South America

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 10, 2021 12:01 pm

ELECTIONS WITH FINAL PHOTOGRAPH
PEDRO CASTILLO WINS IN PERU: RECOUNTING AN EPIC AND FUTURE CHALLENGES
9 Jun 2021 , 11:43 am .

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Coming from deep Peru, Castillo will make his way into the difficult Peruvian institutionality (Photo: Martín Mejía / AP Photo)

According to the calculations of the electoral body, this Wednesday, June 9 at 8 am (Lima time), with 99.79% of the records processed and 98.33% of the records counted, the candidate Pedro Castillo reached 8 million 735 thousand 448 votes for 50,206%, while Keiko Fujimori obtained 8 million 663 thousand 648 for 49,794%.

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The difference is minimal, by 0.4 tenths for Castillo, although it could be slightly widened considering that there are rural votes to be counted and given that the vote abroad, favorable to Fujimori, has been counted 100%.

However, the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), the organizing electoral body, has outlined the existence of acts contested or observed (questioned) by the Peru Libre and Fuerza Popular parties. The figure is 1,260 minutes, of which 457 are contested due to doubts in the vote count.

These will now go to the National Elections Jury (JNE), an autonomous entity of the Peruvian institution, whose responsibility will be to determine the destination of the minutes and votes that are under condition of challenge.

According to some mathematical possibilities, only if this process is carried out in an arbitrary or selective manner against Peru Libre could the electoral balance defined so far be reversed, if there is the annulment of acts favorable to Castillo and the count of acts favorable to Fujimori.

This possibility, latent, but still to be considered remote, comes with the development of the close contest now in jurisdictional instances of the JNE or, in other words, the resolution of the elections through bureaucratic channels.

Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori had signed a commitment to respect the electoral results. However, this Monday, June 7, Fujimori busied himself in denouncing "signs of fraud at the polling stations" during the elections held on Sunday. "A series of irregularities have been occurring that concern us and we believe it is important to show it. There is a clear intention to boycott the popular will," he said.

Fujimori denounced that Castillo would be using the contesting of the minutes to delay the counts and his party assured in the afternoon of the same Monday that 80% of the challenged minutes favor the candidate.

"We call on citizens to help us," Fujimori stressed at a press conference, calling on his supporters to report "irregularities." This unleashed a reaction among his followers on the outskirts of various polling stations in different cities, and a significant number of "complaints" on social media and with the ONPE that have led to new obstacles to the slow "Quick Count" of the Peruvian electoral body.

The presidential elections also deal with the weakness that all the primary subsystems of electoral activity are manual.

Meanwhile, Pedro Castillo, who since Sunday night alerted his followers and table members to remain "vigilant" and organize vigils, on Monday 7 moved to Lima, where he has concentrated his followers on the outskirts of the house of his party, calling on them to "wait patiently" for the continuity of the counts and resolution of challenges.

Since Tuesday night the 8th and after the vote counting abroad, which failed to reverse the trends, the atmosphere is festive for Castillo and his followers.

THE EPIC AND THE SYMBOL
Pedro Castillo, called "The Profe" for his profession, including a master's degree in Educational Psychology, comes from a much loved and respected sector of the rural population: that of rural teachers.

Recognized for being moral authorities and for their vocation to work, teachers have for years been a political potential that had never emerged in these terms as it has now.

This is explained given that the Network of Rural Teachers of Peru, grouped in union instances, deployed in favor of Castillo and the symbol of the new Peru Libre party, whose logo is a pencil. This territorialized network in rural Peru and the urban peripheries campaigned from the base, with very few resources and practically counting on contributions from the poorest social layers and peasant organizations.

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At the traditional "electoral breakfast" in Peru, Castillo appeared in his very modest home with his family in Tacabamba, Cajamarca department (Photo: Ernesto Benavides / AFP)

Peru Libre is a party that declares itself socialist. They manifest openly to embrace "Marxism and mariateguism." The symbol of the pencil places education as an essential element of the movement and its vision for the country.

Castillo's campaign offer was based on very simple but powerful "ideas-force": fight against corruption, state regulation of private activity, investment in education, care for the dispossessed and especially a new Constitution to do everything This is possible, which would be drafted through a Constituent Assembly.

Castillo's speech was direct, flat, and vigorous, with almost no restrictions on some issues. He shied away from going to the private press and avoided dealing with some biased interviews that might ridicule him. He was stigmatized for his hat, for his accent and where he came from.

The electoral result evolved with the end of the photograph, but in mid-April Castillo had more than 20 points of preference over Fujimori. Its decline was due to the harsh and effective campaign deployed by Fujimori, which featured most of the media (except La República , which remained weighted).


Keiko had enormous contributions to the campaign from the upper class and was entrenched in a speech that stoked fears against communism. Indeed, on several occasions Castillo's campaign had to deny that small merchants would not be deprived of their businesses and that families would not be expelled from their homes.

Fujimori used the situation of the Venezuelans in Peru, exposing them and using them as campaign scenery and warning of "not turning Peru into another Venezuela", for which they had the visit of Leopoldo López and Lilian Tintori.

Keiko's broadcast engineering in networks was clearly forceful and expensive, with messages plagued with fake news and where Castillo was classified as a "dictator, murderer and terrorist."

Faced with these conditions, the epic of "El Profe" and the symbol of the pencil lie, to a large extent, in that, despite having been seriously at risk, this campaign managed to prevail against the current of many electoral campaign manuals, without sugarcoated speeches , without ambivalent poses, without great resources, with minimal use of new technologies and from the depths of the communities in a permanent face-to-face.

NEW STARTING POINT AND MUTATION OF THE DEEP CRISIS
Castillo's rise to the presidency will be tumultuous and in a highly conflictual context. This will be proclaimed to be invested in office on June 28, on the emblematic date of the Bicentennial of the Andean country. All these components, as well as his own epic as well as that of his followers imposing themselves in the highest position of Peruvian politics, translate into an enormous milestone in the recent history of Peru.

However, the political picture that precedes him and that awaits Castillo is extremely complex.

The first edge lies in his own election, as it is developed through maximum pressure from Fujimori in the challenge, undermining not only Peruvian institutions, but also the legitimacy of the president-elect. The new president will take office amid another critical knot in heated Peruvian politics.

Next, an unstable political base awaits him, as it contains a quota of voters who have circumstantially supported him. Although a good part of the Peruvian electorate assumed Castillo's candidacy through a real aspiration for change, it is also true that "his" electoral base is also made up of broad sectors that rejected Keiko's candidacy.

But the most serious Peruvian crisis to be addressed by Castillo is just around the corner. The new president brings with him the proposal to found a Constituent Assembly and change the Peruvian Constitution. It has denounced the existence of overlapping powers and competencies that have resulted in aberrant levels of judicialization of politics, which have plunged that country into unprecedented instability. Peru must be "refound", he said.

Peru has had three presidents after the resignation of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2018 over corruption scandals. It is the only country in the world where all its former presidents alive have been prosecuted and, additionally, the institutionality, atomized by its partisan tendencies and interest groups, is in permanent confrontation and dispute to the point of ungovernability.

The dismantling of this entire structure through a new Constitution and the formulation of a new institutional framework will be a huge challenge for "El Profe."

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Castillo will assume the leadership of a flawed and delegitimized institutionality (Photo: Reuters)

The first obstacles, not only for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, but also for the regular actions of the executive government, will come from the elected parliament on April 11. Castillo's newest party won 37 seats of the 130 that make up the unicameral parliament. The second force in the chamber is Fujimori's Popular Force with 24 seats, while other right-wing parties in sum make up a solid remnant that will be constituted as a political opposition, which could clearly be the majority if they join Fujimorism.

Castillo's candidacy provoked the circumstantial union of forces antagonistic to Fujimorism in the same Peruvian right. It should not be ruled out, then, that given the possibility of profound reforms promoted by Castillo, these factors may come together to sustain its status quo and protect the battered institutional scaffolding.

Peru additionally reaps the balance of the economic and social ravages left by the pandemic. The fall was 11% in GDP and the crisis has left a new trail of poor people. The pandemic increased poverty by 10 points according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI) . Figures from 2019 ensure that the country already had more than a third of its population living in poverty conditions measured by household income and unsatisfied basic needs.

The picture is much more serious in rural Peru. Poverty in 2020 affected 45.7% of that population. The rural environment includes large regions that have been relegated from the concentration of resources that go, mainly, to Lima and its Metropolitan axis.

For Castillo, it will be key now to find ways to sustain legitimacy and leadership, strengthening it now from the management of the government, with the challenges that circumstances impose on it.

The evident exhaustion of traditional forms of legitimacy in political parties, as well as the flawed institutional framework where it must navigate, will demand that it govern beyond the institutional and partisan leadership and will have to do so from and with a broad social base not represented in those instances. , namely, peasant forces, teachers, social organizations and grassroots movements with union aspirations, but with a shared vision of the country.

The momentum of his proposals in the unstable Peruvian politics brings for Castillo the risks of being prosecuted and swallowed up by the institutional machinery. But, unlike other politicians, "El Prof" is a man without a record for corruption and Peruvians are already largely fed up with the judicial tirade.

Castillo has moved political fibers in his nation, but he has also aroused affection, a situation that gives his government a mobilizing potential. The current point of initial momentum, before it begins to be eaten away by the Peruvian tirade, will be essential for the strategic advancement of his proposal and the aspirations of millions of Peruvians who now fervently accompany him.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/pe ... s-desafios

Google Translator

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Castillo Asks To Avoid Provocations From the Peruvian Far-Right

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Flag with the pencil used by teacher Pedro Castillo as his political symbol, Lima, Peru, June 9, 2021. | Photo: EFE

Keiko Fujimori asked the National Jury of Elections to annul some 200,000 votes in regions where the leftist presidential candidate had won overwhelmingly.


Free Peru candidate Pedro Castillo asked his compatriots to remain calm in the face of destabilizing actions of those who want to disregard the results of the presidential elections held on June 6.

"Dear brothers and sisters: I thank those who continue to resist in the streets... Let us not fall into the provocations of those who want to see this country in chaos. We call for peace and tranquility. Let us remain firm and joyful in this final struggle that belongs to all Peruvians," Castillo tweeted.

This request came hours after far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori and her Popular Force party asked the National Jury of Elections (JNE) to annul some 200,000 votes in regions where Castillo had won overwhelmingly.

Without presenting any evidence, she argued that 802 electoral records had allegedly been altered by the leftist Free Peru party. The political maneuver of the daughter of dictator Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), however, began to take shape on Monday night when the vote count already showed Castillo as the winner.

On that day, she presented fake news to refute the preliminary reports of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations (Uniore), whose electoral missions highlighted that the presidential elections had been carried out correctly.


As part of her attempt to destabilize the political process, Fujimori called for "defending the vote" while her supporters flooded social networks with requests for the Armed Forces to intervene to prevent Castillo from being officially proclaimed president.

In response, the Defense Ministry issued a statement recalling that "the Armed Forces are not deliberative and are subordinate to the constitutional power. Therefore, any call to disregard this mandate is unbecoming of a democracy".

The declaration of Castillo as Peru's president-elect has not occurred yet. Although the maximum deadline to challenge electoral records ended on Wednesday, the vote-counting process is moving very slowly. As of Thursday morning, Castillo has 50.2 percent of the votes and Fujimori has 49.8 percent.

Published 10 June 2021 (1 hours 11 minutes ago)

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cas ... -0002.html

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Jun 13, 2021 1:38 pm

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Pedro Castillo was proclaimed the winner of the Peruvian presidential elections after 100% of the minutes were processed, according to ONPE (Photo: Alessandro Cinque / Reuters)

WHAT HAPPENS IN PERU?
PEDRO CASTILLO DEALS WITH THE FIRST CRISIS BEFORE ASSUMING THE PRESIDENCY
12 Jun 2021 , 1:35 pm .

The outcome of the second round of the Peruvian presidential elections unfolds in a transversal institutional crisis and with serious internal and external disruptive factors.

On Thursday, June 10, the processing of 100% of the electoral records was announced and the favorable result for Pedro Castillo was revealed, according to data presented by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE).


With 100% of the records scrutinized, the rural teacher has a vote percentage of 50.170% compared to 49.830% for Keiko Fujimori.

However, there was an initial remnant of contested minutes that had not been counted, but whose votes could not turn the result.

Next, the Fujimori people proceeded to challenge the minutes in a massive way, questioning polling stations, which represent about 200 thousand votes, trying to transfer the dispute to electoral juries.

However, most of these challenges were registered after Wednesday 9 at 9 pm, at which time, according to electoral regulations, the deadline for political organizations to do so expired.

According to the laws of Peru, the ONPE is not in charge of resolving these disputes. This falls to another autonomous instance, the National Jury of Elections (JNE) of Peru, a collegiate body made up of members of the highest national court, universities and the Lima Bar Association.

This entity on Friday the 11th surprisingly announced the extension of the deadline (another 48 hours) to present requests for the annulment of voting tables, a measure that favored Fujimori, incorporating challenges made by Fuerza Popular until the night of that same Friday.

The entity acted out of time, altering the lapses in an irregular way. According to the Peruvian lawyer Renzo Cavani, "if a rule establishes a period of three days and it expired, legally there is no way that a later rule can modify it (for example, expanding it). This is called retroactivity and is prohibited by the Constitution." He pointed out from his Twitter account.


The journalist Harold Moreno Luna, regarding the JNE measure, pointed out that said instance was going against the law. He indicated that "annulment appeals are presented up to three days after the elections, which is what is stipulated in Article 367 of the Organic Law on Elections (LAW No. 26859), which has existed since 1997."


However, after the shock generated, the Plenary of the JNE revoked its decision a few hours later due to the broad rejection of Peruvians and the protest of Castillo's party, which considered the measure "unconstitutional", a "consummate fraud" and a Coup".

PERU'S TRANSVERSAL CRISIS
The 100% scope of the processing of the minutes has pushed Castillo to declare himself the winner in the election. However, factors on the international right lined up to dismiss the message from the polls and the counts.

Sixteen right-wing former presidents, including Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana from Colombia, Oscar Arias from Costa Rica and José María Aznar from Spain, all widely known for their interference in Venezuela and other countries under the US influence circuit, interfered in the elections and On Thursday the 10th they demanded that the Peruvian institutions not declare any of the candidates the winner until the Peruvian electoral authorities resolve "objections and observations" in the minutes.

This statement was released by Fujimori, using it to support his judicialization of the election.


It also transpired that Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti had called Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian-Spanish writer and neoliberal activist, who openly supports Keiko Fujimori, to try to get him to mediate with the candidate in order for her to desist from the challenges and thus avoid a major crisis.

The president confirmed that dialogue via Twitter, explaining that he did it to ask that the final results of the elections be calmly awaited.


The reactions came from various fronts of Peruvian politics, especially from Fujimori, denouncing that Sagasti had interfered in the elections and that is why some parliamentarians are proposing his dismissal .

Parliament's action could be part of a retaliation to Sagasti, since the president denounced that the legislative chamber has been acting in dangerous ways recently.

This is because the parliament has decided to extend its term and then they have accelerated a set of reforms to the Constitution , in fact, benefiting the deputies and even creating a bicameral Congress.

Sagasti declared "concern" about the express actions of the parliament, which he defined as "hasty".

"In a period of 28 years, 24 constitutional reforms were approved. Now, in a few days, it is intended to approve more than a dozen reforms, without respecting the spirit of Article 206 of the Constitution, which implies a deep debate and wide acceptance of its content, "Sagasti said from Twitter.


The link between the current actions of the parliament to leave is evident, just when Pedro Castillo has proposed calling a Constituent Assembly to change the Magna Carta.

In this plot, Keiko Fujimori herself is not exempt. The defeated candidate is signaled to attempt to flip the result to avoid incarceration.

Fujimori was arrested in 2018 and 2020, but has managed to escape from jail through habeas corpus , a bail payment, and remains under a filing regime. Enjoying political rights, she managed to run for president, but by failing to obtain the position and the immunity it provides, she could be imprisoned again for her involvement in the Lava Jato case in Peru.

This Thursday, the 10th, a prosecutor in the case requested the preventive imprisonment of Fujimori, alleging that he had violated terms of his appearance regime.


The political and institutional complexity of Peru is a loop, where corruption and the judicialization of politics have escalated to extremely serious levels, generating instability and misgovernment.

CASTILLO'S THIRD ONLINE VICTORY
Pedro Castillo, who has kept his militancy mobilized in Lima, has called his followers to calm down, but assuming a leadership position in the face of the risks that the Peruvian institutionality joins in the usual practices of pressure and lobbying in juries and judicial entities, as is usual in the Fujimori clan, defined by many factors of public opinion as the "Jakuza" (Japanese mafia) in the politics of that country.

After triumphing in the first round and now being a virtual winner via ballot votes, Castillo is leading his first political crisis without ever having assumed office.

The concerns in various sectors of Peruvian society and the traditional political class for a response from the followers of Peru Libre lie in the serious possibility that a staggered fraud from the Peruvian institutions will translate into an outbreak, if the issued result is taken away. by ONPE.

In this plot, Pedro Castillo's party, Peru Libre, maneuvers before the JNE to proceed with the definitive proclamation of the elected president, employing lawyers in a massive way and contesting the minutes before the JNE.

The vast majority of the motions to annul the electoral records submitted by the Fuerza Popular party (804 in total) would have entered outside the legal term stipulated in current regulations. Now with the withdrawal of the JNE, only about 175 minutes would be susceptible to be reviewed and these could not reverse the result.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 15, 2021 1:44 pm

U.S. Interference Threatens Latin American Elections
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 14, 2021

Stella Calloni
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In its plan to colonially control Latin America, the United States openly intervenes in the elections of the region through the Organization of American States (OAS) whose Secretary General Luis Almagro, who was at the head of the coup in Bolivia against President Evo Morales manipulating the results of the elections of October 2019, also acted in the elections of Ecuador, as he did in Peru and Mexico.

The whole range of covert intelligence agencies, Foundations and NGOs, that the US administrations have planted in our region, are in charge of the tasks of infiltration of various sectors, the receipt and distribution of money for the co-optation and purchase of politicians of center and right -including some wrongly called leftists- building alliances, under the advice of USAID (Agency for International Development) or the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which, among other missions, works to prevent the emergence of popular governments that are not willing to accept the colonial submission of the empire and to destabilize countries through the political management of these coalitions.

In addition, in some countries with strong indigenous communities, they infiltrate or try to do so, as they did in Bolivia or Ecuador, trying to create their own indigenous candidates, to divide and gain followers.

In all the coups of various characteristics that have taken place in Latin America so far this century, both entities have played a key role, as demonstrated after the coup of April 2002 in Venezuela, which lasted little more than 48 hours, defeated by the people in the streets and the nascent patriotic armed forces. Investigations have documented where the millions of dollars from the U.S. went.

In Bolivia, it was also demonstrated in the 2008 coup attempt, in both cases with documentation that revealed to which parties and movements, newspaper companies and journalists the funds that arrived via USAID or NED were directed.

We are currently witnessing US interference in the elections in Peru and Mexico, at a time when the US media revealed to which groups and foundations the money destined for the coup against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in 2018 was sent, something that was previously known by revelations of US officials, but that never appears as information in the hegemonic media.

The fact is that management of the mass media, and the infiltration of the judicial structures – and within this a number of National Electoral Councils – other institutions and the security forces and armies, are part of the scheme of the counterinsurgency war that has its headquarters in the US Southern Command and the Pentagon and is applied with different characteristics in all the countries of Our America.

The lack of follow-up of U.S. plans towards our region, weakens the political leaderships in this historical period, especially after former President Donald Trump warned in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on September 26, 2018 that “here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the intrusion of expansionist foreign powers”, recalling that “it has been the formal policy of our country since President (James) Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs”, he added.

In this way, the doctrine presented by President James Monroe in 1823 against European colonialism in our region, summarized in that unforgettable phrase “America for the Americans”, or South America for the North Americans, was revived, establishing that this vast territory from the Rio Grande to the southern tip of the continent should remain under their dominion and that no other power would be allowed to compete with them.

This warning that was also mentioned by Secretary of State John Kerry at the end of the administration of Barack Obama as the return of the Monroe Doctrine concerning the “backyard” (our great homeland), did not even elicit a reaction in our countries.

Even less so when the “axis of evil” was drawn up (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua) under blockades, threats, coup attempts and invasions, which according to Washington’s cynical argument “threaten” U.S. security.

Inadmissible at this stage of the 21st century and even less so after the Covid 19 pandemic dropped all the masks of a savage capitalism in decay. Be that as it may, in the face of what has been experienced in the region since the beginning of the 21st century, when, as a product of the great anti-neoliberal rebellion of the Latin American peoples, a series of governments emerged that converged in the creation of integration institutions, producing in principle the rescue of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), which went from being only a customs issue to a political, economic and cultural project that went beyond.

From there, progress was made towards the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and, on the other hand, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (ALBA), focused on the fight against poverty and the dramatic social exclusion in an attempt to create mechanisms to confront the asymmetries existing in the region.

From there, the way was open to create the Community of Latin American and Caribbean Nations (CELAC), a unity in diversity that was formed in Caracas, Venezuela, in November 2011.

It was too much for the imperial power and its plans to advance in a kind of global governance towards the whole world, frustrated by the emergence of powers such as China, the Russian Federation and a whole emerging movement in other countries, which put an end to unilateralism and turned the “American” dream of bringing the world to its feet 180 degrees.

It was a matter of rapidly advancing the geostrategic project of recolonizing Latin America, returning to the coup d’états in the 21st century, within its project of colonially controlling the region, by means of the strengthened counterinsurgency tactics with the revolution of the new technologies.

In reality, the imposition of the coup perpetrators through strictly monitored elections, to prevent the return of popular governments, as in the cases of Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, using various counterinsurgency strategies and tactics, provoked with the passage of time and the obvious violations of human rights and the rights of the peoples, popular uprisings in various countries of the region, of an uncontrollable magnitude.

The Secretary General of the OAS, the Uruguayan Luis Almagro, has served as a diplomatic battering ram lacking all ethics and commitment to the self-determination of peoples, always pushing the neocolonial agenda ordered by the State Department.

For the U.S. government it was urgent to return with everything, trying to put out the fires and place the electoral processes under its control, while advancing militarily and unleashing economic and media wars that are already impotent on several fronts to control the region.

Since its creation in 1948 in Bogota, Colombia, coinciding with the assassination of the popular Colombian leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, carried out by the CIA, the Organization of American States (OAS) was considered a “ministry of colonies” and played that role in different periods of the history of the continent.

Now it is no longer disguised. Its Secretary General Luis Almagro deployed as a detonator – as was seen leading the coup against the government of Bolivia in 2019 – made it evident that the government of the United States, faced with undeniable imperial decline, hastened their advance over a Latin America that they urgently “need” to control, in view of the new world scenario.

Controlling the elections led the OAS to surround itself with “electoral observers” sought among the right-wing parties and alliances, which throughout the continent today depend on the money and advice of Foundations such as the NED.

The NED was created during the ultra-conservative government of Ronald Reagan in 1983, as a cover for the CIA and other intelligence agencies and to prevent money and orders coming directly from embassies and intelligence agents, which were exposed with the debate in the US Congress in 1975 for the involvement of the “agency” in the brutal coup against President Salvador Allende in Chile.

Since the partisan alliance created in Nicaragua after a terrorist war against the Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN) that liberated that country on July 19, 1979, initiating a revolutionary process, Washington was dedicated to form similar coalitions such as the one formed in Panama by the Cruzada Civilista, which then President George Bush Sr. used to destabilize the government and invade that small Central American country on December 20, 1989.

They slaughtered thousands of people and destroyed a country of a little more than two million inhabitants. It is worth mentioning that the “invaders” launched their planes from the Southern Command that divided Panama into two parts and whose role in the region was understood by Latin Americans in the torture chambers of our countries subjected to brutal dictatorships in the 70s and 80s and in the crimes against humanity, including forced disappearances.

All these episodes seem very distant, but it is impossible to ignore them because each of these elements was used for their recolonizing project of our region in this 21st century. Today we are living under a counterinsurgency war that has characteristics defined by the Pentagon according to the reality of our countries, now under severe crisis and chaos due to the Covid 19 pandemic with consequences that we must analyze exhaustively if we are to anticipate the events and not find ourselves politically defenseless.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/06/ ... elections/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 19, 2021 1:35 pm

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Astounding Victory in Peru of Socialist Candidate for President
June 18, 2021
By W.T. Whitney Jr. – Jun 13, 2021

In voting on June 6, Pedro Castillo, candidate of the Peru Libre (Free Peru) political party, defeated three-time presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori. Five days later, with all votes counted, Castillo claimed a victory margin of 69,546 votes, or 50.2 % of the votes. Keiko Fujimori, who gained 49.8% of all votes, is charging fraud and demanding that 200,000 votes from rural areas be recounted.

Castillo’s narrow victory, yet to be officially validated, represents an abrupt shift from Peru’s norm of corruption, right-wing ascendancy, and political instability (such that in one week in November 2020, three presidents took office, one after the other.) Castillo’s unexpected first-round victory on April 11, with 16.1% of the votes, was unsettling enough to his competitors that almost all of them backed Keiko Fujimori in the recent voting.

In office, Castillo will face formidable obstacles: a hostile national press, a Congress that overwhelmingly opposes him, business and financial establishments in panic mode, and retired military figures threatening revolt. Additionally, Peru’s total of deaths attributed to climate change is the third highest in Latin America and its rate of deaths due to COVID-19 infection is tops in the world.

Under the auspices of dictator Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Peru turned to undiluted neoliberalism characterized by foreign profiteering from mining and oil and gas extraction and by privatization of healthcare and education. A long-established rural-urban gulf widened. Rural disadvantage, affecting Peru’s indigenous population in particular, provided the boost accounting for the victory of Pedro Castillo and his party.

The divide separates Lima, with 40% of Peru’s population, from rural districts, where Castillo scored overwhelming pluralities, some in the 80-90% range. Political attention to rural life from national centers of power, from Lima, has been sparse. Candidate Fujimori campaigned only fitfully in Peru’s countryside.

Pedro Castillo, born in 1969 of illiterate parents, has taught in a rural elementary school since 1995. In 2002, he was an unsuccessful mayoral candidate. Earlier, Castillo had taken a leadership role in autonomous peasant patrols (known as “ronda campesina”) responding to thievery and political turmoil. He gained prominence in 2017 for his part in a teachers’ strike. He and his family operate a small subsistence farm.

The Peru Libre Party, established in 2012, calls for nationalization of extractive industries, a new constitution, and respect for women’s rights, including reproductive rights. It claims to be Marxist, socialist, and anti-imperialist – but not Communist. Campaigning, Castillo called for “No more poor people in a rich country.” Keiko Fujimori based her campaign on fear as she associated Castillo with terrorism, communism, and Cuban and Venezuelan socialism. She extolled her father’s success in corralling the Shining Path guerrillas.

According to the Party’s website, Peru Libre “originates from the provinces, represents Deep Peru, and is committed to people who are most in need … Peru Libre has governed in the regions and [small] cities … and firmly defends decentralization … We are internationalists … The Party condemns all types of imperialism … interventionism, and foreign dependency.”

Peru Libre calls for the departure of USAID and closure of U.S. military bases. Castillo supports solidarity alliances such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Union of South American Nations.

Vladimir Cerrón, a neurosurgeon educated in Cuba and Peru, founded Peru Libre’s predecessor party in 2012. He has served as governor of Junim Province, was briefly a presidential candidate in 2016, and continues as Peru Libre’s secretary general. Charged with corruption, Cerrón entered prison in August 2020. A judge annulled the charges against him on June 9, coincident with the election of Pedro Castillo.

Defeated presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori was imprisoned briefly in 2018 on charges of taking bribes from Brazil’s Odebretch corporation to finance her presidential run in 2011. Presently she is under investigation on charges of money-laundering and obstruction of justice. From age 19 on, she served as “first lady” for her father who, having abandoned his presidency in 2000, is serving a 25-year presidential term on charges of corruption and human rights abuses.

The Peru Libre Party adopted the thinking of José Carlos Mariátegui, founder in 1928 of Peru’s Communist Party. Mariátegui endeavored to adapt Marxist thought to the rural and indigenous realities of Latin America. As explained by Gilberto Calil, whose report appears on rebelion.org, Mariátegui held that Peru’s elite, concentrated in Lima, despised and oppressed indigenous peoples. The divide was such, according to Mariátegui, that Peru lacked a “national project” and a bourgeois revolution. Only indigenous peoples based on the land were potentially ready to advance social and democratic demands.

Mariátegui insisted that any socialist revolution in Peru and Latin America would have rural and indigenous origins. Accordingly, Calil regards Peru Libre’s program as “coherent … in centering on concrete demands of Peru’s rural population: agrarian reform, social rights, education and healthcare.”



Featured image: Pedro Castillo

https://orinocotribune.com/astounding-v ... president/

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Jeanine Añez’s Rule was Catastrophic for Women Workers
June 18, 2021 Camila Escalante Bolivia, Bolivia Coup, Jeanine Anez, women
By Camila Escalante – Jun 14, 2021

The gender gap widened and women workers were hit significantly harder than men during the year long coup administration of Jeanine Añez.

During 2020, unemployment rose sharply for both men and women, but increased faster for women and took far longer to fall back, while underemployment saw an even more dramatic rise, affecting women to a much higher degree than men.

A new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) looks at the economy of Bolivia during the year in which it was ruled by then Senator Añez following the November 2019 United States-backed military coup. CEPR’s findings show that the regime instituted regressive economic policies and mishandled the response to Covid-19 and related recession “in ways that indicated it was undertaking an economic policy agenda, along with its political agenda, that was very different from the prior government.”

From the outset, Añez and spokespersons of the regime explained to the country that her rule would be temporary, calling it a gobierno transitorio, while referring to Añez as the presidente interina and other such combinations to indicate that the coup administration was acting as a provisional or interimgovernment until new elections could be held, despite that President Evo Morales triumphed in a clear first round victory in the October general election.

As we (Radio Kawsachun Coca/Kawsachun News) have reported since the start of the coup, the leaders of coup had always intended to massively overhaul the MAS government’s socialist economic policies, gut the Bolivian state, privatize national industry, sell off state resources and impose a neoliberal model by force. The regime’s immediate attack on Bolivia’s state companies and industries, a central feature of Bolivia’s socialist economic model under the MAS, was not included in CEPR’s report and will be important to analyze.

The findings in CEPR’s analysis, published seven months after Bolivia’s democracy was restored, conform with what the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) and its social movements, unions and elected leaders had told us all along: After seizing power by through violence, the illegitimate de facto administration moved to hastily force a starkly different set of economic policies than those which had been implemented by the government of Evo Morales.

As Evo has many times reiterated, the coup dictatorship not only sought to obliterate the undeniably successful model of the previous 14 years in order to install the neoliberal model: Coup actors came together to plunder the Bolivian state for their own personal gain.

CEPR’s report shows that damage to the Bolivian economy can be seen as early as the fourth quarter of 2019 when Añez took power, months before Covid-19 appeared in South America.

“In the fourth quarter of 2019 (when the coup occurred), public sector expenditure fell sharply, shrinking by 7 percent of quarterly GDP from the prior period. Although some of this drop was recovered in the first quarter of 2020 (3 percentage points), the cuts damaged the economy in advance of the pandemic and recession. The de facto government also failed to increase the nominal value of the minimum wage for the first time since 2006, and sharply reduced public sector wages. These were more indications of its goals of changing the policies of the prior, elected government.”

The report’s Labor Market Developments section was only able to account for employment, unemployment and underemployment figures from Bolivia’s urban areas, which is noted as 70% of the population, since figures for rural areas were unavailable after March 2020.

Bolivian workers lived through extremely difficult times, experiencing hunger and other hardship as a result of the national lockdown which left the country’s informal employment sector workers completely without income. Unemployment and underemployment peaked for both men and women workers in July, however women workers saw no improvement in August as men returned to work, despite the lifting of the national lockdown in June.

“As with unemployment, women were hit significantly harder than men in the labor market during this downturn. The underemployment rate rose around 10 percentage points over 2020 for women, and 7 percentage points for men. Women who are employed are more likely to be underemployed than men, and the gap between the genders has widened.”

Meanwhile, salaries fell for both the public and private sectors over 2020, beginning pre-Covid, and for the first time in 14 years, there was no annual increase to the minimum wage.



Featured image: File Photo

(Kawsachun News)

https://orinocotribune.com/jeanine-anez ... n-workers/

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Bolivians Demand Justice for Crimes Committed by Jeanine Áñez’s Coup Regime
March 26, 2021

With massive marches across the country, people in Bolivia have expressed their support for the progressive government of President Luis Arce that has arrested coup regime officials, taking an important step in the struggle for justice

On March 22, thousands of Bolivian citizens and members of various social movements and trade unions took to the streets of the nine capitals of the country’s nine departments. The citizens held massive marches to demand justice for the Sacaba and Senkata massacres and numerous other human rights violations committed by the coup-installed regime under the rule of de-facto president Jeanine Áñez. They demanded that all those responsible for the crimes perpetrated after the coup d’état of November 2019 against the democratically elected president Evo Morales be punished.

Dancing and singing, waving national and Indigenous Wiphala flags, the demonstrators expressed their support for the progressive government of President Luis Arce. They rejected the accusations of the country‘s right-wing forces and affirmed that Áñez and her former ministers’ arrests are part of justice and not “acts of political persecution or revenge.”

Áñez and two of her former ministers: Álvaro Coimbra, the former justice minister, and Rodrigo Guzmán, the former energy minister, were arrested on March 13 for their involvement in the coup. On March 14, a criminal investigating judge ordered four months of preventive detention for them, considering that there was a high risk of their escape, and that they could influence important witnesses if they remain free. On March 20, the Second Criminal Chamber of the Departmental Court of La Paz ruled to extend the preventive detention for them from four to six months. They have been charged with terrorism, sedition and conspiracy crimes, which left 36 people dead and 804 injured, while thousands were illegally detained and hundreds were harassed, kidnapped, tortured and persecuted.

On March 15, two other former government officials were arrested: General Pastor Mendieta, former chief of the armed forces, for his participation in the 2019 coup and Major Freddy Vargas, former police chief, for wrongly granting promotions to officers supporting Añez’s regime.

Since March 16, the country has been witnessing demonstrations for and against the arrests of coup regime officials. Bolivia’s right-wing organizations have been holding rallies against the arrests in the Santa Cruz department and few other cities, while the Indigenous, peasant and women’s organizations have been marching across the country in defense of democracy and justice for victims of the coup regime.

Yesterday’s nationwide mobilization was called for by the Pact of Unity, a national alliance of grassroots organizations in Bolivia, on March 19. Trade unions such as the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), the Sindical de Comunidades Interculturales de Bolivia, the Confederation of Indigenous Peasant Women of Bolivia ‘Bartolina Sisa’, the National Council of Ayllus and Markas del Qullasuyu, Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba and the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia’s trade union center, supported and joined the call.

The leaders of the organizations condemned the right-wing protests and their rejection of the investigations carried out by the Prosecutor’s office and denounced them as attempts to destabilize the current government of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS).

Eber Rojas, the executive national secretary of the CUTCB, questioned the opposition for rejecting judicial proceedings against former authorities. “They are inciting (conflict) from their homes, why don’t they talk to Bolivian society, Bolivian social organizations? We demand justice and peace in Bolivia,” Rojas told the Agencia Bolivia de Información (ABI).

Likewise, Flora Aguilar, the executive secretary of the Peasant Women Confederation Bartolina Sisa, stressed that the cases should not go unpunished and that investigations must continue. “So many brothers have been lost to restore democracy, for them we ask for justice. Justice for those comrades who were battered in Sacaba, Cochabamba, here in Senkata so many died,” said Aguilar.

Similarly, several international leaders and organizations rejected the interference in the internal affairs of Bolivia by the secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro. Almagro, who has been widely criticized for his participation in the 2019 coup, questioned the judicial process against Áñez and expressed “concern about the abuse of judicial mechanisms that once again have become repressive instruments of the ruling party.”

The Puebla Group, a political and academic forum made up of progressive presidents, former presidents, political and social leaders from around the world, declared that Almagro’s statements “flagrantly ignore the independence of powers in that country” and that the OAS “presumes, without any basis, that it is a persecution campaign directed by the government whom it accuses of using “repressive instruments”.” The group declared that they do not recognize “the moral authority of Secretary Luis Almagro, after the role played by the Observation Mission under his charge in the 2019 elections, after which the coup against the government of Evo Morales took place.”

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), a platform for social, political and economic integration of Latin American and Caribbean nations, also rejected Almagro’s interference and meddling. The ALBA-TCP denounced “these actions constitute a very serious violation of the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations” and that “such actions only promote confrontation and destabilization scenarios of the democratic processes that the Bolivian people freely decided to undertake. A clear example of this is the role of the OAS in the coup d’état, during and after the 2019 Bolivian electoral process.”



Featured image: On March 22, thousands of Bolivians took to the streets across the country to demand justice for the massacres and other human rights violations committed by the coup-installed regime led by de-facto president Jeanine Áñez. Photo: Bolivia TV

(Peoples Dispatch)

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Jun 20, 2021 2:11 pm

Peru: President Sagasti Rejects Coup Call by Retired Officers

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Supporters of Pedro Castillo demonstrate in Lima, Peru, Jun. 19, 2021. | Photo: EFE

Published 19 June 2021

They send a letter to the heads of the Armed Forces asking them not to acknowledge the triumph of leftist Pedro Castillo in the June 6 Presidential Election.


On Friday, Peru's Interim President Francisco Sagasti called it "unacceptable" that a group of retired military officers was trying to instigate a coup to dismiss the result of the June 6 presidential elections.

Sagasti's statements were supported by Prime Minister Violeta Bermudez and Defense Minister Nuria Esparch, who strongly rejected the attempt to undermine the Peruvian Constitution.

"A coup at this moment in the region is unsustainable. If there are people who believe that they can stir up our Armed Forces, they are wrong," Esparch said.

Arguing an alleged "systematic electoral fraud", the retired officers sent a letter to the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and the general commanders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.


The right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori keeps pushing forward accusations of fraud based on alleged irregularities in 200.000 votes, which are currently under review by the National Board of Elections (JNE).

After all these events, Castillo supporters have flooded Peru's streets with the slogan "Defend democracy and the country, say no to the Coup." Meanwhile, Fujimori voters have also gathered in some cities, thus deepening the political crisis in this Andean nation.

As of Friday, Castillo virtually won the elections by the narrow difference of 44.058 votes and accounts for 50,12 percent of valid votes against 49,87 percent for Fujimori.

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

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Peru at the Brink of Civil War? The Uprising of the Dispossessed
June 19, 2021
By Peter Koenig – Jun 17, 2021

On July 28, 2021, Peru, with her 33 million inhabitants, celebrates 200 years of Independence. The People of Peru may have chosen this Bicentennial celebration, to bring about a drastic change to their foreign and national oligarchy-run country. In a neck-on-neck national election run-off on 6 June 2021, the socialist Pedro Castillo, a humble primary school professor from rural Cajamarca, a Northern Peruvian Province, rich in mining resources, but also in agricultural land, seems to be winning by a razor thin margin of less than 100,000 votes against the oligarch-supported Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, currently in prison – or rather house arrest for “ill-health” – for corruption and crimes against humanity during his presidency 1990-2000.

Election results have been considered as fair by the pro-US, pro-capitalist Organization of American States (OAS). The same organization that supported the post-election US-instigated coup against Evo Morales in November 2019. Either they have learned a lesson of ethics, or there were too many international observers watching over OAS’s election observations. Or, as a third option, Washington may have yet a different agenda for this part of their “backyard”.

Keiko Fujimori, before becoming a Presidential candidate, she was under preventive prison arrest, while under investigation into corruption and human rights abuse. She is currently collecting millions from her ruling-class elite supporters and spending her own ill-begotten money to turn the election result around. For Keiko becoming President is not only a question of power, it is also a question of freedom under government immunity, or back to prison, at least until the investigation into her alleged crimes is completed.

All is possible in a country where money buys everything, and may convert clearly and visibly intended cast votes either as invalid or as a vote for the opponent. This is Peru, but to be sure, election fraud happens even in the most sophisticated countries, including in Peru’s North American neighbor, who pretends to run the world.

However, should Keiko Fujimori and her capitalist supporters ‘coerce´ a turn-around of the election results, the country risks a civil war. This is the moment for the vast majority of Peruvians that they have been waiting for – getting their just piece of the very rich pie that is Peru. After two hundred years of an oligarchy-ruled nation, this mostly silent majority truly deserves a break.

Why is Peru so different from Bolivia, Ecuador and even Colombia in how they treat their natives, the so-called indigenous people, the original landowners of their country? The Kingdom of Spain officially created in 1521 (500 years ago) the Kingdom of “New Spain” in what today is Peru. Ever since Peru became the first Spanish Viceroyalty in South America, the white descendants of Spain and other immigrants from the “Old Continent”, had the audacity to discriminate the natives.

Peru, a multi-ethnicities nation¸ is also divided economically and culturally into three distinct geographic areas: The Coastal Region, mostly desertic, but very fertile when irrigated, where 70% of Peru’s agricultural produce is grown; the Highlands of the Andes, the Sierra, where people survive on patch-work agriculture; and the Amazon area that covers about 70% of Peru’s landmass, with only about 5% of the country’s population. They live close to Mother Earth, with strong ties to traditional shamanism.

Education, basic infrastructure but foremost exploitation of Peru’s enormously rich natural resources is all decided by a small elite in Lima, a city of 11 million, of which two thirds live at the edge of poverty or below. The lack of appropriately decentralized education has left the indigenous people at a decisive disadvantage.

The ethnic composition of Peru consists of Amerindians (or purely indigenous people), 45%; mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white), 37%; white 15%; three percent are black, Japanese, Chinese and other

A white immigrant minority rules over 85% of mostly natives and mixed groups. It is high time that Peru gets an indigenous president, paying attention to the real needs and interests of the Peruvian majority. After more than 500 years of a lopsided rule, the 85% are demanding a government of more equilibrium. Pedro Castillo may be their man.

Extreme social injustice and differences between the majority peasant society and a small ruling elite, prompted the birth of a revolutionary movement in 1980, led by Abimael Guzmán, a former professor of philosophy, strongly influenced by Marxism and Maoism. He developed an armed struggle, what became to be known as the “Shining Path” – Spanish, “Sendero Luminoso” – for the empowerment of the disadvantaged indigenous people. Severe acts of terrorism throughout the 1980’s were also detrimental for the peasant population.

The Shining Path emerged just after the country had its first free elections after a 12-year military dictatorship, first by Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (1968 – 1975), pursuing what the Peruvians called a Maoist socialism. Velasco organized a disastrous, totally unprepared land reform, nationalized most foreign investments, resulting in massive unemployment and perpetuating poverty. When in the mid-1970s Velasco became ill, he appointed in August 1975 his Prime Minister, Francisco Morales Bermúdez, as his successor. Bermúdez began the second phase of the Peruvian armed Revolution, promising a transit to a civilian government.

Bermudez soon became an extreme right-wing military dictator, pursuing a policy of leftist cleansing. Though, he kept his promise, leading Peru to democratic elections in 1980, when Fernando Belaúnde Terry was elected, the very Belaúnde, who was deposed as president in the 1968 Velasco military coup.

At the same time, a clear pattern of US-influenced brutal right-wing military dictatorships formed throughout Latin America, with General Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina (1976-1981); General Augusto Pinochet in Chile (1973 to 1990); Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay (1954 – 1989); General Juan María Bordaberry of Uruguay (1973 – 1985); the Brazilian military dictatorship of various successive military leaders (1964 – 1985). The Bolivian history of successive military dictatorships (1964 – 1982), also fit the pattern of the epoch.

The Shining Path emerged as a resistance to the continent-wide US-influenced military dictatorships. It loosely followed the objectives of the Uruguayan Tupamaro guerillas, named for Túpac Amaru II, the leader of an 18th-century revolt against Spanish rule in Peru.

The Shining Path was open and transparent about its willingness to inflict death and the most extreme forms of cruelty as tools to achieve its goal, the total annihilation of existing political structures. Its leader Guzman was caught in 1992 and convicted to life imprisonment.

In 1990, Alberto Fujimori, a little-known Rector of the Agrarian State University of Lima, with the support of Washington, became President, defeating Nobel Prize-winner adversary Mario Vargas Llosa, in a landslide victory. Fujimori followed the neoliberal mandates of the IMF and the World Bank. His other main objective was to finish with the Shining Path.

Other than stopping terrorism for humanitarian reasons, there were a myriad of commercial and economic interests at stake. The entire mining industry was largely in control of foreign corporations. As soon as elected, Fujimori was “given” a top CIA „advisor“, Vladimiro Lenin Ilich Montesinos. The CIA agent basically decided on all affairs of international, especially US interests.

In 1992 Fujimori instigated an auto-coup, with Washington’s tacit consent, dissolving Parliament and becoming the sole ruler. He also changed the Constitution allowing him to be “reelected” for another 5 years, until 2000, when he fled to his “native” Japan. Many analysts say he was actually born in Japan and was lying having been born in Peru, so he could ascend to the presidency. Just for the record, his registered birthday 28 July – Peru’s Independent Day – is suspicious.

In 2005, when visiting Chile, Fujimori was arrested and eventually extradited to Peru, where he was convicted in 2009 to 25 years in prison for corruption, human right abuses and for his role in torturing and killing indigenous people in the course of battling the Senderos Lumiosos.

During the two decades of Shining Path, some 69,000 people, mostly Peruvian peasants, died or disappeared. According to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC), at least as many people died at the hands of the Fujimori’s military, as were killed by the Shining Path. See this https://www.ictj.org/sites/default/file ... llakuy-en/

To this day Fujimori is in prison, rather under house arrest for alleged ill-health – while his daughter Keiko Fujimori was running Congress with a majority of her Party Fuerza Popular. During the past three decades Fujimorismo and the APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance – a left-turned-right party) reigned over Peru, selling off the country’s riches to international corporatism, mainly in the US – and for the benefit of Peruvian oligarchs.

Peru has a wealth of mineral resources. Copper, iron, lead, zinc, bismuth, phosphates, and manganese exist in great quantities of high-yield ores. Gold and silver are found extensively, as are other rare metals, and petroleum fields are located along the far north coast and the northeastern part of Amazonia.

Of Peru’s GDP of US$ 270 billion (World Bank – 2019) a great proportion is generated by foreign majority holding extractive, manufacturing and ever-increasingly also agricultural industries, leaving little in the country which is why poverty has hardly changed over the last 30 years. In the first decade of 2000 Peru had a phenomenal GDP growth, between 5% and 7% annually, but two thirds went to 20% of the population. The rest was trickling down to the other 80%.

Poverty with covid covers at least two thirds of the population, with up to 50% under extreme poverty. Exact figures are not available. Those listed by the World Bank indicating a 27% poverty rate are simply fake. The informal sector in Peru, at least 70%, keeps Peru somewhat going, but it also plunged masses of people into poverty.

Candidate Castillo would face many challenges. He is aligned with a seasoned and well-experienced, nationally respected politician, socialist Veronica Mendoza from Cusco. She also identified the current economic advisor for Mr. Castillo, Pedro Francke, who has a center-left reputation.

Mr. Francke served as director of the Cooperation Fund for Social Development (FONCODES), a government-controlled social services and small investments institution, promoting small and medium size enterprises and creating jobs. He also served for the Peruvian Central Bank and worked as an economist at the World Bank.
In a political statement, Francke separated a potential Castillo presidency from what he called Chavez socialism, with the intent to tranquilize a worried, right-wing media indoctrinated populace. The right-wing El Comercio and affiliated media control 90% of Peruvian news.

Mr. Francke said that a Castillo Government would not be “interventionist”, abstaining from nationalization and expropriation, thus maintaining a market economy. They may, however, renegotiate corporate profit-sharing. Having experienced the Velasco Government in the 1970s, a socialist government is one of the major worries of Peruvians, who lived through the Velasco years.

Pedro Francke repeated Castillo’s campaign promise of encouraging local over foreign investments. This would be among the healthiest economic moves for Peru – towards fiscal autonomy and monetary sovereignty.

Ten days after the ballot, the vote recounts and quarrels over voter fraud is growing, creating a chaotic ambiance, one that becomes increasingly volatile. We can just hope that the Peruvian Electoral Court applies fair rules and is able to avoid civil unrest.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 24, 2021 1:36 pm

POST-ELECTORAL CRISIS, COUP AND OTHER SCENARIOS IN PERU
23 Jun 2021 , 9:37 am .

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The JNE is today the point of greatest stagnation of the electoral result in Peru (Photo: El Comercio)

More than two weeks after the second round of the presidential elections in Peru, although the figures continue to give Pedro Castillo of the Peru Libre party the winner, he has not been proclaimed president. The reason? Keiko Fujimori has known how to maneuver in favor of delaying the weak Peruvian institutions.

In summary of the last events, the National Electoral Jury (JNE) of Peru declared "unfounded" the claims for nullity of the acts that Keiko Fujimori's party, Popular Force, introduced, with which it managed to exceed the capacities of the entity in use and abuse of their political rights.

The stumbling block in the JNE now lies in the processing or not of requests for annulment that Fujimori presented in an extemporaneous manner to the foreseen period and, additionally, the JNE will proceed from this Wednesday, June 23, to process the appeals to the opinions of the JNE itself that it introduced. Popular Force.

Regarding the election, the bureaucratic collapse has subjected Castillo's proclamation to an institutional loop in which the electoral result has been compromised, and the political crisis is deepening in a multidirectional way and there are many factors participating in it. fray.

COUP

Recently, the interim president Francisco Sagasti has denounced the existence of a letter, which is now in the hands of the Peruvian Prosecutor's Office, where alleged ex-military officers instigated the officers in office not to allow Castillo's promotion to the presidency, declaring that his choice was "fraudulent". Then, according to Sagasti, in the document they called for a coup against the country's institutions.

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President Sagasti has called to reject any attempt to ignore Peruvian institutions (Photo: La República)

This Tuesday, June 22, the Peruvian Ombudsman's Office declared in a statement that this instance has accompanied the entire electoral process in all its sections and affirmed that there is no will, neither in the National Organ of Electoral Processes (ONPE) nor in the JNE, to alter the will of the votes.

At the same time, the Ombudsman's Office established firm opposition to any act of ignorance of the Peruvian institutions or coup, declaring said acts contrary to the National Constitution.

These pronouncements have been responses to requests from actors on the Peruvian right to annul the presidential elections, even though the constitutional requirement of 70% white or null votes has not been met, the only condition that enables the possibility of annulment.

Several of these actors have also made calls to ignore the current government and produce an institutional breakdown through a seizure of power.

The whole picture is clearly singular and reflects a moment of grave vulnerability in the Andean country's institutions, which, it is evident, has been the result of a crisis manufactured by the post-election boycott that Keiko Fujimori has generated by pushing the election towards a judicial loop .

Fujimori has also proposed taking the election to other judicial instances, although the Constitution of Peru does not establish these mechanisms since the JNE is the only delegate for the resolution of their claims. This intention should be understood as a possibility that is clearly congruent with the co-optation and lobbying capabilities that the Fujimori family has shown in front of the judicial institutions of their country in the last 30 years.

The obvious inconsistencies between these arguments and the Peruvian laws themselves continue to be present in the post-electoral crisis, precisely because of the transversal weaknesses of the Peruvian institutionality. In other words, a political crisis has been manufactured thanks to the opportunities that have been generated from the Peruvian institutions themselves and their weak electoral protocols, which have resulted in the difficult cost of postponing Castillo's proclamation and that, therefore, the institutions of the country are singled out and besieged from within.

Lima has been a center of concentrations, both in favor of Castillo and Fujimori. The followers of Castillo have considered that the delay in his proclamation consists of the development of an "electoral coup" over low heat. While in Fujimorismo the complaints of "fraud" paradoxically point to the existence of a "coup" for "theft" of the election.

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"El Profe" Pedro Castillo has kept his militancy mobilized and sustaining his triumphal epic (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

The Peruvian capital has been the center of significant tensions and uncertainties, and now the election is mired in the legal bureaucracy. In the case of Peru, which is also the world capital of Lawfare , the picture is much more than dangerous.

We must add that one thing is what happens in the offices of the JNE and another in the public perception. 66% of Peruvians consider that Pedro Castillo is the winner of the second round of the presidential elections, according to the latest survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), published in La República .

The study also asked what citizens think about the Popular Force complaints after the second round of elections. 53% pointed out that Fujimori is not right and that it is a strategy to ignore the results and, in addition, the investigation revealed that 69% of Peruvians disapprove of the behavior that Keiko Fujimori has had after the ballot, this for having qualified the election as a "fraud".

It is clear that, at this point, Fujimori is not so interested in public opinion. Fujimori emerged in Peruvian politics under the brand of her father, former dictator Alberto Fujimori, and is the most outstanding member of Peru's "Yakuza." Despite her father's plight, Keiko's long record of wielding her powers in the courtroom has given her the skills to break out of jail and she is determined to continue to elude her at any cost, including dragging the entire country to a crisis and a confrontation.

During the past week a prosecutor in the Lava Jato case requested his preventive imprisonment, stating that it was violating the conditions of his provisional release, but this was rejected by a court on Monday 21.

ALL THE STAGES ARE ON THE TABLE

In political times, procrastination occurs so that behind-the-scenes politics unfolds by extending its possibilities. In the absence of Castillo's proclamation, it is evident that the electoral loop is generating all political times for various possibilities or scenarios. Several of these possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

It is not difficult to make an exercise of assumptions or estimates, since there are so many that they must be numbered. Let's see.

1.The scenario so far most framed within the politically correct and expected is that of the proclamation of Pedro Castillo, because so far 100% of the processing of electoral records has indicated it and because the records claimed by Fujimori have been declared as "unfounded". . This implies the overcoming of the bureaucratic obstacles in the JNE and the fulfillment of all the retarding steps of the weak electoral system. Of course, a proclamation would be given after the wake of crisis and post-electoral delegitimization that has produced irreparable damage to Peruvian institutions. Castillo would assume the presidency in a country already battered and with an extremely accentuated long-standing political crisis.
2.One scenario, which is not the most likely but still has a handle, is that of a reversal of the electoral result and produce, via JNE, the appointment of Fujimori. Peru would not only be the country where the president is deposed by means of jury, it would also be the country where they are imposed by those means. That scenario would imply a social outbreak with unpredictable possibilities today.
3.There could be factors in Peruvian politics, especially in the instances of the Electoral Jury, being approached by multiple pressures and considering favoring some side of the political balance, foreseeing the future conditions of the country, either in charge of Fujimori or in charge of from Castillo. In this scenario, it must be considered that a large part of the Peruvian institutionality does not want a government of the left, nor a government of Fujimori. In other words, in the face of a clearly adverse situation for certain layers of the traditional political class, the electoral result could be negotiated.
4.A handcuffed election in the JNE is now a matter for lawyers and not statistics and counted votes. The future of Peru seems to have fallen into the dangerous hands of the Peruvian tinterillo power, anchored in the Lima law firms and its great power, divided into groups and sectors of interest. Let's remember: it is the country of Lawfare and extreme prosecution. Anything can happen.
5.It is likely that at this stage of the crisis, Fujimori's strategic objective is not to reach the presidency, but to manufacture a political crisis to buy time, negotiate his future, pressure the national institutions and promote his acquittal. His handling behind the scenes would be to aggravate the crisis or create tension, desisting. In the second probability she would not loosen this critical knot to come out empty-handed.
6.It is likely that all these delaying factors are aligned to generate a crisis, but at the same time to generate time and that due to this simultaneity another expression of the crisis will ensue: a classic coup d'état. This possibility is not at all unreasonable, considering that the incumbent president Francisco Sagasti is the one who is most alerting and rejecting such a possibility. Obviously, a coup d'etat suits those in the political class who are opponents of Fujimori, but above all those who do not want Castillo to assume office.
7.Behind the scenes, various factors are likely trying to bend Castillo's government before he takes office. This, by creating pressure to submit him to early negotiations in exchange for granting him the victory that he already has through votes, but which is repressed in the JNE. This possibility occurs, given that Castillo plans to convene a Constituent Assembly, wants to change the Constitution and put an end to corruption in the traditional political class. Obviously, if Castillo commits to his campaign offer, he could send a good part of the power players in Peru to the pit, so we must not doubt that they want to tie him up.

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Keiko Fujimori, who has already been prosecuted by the Peruvian justice, could be generating a crisis to negotiate his future (Photo: Reuters)

END POINT

The current critical knot of Peru's politics will undoubtedly have an outcome very soon, but this does not mean that the systemic and cross-cutting crisis in the Andean nation will be overcome. It could be the opposite, even in the healthiest of scenarios, which would be Castillo's final promotion.

The Peruvian institutional loop that has worsened since 2018 with three successive presidential dismissals will now evolve according to the new probabilities.

Pedro Castillo is today the only solid political figure in Peru. As the polls we refer to have outlined, his political presence continues to consolidate, despite the post-election disaster, gaining ground as an elected man, now beyond the sectors that voted for him.

But his eventual inauguration will not be enough to overcome the entire deteriorated national political mess, since intersecting interests and overlapping powers will be part of the adverse situation with which he will deal, if so determined by the JNE. And it is that the latter is the most tragic, because it seems that his rise will not be by the clear and straightforward way of the votes, but by arbitration and late decisions of the electoral jury. His government would be born in a crisis manufactured in an express way because what is in a long crisis is the country.

If Castillo corresponds to the political offer he has made to the Peruvians, much could change amid the rattle and fury unleashed. But that will be left for other reflections, we emphasize, if so determined by the JNE.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Jun 27, 2021 4:51 pm

The Imminent Coup in Peru
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 26, 2021

Kawsachun News
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Legal maneuvers and delays, presented by the far-right, are pushing Peru closer to a coup with each passing day. It’s been 20 days since Peru’s June 6th election, and the authorities have not yet proclaimed the winner, Pedro Castillo.

According to the law, a new President must be proclaimed by July 28th, and if this state of limbo continues until then, the electoral process will have to be thrown out and a coup will have been consolidated.

Leftist candidate Pedro Castillo won the presidential election in Peru, receiving 50.125% of the vote, the equivalent of 44,000 votes more than far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori. Fujimori presented a number of motions to annul votes in provinces that delivered landslide victories for Castillo, claiming the existence of ‘irregularities’. The motions have been analyzed and thrown out by the electoral authorities. Nevertheless, no winner has been officially declared President-elect.

After rejecting Fujimori’s motions, Peru’s national electoral court, the JNE, was suddenly thrown into chaos on Wednesday (June 23rd) when a member of the court and known Fujimori supporter, Luis Arce Cordova, resigned. The resignation meant that the court no longer had a quorum and thus could not declare Castillo’s victory

If Castillo is not proclaimed President by July 28th, due to bad faith delays and maneuvers of this nature, then the law stipulates that Congress must convene and elect a President. Right-wing forces currently have a majority in the legislature and would be able to elect one of their own and call for new elections, thereby annulling Pedro Castillo’s victory.

At a street level, retired military officers have been holding rallies in Lima to demand a coup to prevent Pedro Castillo from being sworn in. This follows numerous letters asking for the same. Many of the Congressional lawmakers who would be in charge of electing a President after the 28th were present at those marches.

Peru’s electoral authorities were then hit by another bombshell from Fujimori supporters. On Thursday, June 24th, leaked audios from Vladimiro Montesinos, the jailed right-hand man of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, revealed significant attempts by him to meddle in the National Electoral Court (JNE) and possible collusion with the United States embassy.

The audio that was leaked to the media shows Montesinos giving instructions to Keiko Fujimori staffers, informing them that his friend has a relationship with three members of the JNE and that this should be exploited to help Fujimori. Montesino’s closing remark on the audio states:

“There is no other way, there is no other way because it’s been a long time now… on the issue of the U.S. embassy … they have had to handle this differently. You can still do the embassy thing, as I am explaining to you … but make it clear to the father [Alberto], or the girl [Keiko], understand, I don’t know who you are talking to… I don’t want to be contaminated … we are trying to help in a common goal. What do I get from this? Nothing. I’m not interested and I’m never going to ask them for anything either, I’m just trying to help because otherwise they’re screwed, the girl will end up in prison … that’s the situation, right?”

Montesinos is currently in jail for corruption and human rights abuses during the Fujimori dictatorship and is being held at a naval base. The Peruvian Navy has confirmed that Montesinos did make phone calls on the date in question, to a number registered to his wife, but that they are now opening an investigation into whether he was, in fact, speaking with the unauthorized persons that appear in the audio.

As the forces behind Keiko Fujimori apply pressure upon the electoral authorities, Pedro Castillo supporters are also mobilizing on the streets of Lima and say that they will not leave until Castillo has been duly sworn in as President.

Vice President-elect Dina Boluarte has denounced the ongoing coup attempt by Fujimori, declaring at a press conference on Friday, “There is an organized criminal gang that is working to generate a coup d’etat, pretending that there was a fraud, which has been totally dismissed”

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 30, 2021 1:07 pm

Why Hasn’t Pedro Castillo Been Declared the Winner of Peru’s Presidential Elections Yet?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 29, 2021
Tanya Wadhwa

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Pedro Castillo greets supporters in the city of Cusco. Photo: Pedro Castillo/ Twitter

Pedro Castillo of the left-wing Free Peru party won the second round of presidential elections but his opponent has refused to concede and the National Jury of Elections (JNE) has not yet proclaimed him as winner.

Pedro Castillo of the left-wing Free Peru party won the second round of presidential elections held in Peru on June 6. According to the official vote count by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) that concluded on June 15, with 100% of the votes counted, Castillo secured 50.125% of the votes, while his opponent Keiko Fujimori of the far-right Popular Force party obtained 49.875% of the votes. The left candidate received 44,058 more votes than the capitalist candidate. However, the National Jury of Elections (JNE) has not yet proclaimed Castillo as winner.

For the past two weeks, the JNE has been resolving the numerous appeals for annulment of votes raised by Fujimori in Indigenous regions, where Castillo won with huge margins of votes, alleging irregularities and fraud. The daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori has not only refused to concede defeat and has waged a legal war against Castillo, but has also created a climate of conflict and tension in the country. Her supporters have been demonstrating in the streets calling on the national security forces to intervene. Various conservative politicians and former military chiefs allied to Fujimorismo have also called on armed forces to refuse recognizing Castillo’s victory.

On June 26, the Prosecutor’s Office initiated an investigation against at least 23 retired army generals, 22 retired navy vice admirals and 18 retired air force lieutenant generals, who signed a letter addressed to the commanders of the Armed Forces not to respect the results of the ongoing electoral process and act against the Constitution.

The attempts to derail the elections are not limited to the allegations of electoral fraud and the calls for coup d’état. The members of the electoral authorities have also been attacked and threatened.

On June 27, the Prosecutor’s Office in Lima asked the police to patrol around the house of the JNE’s president, Jorge Salas Arenas, in the light of the threats and harassment that he has been suffering from supporters of Keiko Fujimori. The Prosecutor’s Office reported that the decision was taken “to prevent the possible commission of crimes against freedom, public tranquility, public safety, property, among others”, due to the protests and sit-ins that have been organized in front of Salas’ house by the supporters of Popular Force, and due to the screenshot of a WhatsApp message, circulating on social media, in which a person threatens to kidnap Salas.

Likewise, on June 27, the president of the ONPE, Piero Corvetto, denounced on his twitter account that he was physically and verbally attacked by a man in the Regatas Club in Lima. After this complaint, the Peruvian Public Ministry opened an investigation into the facts and the Prosecutor’s Office carried out actions at the club’s premises to identify the aggressor.

Threats and attacks followed after Salas requested the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the audios released in connection with bribing the judges. On June 24, former legislator Fernando Olivera posted some audios and videos on social networks, in which Vladimiro Montesinos, the former head of intelligence during the Fujimori’s dictatorship, was heard coordinating the plan to bribe three of the judges of the JNE to obtain resolutions in favor of Keiko Fujimori. According to the reports by the Ministry of Defense and the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE), Montesinos called Peruvian Army Commander Pedro Rejas Tataje, Fujimori’s trusted man, at least 17 times between June 10 and 23, from the Callao Naval Base jail, where is imprisoned.

According to the recording of the call between Montesinos and Rejas on June 23, the payment of bribes to the members of the JNE was their “plan B” to help Keiko Fujimori reverse the results. Their “plan A” was to encourage a pronouncement of an alleged electoral fraud by the United States government, based on alleged evidence that would be delivered by Fujimori’s husband, Mark Vito Villanella, to the US diplomatic minister.

Additionally, on June 23, after the JNE rejected ten appeals presented by Fujimori, one of the members of the JNE and a known supporter of Fujimori, Luis Arce Cordova, presented his resignation from the position. The resignation was meant to leave the court without a quorum and thus obstruct the proclamation of Castillo’s victory. On June 24, the JNE resolved to suspend Arce Córdova due to a conflict of interest in favor of Fujimori. On June 25, prosecutor Víctor Rodríguez Monteza was appointed as a new member of the JNE. On June 28, the JNE resumed the reviewing process after four days and dismissed ten more appeals. So far, the JNE hasn’t declared any of the reviewed appeals as founded.

Fujimori’s legal team has not presented evidence of the alleged electoral fraud, but it claims that the signatures of the polling station authorities were “substituted.” In contrast to these claims, 36 board members signed affidavits, denying that their signatures were forged. International observers have also stated that they found the elections clean.

Many political experts have condemned these maneuvers as attempts to delay the proclamation of the results, so that there is no inauguration and the parliament is forced to call for new elections. According to the law, a new president must be proclaimed by July 28. If this does not happen, the elections will be automatically annulled and the parliament will meet to elect an interim president and call for new elections. The right-wing forces have a majority in the Congress, and it is certain that they will elect one of their own, thereby invalidating Castillo’s victory and consolidating a coup against him.

Fujimori has been trying all means to steal Castillo’s victory. On June 28, she played her last card to avoid his victory. She went to the Government Palace and delivered a letter addressed to President Francisco Sagasti, requesting him to ask the Organization of American States (OAS) for an international audit of the second round. The Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, is infamous in the region for interfering in the internal affairs of the countries and promoting the US imperialist interests. He is accused of playing a key role in the coup d’etat against Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2019, alleging that an electoral fraud had happened in the general elections, when the socialist president won the presidency for a fourth time.

Progressive political and social leaders and organizations, such as the Puebla Group, have expressed their solidarity with Castillo and have called on the opposition to respect the results and the will of the Peruvian people.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 01, 2021 12:59 pm

On Vargas Llosa and Putrid Liberalism
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 30, 2021
Alvaro Garcia Linera

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“Neoliberalism is degenerating into a complex neo-fascism,” writes Alvaro Garcia Linera.

All things age: living organisms, people, and ideas. It is the tough reality of the second law of thermodynamics. But there are dignified ways to do it, staying true to the principles at which the zenith of one’s existence was reached, aware of the mistakes, and without regrets or last-minute switching of sides. But there are existences that are corrupted by choice, that degenerate by decision. They are the beings that wallow in their own rotten soul, dragging behind them the pestilences of a lost destiny.

This is the pathetic future of, what is now, the politician Vargas Llosa; not of the literary genius who entered the canon of universal literature on his own merits with “The city and the dogs” or “Conversation in the cathedral”. His current political prose is tacky, full of ideological monstrosities that tarnish the neatness of the conservative ideals that he once professed. It is as if there is a deliberate effort to debase the person who won the Nobel Prize and leave behind a decadent politician troubled by barbarous passions.

Vargas Llosa swallows his once substantial democratic convictions to support, without any decorum, the heiress of the Fujimori regime that closed the Congress of the Republic, suspended the judiciary, ordered the military assault on Peruvian media, and promoted death squads with dozens of massacres to his name. That speaks to a perverted drama in which a laid-back liberal mutates into an ardent neo-fascist.

And it is not a subject of weak temperament or ephemeral convictions that perhaps, in this case, have contributed to the elegance of his prose. In reality, Vargas Llosa is an example, an advocate, of the emotional displacement of this period.

He endorses the gross maneuvers of the defeated Keiko Fujimori who denounces electoral “fraud” and calls for the annulment of thousands of votes from indigenous communities and maintains a curious silence in the face of the manifesto of former military leaders who call on the Armed Forces to ignore the victory of Pedro Castillo. He is therefore ideologically related to Trump, who instigated his followers to violently take over the United States Congress in January 2021; or with the presidential candidate Carlos Mesa who, upon learning of his defeat in November 2019 against Evo Morales, summoned his followers to set fire to Bolivia’s electoral courts, including those that held voters ballots. These are attitudes not very different from that of Bolsonaro, who reproaches the Brazilian dictatorships (1964-1985) for only having tortured rather than killed numerous leftists; or to the indignity of Piñera, crumpling up his little national flag, to show Trump that his colors and star would fit in a corner of the American flag.

They are symptoms of the decline of political liberalism that, in its refusal to assume with dignity the dying light of its existence, prefers to exhibit the miseries of its retreat. Before, he could boast of his democratic affiliation, his cultural tolerance, and his sympathy for the poor. He could because regardless of the victorious political party, the rich had always triumphed, all the “possible worlds” were designed for them.

Now, the planet has been plunged into an uncertain destiny. Ruling elites are divided on how to get out of the economic and environmental quagmire they have caused, the poor no longer blame themselves for their poverty, the neoliberal utopia is fading, and the free market priests no longer have parishioners at their feet to dupe with future redemptions in exchange for current complacencies.

It is the time of decline for the consensus around globalization. Those from above do not have a shared perspective of where to go; those below do not trust the old course that those above used to point out for them. All live in a state of collective stupor, all live with the absence of a feasible future that triggers, among the global humiliated, outbreaks of anguish, discomfort, anger, and revolt. Occupy Wall Street, the movement of the Indignados in Spain, the “yellow vests” of France, the popular uprisings in Chile, Peru, and Colombia, the waves of Latin American progressivism, are the symptoms of a convulsive era of unleashed anxieties that is just beginning. None of the nonconformists know with certainty where to go, although they know, with the clarity of the commoner and of the street, what they can no longer bear. It is the time of a present that is failing and of a future that neither arrives nor announces its existence. The old dominant beliefs are fissured, they retreat to give way to radical disbelief first, and then to the search for some new certainty to take root. Hopes.

It is a creative chaos that erodes the old moral tolerances between those “above” and those “below”, it pushes the neoliberal consensus that used to rule society into retreat. The street and the vote, no longer the media or the governments, are now the spaces and the grammar with which the new popular mood will be written. Democracy is revitalized from below, but paradoxically because of this, it has become a dangerous environment for neoliberal ideologues who were democrats as long as the vote did not put the privatization and free-market consensus at risk. But now that the street and the vote challenge the validity of this unique destiny, democracy is presented as a hindrance and even a danger to the validity of twilight neoliberalism.

The claims of electoral fraud that are spreading throughout the Americas, and which will surely be present soon in Europe, are not only the howl of the defeated. They are the desperate slogan of the now neoliberal minorities, to systematically attack the democratic institutions and the legitimacy of voting as a way of electing rulers. The coup d’etat tends to be installed as a feasible option in the conservative political repertoire. And it does all this riding an enraged language that crushes in its gallop any respect for tolerance and pluralism. They flaunt racial supremacism against indigenous people and migrants alike. They despise the nonconformity of the people, they label them as “wild hordes”, “ignorants” “foreigners” or “terrorists”. And in a laughable anachronism, they dust off old anti-communist phraseology to cover up the violent disciplining of the poor, women, and leftists. Neoliberalism is degenerating into a complex neo-fascism.

We are facing the decomposition of political neoliberalism that, in its phase of decline and loss of hegemony, exacerbates all its violent charge and is willing to make a pact with the devil, with all the dark, racist, and anti-democratic forces, to defend an already failed project. The universalist consensus that neoliberalism boasted of in the 1990s has given rise to the feared hatred of an outlet ideology. And, as the last Vargas Llosa shows, the narration of this cultural rot is a literary mess lacking the epic of worthy defeats.

This piece originally appeared in El Diario AR. Translated by Kawsachun News.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:15 pm

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Is Peru on the Verge of a Coup?
July 4, 2021
By Alejandra García – Jul 1, 2021

One month after holding the run-off election, Peru still has no president-elect. The winning candidate, leftist Pedro Castillo, hasn’t assumed the country’s leadership yet because the Peruvian right-wing insists that widespread election fraud has taken place, although judicial authorities say otherwise.

Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) concluded the official vote count on June 15. Since then, Castillo’s rival, right-wing Keiko Fujimori, has been waging a legal battle without solid grounds to reverse the result of this electoral process, which was labeled by international organizations that observed it as “organized and democratic.”

But the daughter of dictator Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) does not accept her defeat. Keiko accuses Castillo of being a “communist and socialist,” and assures that he wants to turn Peru “into another Cuba or Venezuela.” She is using arguments so often repeated against political figures who oppose the Western hegemonic model or those who, like Castillo, come from the poorest sectors of society.

As in Peru, these adjectives were heard frequently during the elections in Ecuador, after leftist Andrés Arauz won the first round of elections over his rivals Yaku Pérez and Guillermo Lasso, the right-wing banker who eventually became president of the country. Currently, those words are being used again against one of Chile’s leading presidential pre-candidates, communist mayor Daniel Jadue.

Most of the time, these anti-communist adjectives are enough to gain the right-wing political movements and wealthy people’s support. But will they have any effect on Peru? Will Keiko really be able to change the outcome of the elections in her favor? Experts think not.

“Fujimori is making a fool of herself,” asserted political scientists Steven Levitsky and Alberto Vergara in an article published in The New York Times. ”She is following in the footsteps of former US President Donald Trump in his desperate and baseless pursuit of widespread election fraud. The only difference between them is that Trump wanted to add votes to his candidacy while she has tried to make her opponent’s votes disappear.”

Peruvian journalist Fernando Leyton reminded that Keiko has already lost three times in a run-off election. “This is the reason why internally the right-wing is breaking up with her because she has failed to gain power,” he said.

The Fuerza Popular party leader also has on her back the reputation of her 82-year-old father Alberto Fujimori, currently serving 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity, murder, bribery, kidnapping, and embezzlement. He is also under investigation for the forced sterilizations committed during his term against thousands of women, mainly indigenous, a crime that Keiko has tried to justify.

Since Fujimori began demanding a full recount of votes, supporters of elementary school teacher Castillo have been taking to the streets with signs reading, “The Fujimori regime’s victims and their families don’t forget,” and “Respect my vote.”

According to Levitsky and Vergara, Peru’s electoral authorities have found no evidence of fraud. International observers and election experts also concluded that the elections were fair.

“Fujimori has pushed for a move tantamount to an attempted electoral coup just to bring Peru’s democracy to the brink of the abyss,” they added.

Lima’s Archbishop Carlos Castillo described as “immoral” the delay in the proclamation of the new president of the Republic. “It has already been proven that there was no fraud,” he said. ”Some sectors are not interested in who the president-elect is but only seek to turn the Peruvian democratic system upside down, and that is grave.”

But these reasons have not been enough to stop Fujimori or dispel rumors of a coup. She has the backing of almost all of Lima’s ruling class: business leaders, the major media, and the middle class. For them, the teacher is an upstart whose rise is a threat.

“The fear around Castillo is beyond reasonable. Keiko must stop this madness and stop sacrificing democracy on the altar of anti-leftism. Peru needs a leader,” Levitsky and Vergara concluded.


Featured image: Pedro Castillo’s supporters remain in the streets as Peru continues to wait for official declaration of Castillo as president. Photo: Ernesto Benavides / AFP

(Resumen Latinoamericano – English)

https://orinocotribune.com/is-peru-on-t ... of-a-coup/

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Peru: Community Kitchens, Crisis and Inequality
July 4, 2021

By Marco Teruggi – Jun 30, 2021

The pandemic and the economic crisis in Peru have led to the emergence of community kitchens being organized in the poorest areas of the country’s capital, Lima. In such neighborhoods, local women have organized themselves to get food and cook it, thus facing poverty and filling in for the absence of aid from the State.

It is noon and Edith Tajani comes to the door of her house with a megaphone in hand. ”Neighbors, lunch is ready, you can come and collect,” she speaks into the megaphone. Tajani is surrounded by hills on which there are a few scattered brick houses, and many more houses made of wood, cardboard and other materials that can be scavenged in one of the poorest and most populated areas in the south of Lima, Villa María del Triunfo.

Beside Edith stand the women who have prepared the collective meal. The menu for this day is rice, lentils and tuna fish. Women and children begin to approach with bags, plates and different containers to take home their lunch. The women who manage the kitchen keep note of the names of each person in a list that is upgraded daily at the Community Kitchen Juntos Venceremos esta Lucha [Together We Will Win This Fight].

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Queue for food outside the community kitchen Juntos Venceremos esta Lucha. Photo: Sputnik / Marco Teruggi

If it weren’t for the clouds, one would have been able to see the entire extent of the immense working class neighborhood that is a succession of conic hills filled with houses up to their tops. But this is the season of permanent clouds, of rain, cold temperatures, and danger for those who live here. A neighbor approaches Edith and tells her that her house fell down due to the rain, the mud, and poverty. She carries her daughter on her back wrapped in a lliclla, a traditional colored cloth of the Andes.

Edith was part of a group that started the kitchen at the beginning of the pandemic. ”The lockdown order was imposed, and everyone was left without work. We had to stay with the family at home,” she recalls. The store where Edith was employed in Lima closed, and her two daughters could not continue their work of going to Brazil to sell clothes. The three women were left without a fixed income and with the responsibility of supporting ten grandchildren.

Edith says that the kitchen started with a donation of thirty chickens. ”Then each family brought rice, peas and we made a large pot of food,” she recalls. ”We began to distribute food to everyone and started to call the neighbors.” The formation of the olla común [community kitchen] in her locality, Las Flores del Paraíso, coincided with the multiplication of kitchens in poor neighborhoods. Edith is now in charge of coordinating 80 kitchens in her area. It is estimated that there are around 2,700 kitchens in all of Lima and about 243,000 people who depend on them for food.

Against all odds

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View from the community kitchen Santuario de las Vizcachas. Photo: Sputnik / Marco Teruggi

According to María, who runs another community kitchen called Santuario de las Vizcachas, ”the government does not help at all. We collect money every day in order to be able to sustain our kitchen; otherwise there would be no food; we would not have anything to eat. What we want is that there should be a budget for the community kitchen, to be able to sustain it every day.”Here also the lunch is rice, with lentils and squash porridge. The women cook with gas and firewood, and, as there is no water supply here, each neighbor who buys their lunch at the price of 2 Peruvian soles (around $0.60 US cents) brings with them a bucket of water. The kitchen is at the foot of a hill that, higher up, is beginning to turn green with the first yellow amancay flowers. Up there, on the slope of the mountain are the houses at the highest reaches, built of wood, and without electricity.

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Queue for food at the community kitchen Santuario de las vizcachas. Photo: Sputnik / Marco Teruggi

Lack of state support is a common feature in the different kitchens that Edith coordinates. ”We want support for all the community kitchens; we are all suffering,” says Lurdes Canchari Santos, who cooks at the Santuario de las Vizcachas kitchen. ”In each kitchen we strive from day to day to feed people in need, our elderly, our children.”The situation has not really changed from the beginning, when the kitchens were spontaneously born out of necessity in the face of the pandemic and the economic crisis, which hit an economy where 70% of the population is engaged in some form of informal work. In the case of the Las Flores del Paraíso kitchen, Edith and several women began to walk in the markets ”from stall to stall” asking for food donations.

More than a year later, the situation remains the same. Help from the government has been scarce and not generalized, remarks Edith. ”The only thing that we have received from the government, just twice during the entire pandemic, are some baskets with small packages of sugar, noodles and beans. That is what the government has sent us. We do not have government; the only aid that comes to us is what we go out to seek in the factories, from the NGOs, in the parish.”

This lack of government support is not just a feature of a health and economic crisis in the neoliberal model, but it is also within the context of a political crisis. Three presidents have succeeded one another since the beginning of the pandemic and the community kitchen and now. Edith, María, Lurdes, and all the women who cook for their communities every day, have had no response from the government to their demands, which have even reached Congress, where they managed to even meet with its current president, Mirtha Vázquez.
”We have asked that they declare a food emergency, a permanent budget and that common kitchens be legally recognized as an organization by the State,” explains Edith. ”We have also asked for technical training to carry on with our organization.” Today, the situation is the same as at the beginning: these women have to rely solely on their own initiative, will and perseverance.

Hope for change

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Edith, on the right, at the Santuario de las Vizcachas community kitchen. Photo: Sputnik / Marco Teruggi

”A number of people from different political parties have come here to look for me during elections,” says Edith. This was the case for different community kitchens as well. ”During the campaign the people from the kitchens would call me up and tell me: ‘Look, a man came saying that he can monetarily help, but he wants us to put up a political party banner.’ I would tell them to receive the help if they want to give it, but not to put up the party banner, because the day the campaign ends they will forget about us.”

In the first round of the presidential elections, Edith voted for Verónika Mendoza, the progressive candidate of Juntos por el Perú, who came in at the sixth place in the April 11 elections. ”She is a feisty and provincial woman like us, the heads of the community kitchens,” Edith explains.

Then, on June 6, Edith and the others decided to vote for Peru Libre’s Pedro Castillo, ”because he too is from the provinces. We hope that he will be with us, with his people, and that he will understand his people’s needs, and that we need him as president. We hope that the professor brings a total change and ends all that corruption that is in the country.”

The provincial component, that is, those who are not from Lima, is important in Edith’s area, where the vast majority of people come from the different provinces within the country. In Edith’s case, she came ”from the jungle,” as it is said, from the Loreto department, on the border with Colombia. Her kitchen companions are from Ayacucho, Puno, Arequipa and other places.

Edith, on the left, with one of the members of the Juntos Venceremos esta Lucha community kitchen. Photo: Sputnik / Marco Teruggi
Edith and the community kitchens are part of the deeply unequal social geography of Lima, in a country crisscrossed by multiple fractures. These cleavages are quite visible—on the border between Villa María del Triunfo and La Molina, one of the richest areas of the capital, there is a partition called the Wall of Shame, which is a wall running several kilometers that prevents passage from one side to the other.

These divisions within Peruvian society were also visible in the June 6 election in which Castillo and Keiko Fujimori, of the neoliberal and dictatorial right, faced each other. The Peru Libre candidate brought together under him a range of demands, expectations and the need to ”start over,” as Edith states. Although he could not win in any electoral district of Lima, the support that he got in the provinces allowed him to win the election with 44,058 more votes than his opponent.Although the political situation in the country is still unstable due to Fujimori’s attempt at not recognizing the results, Edith has expectations for Castillo’s future government, which should begin on July 28. ”The hope is that there will be a redistribution of wealth, which right now is in the hands of a tiny minority,” continues Edith. ”At the same time, the vast majority of people—look at how we live! Look at the hills that you have climbed up! We live without water, without electricity, without roads—this is the reality. We want decent housing, decent food, a minimum wage. We don’t want them to give us anything for free, we want work,” she concludes.



Featured image: A community kitchen in the impoverished areas hard hit by the pandemic and the economic crisis in Lima, Peru. Photo: Sputnik / Marco Teruggi

(Sputnik)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/peru-communi ... nequality/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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