all kinds of ways of regulating the economy, the idea of abolishing taxes, and the call to reduce the state to its minimum expression are the main pillars of a narrative that presents itself in the name of freedom, but which in fact vindicates authoritarian governments. In addition, this discursive construction is characterised by mixing the classic reference to a golden age – set, in Argentina’s case, in the oligarchic regime of the late nineteenth century – with the allusion to a ‘liberal utopia’, whose intention is to dispute the meaning of the future. This position is very close to the neo-reactionary concept most fully developed in Nick Land’s The Dark Enlightenment (2013), which is understood as a reactionary uchronia based on progress towards individualism and in which an anti-egalitarian logic reigns and monarchical and exclusionary forms of government return.



Brazil Caught between Neoliberalism and Neo-Fascism

At first glance, Brazil appears to be another laboratory of the new right. How can we understand the contradiction between a classic neoliberal economic programme and the excesses that President Jair Bolsonaro produces in the Brazilian political system? We can analyse this process as part of a discursive tension that does not appear to be clearly resolved. While the representatives of big business place themselves in the rhetorical camp of neoliberalism, value its institutions, and concretely advance globalist projects, the president intensifies his neo-fascist rhetoric. Let us consider three concrete examples of these discursive elements.

Firstly, as a parliamentarian and even more so as president, Bolsonaro puts forward an anti-Workers’ Party (PT) and anti-communist position, which discriminates against left-wing stances and resembles the case of Keiko Fujimori in Peru. These stances are associated with Lula da Silva and the left wing in general as well as with a continental project born in the São Paulo Forum and which has its most obvious expression in castrochavismo (Castro-Chavism).[48]

Secondly, Bolsonaro’s discourse clearly reveals a growing attempt to bypass the rule of law. At the time of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, the now president of Brazil dedicated his vote to oust Dilma in memory of the late Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who was in charge of a torture centre during the military dictatorship, and called Ustra a ‘national hero’.[49] From then on, Bolsonaro’s celebratory mentions of Brazil’s military dictatorship have multiplied, which sheds light on his profoundly anti-democratic and politically incorrect side. He has managed to transform the unsayable into the sayable and move the discursive boundary one point further to the right.

Thirdly, Bolsonaro has tried by all means to connect with the big players of the alternative right in the United States. He expressed his support for Donald Trump on a number of occasions during the then-president’s years in office and participated in meetings of the regrouped formations of the global right. His alignment with the United States is in clear opposition to the more pragmatic sector of the government, which maintains the agenda of globalism as a possibility.

Though we cannot delve into all of these elements in the scope of this text, we can at least situate Bolsonaro’s interventions and discourse in an authoritarian, anti-popular, and repressive agenda. To a large extent, this approach follows the classic positions of the coup-mongering Latin American right wing. Bolsonaro also embodies a neo-fascist position; however, the Brazilian government as a whole cannot be characterised as neo-fascist because of the tensions that are developing within the Brazilian bourgeoisie and even within the military high command. If it were not for the reactionary unity sparked by the possibility of the advance of a popular project that could once again lead state power in Brazil, the economic powers would seek other alternatives that are more acceptable in democratic terms.



What’s New and What’s Old?

We have presented what we consider to be one of the central problems of the times we are living in: the right-wing offensive. Much of the current reality of the capitalist world – its profound economic, political, cultural, and civilisational crisis – once again poses the idea that there is no alternative. In the face of this anguish, the levels of discontent are becoming more acute, and popular and left-wing projects seem capable of obtaining partial victories and even putting limits on the advances of the reactionary offensive. However, these projects face serious difficulties in constructing a new narrative that could unleash a real wave of popular progress capable of bursting the seams that hold together the new right and the old right.

In Latin America, the adoption of the neo-reactionary and alternative right projects of the North appears to be a launching pad from which to modify the cognitive maps of the people and to shift political and discursive positions and public agendas to the right. However, the main right-wing forces in the region have exposed the old threads that stitch together their new clothes. This is above all because big business has no choice but to stick with its familiar programmes to avoid perishing in the face of the relentless advance of the global concentration and centralisation of capital led by the high-tech/finance conglomerates. Moreover, this is because the extreme uncertainty from which the peoples of the South most suffer evokes a defensive unity amongst the ruling classes, which above all want to prevent new processes of popular progress. This is the red thread that stitches together the views of the old and new right wing: anti-populism, anti-communism, and other ways of naming any project that puts equality, solidarity, and the rights of the masses above all else.

The challenges posed by the present historical moment are enormous, but the struggles of popular movements, political imagination, and the commitment to life are on our side.

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https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-4 ... n-america/

Bibliography and notes are prodigious and should be viewed at link.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 13, 2021 2:23 pm

Pedro Castillo Survives Another Parliamentary Impeachment Attempt in Peru: The Threat Has Not Passed
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 9, 2021
Mariana Álvarez Orellana

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Pedro Castillo’s Supporters Protest Impeachment Moves in Lima

The last right-wing intention to impeach the Peruvian president, Pedro Castillo, was shipwrecked between the massive rejection in the streets and the decision of most of the parties to deny their support to the impeachment attempt, but the threat is far from being dissipated and the strategy of the right wing is to keep on striking until it achieves its goal.

This time it did not prosper either and a new story between the rural teacher and leftist trade unionist Pedro Castillo and the Congress ended on Tuesday 7th with the lack of six votes to admit for debate the motion of presidential vacancy under the ambiguous figure of “permanent moral incapacity” against him.

The impeachment operation was the culmination of an offensive of the ultra-right initiated the day Castillo won the elections against Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the imprisoned ex-dictator who was the candidate of the power groups and of the defense of the neoliberal status quo. The accusation against Castillo stands out for the weakness of its arguments, such as pressuring to obtain the promotion of five military officials (which did not happen) and the actions of his ex-secretary in favor of some companies.

They also tried to qualify as “moral incapacity” the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and other typically McCarthyist arguments such as relating him to “terrorism”, and appealing to a vote “against communism” to justify an impeachment.

Two days of meetings of the head of state -who took office just over four months ago- with political representatives of congressional benches dissipated the storm clouds. Of the total of 128 legislators present, only 46 voted in favor (52 were needed), 76 against and 4 abstentions.

The columns of unions, social organizations, progressive parties, converged with their banners and posters repudiating the vacancy and the attempted parliamentary coup, in front of the Congress headquarters, where a small group mobilized by the destitute was isolated and protected by a police cordon on a sidewalk.

Castillo escaped again, but appears weakened by the permanent attacks and the coup plot of the right wing, but also by his mistakes, questioned appointments, the delay in making decisions in moments of crisis and the divisions in his internal front. The ruling party celebrated the result of the vote with the classic “the people united, will never be defeated”.

Various benches of the right wing opposition, which is the majority, did not support the government, but distanced themselves from the coup. The press had speculated that a sector of the ruling Peru Libre (PL) party, divided between support and criticism of the government, could contribute votes to the impeachment process. But the 37 PL legislators voted as a block against the coup, thus avoiding political suicide.

The truth is that the divisions in the ruling party have not been overcome. The secretary general of PL, the Marxist Vladimir Cerrón, questions Castillo for supposedly having moderated and has pointed out that he maintains “deep differences” with his government, but has said that he was not going to lend himself to the coup of the ultra-right.

Sociologist Alberto Adrianzén maintains that the risk of a coup has not been averted, but that the right wing is going to continue in its attempt to remove the president, so the situation in the next months is going to be difficult, since the right wing is not going to lower its guard. “What Castillo must do is to politically confront the right wing, denounce who the coup perpetrators are, mobilize the people in the streets and get rid of that environment”, he said.

Hypocritically, the coup leaders spoke of fighting against corruption, but what they were trying to do was to ensure impunity in the various corruption trials of the leaders of that right-wing coup, such as Keiko Fujimori, who in the coming months must face a trial for money laundering with a request for 30 years in prison.

The racist Peruvian elites, supported by financial power, corruption and the hegemonic media, do not accept losing power, especially not to an Andean peasant who comes from the poorest and most marginalized sectors, and who speaks of exclusion, inequality and changes in power structures.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... ot-passed/

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Peruvian justice will decide whether to incriminate former president Fujimori

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Relatives and victims of forced sterilizations hope that the justice will condemn former President Alberto Fujimori. | Photo: The Trade
Published 11 December 2021

During Fujimori's second term, more than 272,000 women and about 24,000 men were victims of forced sterilizations.

After almost three months of marathon hearing, Justice is expected to decide this Saturday whether to prosecute former President Alberto Fujimori for the forced sterilization of thousands of women during his second term.

Judge Rafael Martínez will announce whether to open a judicial investigation against former President Fujimori for the crimes committed against 1,307 women and men and the serious violations of human rights in rural communities in Peru.

During Fujimori's second term (1995-2000), about 300,000 people were sterilized, including more than 272,000 women and about 24,000 men.


As anticipated by Judge Rafael Martínez, the doctors and nurses in charge of performing the sterilizations did not respect the sanitary protocols due to the pressure from the Government to achieve the goals established by the National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning promoted by former President Fujimori.


During the hearings, the magistrate reiterated that, as a result of these events, human rights were violated in a health strategy that caused at least five deaths, which are those linked to the investigation.

The current trial began in 2018, after previous prosecutors shelved the investigation against the former president and the three former senior officials. Judge Martínez began reading the resolution of the case last September.


If the accusation against Fujimori is accepted, the former president could not be tried if the Peruvian Justice does not request the Chilean Supreme Court of Justice to expand the extradition charges approved in 2005, after the former president was arrested in the neighboring country.

Alberto Fujimori is serving a 25-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity for the murder of 25 people, including an 8-year-old boy, in the Barrios Altos massacre.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-jue ... -0006.html
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