South America

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 01, 2023 4:58 pm

Latin America and Caribbean Year 2022 in Review – Challenges for a Pink Tide Surging Over a Volatile US Hegemony
DECEMBER 31, 2022

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Mural by the Ramona Parra Brigade, muralist collective at the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center, GAM, Santiago de Chile. Photo: Hanne Therkildsen.

By Roger D. Harris – Dec 28, 2022

2023 marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine. This imperial fiat arrogates to the US the unilateral authority to intervene in the affairs of sovereign states in the Western Hemisphere and to exclude any other power from meddling in what is viewed as Washington’s backyard. Two centuries later, the doctrine faces a fragile future.

Going into the new year, the neoliberal model for regional development has been discredited in Latin America and the Caribbean. The socialist model is under siege and the social-democratic model is encountering unfavorable conditions.

Paradoxically, the very problems that the progressive movements protested against, which brought them into power, now have become theirs to solve, once in power and in a time of mounting economic distress. Antonio Gramsci’s observation back in 1930 aptly characterizes the current state: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Volatile US hegemony
Last June, US President Joe Biden issued his imperial summons for a hemispheric “democracy summit” in Los Angeles but did not invite Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known by the acronym AMLO, took umbrage that not all of the countries of Our Americas had been invited. He then led a boycott of the event, causing a major embarrassment to the self-proclaimed world leader of democracy.

Regardless, the principal superpower, far from retrenching, has been intent on extending its imperial fiat to the whole planet. With overwhelming military dominance – a war budget larger than the next nine contenders – the US has aggressively asserted “full spectrum dominance” over the entire world.

From a previous stance of enforcing a “Pax Americana” on the premise that a stable world order is good for capitalism, the US has become the leading provocateur of chaotic conditions, most notably provoking a confrontation with Russia, which could escalate to nuclear war.

And with overwhelming financial dominance, the imperial power has imposed sanctions on a third of humanity, throwing the world economy into a gathering recession. In reaction, proposals for alternatives to the US dollar are being circulated. But paradoxically, the greenback is stronger than ever in the last two decades, because it provides what is perceived as the most secure shelter from the international economic precariousness itself precipitated by the US.

Pink Tide Surges
Starting in 2018, neoliberal regimes in all the major economies in Latin America have been defeated at the ballot box. AMLO ended over 36 years of neoliberal rule in Mexico in July 2018. Mexico is the second largest regional economy, the thirteenth in the world and the US’s second largest trading partner.

In Argentina, Alberto Fernández replaced Mauricio Macri in October 2019. Luis Arce retook Bolivia in October 2020 after a coup had overthrown leftist Evo Morales a year before. In Peru, Pedro Castillo, a rural school teacher from the leftist Perú Libre Party, became president in June 2021. Former student protest leader, Gabriel Boric was victorious in Chile in December 2021.

Gustavo Petro became the first left-leaning president ever in Colombian history in June. The former leftist guerilla, since gravitated to the center left, ran with Afro-descendent environmentalist Francia Márquez. Their Pacto Histórico emerged out of the protest movements of 2019 and 2020. In defiance of the US, the new administration has reestablished friendly relations with neighboring Venezuela, while it has pursued implementing the 2016 Peace Accords with paramilitaries and guerillas.

The spectacular comeback of Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil over Jair “Trump of the Tropics” Bolsonaro last October was of international significance. Brazil is the leading economy in the region and eighth in the world. Lula, as he is affectionately called, went from being a popular president from 2003 to 2010, to sitting out the 2018 presidential contest in prison as a victim of US-backed “lawfare,” to again winning the presidency.

Lula promises ambitious social programs for the poor. Although his inauguration is not until January 1, 2023, he is already playing a leading international role, championing regional integration. Ignoring the lessons of Gadaffi and Hussein whose attempts to replace the US dollar were terminated with extreme prejudice, Lula has proposed the “sur” as a new regional currency.

Among the smaller countries, Xiomara Castro became the first female president of Honduras a year ago. This was an especially sweet triumph for the left as her husband Manuel Zelaya had been deposed in a US-backed coup in 2009. Her predecessor, Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), was immediately extradited to the US for drug trafficking proving beyond doubt that hers was a victory over a narco-dictatorship. JOH was the last of a line of corrupt golpistas (coup mongers) that the US had propped up for the last dozen years.

Other developments on the left included a successful referendum for a new progressive family code in Cuba, legalizing same-sex marriages. In Nicaragua, which was recovering from an unsuccessful US-backed coup in 2018, the left Sandinista party swept the municipal elections last November.

President Maduro: Venezuela Achieved its Goals in 2022


Venezuela’s resurgence
A leader of the left initiative, Venezuela has been enjoying a resurgence. A year ago last November, the ruling socialist party (PSUV) swept the regional and legislative elections. The economy, which had been tanked by US-imposed “maximum pressure” sanctions, has shown signs of recovery with hyperinflation under control and oil production slowly recuperating.

Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s so-called “interim president,” was anointed by Donald Trump in 2019. But today, only a handful of Washington’s most sycophantic allies along with Mr. Biden fail to recognize the democratically elected Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

Guaidó’s term in the National Assembly will expire by January 5 and any fiction of his “interim presidency” will be over with his own far-right bloc rejecting him. Unfortunately, this came too late for the imprisoned Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. His bid for freedom under diplomatic immunity was rejected on December 23 by a federal judge in Miami largely on the grounds that he was appointed as a special envoy by a government the US does not recognize.

Multilateralism
The entire region is tilting toward more independence from the “Colossus of the North” and toward its corollary, greater regional integration. Collective bodies, which exclude the US and its vassal Canada, are being revived. UNASUR, CELAC, MERCOSUR and ALBA date back from the previous Pink Tide led by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The vision of patria grande, the project of Latin American unity, is alive.

Significantly, China has emerged as the region’s second largest trading partner, with over twenty states in the region joining Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. This provides a substitute to monopolar dependence on commerce with Uncle Sam. Russia, too, has been pushing under the greenback curtain. Brazil is already in the BRICS alliance with Russia, India, China and South Africa. Argentina is slated to join an expanded BRICS+.

China, Russia and newcomer Iran have more than provided an alternative. They have been a vital lifeline for the explicitly socialist states of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela, which are in the crosshairs of imperialism.

Revolt against the neoliberal model
“Neoliberalism was born in Chile and here it will die” was the slogan of the massive demonstrations of 2019-2020 in Chile. This was also the animating sentiment of the entire current Pink Tide, which was a reaction to and rejection of the discredited neoliberal model for development. Neoliberalism is roughly defined as the contemporary form of so-called free-market capitalism.

Out of the anti-neoliberal protests in Chile came the Gabriel Boric presidency and a referendum on replacing the Pinochet-era constitution. The latter was soundly defeated by the voters on September 4. And, of the current crop of “pink” presidents, Boric has criticized his more left-leaning colleagues for being “authoritarian,” while he has suffered plummeting approval ratings at home.

The rejection of the neoliberalism model has also spawned more decidedly non-progressive manifestations with the rise of right populism, epitomized by Bolsonaro in Brazil. The appeal of someone as unappealing as Donald Trump in the US is a similar example. Such politicians opportunistically capitalize on the revulsion against neoliberalism by associating its failures with their more liberal opponents.

The poster child for the failure of the neoliberal model is Haiti. The proud home of the first successful revolution and slave revolt in the region in 1804, Haiti has had to pay “reparations” for freeing the slaves. A burdensome debt imposed by mainly the former colonial power of France and the US has contributed to Haiti being the poorest nation in the region.

US-led policy further destroyed small-scale agriculture impoverishing the population to serve as cheap labor for foreign corporations. The US had twice helped engineer coups removing the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Today, Haitian civil society has risen up and all the US can propose is a return of a multi-national military force. Haiti is without an elected president, a parliament that doesn’t meet and governmental services that barely function; proof that western patronage is a formula for un-development.

Venezuela’s Economy Under Siege: A Conversation with Luis Salas (Interview)


Socialist alternative under siege
The current surge of the Pink Tide was a “battle at the ballot box” focused on the electoral arena. It did not produce any new socialist revolutions and none are on the horizon. On the contrary, the socialist states of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are under heavy siege, struggling for survival.

These states have had to retrench some of their social programs, forced by economic necessity to introduce clearly neoliberal forms such as “free-trade” zones. Of the three countries with explicitly socialist governments, it should be noted, only Cuba has a socialist economy where there is central planning and where key economic units are state-controlled.

While US hegemony may be on an increasingly fragile footing, there is no counter-hegemonic force in the current world geopolitical arena comparable to the former Soviet Union and the role that it played in fostering a socialist alternative. China offers alternative trade opportunities, along with limited debt relief, cultural exchanges and Covid care assistance. But much more than mere commerce is needed to offset the deleterious impacts of US “hybrid warfare” on Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The current reality is that all states have to engage in an international economy where the US dollar is supreme.

The debilitating effects of the blockades imposed by the US and its allies have been further amplified by the impact of the Covid pandemic and then followed by lethal hurricanes, rains and flooding last October. As a result, all three socialist countries have experienced unprecedentedly high out migration this last year.

Recent on-again-off-again offers of asylum to Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and the longstanding Cuban Adjustment Act are deliberately perverse incentives exacerbating out migration from the socialist states.

The economic refugees from the socialist states should be distinguished from the Northern Triangle migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala who are also fleeing gangs, societal violence and insecurity in addition to economic push factors. They, along with Mexicans, continue to comprise the bulk of those seeking to enter the US.

Limits and liabilities of the social democratic model
Compared to its zero-tolerance of the nominally socialist states, cooption and subversion are Washington’s strategies for the regional social democracies. Governance in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and others is based on a lopsided partnership. The owning classes control, but allow some of the wealth produced by the popular classes to remain with those who produced it.

In the previous Pink Tide wave around 2008, such uneasy inter-class arrangements allowed dramatic decreases in poverty. The more privileged sectors did well too, such as large and politically powerful agribusinesses in Brazil, because a booming international commodities tide raised all ships.

These states now face a much-changed international economic recessionary climate. Low interest rates the previous decade and then the need for emergency spending during the Covid crisis encouraged the accumulation of high debt obligations. Debts now must be paid back in more costly dollars in these globally inflationary times. Capital flight to western banks is accelerating. Under such conditions, fulfillment of social programs is more problematic.

In short, western and particularly US domination of the world financial order considerably limits the possibilities for the new Pink Tide administrations to develop their economies successfully. A near monopoly of 96% of the region’s trade continues to be denominated in US dollars.

Countercurrents
As the metaphor of the Pink Tide implies, the grand class struggle ebbs and flows. President Arce of Bolivia survived a rightwing coup attempt in October. Then by year end, the progressive project suffered back-to-back reversals in Argentina and Peru.

Current vice-president and former president (2003-2007) of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was the leading contender on the left for the 2023 elections. But on December 6, she was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption and barred from running for office. Although she is appealing what is considered a “lawfare” frameup, the right is anticipating a comeback in the upcoming election. A huge debt burden and high inflation rates, incurred by the previous rightwing administration, was inherited by the current left Peronist government.

The next day, former CIA operative and current US ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna, is widely credited with greenlighting a parliamentary coup. The elected president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, is now imprisoned and some 30 people have been killed in popular demonstrations in his support. Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Nicaragua and Bolivia have condemned the coup. Colombian President Petro commented: “The crisis in Peru, the imprisonment, without a judge and without defense, of a popularly elected president, has seriously questioned the role of the American Convention in the Latin American legal system.”

Latin Americans quip that the reason there never has been a successful coup in the US is because there is no US embassy in Washington. The retort to that aspersion on Yankee integrity is that with the neo-con takeover of the Democratic Party, there is no reason for a coup.

US ambassadors to Honduras and Mexico were among the more vocal in interfering in the internal politics of their host countries this last year. Meanwhile Nicaragua preemptively rejected the appointed US ambassador to Managua after he blatantly criticized his presumptive post country in his congressional ratification hearing.

Bolívar’s prophecy
Biden has continued Trump’s policies for Latin America and the Caribbean with only a few cosmetic variations. Full-throated regime-change measures for Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are more aggressive and effective than ever before, according to the Cubans.

And as bad as Trump’s treatment of immigrants from south of the border had been, Biden’s has been arguably worse. The US special envoy to the debacle in Haiti publicly quit in protest to the current administration’s “inhumane” policies.

Symptomatic of the bipartisan Washington consensus was the so-called BOLIVAR Act tightening sanctions on Venezuela, which passed the US Senate by unanimous vote on December 16. The US legislation was pointedly named after Simón Bolívar, the revered leader of the struggle against colonialism and for regional integration in South America.

That the imperialists abused the name of Bolívar can best be understood in the context of his prescient observation in 1829: “The United States seems destined by providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty.”

https://orinocotribune.com/latin-americ ... -hegemony/

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Peru: The Coup Plot
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 31, 2022
Carlos Fazio

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Police violently suppress protests against the US-backed coup.

Since last December 7, a military-parliamentary dictatorship has been consolidating in Peru, using as its “institutional” façade the former Vice-President Dina Boluarte, who betrayed the ousted President Pedro Castillo and became a hostage of the army, Fujimorism and the racist and classist Lima oligarchy at the service of the large international extractivist corporations. A rampant coup d’état that always had the backing of the United States.

In connection with the generals, the main operator of the coup plot in the Parliament was its current president, retired general José Williams Zapata, former head of the Joint Command of the Peruvian Armed Forces and representative of the conservative group Avanza País, who during the second round of the 2021 elections supported the ultra-right Keiko Fujimori, against her opponent, Pedro Castillo, who was elected.

Like many members of the Peruvian Congress, José Williams Zapata’s curriculum vitae exposes his repressive and corrupt side. According to the Peruvian Superintendence of Banking, Insurance and Pension Fund Administrators, in 2006, when he was still president of the Joint Army Command, Williams was accused of illicit enrichment to the detriment of the State and had five bank accounts withheld. In 2021, he was accused of cover-up in the massacre of Accomarca (1985), where 69 community members were murdered. Likewise, and according to the National Police Anti-Drug Division (Divandro), the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and WikiLeaks, when General Jose Williams Zapata was head of the Northern Military Region of Piura (from 2004 to 2005), he was linked to the Tijuana cartel, founded in Baja California, Mexico, by the Arellano Felix brothers in the 1980s.

According to Wayka.pe, in 2010, when WikiLeaks leaked secret diplomatic documents from the US embassy in Lima, Williams, then head of the military region in Piura, had ties to collaborators of the Mexican criminal organization. On March 12, 2009, the US ambassador in Lima, Michael McKinley, sent a secret cable to the State Department warning that Williams Zapata was allegedly linked to former Captain Jonathan Huacac Torrico (identified by Divandro as a collaborator of the Tijuana cartel), and had been seen meeting with Mexican drug lords in the Military Casino of that military region.

With this record, Williams Zapata would have been one of the main articulators of the coup plan from Congress against Castillo, in coordination with the Peruvian military high command and the US ambassador in Lima, Lisa Kenna, a former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who relied on the military attaché of that diplomatic mission, Mariano Alvarado, operations officer of the Pentagon’s Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG), who maintains close contact with the Peruvian generals.

According to sources linked to the hierarchs of transnational corporations in Lima, the coup plot had been hatched since last September as part of a sophisticated intelligence operation. As the Congress did not have the necessary votes to remove him from office, they made President Castillo believe that he had the support of the armed forces and the police and induced him to dissolve the Parliament (so that he would deliberately break the constitutional order). For that purpose they forged polls (which they only showed him) and made him believe that he had more than 40 percent of popular support and the Congress only 8 percent, so that it would be very easy to overthrow him and he would be acclaimed by the crowd.

In addition to the army and the police, the plan involved the attorney general’s office, the comptroller’s office, ministers, congressmen and Vice President Boluarte. After the president read his message to the nation dissolving the House and installing a “government of exception”, several ministers resigned in series. Castillo then sought the support of the armed forces through his military aides-de-camp and got no response. There he realized that he had been set up, but it was too late. State security even held him in the palace while they waited for the congressional vote to strip him of his immunity. He was then told that a supposed plan B had been agreed upon: to seek asylum in the Mexican embassy. Already then, one of the plotters had arranged for Castillo’s diplomatic asylum in the Mexican mission. But moments after Congress declared the presidential vacancy, accusing him of alleged rebellion, Castillo was arrested by a SWAT commando of the national police. He was taken to the Comptroller’s Office and the Attorney General immediately appeared, while Boluarte was waiting at home to be called to assume as President of the Republic.

The only one who was not involved in the coup plot was the general commander of the army, Walter Córdova, who according to the newspaper La República, on December 5 had been pressured by the head of Parliament, José Williams, to leave his post because there were “serious accusations” against him that affected the “institutionality” of the Army. Another version states that the joint army command intimidated him: “You align yourself or you resign”. Likewise, on the eve of the coup, U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kenna met with Defense Minister Gustavo Bobbio, who, like Córdova, resigned on December 7. According to the Lima newspaper, the last phone call Castillo took before leaving the presidential palace came from the U.S. embassy. On December 7, Kenna sent a tweet denouncing Castillo’s measure to dissolve Congress, and from Washington, making use of the old gringo mythology on representative democracy, the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, blessed the coup.

The long hand of the US is also behind the appointment of the new head of the National Intelligence Directorate, retired Colonel Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor, a former liaison officer in the Pentagon’s Southern Command closely linked to the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori and his alter ego, Vladimiro Montesinos, both imprisoned for crimes against humanity. Liendo guarantees the ongoing repression and militarization in Peru.

Translation by Miguel S. for Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/12/ ... coup-plot/

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They arrest those involved in vandalism in Santa Cruz, Bolivia

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The Santa Cruz Police guard facilities and carry out other actions so that right-wing groups do not disturb public peace. | Photo: EFE
Published December 31, 2022

Eleven of the detainees were charged with crimes of criminal association, public incitement to commit a crime, arson and aggravated robbery.

The Bolivian Minister of Government, Eduardo del Castillo, reported this Saturday that at least 21 people have been apprehended for the acts of vandalism that occurred the day before in the city of Santa Cruz, during the day of strike called by the right after the arrest of the Governor Luis Fernando Camacho.

Through his social networks, Del Castillo specified that these people were sent to jail with preventive detention and sentencing.

He explained that among those arrested as a result of the attacks on police officers and the destruction of public and private property is a citizen who was in possession of a firearm.


The official specified that 11 of the detainees were charged with the crimes of criminal association, public instigation to commit a crime, arson and aggravated robbery. A group of them received a sentence and were deprived of liberty.

He reported that nine people involved in the burning of the Santa Cruz Prosecutor's Office were sent to prison in a preventive manner. Among others, they are charged with the crimes of arson, destruction of State property and aggravated robbery.


In addition, he announced that five people were sentenced for the destruction of the facilities of the District Attorney's Office in the department of Cochabamba.

Del Castillo urged the population to remain calm and emphasized that "the Bolivian Police is carrying out its constitutional work preventing irregular groups from sowing pain in the people of Santa Cruz."


Camacho was apprehended on Thursday to testify about the Coup d'état I case. Subsequently, the Justice determined his preventive detention for four months in the Chonchocoro prison, in La Paz.

After his imprisonment, shock groups linked to the parastatal Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (UJC) perpetrated attacks on police officers, burned public offices and cars, and even tried to take over the headquarters of the Police Departmental Command, among other violent acts.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/bolivia- ... -0017.html

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

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 05, 2023 2:39 pm

Latin America: Between Hope and Danger
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 4, 2023
Randy Alonso Falcón

Image

The multitudinous and emotional inauguration of Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva in Brazil, on the first day of the year, and the announcement in Colombia of the beginning of a ceasefire with five armed organizations in that country are the news that illuminate the beginning of the year in Latin America and the Caribbean with hope.

Lula assumes the presidency for the third time in a Brazil that has been severely isolated and battered by the Bolsonaro years. The former union leader now leads a country very different from the one he received in 2003, in his first presidency: economically weakened by inflation and debt, with an exponential growth of poverty and inequalities, extremely polarized and with a right-wing Congress, heavily influenced by Bolsonarism.

“It is necessary for people to know how we found this country. They emptied health resources, dismantled education and culture. They destroyed the environment. They left no assets. They disorganized the governance of the economy, public financing, support for businesses and entrepreneurs. They squandered state-owned companies and public banks. They handed over the national patrimony. They left a budgetary disaster“, he declared in his speech at the presidential inauguration ceremony.

For Colombia, hard hit by decades of conflicts, the step taken to start 2023 is extremely significant. “We have agreed on a bilateral ceasefire with the ELN, the Second Marquetalia, the Central General Staff, the AGC and the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada from January 1 to June 30, 2023, extendable depending on progress in the negotiations,” President Gustavo Petro tweeted. “Total peace will be a reality,” the president promised.

“This is a bold act. The bilateral ceasefire obliges the armed organizations and the state to respect it. There will be a national and international verification mechanism,” added the president in another publication.

These are two testimonies of what the political left and progressivism can bring of change to a Latin America that in recent years has experienced a period of neoliberal restoration by the hand of right-wing governments such as Macri, Bolsonaro and Duque.

Lula’s inauguration completes an electoral cycle that has allowed the arrival or reaffirmation of progressive governments in Mexico, Bolivia, Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Brazil. Each one of them with its own characteristics and different radicalism, but all of them with the projection of greater social justice and an integrating vocation.

They are joined by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, whose political processes are being maintained against all odds, despite enormous pressure from Washington.

Thus, the major economies of Latin America are governed by leftist parties, which strengthens the possibility of greater regional integration and joint efforts to confront the difficult international economic situation and the inevitable hegemonic plans of the United States in the region. These are the two main problems to be addressed in this rebirth of Latin American progressivism.

The new progressive wave comes in the midst of an economic context that threatens governability and the extension of social programs. An uncertain international scenario with a combination of factors including economic slowdown, inflation, financial volatility and lower capital flows, has slowed growth in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022 and will further deepen this downward trend in 2023, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean recently predicted.

In its new report Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC said the region will grow 3.7 percent in 2022, almost half the 6.7 percent recorded in 2021; and only 1.3 percent next year.

If the projected outlook for next year materializes, it would be the second lost decade since the 1950s, with meager regional growth of 0.9 percent since 2014. In the so-called “decade of the debt crisis” in the 1980s, the economy advanced two percent. That was so far the lowest performance since 1951.

Under these circumstances, there will be fewer resources to pay for the social programs required by these nations and proposed by the governments that came to power with popular welfare agendas.

Another concrete danger for progressive governments is that in some cases, as in Brazil, Peru and Chile, parliaments are dominated by the right wing, which seeks to hinder government plans and sabotage proposals that imply a significant change in the status quo of capital domination.

The rejection of the new Constitution in Chile, the defenestration of Castillo as President in Peru and the manipulated judicial condemnation of Cristina Fernandez are proof of the power retained by conservative forces in the region.

The efforts to reinforce integrationist processes, as the new regional scenario may bring about, challenge U.S. domination intentions clearly established in the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy.

The strategy asserts that no region impacts the United States more directly than the Western Hemisphere and states that the United States will continue to build “regional security” by supporting efforts to confront both domestic and organized crime threats, as well as external threats from “malign actors” seeking to establish a military or intelligence presence in the region, in clear reference to China and Russia.

China is today the main trading partner of several Latin American economies and has an alliance with CELAC that has been deepened in recent years.

Added to this is the role played by the OAS, under Washington’s mandate, to divide the region and sabotage popular processes in several countries.

Beyond these threats, there is no doubt that there is a hopeful political correlation in Latin America and the Caribbean, which can put integration processes back on track, strengthen the regional voice and attenuate the harsh impact on the popular sectors of the international economic crisis and the exclusionary policies applied by right-wing governments in the region.

Skill and political will will will be decisive in the course of events. The leadership of Lula, Lopez Obrador, Fernandez and Petro, together with the strength of the ALBA governments can make the difference.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... nd-danger/

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Peru: The coup plot
January 3, 2023 Carlos Fazio

Image
Photo: El Pais

Since last December 7, a military-parliamentary dictatorship has been consolidating in Peru, using as its “institutional” façade the former Vice-President Dina Boluarte, who betrayed the ousted President Pedro Castillo and became a hostage of the army, Fujimorism and the racist and classist Lima oligarchy at the service of the large international extractivist corporations. A rampant coup d’état that always had the backing of the United States.

In connection with the generals, the main operator of the coup plot in the Parliament was its current president, retired general José Williams Zapata, former head of the Joint Command of the Peruvian Armed Forces and representative of the conservative group Avanza País, who, during the second round of the 2021 elections supported the ultra-right Keiko Fujimori, against her opponent, Pedro Castillo, who was elected.

Like many members of the Peruvian Congress, José Williams Zapata’s curriculum vitae exposes his repressive and corrupt side. According to the Peruvian Superintendence of Banking, Insurance, and Pension Fund Administrators, in 2006, when he was still president of the Joint Army Command, Williams was accused of illicit enrichment to the detriment of the State and had five bank accounts withheld. In 2021, he was accused of cover-up in the massacre of Accomarca (1985), where 69 community members were murdered. Likewise, and according to the National Police Anti-Drug Division (Divandro), the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and WikiLeaks, when General Jose Williams Zapata was head of the Northern Military Region of Piura (from 2004 to 2005), he was linked to the Tijuana cartel, founded in Baja California, Mexico, by the Arellano Felix brothers in the 1980s.

According to Wayka.pe, in 2010, when WikiLeaks leaked secret diplomatic documents from the US embassy in Lima, Williams, then head of the military region in Piura, had ties to collaborators of the Mexican criminal organization. On March 12, 2009, the US ambassador in Lima, Michael McKinley, sent a secret cable to the State Department warning that Williams Zapata was allegedly linked to former Captain Jonathan Huacac Torrico (identified by Divandro as a collaborator of the Tijuana cartel), and had been seen meeting with Mexican drug lords in the Military Casino of that military region.

With this record, Williams Zapata would have been one of the main articulators of the coup plan from Congress against Castillo, in coordination with the Peruvian military high command and the US ambassador in Lima, Lisa Kenna, a former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who relied on the military attaché of that diplomatic mission, Mariano Alvarado, operations officer of the Pentagon’s Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG), who maintains close contact with the Peruvian generals.

According to sources linked to the hierarchs of transnational corporations in Lima, the coup plot had been hatched since last September as part of a sophisticated intelligence operation. As Congress did not have the necessary votes to remove him from office, they made President Castillo believe that he had the support of the armed forces and the police and induced him to dissolve the Parliament (so that he would deliberately break the constitutional order). For that purpose, they forged polls (which they only showed him) and made him believe that he had more than 40 percent of popular support and the Congress only 8 percent so that it would be very easy to overthrow him and he would be acclaimed by the crowd.

In addition to the army and the police, the plan involved the attorney general’s office, the comptroller’s office, ministers, congressmen, and Vice President Boluarte. After the president read his message to the nation dissolving the House and installing a “government of exception”, several ministers resigned in series. Castillo then sought the support of the armed forces through his military aides-de-camp and got no response. There he realized that he had been set up, but it was too late. State security even held him in the palace while they waited for the congressional vote to strip him of his immunity. He was then told that a supposed plan B had been agreed upon: to seek asylum in the Mexican embassy. Already then, one of the plotters had arranged for Castillo’s diplomatic asylum in the Mexican mission. But moments after Congress declared the presidential vacancy, accusing him of alleged rebellion, Castillo was arrested by a SWAT commando of the national police. He was taken to the Comptroller’s Office, and the Attorney General immediately appeared while Boluarte was waiting at home to be called to assume as President of the Republic.

The only one who was not involved in the coup plot was the general commander of the army, Walter Córdova, who, according to the newspaper La República, on December 5 had been pressured by the head of Parliament, José Williams, to leave his post because there were “serious accusations” against him that affected the “institutionality” of the Army. Another version states that the joint army command intimidated him: “You align yourself or you resign.” Likewise, on the eve of the coup, U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kenna met with Defense Minister Gustavo Bobbio, who, like Córdova, resigned on December 7. According to the Lima newspaper, the last phone call Castillo took before leaving the presidential palace came from the U.S. embassy. On December 7, Kenna sent a tweet denouncing Castillo’s measure to dissolve Congress, and from Washington, making use of the old gringo mythology on representative democracy, the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, blessed the coup.

The long hand of the US is also behind the appointment of the new head of the National Intelligence Directorate, retired Colonel Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor, a former liaison officer in the Pentagon’s Southern Command closely linked to the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori and his alter ego, Vladimiro Montesinos, both imprisoned for crimes against humanity. Liendo guarantees the ongoing repression and militarization in Peru.

Source: La Jornada, translation Internationalist 360°

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... coup-plot/

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‘They shot them down like animals’: massacre in Peru’s Ayacucho

Survivors and family members of victims of the massacre in Ayacucho on December 15 denounce that the army treated protesters like war targets, reminiscent of violence faced during the internal armed conflict.

January 04, 2023 by Zoe Alexandra

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Women from the Ayacucho-based National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP) hold signs in the central plaza of Ayacucho condemning the deaths of protesters. Photo: Zoe Alexandra

On December 15, 2022, while helicopters flew overhead, members of Peru’s national army shot down civilians with live bullets in the outskirts of the city of Ayacucho. This action was in response to a national strike and mobilization to protest the coup d’état that deposed President Pedro Castillo on December 7.

On December 15, hundreds of university students, shopkeepers, street vendors, agricultural workers, and activists gathered at the center of Ayacucho to express their discontent over the removal of Castillo and continued their mobilization toward the airport. Similar action was witnessed in several other cities across the southern Andean region of the country.

As protesters approached the airport, members of the armed forces opened fire and shot tear gas canisters directly at them. The firing by the army from the helicopters proved to be the most lethal. As the hundreds of unarmed people ran for their lives, the shooting continued.

Ten people were killed as a result of this violence inflicted by the army, and dozens more were injured, according to official numbers provided by the ombudsman’s office. At least six people are still fighting for their lives in hospitals in Peru’s capital Lima and in Ayacucho. Autopsies of 10 of those who died in Ayacucho show that six of the victims died from gunshot wounds to the chest. The youngest was just 15 years old.

On December 27, Reuters reported how one of these fatal victims in Ayacucho, 51-year-old Edgar Prado, was shot and killed while attempting to help someone else who had been shot down during the protests.

The exceedingly violent response of the security forces to the anti-coup protests across Peru was widely condemned. A delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) visited the country from December 20 to 22 to receive testimonies from local human rights organizations and victims about the violent repression suffered by protesters and also spoke to families of the 28 fatal victims. The delegation traveled to Ayacucho on December 22.

More than a dozen other family members, Ayacucho inhabitants, organizers, and a couple of independent journalists, including myself, waited on the sidewalk of one of the city’s narrow and colorful streets as the meeting was underway. As people came and went, much of the events and tragedies of December 15 were recounted.

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Outside the meeting with the IACHR, relatives of victims and witnesses to the massacre hold a sign that reads “Justice for our brothers killed in the massacre on December 15”. Photo: Zoe Alexandra
The massacre
“They won’t show you this on the news here,” Carmen (name changed) told me as she showed me a video on her phone of a young boy with blood all over his shirt being dragged to safety by fellow protesters. “That’s her nephew,” she said, pointing to a woman sitting on the ground.

Pedro Huamani, a 70-year-old man who is a member of the Front in Defense of the People of Ayacucho (FREDEPA), was accompanying the victims waiting outside the IACHR meeting. “We have suffered a terrible loss,” he told me, “I was present that day in a peaceful march toward the airport.”

“When they began to shoot tear gas grenades and bullets at us, I started to choke, I almost died there,” Huamani said. “I escaped and went down to the cemetery, but it was the same, we were trying to enter and they started to shoot at us from behind. Helicopters were flying overhead and from there they shot tear gas grenades at us, trying to kill us.”

Carmen brought over some of her friends and one of them, who was wearing a gray sweatsuit, told me, “We all live near the airport, and saw everything happen. You should’ve seen how they shot them down like animals. We tried to help some of the injured, but it was hard.”

The massacre in Ayacucho, as well as the violent repression across the country, has only intensified people’s demand that Dina Boluarte step down. Boluarte was sworn in on December 7 immediately following the coup against Castillo. In interviews and public addresses, she has justified the use of force by police against protesters calling their actions as acts of “terrorism” and “vandalism.”

Huamani, while shaking and holding back tears, said: “She is a murderous president and in Huamanga, we do not want her, nor do we recognize her as president because this woman ordered the police and the army to shoot at us Peruvians. And these bullets, these weapons, are really bought by us, not by the army, nor the soldiers, but by the people. And for them to kill us is really horrible.”

The anger felt by Ayacucho residents is also linked to the historical undermining of Peruvian democracy and the economic exclusion suffered by the regions outside of Lima. Huamani explained: “They took out our president [Castillo] so this is not a democracy. We are not a democracy, we are in [state of] war, but not just in Ayacucho and Huamanga, but also in Arequipa, Apurímac, Cusco. In these regions, we are suffering from poverty, we can no longer survive, we are dying of hunger… and these right wingers want to make us their slaves, but we won’t permit this because we are responding and resisting.”

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Women comfort each other at a vigil held in the center of Ayacucho for the victims of the massacre. Photo: Zoe Alexandra

Old wounds ripped open

December 15 was not the first time civilians in Ayacucho were massacred by the Peruvian armed forces. Many who were present on December 15 said that the warlike treatment received by the peaceful protesters was reminiscent of the days of the two-decades-long internal armed conflict that Peruvians suffered through more than 20 years ago.

“They still treat us as if we were all terrorists,” a family member of one of the victims of the protests pointed out.

As part of the state’s campaign against the guerrilla insurgency, it tortured, detained, disappeared, and murdered tens of thousands of innocent peasants and Indigenous people, accusing them of supporting or being part of the insurgency.

The population of Ayacucho was one of the hardest hit. According to reports by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up to look into the human rights violations, of the estimated 69,280 fatal victims of the internal armed conflict in Peru from 1980-2000, 26,000 were killed or disappeared by state actors or insurgent groups in Ayacucho. Thousands of people that fled their towns for the city of Ayacucho during the conflict continue to search for their loved ones and demand justice.

One of them is Paula Aguilar Yucra, who I met outside the IACHR meeting. Like more than 60 percent of people in Ayacucho, Indigenous Quechua is her first language. The 63-year-old is a member of the Ayacucho-based National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP). She fled her rural community in Usmay for Ayacucho in 1984 after her mother was killed and her brother was taken by soldiers and never seen again.

Nearly 40 years later, she mourns again. Her grandson, 20-year-old José Luis Aguilar Yucra, father of a two-year-old boy, was killed on December 15 by a bullet to the head as he attempted to make his way home from work.

In a vigil held on the afternoon of December 22, Paula stood tall with the other members of ANFASEP and held a sign reading: “Fighting today does not mean dying tomorrow.”

Zoe Alexandra is a journalist and co-editor of Peoples Dispatch.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.


https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/04/ ... -ayacucho/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 07, 2023 3:19 pm

Peru Dismisses Its Ambassador to Bolivia

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Carina Palacios was dismissed as ambassador to Bolivia and no replacement was appointed. Jan. 6, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@soniacalispa

Published 6 January 2023 (12 hours 22 minutes ago)

The dismissed ambassador to Bolivia was appointed during the administration of former President Pedro Castillo (2021-2022).


The Peruvian Government announced on Friday the decision to dismiss its ambassador in La Paz, Carina Palacio, in the context of the controversy over the alleged interference of former Bolivian president Evo Morales in the country's internal affairs.

The Government's resolution reads: "It is resolved to terminate the functions as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Peru to the Plurinational State of Bolivia of Mrs. Carina Ruth Palacios Quincho."

The resolution was signed by the President-designate, Dina Boluarte, and the Chancellor, Ana Cecilia Gervasi. The Executive appointed no replacement.

This occurs amid a controversy with former Bolivian president Evo Morales (2006-2019). Evo, who defends Castillo amid the current crisis in Peru, has maintained an active presence in the country's southern regions.


In the struggle for the people's freedom, dignity and sovereignty, we face attacks from power groups servile to imperialism that try to divide and threaten us and then try to defeat us. Our convictions are firmer than betrayals and false accusations.

The Peruvian Government has accused Evo of interfering in the country's internal affairs. Boluarte has said she is analyzing with the country's immigration authority the situation of his entry.

The dismissed ambassador to Bolivia was appointed during the Government of former president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022). Castillo was removed in early December when a social and political crisis was unleashed in the country, with national protests and police repression.

Palacios is one of the founders of the leftist Peru Libre party, which is the party that brought Castillo to power by popular vote in July 2021.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0016.html

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Peruvian Prosecutor's Office opens investigation against President Boluarte

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During the preliminary process, the Prosecutor's Office will collect information to know in detail the deaths that occurred in the midst of the repression of the marches. | Photo: EFE
Posted 7 January 2023 (7 hours 27 minutes ago)

The proceedings include various officials of the current government for their responsibility in the repression of the peaceful marches last December.

The Attorney General of Peru, Patricia Benavides, ordered on Friday the initiation of preliminary proceedings against President Dina Boluarte and various officials of her Government for the deaths of at least 28 people due to the repression of the Army and the National Police, during the marches of December 2022.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, the proceedings include who was Defense Minister, Alberto Otárola, current Prime Minister, and Interior Minister, César Cervantes, during the December protests.

The former president of the Council of Ministers, Pedro Angulo, is also included during the State of Emergency throughout the country.


The proceedings stem from the complaint filed by lawyers Abimael Méndez Conde, Yuri Martínez Ochoa, Víctor Porras Rivera and Jack Diburga Cuba before the Ayacucho region human rights, intercultural and terrorism prosecutor's office.

The complaint also links police commanders, including the head of the Ayacucho Police Macro Region, PNP General Antero Mejía Escajadillp, and the general commander of the Second Military Infantry Brigade of Ayacucho, EP General Jesús Vera Ipenza, among others.


Upon learning of the proceedings against her, President Boluarte welcomed the decision of the Attorney General "for the prompt clarification of the facts."

Boluarte previously stated that deaths due to repression should not go unpunished, however he denied his alleged responsibility, accusing extremist groups of promoting violence during demonstrations.


During the preliminary process, the Public Ministry will collect information from state agencies to find out in detail the events that occurred in the midst of the repression of the marches in the regions of Huancavelica, Ayacucho, Arequipa and other areas of the country, after the vacancy of former president Pedro Castle.

The sources of the Prosecutor's Office do not rule out that the military and police chiefs who were in command in the areas where the violent deaths occurred should be called to testify.

The preliminary inquiry can last up to a maximum of 60 days. According to the information collected, prosecutor Benavides will order the initiation of a preliminary or preparatory investigation against President Dina Boluarte or any of the ministers involved.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-fis ... -0002.html

Police repression leaves at least 14 injured in southern Peru

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Police agents throw tear gas canisters towards demonstrators in the Peruvian capital. | Photo: EFE
Posted 7 January 2023 (6 hours 21 minutes ago)

In the capital Lima, the police repression left a balance of at least five injured and more than 40 detainees.

Peru's Ombudsman's Office reported Friday that at least 14 people were injured as a result of the repression by security forces of a demonstration against President Dina Boluarte in the southern region of Puno.

The Peruvian entity confirmed the existence of 10 civilians and four policemen injured in the Carlos Monge Medrano hospital in the city of Julicaca, as a result of the repression of the mobilization against the Government and for the release of former president Pedro Castillo.

"We manage the necessary actions for the corresponding humanitarian aid," added the Ombudsman.


The authorities of the Carlos Monge Medrano hospital announced the status of nine injured, who entered their emergency service at 3:06 p.m. on Friday.

The health center explained that four civilians entered with gunshot wounds, another two with injuries to the face, while the police presented injuries to the eye, hand and foot, and head.


In the country's capital, Lima, a march that was headed to the headquarters of Congress was contained by police officers, leaving at least five injured and more than 40 detained.

Protesters in Peru are demanding the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, the closure of Congress, the advancement of general elections to 2023, and the calling of a constituent assembly, among other demands.


The concentrations and mobilizations in Peru started on December 7, after Congress dismissed Pedro Castillo and swore in Boluarte as the country's new president.

Since the beginning of the anti-government protests, at least 28 people have died in the country due to the repression of the Army and the Police in just 20 days of protests last December, before a Christmas truce began.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-rep ... -0007.html

Google Translator

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

Peru: Nationwide Strike Against Boluarte Reaches Third Day
January 7, 2023 teleSUR

The strongest protests are taking place in the southern part of the country.
Journalists report traffic blockades on the Interoceanic Highway and the Pan-American Highway.

Image
Blocking a highway in Peru, Jan. 6, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @prensacom

On Friday, Peruvians stage the third consecutive day of protests to demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, the closure of Congress, the call for a constituent process, and the release of former President Pedro Castillo.

The land Transport Superintendence confirmed the blockade of roads in 46 sites scattered in eight regions of the country. Among them is the blockade of traffic between Puno and Arequipa, two important commercial cities.

Currently, the strongest protests are taking place in the southern part of the country. Local media report traffic blockades on the Interoceanic Highway and the Pan-American Highway, as well as protests in Andahuaylas, Aymaraes, and Abancay.

In this last region, 70 percent of the population has complied with the national strike, leaving a large number of vehicles stranded on the roads. In the city of Chalhuanca, the police tried to unblock a highway, which led to clashes with the indigenous communities.


The tweet reads, “Attention: Police beat and immobilize photojournalists. They also hinder other journalists from capturing images of the attacks.”

On Thursday, protests were reported in the departments of Apurimac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Puno, Cuzco, and Tacna. Motorcycle taxi drivers and food market workers then announced that they were joining the national strike.

Despite persistent rain, the citizens held a sit-in in front of the Ayacucho Cathedral, from where they demanded justice for the almost 30 deaths caused by the repression in December.

In Arequipa, a mobilization of thousands of people demanded the departure of Dina Boluarte and the closure of Congress.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... third-day/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 08, 2023 4:29 pm

Protesters maintain road blockade in Peru

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According to the Peruvian Ombudsman's Office, until January 7, there were mobilizations and roadblocks in at least 18 provinces of the country. | Photo: EFE
Posted 8 January 2023 (5 hours 59 minutes ago)

The Ministry of Health of Peru indicated that in the last week 36 people have been hospitalized due to police repression.

The protests in Peru that demand the departure of President Dina Boluarte, due to the advancement of the elections and other demands persist this Sunday with the blockade of roads and massive mobilizations in various regions of the country.

According to the Superintendence of Land Transportation, the protesters maintain the blockade of 13 main highways, in the departments of Puno; Cusco, Arequipa, Madre de Dios, as well as Apurímac, Ucayali and Tacna, on the border with Chile.

For its part, the Ombudsman's Office has numbered 62 roads blocked in the country to demand the resignation of President Boluarte, the cessation of Congress and the call for a constituent assembly, among other demands.


According to the Peruvian entity, until January 7, mobilizations, strikes and roadblocks were registered in at least 18 provinces of the country.

Protests against the Boluarte government have concentrated in the south of the country, where acts of repression by the Peruvian Army and Police have also been reported.


Heavy clashes between protesters and police broke out on Friday in the city of Juliaca, department of Puno, where at least 12 civilians and four police officers were injured, the Ombudsman's Office reported on Saturday.


Data from the Peruvian Ministry of Health indicate that in the last week 36 people have been hospitalized due to the repression of the mobilizations in favor of new elections and the closure of Congress.


Demonstrations and mobilizations in Peru broke out on December 7, after Dina Boluarte took office, replacing Pedro Castillo, who was ousted by Congress led by right-wing sectors.

At least 22 people have died in Peru since the protests and mobilizations began last December.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-man ... -0008.html

Journalist union denounces attack against reporter in Peru

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Peruvian press professionals denounced the threats received by the reporter hours before he was shot. | Photo: EFE
Posted 8 January 2023 (8 hours 30 minutes ago)

Mejía, who works for the EFE press agency, visibly displayed his journalist identification.

Trade union organizations such as the National Association of Journalists (ANP) and the Association of Foreign Press in Peru (APEP) demanded on their social network accounts an investigation into the attack suffered by photojournalist Aldair Mejía, in the town of Juliaca, in the San Roman province.

The entities that bring together the professionals of the Peruvian press denounced the threats received by the reporter hours before he was shot in the leg with pellets.

According to local media, Mejía, who works for Spain's EFE press agency, visibly displayed his journalist identification while covering demonstrations in Juliaca in the south of the country.


The ANP demanded that "the corresponding authorities identify and punish those responsible"; meanwhile, APEP requested "the Peruvian authorities to sanction all police excesses, as well as to investigate attacks by protesters against journalists from local media."

"We may be a privileged and uncomfortable witness, but we fulfill a moral duty to society," concluded the statement issued by the Association of Foreign Press in Peru (APEP).


Police attacks against journalists have increased during the political and social crisis that arose after the arrest of former President Pedro Castillo.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/gremio-p ... -0005.html

Google Translator

*******

Peru: Social Movements Declare National Strike, Demand Boluarte's Resignation (+ Evo Morales)
JANUARY 7, 2023

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Peruvian protesters demand resignation of de facto President Dina Boluarte and Congress that carried out a coup against the elected President Pedro Castillo. Photo: Your Newscast.

The indefinite national strike in Peru, called by various social movements of the country, has been continuing since January 4, in demand of a constituent assembly, the release of President Pedro Castillo from prison, and the resignation of de facto President Dina Boluarte and her illegitimate government.

The strike has spread through the country, with the greatest presence in the departments of Apurimac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Puno, Cusco, and Tacna. The protesters demand the closing of the Congress, dominated by the ultra-right, which removed the democratically elected president, Pedro Castillo on December 7, 2022, and imposed his vice president, Dina Boluarte, as the de facto head of state of Peru.

Peruvian press reported on demonstrations, so far peaceful, in multiple sectors of Abancay, Andahuaylas and Aymaraes provinces of Apurimac, as well as roadblocks on important highways like the Interoceanic Highway and the Panamericana Sur.


Confrontations between the protesters and the police occurred in Chalhuanca, of Aymaraes province, where the police launched tear gas at the people while trying to remove a roadblock.

According to local media, 70% of the people of Abancay is participating in the indefinite national strike. A large number of vehicles remain stranded in the city, and the business sector has been affected.

The Peruvian transportation regulatory authority, the Superintendence of Land Transportation of People, Cargo and Goods (SUTRAN), reported that in the early hours of Friday, January 6, 46 roads remained blocked in eight regions of the country, interrupting traffic.

Peruvian right wing tries to blame Evo Morales for protests
In the midst of the political crisis in Peru, some right-wing members of Congress tried to blame the former president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, for the ongoing protests against the coup against Pedro Castillo.

Congress-members of some right-wing parties, namely, Renovación Popular , Fuerza Popular , Alianza para el Progreso , Acción Popular and Bloque Magisterial, asked Boluarte not to allow Morales to enter Peru and to take legal actions against him. They claimed that Morales' recent visits to Peruvian towns on the border with Bolivia must be a reason behind the protests against the de facto authorities of Peru, in spite of the fact that tensions in the Peruvian society were growing since the moment of Castillo's election. From the very beginning of Castillo's term, the Peruvian right wing tried to oust him, as he does not belong to the traditional Peruvian elite and came to power with the promise of changes that would go against the interests of that dominant political and economic class in the country.

Boluarte herself joined the attack against Morales and said that the Peruvian immigration authority is planning to limit the Bolivian leader's entry into the country.

“We are discussing; we see the situation of Mr. Evo Morales' entry into the country in this context [of the accusations from the right], because I believe that no one, no person, no former president or leader of another country can have any right to interfere in the internal affairs of our country,” Boluarte told PBO Radio of Lima.

Morales responded to the accusations through a Twitter post: “We turned the other cheek to the political attacks coming from the Peruvian right wing. But please stop the massacres, illegal detentions, persecution and terruqueo [disqualification] of our indigenous brothers and sisters. There will be no peace without social justice. Peru demands a profound transformation.”

On Wednesday, January 4, Peruvian Congressman Jorge Montoya, leader of the extreme right Renovación Popular party and former commander of the Armed Forces of Peru, filed a complaint before the Attorney General's Office against Evo Morales, for allegedly attacking the “national integrity” of the country. Another ex-military officer turned congressman of the same ultra-right party, retired Admiral José Cueto, wants the Peruvian police to arrest the Bolivian leader.

Cueto urged the Peruvian National Police to capture the former president of Bolivia, stating that Morales is now an “ordinary citizen” who is carrying out an “undue use of his status as former president to incite people”, and that is a crime.

“He must be captured… even if he is outside Peru,” the former military officer said, and asked relevant authorities to issue an international arrest warrant against the former president.


( RedRadioVE , Latest News )

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/peru-social- ... o-morales/

Counterinsurgency War: US Bioresearch Labs, Bases and Troops in Peru
JANUARY 6, 2023

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Helicopter flying over the VRAEM (Valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers), home to 40 US military bases, allegedly fighting “drug trafficking.” File photo.

By Stella Calloni – Dec 31, 2022

Peru has been experiencing a dramatic crisis since December 7, 2022. This crisis was caused by the illegal dismissal of President Pedro Castillo, imposed by the parliament under the control of the Peruvian ultra-right wing, which ordered his arrest the day of the president’s message to the nation. He was condemned to 18 months in prison a week later by the Permanent Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, which provoked a popular uprising in several regions, repressed by the police from the first moments and later by the army when the coup perpetrators imposed a state of emergency and other dictatorial measures.

The government of Dina Boluarte and the parliament are responsible for the massacres that have taken place, and the repression that continues. Boluarte, Castillo’s vice-president, had been “co-opted,” betraying those who voted for her. Imposed by the ultra-right as president, she thought that she could win over some of the sectors that supported the detained president. She did not succeed, and militarization continues to spread over the regions where the population survives under the terror of a military occupation by Peruvian special forces and US troops which have been in Peru for years and occupy a very large area of the country’s territory.

The silence on this presence became open complicity, in addition to ignoring that this parliamentary, media, judicial and political coup of the right wing under Washington’s control is part of the geostrategic project of recolonization of Latin America, publicly admitted by the US leadership. How long will the complicit silence last?

In reality the coup was being prepared since before Castillo took office on July 28, 2021, and since then the pro-US right wing obstructed every measure of that government. The government’s own weakness is not a valid argument if one considers what was taking place since the years of the dictator Alberto Fujimori (July 1990 – November 2000) who, in 1992, dissolved the Congress, intervened in the judiciary, took control of all the media, and gave free hand to unlimited repression and death squads. In 1993 he imposed a constitution similar to that left by dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

Fujimori is now serving a 25 year sentence in prison for the scandalous corruption that continues to burden the country, and for crimes against humanity committed during his government. We still do not have all the necessary data that would reveal the number of massacres in peasant areas, in addition to the murders and disappearances committed in those years.

Uruguayan journalist Carlos Fazio, who lives in Mexico, states in an article published in La Jornada that “the main operator of the coup plot in the parliament was its current president, retired General José Williams Zapata, former head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces of Peru and representative of the conservative group Avanza País, who during the second round of the 2021 elections supported the ultra-right Keiko Fujimori, against her opponent Pedro Castillo, who was elected.“

In 2006 Williams Zapata was the head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces of Peru, and was accused of serious corruption. In 2021, he was also accused of cover-up in the massacre of Accomarca (1985), where 69 members of a peasant community were killed. He has a dreadful background, as noted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the United States, during the time he was head of the Northern Military Region of Piura (from 2004 to 2005) and has been linked to some of the most infamous drug cartels in Mexico.

A character like Williams Zapata is undoubtedly someone who can be given the carpetazos when they are under Pentagon control. This is the main reason why the general, now a two-time parliamentarian, “was one of the main coordinators of the coup plan from Congress against Castillo, coordinating with the Peruvian military high command and the US ambassador in Lima, Lisa Kenna, a former agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),“ who “relied on the military attaché of the US diplomatic mission in Peru, Mariano Alvarado, an operations officer of the Pentagon’s Military Advisory and Assistance Group (MAAG), who maintains close contact with the Peruvian generals.“

It is incredible that it was argued that Castillo was going to establish a government of emergency and exception, which according to the “democratic” parliamentarians “would alter the constitutional order and public peace,” and that “the deposed president could flee due to his attempt to take refuge in the Mexican embassy in Lima.”

Precisely the first thing Boluarte ordered, by orders of the central command, was to install the State of Exception and other dictatorial measures on December 15, in order to allow the “experts” combating “subversion and terrorism” a free rein in the country.

This aggravated the people’s rebellion that had arisen in several regions of the country demanding the immediate freedom of the former president, the dissolution of the parliament, and the call for a Constituent Assembly, given that the people had endured six presidents in six years.

To all this is added the existence of a number of US military bases and establishments, and the presence of US troops in strategic places. Nobody talks about this, as if a growing foreign military occupation of a nation were not a factor of utmost importance.

According to sources linked to the hierarchies of transnational corporations in Lima, the coup plot had been hatched since last September as part of a sophisticated intelligence operation.

Since Congress did not have the necessary votes to remove President Castillo from office, they tricked him into believing “that he had the support of the armed forces and the police and induced him to dissolve the Parliament (so that he would deliberately break the constitutional order). For that purpose they forged polls (which they only showed him) and made him believe that he had more than 40% of popular support and the Congress only 8%, so that it would be very easy to dissolve parliament and he would be praised by the people,” writes Fazio.

“In addition to the army and the police, the plan involved the attorney general’s office, the comptroller’s office, ministers, congressmen and Vice President Boluarte,” according to Fazio. “After the president read his message to the nation dissolving Congress and installing a ‘government of exception,’ several ministers resigned in series. Castillo then sought the support of the armed forces through his military aides-de-camp and got no response. Then he realized that he had been set up, but it was too late. State security even held him in the palace while they waited for the congressional vote to strip him of his immunity. He was then told that a supposed plan B had been agreed upon: to seek asylum in the Mexican embassy. By then, one of the plotters had arranged for Castillo’s diplomatic asylum in the Mexican mission. But moments after Congress declared the presidential vacancy, accusing him of alleged rebellion, Castillo was arrested by a SWAT commando of the national police. He was taken to the Comptroller’s Office and the Attorney General immediately appeared, while Boluarte was waiting at home to be called to assume as President of the Republic.”

“The only one who was not involved in the coup plot was the general commander of the army, Walter Córdova, who, according to the newspaper La República, on December 5 had been pressured by the head of Parliament, José Williams, to leave his post because there were ‘serious accusations’ against him that affected the ‘institutionality’ of the army,“ a typical extortion.

Also, on the eve of the coup, US Ambassador Lisa Kenna met with Defense Minister Gustavo Bobbio, who, like Córdova, resigned on December 7. According to La República, the last phone call Castillo took before leaving the presidential palace came from the US embassy. The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had blessed the coup and recognized Boluarte as president.

The United States was also behind the appointment of the new head of the Peruvian National Intelligence Directorate, retired Colonel Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor, former liaison officer in the Pentagon’s Southern Command, closely linked to the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori and his alter ego, Vladimiro Montesinos, both imprisoned for crimes against humanity. Liendo guarantees the ongoing repression and militarization in Peru, emphasizes Fazio.

The impressive rebellion of the Peruvian people, which sociologist and professor Héctor Béjar, a highly respected man in all of Peru, who had been appointed as foreign minister in the first days of Castillo’s government but quickly dismissed due to the pressure of the parliament, considers “an authentic rebellion of the Peruvian people,” has been joined by students from several universities in the country.

The Peruvian army, trained for years by the United States, is acting to “eliminate subversion, [supposedly] fight drug trafficking and terrorism,” to which “communism” has been added. High-ranking officials declared to the media that they are “working intensely” to combat terrorism, which according to them is behind these popular demonstrations of peasants, workers, trade unionists, communities, miners and others.

The most serious thing is that the statements to the media, that are also under US control, are aimed at terrorizing the Peruvian people, with the supposed fight “against the remnants of terrorism.” The people already know what this means, they have memories of what they have lived through, and they continue to mourn the dead and disappeared, throughout the last few years. But there are sectors of the population that are still terrified by what the disinformation media write.

Peruvians are preparing to suffer a fierce political persecution by the armed forces and police forces that have declared the “anti-terrorist war” with the support of the “parliament” of justice and the media, local and foreign.

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At present, there are more than 10 US military bases throughout Peruvian territory, installed in private modules or in Peruvian military or navy bases. They are located in strategic energy posts. Among the best known military bases are: 1. Palmapampa (in the VRAEM). 2. Mazamari – VRAEM. 3. Pichari – VRAEM. 4. Puerto de El Callao. 5. Ancon. 6. Pucalpa. 7. Equitos. 8. Teniente Clavero 9. Putumayo - Santa Clotilde - Loreto. 10. El Estrecho.
At present, there are more than 10 US military bases throughout Peruvian territory, installed in private modules or in Peruvian military or navy bases. They are located in strategic energy posts. Among the best known military bases are: 1. Palmapampa (in the VRAEM). 2. Mazamari – VRAEM. 3. Pichari – VRAEM. 4. Puerto de El Callao. 5. Ancon. 6. Pucalpa. 7. Equitos. 8. Teniente Clavero 9. Putumayo – Santa Clotilde – Loreto. 10. El Estrecho.
The VAREM is a zone of valleys of Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, a strategic place for military exercises and a military base zone. The existence of the US Navy laboratory, called NAMRU-6, with facilities in Lima and Iquitos, has also been condemned for supposedly researching infectious diseases. This has been decried by numerous social organizations. Peruvian Congressman Richard Arce submitted a questionnaire to the US Ministry of Defense about this, but no one answered.

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US biolab NAMRU 6

Peruvian analyst Ricardo Soberón states that there is a series of doubts regarding the operations and activities of the laboratory NAMRU 6 established by the United States Navy in Peru in 1983 (Bioweapons Production in Iquitos Research Laboratory).

Soberón warns that 21st century war technology “is accompanied by the development of pathological agents, endemic agents and chemical and biological agents that are used for military purposes. We have seen this in various recent scenarios.” Taking this concern into account, “it is striking that a tropical medicine facility has been built that works with biosafety level 3, which is recognized in the use of pathogenic agents.”

“Congressman Richard Arce prepared a questionnaire for the Ministry of Defense during his 2018-2019 legislature, as a member of the Defense and Internal Order Committee, through Dispatch No. 0504/2018/2019-ADP-R/CR of May 3, 2019,” he adds. “It was a questionnaire of 10 questions on NAMRU 6, made to the Minister of Defense at the time, Gen. José Huerta Torres, which were half-answered… eight months later. Among the most important questions, the following stand out: What is the cost for the State to be part of NAMRU 6? What security measures are taken to neutralize the biological risks that can endanger human health in our territory (biological contamination, leakage of microorganisms, viruses, bacteria, toxins)? Are there experiments with human lives, have new pathogens been created or developed, how is compliance with Peruvian legislation on health and biological safety guaranteed in the development of this program?”

He also points out that effectively, the fact that there are American military personnel in Peru being a strictly military mechanism, should lead us to ask two questions:

What jurisdiction do they obey; do they have diplomatic status?

When serving within a Peruvian military installation, is the chain of command directed towards their military liaison or towards the Peruvian military?
Finally, and this question was not answered either, what certainty do the Peruvian military have that the results of the investigations are not directed for military purposes?” (Article published in the magazine El Derecho de Vivir en Paz, No. 14).

On April 19, 2022, the Minister of Defense José Luis Gavidia publicly announced the surprising news of the closure of 40 military bases in the VRAEM, which was done in the presence of Pedro Castillo. The minister said that this objective was to be achieved by 2026. And of course experts insisted that this measure will increase the illegal growth of coca leaf plantation and drug trafficking in that area, with US troops inside, as in Colombia this will increase, but under their control.

As was said before, the VRAEM covers the valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers and it is one of the most violent areas of the country due to the presence of terrorist groups and drug trafficking gangs, as well as the lack of State presence. What is the truth in all of this?

These supposed terrorist groups are, at this moment, nothing more and nothing less than the uprising of the people, as has been happening in the last few days.

In this situation, when it became known that 40 military bases would be transformed into entities to promote legal economic activities in the area, the news aroused not only enormous concern in Peru, but also among experts in military matters who were astonished because it is in that area where most counterinsurgency and antiterrorist military exercises by Peruvian troops with the “special” forces of the United States have been carried out and continue to be carried out.

The Castillo government had set as an objective that before 2026, the VRAEM valley zone “will cease to be an emergency zone and we are working intensely so that these forty counter-subversive bases that we have there become forty production centers,” as announced by Minister Gavidia in April 2022. He added that the zone in question (VRAEM) is in a consolidation stage, a phase in which the authorities are trying to annihilate the terrorist and subversive remnants.

“Everything that is done in the VRAEM and the border areas is controlled by the United States, and everything that is done there has the authorization and diplomatic, military and ideological support of the United States,” Soberon stated.

“As for the war on drugs, it has very little to do with reducing drug consumption in the United States and has no effect on it either,” the expert continues. “It consists fundamentally of a chemical warfare against the peasants of the VRAEM that destroys their crops (as already seen in the Monzon Valley) and drives them off their lands into the suburbs of the cities, leading to human trafficking, prostitution and other crimes. I gathered testimony from the peasants and natives of the VRAEM.”

“The government has destroyed their lives by destroying their land with chemical agents, forcing them to move, many of their children are in prisons in Ayacucho, Andahuaylas, Cusco and Lima,” he adds. “In fact, according to the penitentiary census, most of the inmates of the prisons in question are poor youths, backpackers or cargachos from all over the territory surrounding the VRAEM.”

“The coca route is full of dead adolescents,” Soberon states. As an interview in the newspaper La República (Arrieros de la Cocaina) points out, “unlike the disappeared of the internal war, the inhabitants of the VRAEM and surrounding areas do not claim those who disappeared on the coca route,” and “if the intention was to reduce drug consumption in the United States, it would be much cheaper to resort to prevention and treatment.“

“The same would be true if the intention was to eradicate terrorism,” says Soberón. “But no. Police and military measures are much more expensive and less effective. And even more expensive and less effective are military operations outside the country violating sovereignty, and under a state of emergency destroying crops, which means chemical and psychological warfare. The gringo military does not come to learn from Peruvian soldiers, nor to reduce drug consumption or combat the remnants of terrorism.”

The lack of monitoring of what Peru has been experiencing for years conceals the real military occupation of the country, strategically located as part of the sea surface of the Pacific Ocean (Sea of Grau) and with land borders with Ecuador and Colombia in the north, in the east with Brazil, southeast with Bolivia and Chile. It also has maritime borders with Chile.

According to SOA Watch, in March 2018, the US Southern Command published information about its strategy for this region in the next ten years, warning about the main “dangers” or “threats” identified and the way to confront them.

In 2017 Peru became a key region for US military deployment, with the installation of new bases in the Peruvian jungle and the Regional Emergency Operations Centers (COER).

“These bases are not only military, although all of them are in their essence,” says Cuban analyst Raúl Capote Fernández. “There are bases that function as centers for media warfare and cyberwarfare. From this point of view, the Armed Forces of each country should be retrained to face these heterogeneous issues, which in most cases are complex socioeconomic phenomena.“

Peru is today, together with Colombia, the country with the largest number of foreign military bases. Moreover, the principal Peruvian ports (Callao, Salaverry, Paita, Chimbote and Ilo), from where the oil, gas and minerals that the country exports are shipped and the regions of high social conflict and protest, such as the Apurimac and Ene River Valleys and others known as VRAEM, are under US control.

For years the US Navy has been using Peruvian ports as an operational center on the Pacific coast of South America, to supply its ships and to rest its troops.

In addition to the strategic decision to re-impose the Monroe Doctrine, another threat is “what the economic and commercial presence of China and Russia represents for the US ‘democratic’ values in the region,” although Russia and China never been interested in colonial domination in any part of the world, but instead offer investments and commercial relations on respectful terms, which allow setting the conditions of the agreements to the countries themselves. A non-colonial relationship that the US evidently wants to eradicate definitively. It needs to ensure its hegemonic interests in the hemisphere, and perpetuate its domination over the immense economic resources of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Between military bases and Special Operations Centers (COER) to (allegedly) attend to “humanitarian” issues with the presence of thousands of US soldiers and officers, the US has been controlling the Amazonian zone for years with bases such as Iquito and Santa Lucia.

On December 28, 2021, the Peruvian Congress authorized the entry of US military troops in several regions of Peru for a period of one year. The surprising thing about the initiative is that it was approved and published very quickly at night. The plenary of the Congress enacted Legislative Resolution N° 31102 on December 29, and on December 30 it was published in the newspaper El Peruano.

The resolution authorizes the entry into Peruvian territory of military personnel with weapons of war (M4 rifles, short cannons, pistols, machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, high-precision rifles and shotguns), and troops who had already arrived from January 1 to December 31, 2021.

Moreover, the government was asked to modify the execution of military activities “when unforeseen causes exist.” The entry of US military personnel is intended to develop training activities with the Armed Forces and National Police of Peru (in Lima, Callao, Loreto, San Martin, Santa Lucia, Huanuco, Ucayali, Paseo, Junin, Huancavelica, Cusco, Ayacucho, lquitos, Pucusana and Apurimac).

“Every year, military troops enter Peruvian territory on at least three occasions,” according to SOA Watch. “It is justified that it is for protocol purposes of training and combined operations, day and night, contributing to the interoperability of the Special Forces with NATO systems and doctrine, among them, terrorism and defense against possible attacks against energy resources.”

In Peruvian territory, as SOA Watch reports, a total of 87,516 US military personnel have entered between 2003 and 2010; between 2011 and 2018, 23,122 U.S. military personnel entered for military training exercises in sea, on land and in rivers, for anti-subversive and intelligence training in conjunction with the armed forces and police of Peru.

In summary, Peru pays millions of dollars to the special troops of the United States, who on the one hand train supposedly to act against terrorism and subversion, and on the other hand to reduce the cultivation of coca and other drugs, in a “special project” of the combined special forces (Peru-USA) for strategies and operations. The”fight against drugs and terrorism” has received an annual investment of around $232 million for 10 consecutive years.

In 2021, the US military that entered with weapons of war, were subsidized by the Peruvian State and will use the entire military apparatus (helicopters, vehicles, infrastructure, etc. which includes fuel and other expenses) with the Peruvian State’s budget. This and much more is behind the events in Peru. The cost is nothing more and nothing less than independence, sovereignty and freedom. The number of people killed in different massacres, the wounded and the disappeared are incalculable at this moment. The true history of Peru is also written in the mass graves that remain in the shadows and silence of impunity.



Author’s Note: The research on these topics is lengthy and requires a book. I thank researchers such as Raul Capote Fernández, Cuban analyst, essayist, researcher and editor; Ricardo Soberón, Peruvian lawyer, specialist in drug and drug trafficking policies and international politics; Telma Luzzani, Argentine journalist, writer and researcher, author of the book Territorios Vigilados, about US military bases; Carlos Fazio, Uruguayan-Mexican journalist, writer and analyst of international politics.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 10, 2023 4:18 pm

At Least 67 Peruvians Injured In Protests Against Boluarte

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Protesters block the road over the Combapata bridge, Cuzco, Peru, Jan. 5, 2023. | Photo: EFE

Published 9 January 2023 (6 hours 24 minutes ago)

“All injured people currently receive medical care,” the Health Ministry tweeted, stressing that most patients come from Juliaca city, where the Police fired tear gas against protesters.


On Sunday, Peru’s Health Ministry (MINSA) reported that at least 67 people have been injured so far in the demonstrations demanding President Dina Boluarte's resignation.

“All injured people currently receive medical care,” the Health Ministry tweeted, stressing that most patients come from Juliaca city, where the Police fired tear gas against protesters who attempted to take over the city airport.

Demonstrations began on Dec. 2022, after Vice President Boluarte swore in as President in replacement of Pedro Castillo, whom the Congress dismissed. After a pause for the end-of-the-year holidays, the protests resumed

Currently, protesters maintain roadblocks in six out of 24 Peruvian departments, including Puno, Cusco, Arequipa, Madre de Dios, Apurimac, and Ucayali. So far, 22 people have died in these mobilizations, which the Economy Minister Alex Contreras estimates have generated losses of between US$15 to 25 million.


“Road blockades are also blockades of production, employment, and agro-exports,” Contreras insisted, adding that protests also affect the tourism sector, which he thinks will take two or three quarters to be restored.

To tackle protests through dialogue and political conciliation, Boluarte convened the "National Accord", a forum that brings together the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches with political and social organizations. To contain the social tension, Congress also approved advancing the general elections to April 2024.

None of these initiatives, however, proved to be effective. On Sunday, protesters blocked more roads in the Ica region and announced new marches through Lima and Cuzco next week.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/At- ... -0011.html

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Peruvian Regime Kills 9 Protesters in Juliaca
January 9, 2023Peru
Peru’s human rights ombudsman has confirmed the death of 9 protesters today as a result of repression by regime security forces in the town of Juliaca, an indigenous Aymara town on the border with Bolivia. The local population was taking part in a general strike to reject the coup against Pedro Castillo.

The statement by the ombudsman says, “We regret the death of 9 people after clashes in the vicinity of the Juliaca airport, who were transferred to the Carlos Monge Hospital and the La Revolución Health Center. We request that the security forces ensure legal, necessary, and proportional use of force, and we urge the prosecutors office to carry out a prompt investigation to clarify the facts.”

This is breaking news, and we’ll continue to inform on the events as they develop.

https://kawsachunnews.com/peruvian-regi ... in-juliaca

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Peru: General Strike Continues Despite Repression
January 9, 2023Peru
The general strike against Peru’s coup regime is on its sixth consecutive day with barricades and roadblocks erected across the country. The weekend also saw countless illegal arrests of protesters and journalists.

According to authorities, protesters have blocked highways at 45 different points. The indigenous Aymara region of Puno is the center of opposition to the regime, with the highest number of barricades erected along highways. The roads connecting Puno to Arequipa, Cusco, and the Amazon, are among those currently blocked.

In Lima, 224 people were detained on Friday for participating in protests organized by workers’ unions. Nevertheless, the transport workers union has announced that they will join the general strike “if this is the only way for them to listen to us,” said their general secretary Ricardo Pareja.

The possibility of dialogue appears unlikely after the Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), the largest union confederation, announced that it would not participate in the ‘National Agreement Session’ organized by the regime. The unions say that there cannot be social peace while the Peruvian people are being massacred, tortured, and killed for using their right to social protests.

The regime of Dina Boluarte has killed more than 30 protesters, mostly indigenous, since the coup against Pedro Castillo. Strike demands include the resignation of Dina Boluarte, new elections, a constituent assembly, and the release of Pedro Castillo.

https://kawsachunnews.com/peru-general- ... repression

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SEEKING RELIEF FROM OPPRESSION, PERUVIANS RESIST CASTILLO REMOVAL…AND WAIT
Posted by W. T. Whitney, Jr. | Jan 9, 2023

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BY W. T. WHITNEY JR.
December 23, 2022 Counterpunch

“Pedro Castillo emerged from that deep, excluded, and marginalized Peru that has been the primordial object of nefarious consequences of treason by the elites,” according to an observer. Castillo was the first progressive candidate ever to win a presidential election in Peru.

After harassing him for months, Peru’s right-wing-dominated unicameral Congress recently ordered Castillo’s removal from office. The authorities arrested him, and now he is in prison. Replacing Castillo was Vice President Dina Boluarte.

Protesters have mobilized throughout Peru, blockaded over 100 highways, occupied five airports, and held rallies in various cities. The new government has instituted a 30-day state of emergency and imposed a strong police and military presence throughout the country. Security forces have killed almost 30 protesters and wounded hundreds.

Demonstrators are demanding Boluarte’s ouster, Castillo’s liberation, his return as president, new elections in 2023, and a constituent assembly.

As with Peru’s tumultuous history over recent decades, this conflict reflects division between Peruvians who are well-resourced, European-descended, and living mainly in cities—one-third of Peruvians live in Lima—and the majority of Peruvians who are distressed and deprived and who are likely to live in rural areas and be of indigenous heritage.

They are the 51% of Peruvians who are food insecure, the 32.90% who are impoverished, the 76% who work in the informal sector, and the 14.9% of the rural who are illiterate.

Vladimir Cerrón, a Cuba-trained neurosurgeon and founder of the Marxist-oriented Peru Libre (Free Peru) party, in October 2000 recruited Castillo as that party’s presidential candidate. Living in northern Peru, Castillo had never held political office. He was a small farmer, a teacher, and leader of a teachers’ union. He scored a surprise second-round victory in presidential elections on June 6, 2021.

Castillo’s hold on the presidency was fragile, beginning with a 42-day delay in taking office pending investigation of electoral fraud allegations. From then on, he was dodging attacks from Peru’s Congress, where conservatives are in charge. He frequently replaced cabinet ministers in vain attempts to ward off moves leading to his impeachment. The Congress repeatedly accused Castillo of corruption.

Cerrón, angered at Castillo’s dismissal of Peru Libre cabinet ministers, allowed the party’s congressional representatives to break their ties with Castillo. Pressured by Cerrón, Castillo withdrew from Peru Libre in July 2022. Dina Boluarte, his vice president, had earlier been expelled from that party. She and Castillo were not communicating.

Castillo survived two impeachment votes in Congress. But anticipating a successful third impeachment vote, Castillo on Dec. 7 dismissed Congress and called for new elections. The Congress then did impeach him on grounds of “moral incapacity” and proceeded to arrest him. He has been ordered imprisoned for 18 months. The next elections, according to Peru’s constitution, would take place in 2026.

Conflict between President Castillo and the Congress has revolved around provisions of Peru’s 1993 constitution created under the auspices of the Fujimori dictatorship. That constitution authorizes removal of a president via congressional impeachment in a process known as “vacancy.” It also states that, “The President has the power to dissolve Congress if the latter has censured or refused to give a vote of confidence to two cabinet ministers.”

Castillo’s family has taken refuge in the Mexican embassy. The governments of Colombia, Bolivia, Argentina, Honduras, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and some Caribbean nations denounced Peru’s parliamentary coup. The United States, together with Chile, are backing the new government.

The U.S. government is heavily involved. Ambassador Lisa Kenna, an experienced CIA and State Department operative, met with Defense Minister Gustavo Bobbio Rosas on Dec. 6, the day before the Congress impeached and removed Castillo. Bobbio is a retired brigadier general.

The next day, prior to resigning, Bobbio instructed Peru’s armed forces to oppose Castillo’s attempt to dissolve the Congress, which he characterized as a coup. That day, Ambassador Kenna tweeted: “The United States emphatically urges President Castillo to reverse his attempt to close the congress and allow the democratic institutions of Peru to function according to the constitution. We encourage the Peruvian public to remain calm.”

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador , on Dec. 16, criticized the state of emergency in Peru. He denounced President Boluarte’s meeting with U.S. ambassador, adding, “Force must not be used, the people must not be repressed, and freedoms must be guaranteed.” In response, Peru’s government on Dec. 21 moved to expel Mexico’s ambassador in Lima.

The U.S. military has a presence in Peru, as with other Latin American and Caribbean nations. U.S. personnel in 2017 participated in military exercises held jointly with Peru, Colombia, and Brazil in the “triple borderland” in the Amazon region. The U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit Six has long carried out infectious disease studies in Lima and Iquitos. As of 2018, the U.S. Southern Command had built 15 Regional Emergency Operations Centers as part of its “Humanitarian Assistance Program.”

Peru’s military may not uniformly support the coup. Troops stationed in the “VRAEM” area (a Spanish acronym meaning Valley of the Apurimac, Ene, and Mantaro Rivers) on Dec. 18 declared that “The glorious Peruvian Army will not honor the state of emergency” and that they are “in rebellion against the usurper [President] Dina Arcelia Baluarte Zegarra.” Their statement condemns “this exploitative, corrupt system endorsed by Peru’s Political Constitution of 1993.”

This rebelliousness may somehow relate to a Defense Ministry announcement on May 5 that 40 bases in the VREAM area would eventually be converted from drug-war installations to “production and development centers.” The VRAEM in 2020 accounted for 70% of Peru’s coca production. The Ministry’s plans to remove the military bases have been criticized.

The highly-regarded Héctor Béjar, chancellor for the first 19 days of Castillo’s presidency, has the last word. He notes that, “Castillo is a humble man, not a man of the left. He is an evangelical … not a Marxist-Leninist, not a terrorist … His behavior is inexplicable because he is a labor leader at the national level and led two very important teacher strikes. It’s not that he had no experience.”

Béjar is perhaps alluding to Castillo’s unpreparedness in presuming to head a reform-minded progressive government, especially in comparison with similarly-motivated regional leaders of the past and present. In their own ways Presidents like Morales of Bolivia, Petro of Colombia, Chávez of Venezuela, Castro of Honduras, Allende of Chile, and Correa of Ecuador had prepared. They had nurtured popular support, recruited reliable political associates, already were leaders within a left-leaning political movement, or they developed one.

Béjar declares that, “We have a dictatorship in Perú, a military and political dictatorship …[and] we are in a revolutionary movement without revolutionaries.”

It’s true. Masses of working and marginalized people in Peru are themselves prepared, as indicated by their surprise vote for Castillo in 2021 and currently by their vigorous and ongoing resistance to the coup. Now as in the past, they are waiting for visionary and revolutionary leadership.

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Thu Jan 12, 2023 3:36 pm

Peru: US-Backed Coup Regime Has Murdered 46 Demonstrators
JANUARY 11, 2023

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Relatives of 18 people killed by police repression wait with empty coffins outside the morgue of the Carlos Monge Medrano hospital in Juliaca, southern Peru, on January 10, 2023. Photo: Juan Carlos Cisneros/AFP.

By Steve Lalla – Jan 10, 2023

In Peru, the death toll has risen to at least 46 following the December 7 US-backed coup overthrowing democratically elected socialist President Pedro Castillo.

On January 9 alone, at least 18 were killed by the coup regime’s security forces in Juliaca. Peru is now mobilized in a national general strike, with demonstrators demanding the return of the president they elected, Pedro Castillo, imprisoned without trial since the coup. Video footage has emerged of military troops firing live ammunition at demonstrators, brutally beating unarmed protesters, and using helicopters to control crowds.

The electoral choice of poor and Indigenous Peruvians, former teacher Pedro Castillo is Peru’s first Indigenous president and the most left-wing president in the country’s history. He promised to rewrite Peru’s Constitution and ensure that the country’s resources were not pillaged by foreign corporations, as they have been for centuries. He was never allowed to govern. The right-wing forces in Peru, in league with transnational and US corporations, tried to impeach him three times, claiming he was morally or mentally unfit for the position.

Attempting to portray him as a dictator-in-the-making, mainstream media claim that Castillo carried out a “self-coup.” President Castillo acted constitutionally at all times, moving to dissolve Congress only after Congress made it impossible for Castillo to enact any of his campaign promises and forced dozens of his cabinet ministers out of office. This motion is clearly provided for in Article 134 of Peru’s Constitution, which stipulates that the president can dissolve Congress if it refuses to support two cabinets appointed by the president. Castillo’s administration was forced to appoint at least four complete cabinets in the first six months alone, and over 80 ministers in less than 18 months in office.

The US has supported Castillo’s overthrow since day one. The US speedily expressed support for Castillo’s replacement, the coup leader Boluarte, recognizing her “presidency” minutes after she was appointed by the coup regime. Washington, DC-based Organization of American States, which presents itself as an arbiter of democracy across the Americas, promptly issued a statement steeped in hypocrisy, claiming that it supported peace, democracy, and the unelected “president” of the coup regime.

Mainstream media outlets exploded immediately with the news that Peru now had its first woman president. Of course, that would have been great news, had she been elected, but Boluarte has never received any votes for president; nevertheless, she initially stated that she would occupy the presidency until 2026.

The blood of Peruvians is on the hands of the US. In 2021, under disgraced president Donald Trump, the US appointed CIA agent Lisa Kenna as ambassador to Peru. Kenna was “senior aide” to Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who previously headed the CIA. Kenna met with Peru’s minister of defense the day before the coup—perhaps to suggest that he arrest the president, which is what Peru’s security forces did the following day, December 7, 2022. The US has armed and trained Peru’s military for decades and continues to occupy the nation via its naval base in the capital, Lima, and numerous US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) radar sites.

The coup and the massacres have sparked a mass uprising in Peru. A general strike is occurring; barricades have been set up in at least 45 municipalities. Let us hope that—as we saw in Bolivia in 2020—democracy can be restored and an administration that stands up for the rights of the poor and Indigenous is able to take power. Whether in the short or long term, the people’s struggle against exploitation will determine the course of history.

https://orinocotribune.com/peru-us-back ... nstrators/

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Repression Leaves One Dead and Over 20 Injured in Peru


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The sign reads reads, "Dina killed me with bullets." | Photo: Twitter/ @nbcwashington

Published 12 January 2023

Over 40 citizens have died as a result of the repression unleashed by the Army and the Police since Dina Boluarte assumed the presidency in December 2022

On Wednesday, the Peruvian Ombudsman confirmed the death of an Indigenous leader as a result of the police repression unleashed against the people protesting in Cusco city.

Remo Candia Guevara, who died at the Antonio Lorena Hospital in Cuzco, was a leader of the Urinsaya Ccollana peasant community, in the province of Anta.

"We demand an immediate investigation to find those responsible for the death and proceed to the respective sanction," the Ombudsman said.

Over 40 citizens have died as a result of the repression unleashed by the Army and the Police since Dina Boluarte assumed the presidency in December 2022.


The tweet reads, "Peru now: Dina Boluarte 'bringing democracy' to Cusco. Several people injured... The people resist fighting!!"

Jennie Dador, the secretary of the National Human Rights Coordinator (CNDH), denounced that human rights activists have reported on extrajudicial executions perpetrated by security forces under the command of President Boluarte.

According to international standards for the protection of human rights, an extrajudicial execution occurs when the death of a person is the consequence of acts outside the law, which deprive the victim of any possibility of legitimate defense.

The murder of 10 people in Ayacucho and 17 citizens in Puno fall within the concept of "extrajudicial execution", human rights defenders said, warning that this will be reported to the delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) visiting Peru.

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

Peru: Hundreds Pay Tribute to Juliaca Massacre Victims

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The death toll since the beginning of the protests last December has risen to 46. Jan. 11, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@PROTTETIVO

Published 11 January 2023 (18 hours 26 minutes ago)

Hundreds of people accompanied the coffins of the victims through the streets of Juliaca.

The tribute to the dead victims of the clashes between the population and the security forces during the protests of January 9 and 10 took place this Wednesday in the main square of Juliaca.

The coffins were carried through the streets of Juliaca today in the company of hundreds of people from the southern Peruvian city and other provinces. They arrived in the city's main square and paid homage to the victims.

In tears, the victims' relatives demanded justice for their loved ones. From the main square, they also demanded the resignation of Dina Boluarte and the closure of the Congress.

Finally, they continued their march to the Juliaca airport. Outside the landing strip of the Inca Manco Capac International Airport, in the province of San Roman, Puno Region, the 17 victims were taken out last Tuesday night.


Pain and tears in Juliaca. They walk through the streets to the people who died in the clashes. They arrive at the Plaza de Armas. They ask for justice and the resignation of Dina Bolaurte.

Seventeen people died in the protests of the last two days in the city of Juliaca within the framework of the national strike against the government of Dina Boluarte.

Among the victims are two teenagers hit by a stray bullet, a doctor helping the wounded in the clash, and poor parents leaving their children fatherless and their wives in mourning.

Amid the current social and political crisis in Peru, the death toll since the beginning of the protests last December has risen to 46.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0014.html

Looks more like 'thousands' to me.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Sat Jan 14, 2023 4:31 pm

‘We Need a Constituent Process in Peru’: An Interview with Héctor Béjar
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 13, 2023
Lautaro Rivara and Héctor Béjar

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Presidential hopeful for Peru Libre, Pedro Castillo, had a bumpy ride on a mare while going to his polling station in Cajamarca.

With more than 60 years of leading experience in Peruvian politics, Héctor Béjar breaks down in this exclusive interview the context and motives of the coup, and presents a panoramic view of a country caught between reality and fiction.


The rearing horse that “professor” Pedro Castillo, then candidate for the presidency, rode in Tacabamba, became neither a metaphor for speed nor bravery. With a slow stride and a confused step, his government chose, from the very first moment, the strategy of retreat. One step back and then another. Restraint in order to contain. Offering a program for governability to a seditious and insatiable opposition. The most unexpected government of the so-called “second progressive wave” lasted barely fifteen months.

However, it must be recognized that the conditions for the exercise of his government could not have been more hostile, since his narrow victory over Keiko Fujimori by barely 44 thousand votes in the second round of the elections. The president himself quickly became a non-party, disaffected by his own will or abandoned by some of his own, while the friendly fire between “sectarians” and “caviars” ended up with the fracture of the parliamentary blocs. In addition, a very high turnover of civil servants and several scandals and denunciations turned many ministers into lightning rods, discontinuing all executive policies. We can also add the adverse economic conditions generated by the war in Ukraine, and even the protests in the regions by sectors of the transport workers and other subjects that would a priori make up its natural social base.

To this must be added the sapping work of the Congress: from the parliamentary blockade to the proposals for health and education reforms, to the vacancy motions and the accusations of alleged treason against Castillo. In short, his government raised many hopes, many difficulties and many fears, with the vivid memory of the disappointment caused by the presidency of Ollanta Humala, who promised, and failed to deliver, to be a sort of a Creole Hugo Chavez.

We had a conversation with Héctor Béjar Rivera regarding his evaluation of a government of which he was part for a very brief period, serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Béjar’s political experience has been anything but brief. For 60 years he played a leading role in Peruvian politics, from the political-military path he explored in the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and the Peruvian National Liberation Army, to his institutional participation in the Velasco Alvarado government and its agrarian reform policy, as well as in the Constituent Assembly of 1978. His intellectual life has been equally profuse, from the creation of the Center for Development and Participation (CEDEP), to the publication of numerous articles, essays and books, some of them true classics of Peruvian history and sociology. We refer to his vast experience in this conversation.

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Héctor Béjar Rivera during his inauguration as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru.

Everything seemed to indicate that the constituent reform was a demand with broad popular support. Why was that flag lowered as soon as Castillo entered the palace?

It is true that a constituent reform was proposed, and the mobilizations continue to propose it. I have always said that we should not speak of a constituent assembly but of a constituent process, because under the present conditions, an assembly would replicate the parliament. We even run the risk that a body hastily formed in this situation of political precariousness that Peru is going through could be even worse than the Congress itself, giving rise to a Constitution even more regressive than that of 1993, created by the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori.

What we need to do then is undertake a constituent process, a work of education and dissemination with the rural and urban communities, from the grassroots. And, based on the intense popular struggles that are taking place in Peru -which have now intensified-, we must start to create a Constitution that is not the fruit of dubious people or of mafia instruments.

And what about the agrarian reform that the former president announced with great fanfare?

The agrarian reform never existed. It was nothing more than a publicity tool. There were even those who wanted to compare it with the one carried out by Velasco Alvarado, but that was ridiculous.

Why did some of your statements generate such a level of virulence in the opposition? How was it that your resignation as Minister was precipitated?

In Peru there are no right-wingers: there are mafias. This group of mafias and some political parties raised a real outcry of rage when I was appointed Chancellor, so they were looking for any pretext to force my departure. They used as an excuse two statements I had made long before. I stated two things: that the first terrorist acts in Peru were committed by the Navy in 1974, and that the army was involved in some acts of [the guerrilla group] Sendero [Shining Path]. According to them this was an insult to the armed forces. They threatened a coup and the government, which at that time was only 19 days old, trembled.

But it is the Navy itself that acknowledged this, and published a book in homage to those within the institution who carried out these acts of terrorism against General Velasco. One can, moreover, ascertain these facts just by reading the newspapers of that time. This was in 1974, long before the birth of Sendero, which operated from 1980 to 1992. During those twelve years, were the Army intelligence services not capable of penetrating the organization? Were they so inefficient? It is obvious that to penetrate a terrorist organization you have to practice terrorism: those are its rules. This can be understood by anyone, you don’t need to be a scholar or an expert.

As a result of pressure from the armed forces, I was prevented from going to Congress. Castillo and his closest circle probably thought that this could aggravate the situation. If my presence endangered the government, the best thing to do was to get me out of the way. And that is what I did with my resignation.

The deep sewers

The last few years of Peruvian politics seem to have made one thing clear: the political structure is rotten. Six presidents in seven years, the dramatic suicide of a former president, a judiciary that is like the dog in the manger: it neither governs nor lets govern. An omnipresent past that went from democracy to de facto government and then recycled again under a precarious rule of law: Fujimorism, a monster with multiple heads and parties that has been determining the pulse of the last 30 years of local politics. A Constitution, of unholy origin, that protects and shields that which really matters: the apparently untouchable neoliberal economic model. These are some of the deep sewers that furrow the Peruvian State.

For weeks now, absolutely contrasting analyses of the country’s political system have been circulating. The right wing affirms that Peru demonstrates the failure of presidentialism in Latin America, while other sectors affirm that Peru evidences the chronic problems of a parliament with powers and prerogatives inconceivable in other formally presidential countries. What is your analysis of this tense power relationship between the executive and the legislature, and what kind of political reform do you imagine could solve this fundamental problem?

What happened is that the 1993 Constitution is a terrible result of a disastrous coup d’état and of an entangled negotiation of Mr. Fujimori – de facto president at that time – with the OAS and the international community. This resulted in a legal text full of patches, which has elements of Fujimori’s de facto presidentialism, who wanted -and finally succeeded- to perpetuate his power.

But on the other hand, international pressure introduced some interesting elements, such as the Ombudsman’s Office, habeas data, the Court of Constitutional Guarantees -now the Constitutional Court-, etcetera. But at this point it is clear that this Constitution is useless. It also has a famous economic chapter that shields and makes invulnerable foreign investment, exonerated from taxes in Peru. It is an apparatus that no longer works. The discussion on human rights, for example, has advanced a great deal since 1993 to date: there are human rights that have been incorporated into other legislations in Latin America and in the world that simply do not exist in Peru.

All this is what has to be explained, what has to be worked with the popular bases of the country. What is happening is that this Constitution, already patched in 1993, has been further patched. And it was this Congress, which supposedly refused to touch the Magna Carta, which has made more than thirty modifications that Peruvians do not even know about. Some of these modifications annulled existing rights, such as the right to referendum.

And what about the judicialization of politics? Already in the last elections, 10 of the 18 presidential candidates had judicial processes in progress. Is what we see in Peru a local singularity or can it be considered a national chapter of a regional strategy of lawfare application?

There are both. After the Velasco government, the Peruvian armed forces were denationalized and lost quality: their training is no longer what it used to be, not only from the strictly military point of view, but also from their national and general culture. Corruption was introduced in the Army and also in the police. However, they know that they cannot directly carry out a coup d’état: there is no propitious environment either in Latin America or in the world for that. But as everybody knows, the modalities of coups have been varying. Today in Peru we have a “PM”, a media party, very active as well as monopolistic and concentrated. A “PF”, the prosecution party. And a “PJ”, the party of the judiciary. These three parties, together with the Congress, are the four great actors that govern Peru, having behind them the great local and foreign capitals.

“The armed forces] know that they cannot directly stage a coup d’état: there is no favorable environment either in Latin America or in the world for that.”

That web of power has resulted in Castillo being harassed, stigmatized, prosecuted, accused of five thousand things, since before he was president, which does not mean that Castillo is a neat, pure, popular leader, or anything that resembles that. Castillo is for me a character that would require a much more detailed analysis. But I also say, at the same time, that what is being done against him is an abuse, absolutely illegal. The fact is that the prosecutor of the nation and the power of the nation will have the luxury of keeping him in prison, under “preventive detention”, for a period of three years. We have reached such a point of politicization of justice that you can go to jail and the judge can take three years to find out if you are guilty or not of any crime.

I believe there was a caricature coup and a real coup.

As happened in the dramatic situation that culminated with the coup d’état in Bolivia in 2019, the latest events in Peru have given rise to as many hypotheses and theories as there are analysts, experts and opinion makers in these generous South American lands. Roughly speaking, these competing interpretations (more than mere theories, decisive motives for political action -or inaction- are organized in three main groups. The first view is that of those who describe what happened as a self-coup perpetrated by Pedro Castillo, followed by the restoration of democratic normality with the assumption of the next person in the line of constitutional succession, the sworn-in president Dina Boluarte. There were even those who dared to compare Castillo to Fujimori.

A second group of interpretations points to the existence of “two coups”, interpreting as democratic interruptions both Pedro Castillo’s speech on December 7, as well as his dismissal by parliamentary means and the subsequent inauguration of Boluarte, considered here a de facto or illegitimate president. This theory is closely related to the one that spoke of “two conservativisms” and called for not taking sides in the decisive ballot that pitted Keiko Fujimori -daughter of the former dictator- against Peru Libre’s own candidate on June 8, 2021. Several “progressive” media echoed both hypotheses in Peru and in the world.

The third interpretation underlines the existence of a single coup, consummated by parliamentary means with the vacancy achieved, after two unsuccessful attempts, against the now former president. A coup that, from this point of view, would follow a clear regional pattern, with antecedents such as the parliamentary coup against Fernando Lugo in Paraguay and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

Let us recapitulate the facts: was there a coup, perhaps two? Who perpetrated it?

The caricature coup belongs to Mr. Castillo.


I believe there was a caricature coup and a real coup. The caricature coup belongs to Mr. Castillo. So far he has not spoken of what happened, and no one can say for sure. But it is a merely anecdotal fact: that of a president who, without prior announcement, in front of the cameras of a national chain, reads a small paper with a trembling hand, ordering the gentlemen of the armed forces to close the Congress in order to form an emergency government and reorganize the powers of the State.

In the first place it must be said that the closing of Congress is a national demand: except for the congressmen themselves, everyone demands it. The declaration, in this sense, fulfilled a widespread demand. The same goes for the highly corrupt judiciary: in my opinion, it should not only be reorganized, but totally dismantled. But the naïve and childish way in which he announced these measures is a mystery to me. Then one has to wonder what happened, how he decided it, why, and with whose participation and incidence.

“The closing of Congress is a national demand: except for the congressmen themselves, everyone is demanding it.”

But all this is nothing more than an anecdote that disorients, that distracts us from the central fact. This was not a coup d’état. The coup d’état came later, when, violating all the norms, the Congress removed him from office in a matter of minutes. A few hours later you had Castillo in prison, and Mrs. Dina Boluarte, apparently prepared for the occasion, assuming the presidency of the Republic. In a short time Boluarte declared a national emergency, refused to dialogue, and began to govern the country in a practically dictatorial manner, because constitutional guarantees were interrupted throughout the country. At this moment any policeman can break the door of my house and enter it without explanation: all Peruvian men and women are now in the same situation.

And what do you think about the presumed participation of two key actors: the Peruvian armed forces and the OAS, which in the figure of its Secretary General Luis Almagro had a very opportune visit to the country a few weeks before the coup?

Today everything is possible. Everything is imaginable. I would not yet risk any hypothesis. The newspaper La República published an article stating that Castillo, together with the last appointed Minister of Defense, General [Emilio] Bobbio, asked the General Commander of the Army for his resignation the day before the coup. According to that newspaper, after a meeting of all the commanders of the Joint Command, which included not only the Army but also the Navy and the Air Force, the uniformed officers agreed to reject the President’s request, deciding there and then to dismiss him. Although it does not expressly say so, the newspaper suggests that we would be in the presence of a coup defined by military actors.

Now, what does the OAS have to do in this matter? The curious thing is that, at least publicly and as far as we know, the OAS has defended Castillo, because he did not affect in any way the interests of the United States. When Castillo went to the Summit of the Americas he spoke of an “America for the Americans”, repeating James Monroe’s famous phrase. There was a clear message there. And when the OAS mission was in Peru, it was more critical of the opposition than of Castillo himself. With the information we have, I find it difficult to suppose that the OAS was the promoter of this. I still think -and of course I could be wrong, that this is mainly a local event, led by local actors, mobilized by local interests.

It is obvious that our cavernous right wing and certain military groups hate Castillo because they reject their own people. Some military chief leaked information stating that as long as there are armed forces in Peru, the left will not govern the country. The problem then is no longer only communism, as they used to say: now it is the entire left that is rejected by these people.

If Boluarte does not leave power she will lead the country to a tragedy.

Boluarte’s inauguration has been strongly resisted, both by the citizens of deep Peru and by different presidents and leaders of the region. Today we see attempts of mobilization with notable peaks of massiveness and radicalism. There are even dozens of fatal victims of repression. Where can this situation evolve in the coming weeks? Will the protests reach a destitutive climax? What immediate or mediate solution do you imagine for the crisis?

Today we are witnessing a comedy, a bad comedy, in which the press, including a so-called “progressive” press, is full of furious attacks against Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia or Argentina. Even against the OAS, arguing that today the whole world is against Peru. This is true with respect to the international level and the denunciations of the Boluarte government.

Regarding the popular response, we have to differentiate things here: it is not a question of the people in general, although they are very active and significant sectors. The popular classes, in general, are watching with more or less indifference what is happening, as usual. They are disengaged from the political world and from all these events. But the mobilized sectors, it is clear, are not going to ignore the state of emergency and will continue to protest. I find it hard to believe that Mrs. Boluarte does not know that the continuity of these measures will bring more deaths and more blood. And I find it hard to imagine how she could appoint such a right-wing cabinet, linked to the financial oligarchy of [Pedro Pablo] Kuczynski, without any political capacity or willingness to dialogue.

If Boluarte does not leave power she will lead the country to a tragedy. What she and her circle hope is that the people will get tired and demobilize, that they will forget their problems, and continue in this way for at least two more years of government. But there is no historical experience that supports this strategy in Peru.

The Left’s misdirection

Rare are the occasions in which a text written 60 years ago can still illuminate the present of a country. It is the case of the book “Peru 1965: notes on a guerrilla experience”, written in the prison of El Frontón Island between 1966 and 1969 by Béjar himself, when he was part of the ELN. He said there:

” […] due to the insufficiency and lack of continuity of theoretical work, the Peruvian left as a whole cannot exhibit an interpretation of the Peruvian reality based on serious studies […] Part of that ballast is the one we have received and the one that still prevents us from seeing social changes with complete clarity”.

What has become of the Peruvian left in the last decades? Why was it unable to read with complete clarity the latest social changes, from the unexpected electoral possibilities of Pedro Castillo to this popular insurrection at the door? Béjar assures us that the social structure of the country has been radically transformed in recent times. But perhaps the many “Peruvians in Peru” continue to determine the many lefts -rural and urban, Lima or provincial- that inhabit the popular camp. To these insoluble problems must be added, in addition, the presence of a hysterical right wing that “terruquea” -accuses as terrorist or communist- anyone who expresses any demands or even the slightest disagreement.

What is the current state of the Peruvian social movement, independently of what is happening at the governmental level? How is it coming out of this trance, of the brief interregnum of the Castillo government?

The social movement has grown a lot. In Peru there is a political left, which is in the political apparatus, in the political system, and there is what we could call a “social left”, which is not left in terms of strict political consciousness, but which has many social activists who feel they belong to the left, have highly articulated political ideas and are highly honest people. There are thousands of them in contemporary Peru. In that sense, the social movement has grown a lot. But we cannot sanctify these processes. Corruption permeates everything in this country, including sectors of the social movement.

But the truth is that the social movement is stronger and more active than it was a few decades ago: we see it today, in its great capacity for mobilization, in its possibility of influencing the government. This movement does not wait for slogans from political parties: it is capable of reacting positively and spontaneously.

Plurinationality in Peru

You mentioned, in a recent interview, that there was a positivist left in Peru, which thought in terms of civilization and barbarism. At the same time, there has been much discussion about the apparent non-existence of an indigenous movement, at least comparable to its counterparts in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador or Guatemala. What is the state of the debate on plurinationality in Peru? Does it seem to you a possible and reasonable perspective to reorganize the State? What is the situation of the indigenous and peasant-indigenous movement?

There are demands and statements about plurinationality, but we have not yet had a serious discussion about it.

In Peru’s social panorama, which is quite complex and varied, we can establish various indigenist tonalities and positions. The strongest and most conscious indigenous movements -or their indigenism, depending on the perspective- are the native peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, who recognize themselves as communities with their own identity. This is the case of the Ashaninka and Aguaruna, for example. These and other peoples speak around 200 languages, and some of them cover an important expanse of the national territory, from the central Amazon to the south of Peru.

The other strong pole, with a strong presence and identity, is the Aymara, in the altiplano near Bolivia, in a border that is only political and where cultural exchange is very strong. With the Quechua the situation is different. Peru was the center of Spanish colonialism in South America. The Quechuas were subjugated, but they established some form of identification with the colonial regime and had their own chiefs and curacas for 300 years. The well known exception was that of Tupac Amaru and his revolution. But this did not happen with the rest of the aristrocracies of the Quechua elites, who were rather instrumentalized by the colonizers.

Then there are other nationalities, which have disappeared or are less visible. The vortex of the current rebellion is in the territory of the Charcas, in the Apurimac area, in the central-southern departments of Peru. These people have always been very resistant. They have their own tradition, although they do not recognize themselves as a people, but rather as Apurimeños or Abancaínos and also as Peruvians. Then we have the people from the north, from Cajamarca, from the land of Castillo: more acculturated people, more influenced by the Spaniards of the Colony.

The situation in sum is quite varied, and presents the serious possibility of building a plurinational state.

We do not yet know how it might work, nor which nationalities would eventually be recognized. But there is a demand, and it is even accepted by certain cultural elites, for a new Constitution that could include a plurinational and multicultural panorama, although there is also active opposition from sectors of the most cavernous right wing.

It would seem then that the indigenous question and the peasant question appear to be closely linked to the regional question, and above all to the political and administrative centralization in Lima, excessive even in a continent where centralization around the port-cities is a very exacerbated phenomenon.

Yes, Lima is absolutely dominant. But Lima is also provincial. People from all over Peru are also there.

Finally, how do you see the country in its regional context?

I always believed that the best way to wage the struggle is continentally. Intensifying regional ties is now much easier; technology gives us all the facilities to do so. It is a pity that we do not have Latin American publishing houses as we had many years ago. We have media such as Telesur, a very important example, but perhaps we can do something more in terms of communication. Other political forces in the continent have had very important political achievements, which we still have not assimilated, while others, such as Peru’s, shine for their inefficiency. We must do everything possible to take the debate out of its daily political contingency. We have to have a political debate of greater depth, of longer duration, more continental and also more global.

Translation by Miguel S. for Internationalist 360°

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... tor-bejar/

Peru: Changing the Rules of the Game
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 13, 2023
Iroel Sánchez

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“America for the Americans”, is the phrase Pedro Castillo delivered to close his speech at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in April 2022, which he attended without his traditional rural schoolteacher’s hat. In the midst of the schism caused by the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from the United States, Castillo was one of those who chose to attend and not raise the issue that became the focus of the event.

“America for the Americans” is the central slogan of the Monroe Doctrine, on which the United States has based its hegemonic relationship with Latin America since the beginning of the 19th century, in practice “America for the Americans, of the North”. The fact that the then Peruvian president uttered such a phrase was attributed to his ignorance and that of his advisors, including his Foreign Ministry, and it is very likely that this was the case. However, the fact that in his speech there was not the slightest reference to the questionable policies of the United States towards the region, including the blockade of Cuba that several leaders present at the event condemned, nor to the exclusions imposed by the U.S. organizers, reveals a complacent or at least uncritical stance towards what the progressivism of the region considers “the America that is not ours”, as defined by José Martí.

Upon being elected, Castillo appointed the intellectual Héctor Béjar as Chancellor. Béjar, who lasted less than a month in office, was lynched by the media for statements in which he accused the Peruvian Navy of initiating terrorism and of having been trained for it by the CIA. He failed to say state terrorism, like all the armies that collaborated with Washington during the Cold War in Latin America, but he was still defenestrated. With Bejar in office, Castillo would not have committed the folly he did in Los Angeles, but he preferred to accept the resignation of the leftist intellectual. The unusual thing is that after being dismissed and while he was in prison, Pedro Castillo accused the CIA and the United States – those America for the Americans, from the North – of being behind the repression that the now President Dina Boluarte is carrying out with the Army and Police against those who in the streets of Peru are demanding elections and calling Castillo’s former Vice President a dictator.

Castillo was not clueless this time, unfortunately it is a little late. U.S. Ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna, who according to her official State Department biography worked 9 years at the Agency, met with the Peruvian defense minister shortly before the democratically elected “leftist” president was overthrown in a coup d’état and imprisoned without trial. Four days after the coup, the same ambassador met with Ms. Boluarte and proclaimed the U.S. government’s support for her.

Boluarte, Vice President elect of Castillo, like Michel Temer of Dilma Rouseff and Lenin Moreno of Rafael Correa, chose to be more faithful to the embassy than to the program chosen by the voters. A program that, by the way, has not had the slightest chance of being implemented, because, between media attacks and congressional sabotage, Castillo was not allowed to govern. And the latter, instead of mobilizing the people to pressure in the streets for the Constituent Assembly and the measures of social justice he promised, devoted himself to a lost confrontation with the Congress, giving Congress, with his last bureaucratic and unipersonal effort, the pretext to declare him anti-democratic, to discredit him and to throw him into prison. Nobody has asked Boluarte about the program of changes for which she was elected together with Castillo, including a Constituent Assembly that Peruvians are also demanding in their protests these days.

But there the people are, risking their lives against the bullets in the streets for a President who was not up to his task. Will this struggle lead to the end of the oligarchic control over Peruvian politics and resources? Hopefully, but there does not seem to be an organized political force capable of doing so and only a radical change in the rules of the game could accomplish this.

Trying to change something out of concern for not bothering those who control the media, and those who from the North have been removing and putting governments in many Latin American countries for more than a century, always ends up in the same place: defeat.

Fernando Martínez Heredia, a Cuban thinker whom Pedro Castillo surely does not know but Héctor Bejar most likely does, wrote in his last text, dedicated to Fidel Castro:

“Capitalism raises its discredited democracy, corrupt and directly controlled by oligarchies, and demands from timid rulers and respectful opponents to abide by its rules as articles of faith, an attitude that would be suicidal, because those rules are made to preserve the system of capitalist domination.”

Martinez Heredia died without knowing of Pedro Castillo’s existence but the latter perhaps could have benefited from knowing Fernando.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... -the-game/

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Perú’s Prosecutor’s Office Initiates Preliminary Investigation Against Boluarte for Genocide
JANUARY 12, 2023

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Featured image: De facto president of Perú, Dina Boluarte. Photo: Martin Mejia/AP.

This Tuesday, January 10, the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office ordered a preliminary investigation to be initiated against the de facto president, Dina Boluarte, for crimes of genocide, qualified homicide, and serious injuries, regarding the protests that have shaken the country after the ousting of Pedro Castillo as head of state.

Several members of Boluarte’s cabinet will also be investigated, including the president of the council of ministers, Alberto Otárola, minister of the interior, Víctor Rojas, and minister of defense, Jorge Chávez, will also be investigated. In addition, the body ordered an investigation against Pedro Angulo, as former president of the council of ministers, and César Cervantes, as former minister of the interior.

The measure will be applied in relation to “the alleged crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries,” committed during the demonstrations in the months of December 2022 and January 2023, across the regions of Apurímac, La Libertad, Puno, Junín, Arequipa, and Ayacucho. Since the beginning of the national protests last December—which demand Boluarte’s resignation, the closure of Congress, early elections, constituent assembly and the release of President Pedro Castillo—the death toll has reached 46 so far.

This Monday, Boluarte stated that she does not understand the reasons for the protests in the department of Puno, during which at least 18 people have died and over 112 have been injured so far in massacres of police repression. “In protest of what? It is not clear what they are asking for,” she said. “It is a pretext to continue generating chaos in the cities.”

Puno rejects the massacre
Hundreds of inhabitants in the city of Juliaca, Puno, took to the streets this Tuesday after the massacre that occurred the day before. The Juliaca community repudiated the 18 deaths and the hundred-plus injured amidst rejections of the brutal repression by security forces. The association of funeral homes of the city donated coffins for those who died in the massacre. “We stand in solidarity with the brothers who fell in the fight for freedom, and for the resignation of Dina Boluarte,” a member of the aforementioned association told local media.

This Wednesday morning, 19 coffins were placed outside the Carlos Monge Medrano Hospital, the main medical center to which people injured by the protests in the vicinity of the Inca Manco Capac Airport have been transferred. So far, authorities have only confirmed 18 deaths. At least 34 people remain hospitalized at the Carlos Monge Medrano Hospital, as confirmed on Tuesday by the San Román Health Network.

Amid outrage over the 18 fatalities—and the total balance of 46 deaths since the start of the national protests last December—the de facto government of Boluarte announced on Tuesday a curfew in the city of Puno for three days, from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m.

https://orinocotribune.com/perus-prosec ... -genocide/

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Stop the violence against the Peruvian people!
Over 100 journalists and media projects from across the world signed a letter to demand an end to the repression of the Peruvian people and to the attacks against journalists

January 13, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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[Lee en español aquí]

The Peruvian people have been on the streets across the country to reject the coup that took constitutional president Pedro Castillo out of office on December 7. The Peruvian authorities have responded to these mass protests with brutal violence. As of today, Peruvian human rights organizations estimate that 48 people have been killed in the context of the protests and hundreds more have been injured.

Mainstream, corporate media in Peru has helped reinforce the government’s narrative that those who are on the streets are “criminals”, “terrorists” and that their demands are illegitimate. Meanwhile, independent and alternative media outlets and journalists in the country who have been covering the protests, have faced threats, campaigns of slander and stigmatization, and physical attacks.

In light of this situation, over 100 journalists and media outlets from Peru to India, and from Haiti to Egypt, including Rania Khalek, Carlos Aznarez, Claudia Cisneros, Eugene Puryear, Vijay Prashad, Alina Duarte, Kwesi Pratt Jnr., among others, signed a letter to condemn this violence and demand that protesters and journalists rights be respected.

See below the letter and the signatories:


We, communicators and journalists, repudiate the brutal violence against the Peruvian people by the security forces and the disturbing attacks against journalists and photographers who seek to tell the truth about what is happening in the country.

Since December 7, when the coup d’état against constitutional president Pedro Castillo and his subsequent illegal detention took place, the Peruvian people have been in constant mobilization to demand the immediate resignation of the de facto leader, Dina Boluarte, the dissolution of Congress, the realization of a Constituent Assembly and the immediate release of Pedro Castillo.

Their just and courageous protests have been met with an extremely violent response by the security forces. To date, at least 48 Peruvian brothers and sisters have been killed with bullets, sound grenades, tear gas and pepper spray during the protests. We have seen with great concern how these flagrant violations of human rights, the right to protest, freedom of expression and the democratic state have been justified by the executive branch, the mass media and right-wing politicians.

In all this, we have not been able to depend on the narrative of the corporate media that call the protesters “vandals” “terrorists”, justifying the violence against them as sinister accomplices of the barbarism of the state. It has been the popular communicators, independent journalists and photojournalists, who take to the streets risking their physical integrity, facing extreme violence in order to communicate the truth to the world.

We are concerned about the case of Aldair Mejía, photojournalist, who was shot by a projectile while covering the demonstrations in Juliaca. He had denounced that prior to the attack, a member of the Peruvian National Police had threatened him saying “Get out of here, if not I’ll blow your head off and kill you”. In addition to him, there are many other cases of colleagues who have suffered stigmatization, accusations, violent attacks, criminalization and more in the context of their journalistic work. Journalism is not a crime!

As communicators and journalists of the world, we stand in solidarity with the brave Peruvian people and with their communicators and journalists who are facing the terrible repression of Dina Boluarte’s government.

We demand an immediate end to this repression and respect for the human rights of protesters and members of the press.

Signatories:
Journalists
Alina Duarte, Mexico

Ama Pratt, Pan African Television, Ghana

Ana María Islas, Mexico

Anish Radhakrishnan, Peoples Dispatch, India

Benjamín Norton, Geopolítica Económica, United States // Nicaragua

Brian Mier, TeleSur/Brazilwire, Brazil

Byron Javier Viteri Pólit, Coordinadora Artistas Progresistas Eloy Alfaro, Ecuador

Camila Parodi, Marcha Noticias, Argentina

Carlos Aznarez, Resumen Latinoamericano, Argentina

Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuelanalysis, Venezuela

Claudia Cisneros, Independiente, Perú

Danay, Cuba

Dayana López Villalobos, Independiente, Argentina

Denis Rogatyuk, El Ciudadano, Chile

Diana Almeida, Revista Crisis Ec, Ecuador

Eduardo Lohnhoff Bruno, Abya Yala Tv, Bolivia

Elmer Raúl Ayala Hinojosa, Poder Popular @lljr_poder @ElmerAyala_PE, Perú

Eugene Puryear, Breakthrough News, United States

Fabiola Gutiérrez, Red de Periodistas y Comunicadoras Feministas de Chile , Chile

Facundo Pérez , ARG Medios, Argentina

Felipe Bianchi Dos Santos, ComunicaSul y Centro de Estudos da Mídia Alternativa Barão de Itararé, Brazil

Felipe Kohler, Revista Crisis Ec, Ecuador

Fernando Barreto, Ecuador

Fiorella Isabel, RT International, United States

Francely Flores, Molino Informativo,

Gerardo Szalkowicz, Nodal, Argentina

Giovani del Prete, Diplomacia dos Povos, Brazil

Gustavo Espinoza, Noticias Hudson Valley NY/ Revista Travesías de la Migración, United States

Heriberto Paredes, Independiente, México

Ignacio Urrutia, Chile

Ingrid Sánchez, Peninsula 360 Press, México

Jackson Jean, TeleSUR, Haití

Jaime Herrera, Telesur, Perú

Jaime Soto, Chile

Javier Arjona, www.indixenas.org, España

Javier Tolcachier, Agencia Internacional de Noticias Pressenza, Argentina

Jazmín Valdivieso, La Zurda Radio, Bolivia

Jean Waltès Bien-Aimé, Radyo Rezistans, Haití

Jennifer Mujica, Individual, Argentina

John McEvoy, Declassified UK, UK

Jose Gil Almeida, Jornal Agua Verde, Brazil

José Luis Granados Ceja, Venezuelanalysis, México

Jose Marques, Jornal da Rua XV ciudad de Curitiba, Brazil

José Robredo Hormazabal, Chile

Julián Pilatti, ARG Medios, Argentina

Kwesi Pratt, Jnr, The Insight Newspaper, Ghana

Laura Carlsen, Independiente, Mexico

Laura Lucía Cevallos Alcázar, Sin Línea Mx, México

Laura Quispe Perez, TeleSISA, Argentina

Lautaro Rivara, ALAI, Argentina – Ecuador

Loreto Paillacar, Círculo de Periodistas, Chile

Luis De Jesús, Claridad, Puerto Rico

Luis Enrique Angio, Argentina

Luis Varese, Ecuador

Mahmoud Elenani, Independent Film Producer, Egypt

Marcos Cariz Villanueva, Trabajadores al poder, Chile

Margarida Flávia Gonnet García, Semanario Brecha(URU) / Análisis Digital(ARG), Uruguay

Margarita Pastene Valladares, Chile

Mario López M., Estapasando.cl, Chile

Martha Raquel Rodrigues, Jornalistas Livres / MST, Brazil

Martín Varese, Peoples Dispatch, Nicaragua

Mauricio Leandro Osorio, Independiente, Chile

Midhun Puthupattu, Peoples Dispatch, India

Nathalie Castillo, Diputada de la República- Periodista ex Presidenta Nacional del Colegio de Periodistas de Chile, Chile

Omar Lucas, Perú

Oscar Gálvez, Voces de Ixumulew, Guatemala

Oscar Puebla Ortega, El Molino Informativo, Mexico

Pablo Navarrete, Alborada, UK

Patricia Villegas Marin, teleSUR, Colombia- Venezuela

Pilar Troya, Brasil de Fato, Brazil

Prasanth Radhakrishnan, Newsclick, India

Rafael Urrejola Dittborn, Centro de Formación Memoria y Futuro, Chile

Rania Khalek, Breakthrough News, United States

Rodrigo Acuña, Indestructible Podcast, Australia

Roger McKenzie, Morning Star, United Kingdom

Sandra Trafilaf, Chile

Tanupriya Singh, Peoples Dispatch, India

Tanya Wadhwa, Peoples Dispatch, India

Vijay Prashad, Globetrotter,

Vivian Neves Fernandes, Brazil

Vyshakh Thaliyil, Peoples Dispatch, India

Yoselina Guevara, Info al Desnudo, Venezuela ( Italia)

Zoe Alexandra, Peoples Dispatch, United States

Media outlets
Agencia Internacional de Noticias Pressenza

ALAI

ARG Medios

Barricada TV

Boletín Américas, Américas.org

Brasil de Fato

Breakthrough News

Centro de Estudos da Mídia Alternativa Barão de Itararé

Colombia Informa

ComunicaSul

Consejo Metropolitano del Colegio de Periodistas

Correo del Alba

El Ciudadano

Hora do Povo

Iniciativa Direito a Memória e Justiça Racial

Jornal Agua Verde

Jornal da Rua XV ciudad de Curitiba

Jornalistas Livres

Kawsachun News

Liberation News

El Molino Informativo

Noticias Hudson Valley NY

Pan African Television

Radyo Rezistans

Red de Periodistas y Comunicadoras Feministas de Chile

Resumen Latinoamericano

Revista Crisis Ec

TeleSISA

The Insight Newspaper

Trazos de Nuestra Identidad Medio digital alternativo

Venezuela Analysis

Voz en Fuga

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/01/13/ ... an-people/
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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 16, 2023 2:57 pm

Boluarte’s Government Suspends Constitutional Rights in Peru

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For 30 days, the constitutional rights of inviolability of domicile and the freedoms of transit through the national territory, assembly and personal freedom and security will be suspended. Jan. 15, 2023. | Photo: Twitter: @DailyWorld24

Published 15 January 2023

The Government of the President-designate issued this decree on the eve of several demonstrations that social movements are preparing to carry out this Monday in Lima.


At a time when Peruvian social organizations keep calling for demonstrations against police repression, the Government of President-designate Dina Boluarte decreed this Saturday a state of emergency in Lima, Callao, Puno and Cusco, which will suspend several constitutional rights.

The decree, published in the official gazette close to midnight on Saturday, authorizes the military forces to intervene together with the Police to "safeguard" public order.

Peru has been experiencing a series of social protests since last December 7, when the Congress dismissed President Pedro Castillo, who is in prison on charges of rebellion, and appointed in his place Boluarte, who was serving as the country's vice-president.


The social mobilizations, demanding the resignation of Boluarte, the closing of Congress, a constitutional assembly and the release of Castillo, have been strongly repressed by the police forces with a toll of about 50 killed and hundreds injured and detained.

The decree, which went into effect as of Sunday, establishes that "the Peruvian National Police maintains control of internal order with the support of the Armed Forces".

For 30 days, the constitutional rights of inviolability of domicile and the freedoms of transit through the national territory, assembly and personal freedom and security will be suspended.


Leaders from Puno and patrols from La Libertad and Cajamarca announce "2nd march of the 4 of theirs" heading to Lima in the coming days. Meanwhile, the government of @DinaErcilia lacks a clear strategy for dialogue with the population.@ConexiontlSUR

In the department of Puno, the decree included "mandatory social immobilization" for 10 days starting this Sunday, to be complied with from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. the following day.

During these hours, circulation will only be allowed for the acquisition, production and supply of foodstuffs. In addition, only the personnel necessary for the provision of essential services will be allowed to circulate.

The Government of Boluarte declared a state of emergency on the eve of several demonstrations that social movements are preparing to hold this Monday in Lima to demand the release of several leaders who have been detained by the authorities.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bol ... -0001.html

Peru: Thousands Head to Lima to Demand Boluarte's Resignation

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The sign reads, "Dina, killer." | Photo: Twitter/ @Mision_Verdad

So far 50 people have died during the massive mobilizations that demand an immediate change in the Peruvian political system

Thousands of Peruvians from the Aymara and Quechua communities, as well as from social and union organizations, are heading from different provinces to Lima as part of the second edition of the "March of the Four Regions" (Cuatro Suyos).

They demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, the closure of Congress, the holding of a Constituent Assembly, and the release of former President Pedro Castillo, who was accused of rebellion and removed by Congress on Dec. 7.

Since then, there have been massive protests in different regions. Security forces have repressed them with violence, leaving 50 citizens dead and hundreds of people injured and detained.

The first march of the Cuatro Suyos occurred in the year 2000 when thousands of people gathered in Lima to protest against the fraudulent third re-election of Alberto Fujimori.


The tweet reads, "In Cuzco (Peru) the people march furiously shouting a clear and direct message to the oligarchy and powerful elites: 'Civil war now!' Peru Resists."

“Thousands of people will arrive and stay until Dina Boluarte and Congress leave,” said Santos Saavedra, the president of the Central Union of Peasant Rounds, who arrived in Lima on Saturday accompanied by farmers from Cajamarca, La Libertad, and Amazon.

On Sunday, the Peruvian Ombudsman's Office reported that a person died in the city of Moyobamba, in the San Martin region, amid a traffic accident linked to road blockades against the Boluarte regime.

Since Dec. 7, 50 people have died during the massive mobilizations that demand an immediate change in the Peruvian political system.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0001.html

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Latin American and Caribbean Integration from a Sovereign Perspective
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 15, 2023
Irene Leon

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Latin America and the Caribbean have come to propose not only the idea, but an entire architecture of regional integration. This article analyzes their achievements and their renewed possibilities, on the eve of a new CELAC summit.

Regional integration is the most significant project that the region has managed to place in the scenarios of the future, not only because of the strategic perspective of raising a common agenda in the face of the challenges of globalization, but also because it opens up a range of possibilities for the delineation of geopolitical, geoeconomic and socio-cultural initiatives, ascribed to the configurations of a multipolar world, in whose process the region is a relevant link.

In addition to this positioning in the world, however, the backbone of integration is endogenous structuring, to delineate the collective future of historical societies that share their geography.

Integration is a strategic tool, indivisible from the concept of sovereignty, aimed at building the socio-political, economic, ecological and cultural union of the region, through the consensual and participatory creation of proposals for complementarity, cooperation, solidarity and exchanges, in order to strengthen endogenous capacities and promote the region’s participation in a multipolar world. [1]

From this perspective, the integration bodies of the 21st Century [2] have developed a multiplicity of projects to enhance complementarities through consensual agendas on: management of natural resources, energy, security and defense, education, health, knowledge, technologies, cultures and others. Likewise, in times of financial capital domination, they have placed on the stage one of the most challenging proposals, that of a new regional financial architecture.

Regional integration is a proposal with a historical sense, based on a geopolitical perspective, based on the articulation of States to support projects of collective interest. This constitutes a first-order opposition to global capitalism, whose powers strive to organize the world exclusively through geo-economics, based on private interests, in pursuit of the total market, which is a central goal of neoliberalism. Therefore, just by proposing the common good and the primacy of the States as the articulators of integration, the region has already laid the seeds of an alternative.

In the current context, the global de facto powers, such as financial capital, transnational corporations, technological-media conglomerates and the military industrial complex, are striving to establish themselves as an omnipotent power at the top of the world and, hand in hand with technological-digital changes, are promoting the transition to a new model of accumulation. As a prerequisite for the achievement of such a plan, they have proclaimed the obsolescence of the State and do not hesitate to supplant its powers, especially over the management of economic flows, territories and resources.

“Just by proposing the common good and the primacy of the States as the articulators of integration, the region has already laid the seeds of an alternative.”

The shift of power from the State to the private sector is of such magnitude, that the private corporations that operate as spearheads of the renewal of capitalism consider themselves exempt from national and international legislation; in fact, they have their own system of dispute settlement, to channel States that dodge the guidelines of “entrepreneurial freedom” [3]. According to business sources themselves, “Economic privatization […] extracts economic power from nations to corporations. These companies, of a multinational character, obtain the added value that formerly belonged to the nations. […] Finally, the increase in tensions between nations indicates that cooperation is no longer the basis on which relations between countries function.” [4]

Thus, the disjunctive around the centrality of collective interest over private interest is central to the dispute over the approaches, meanings and actors of integration, because whether this has been conceptualized by the dominant powers as a tactical response to the evolution of capitalism or as a device for cohesion in terms of the dispute over markets, in Latin America and the Caribbean of the 21st century, in line with the positioning of progressive and alternative proposals in power [5], integration is emerging as an integral project to promote the region’s self-determination and channel a project for the future, based on shared history.

The sovereign integration mechanisms have outlined an endogenous project, with broad and diversified trade exchanges and relations, attentive to the designs of the common good of the region, while the neoliberal association proposals are articulated through free trade and promote openness for the benefit of private interests and profits. Because of this biased approach, the free trade bodies that were created to counteract the integration process have not been able to and cannot replace an entire regional integration architecture, built on complementarity in the first three decades of this century, although they did hit the process and have managed to temporarily weaken its momentum.

From the perspective of integration as a historical process, marked by a sequence of attempts and ruptures defined by endogenous and international power relations, it is evident that in the context of global capitalism, integration is a strategic proposal with a unique capacity to dispute content in the face of the capitalist project, which pursues the commodification of all the principles of life. Likewise, the recognition of integration as a historical process and project has entailed resignifications and updates of the aspirations of union and independence enunciated by Simón Bolívar. Hugo Chávez, one of the main actors of the integration policy of the XXI Century, emphasized this historical bridge, the idea of process and collective memory, even to outline new perspectives in terms of building a future with affirmation of diversities, ancestral knowledge and plurinationality.

Thus, integration is in dispute. The region is in dispute. Hence the relevance of the agenda for Reactivation and Strengthening announced by CELAC [6]; as well as the dynamization contained in the priorities of the ALBA-TCP Economic Council [7]; and the actions towards the reestablishment of UNASUR [8]. Significant contextual elements, among them the political will expressed by several countries, point to an activation of integration, which is at the same time placed as a priority by geopolitical and structural realities, the elements of which I will outline below.

Brief overview of sovereign integration

Chronologically, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America -ALBA-[9] emerged in 2004 as an anti-systemic alternative, which seeks to leave behind the definitions of capitalist competition to generate a proposal of solidarity and complementarity, with approaches of economic diversity, reciprocity and participatory perspective. In 2006, the Peoples’ Trade Agreement (PTA)[10] was included to give impetus to heterogeneous exchange practices, stemming from the productive and economic diversity existing in the region.

ALBA-TCP is the result of an accumulation of alternatives to neoliberal globalization that have been raised since the 1990s, as well as of the resistance to free trade, especially to the economic, productive and geopolitical relegation brought about by the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a hemispheric plan that the United States tried to implement[11]. For its part, the strategic synthesis of economic and geopolitical alternatives underlying the formulation of a new paradigm of integration, conceived on the basis of self-determination and solidarity, comes from the political capacity and historical commitment of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez; the thesis of the Peoples’ Trade Agreement was, for its part, a contribution of Evo Morales.

The programs promoted by ALBA-TCP in the areas of energy, food, education, culture, technology, health and other areas, set a precedent for the diverse modalities of exchange, with altruistic scopes, which have even included non-member countries and local governments. Among its emblematic achievements are, among others, the eradication of illiteracy in several countries, exchanges related to food sovereignty and, more recently, the program to deal with the impacts of Covid 19 in member countries, with the provision of vaccines, health care and others.

ALBA generated the pioneering proposal of a new financial architecture and a new regional financial institutionality, among whose concretions is the Bank of ALBA (2008) [12], a regional public financial institution of a sovereign and cooperative nature, dedicated to promoting economic integration and fostering the reduction of asymmetries and the strengthening of the region. Also noteworthy is the design of its own international monetary exchange instrument: the Regional Unitary Compensation System (Sucre), a virtual currency issued by the ALBA Bank to facilitate exchange among countries and respond to the need to increase “cooperative advantages”. Along the same lines, we find the Peoples’ Trade Treaty (TCP), an economic mechanism that reconceptualizes trade, including among its principles “complementarity, solidarity and cooperation, so that together we can achieve a dignified life and living well” [13].

This approach marks a milestone in financial matters, not only because it supports cooperation and not profit in international exchanges, but also because its design is that of a public mechanism, with a humanist vocation, at the same time that the Sucre opens possibilities to break with the omnipresence of the US dollar as a monetary reference for international trade.

“The Regional Unitary Compensation System [is] a virtual currency issued by the ALBA Bank to facilitate exchange between countries and respond to the need to increase ‘cooperative advantages'”

In international politics, ALBA-TCP supports the relevance of a multipolar world, is committed to internationalism and the development of reciprocal relations. From that perspective, it contributes to the dynamism of influential multilateral bodies, groups of countries and forums for political coordination, such as the G77+China, the Non-Aligned Movement and others. In turn, it interacts with intersectoral initiatives on issues related to foreign debt, with the development of alternatives, as well as with organizational bodies, as is the case of ALBA Movements, the World March of Women, or the International Peoples’ Assembly.

The innovative concept of integration, its anti-capitalist definitions and the contextualization formulated by ALBA had a substantial influence on the development of new approaches to the set of perspectives on the region. They also contributed to the conceptualization of subsequent integration mechanisms, which are politically defined as more heterogeneous, as is the case of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which emerged in 2008 as a space for the consensual and participatory construction of socio-economic, commercial, cultural and political integration, with the aspiration of gradually seeking comprehensive levels of endogenous articulation.

UNASUR shows that South America has everything to guarantee several decades of self-sufficiency and that with appropriate management it could reach optimum sustainability; concomitantly, it proposes an approach of strengthened democracy with the elimination of socioeconomic inequality, inclusion and citizen participation. Under these parameters, it configures an advanced institutional mechanism with tangible results in defense, health, production, science and technology, energy sovereignty, cultural cooperation, democracy, electoral control and others. In a short period of time, it achieved the consolidation of “12 Sectorial Ministerial Councils for the strengthening and projection of public policies and the consolidation of the Nation States, with statutory normative definitions, with defined courses of action, based on sectorial action plans” [14].

The design of a new regional economic, financial and productive architecture, as a sovereign instrument, articulated to a set of endogenous plans promoted by UNASUR, is based on complementarity and the development of intra-regional productive and value chains. This goal also has socioeconomic objectives such as the achievement of equality in the countries and convergence among them.

In the international arena, it is committed to the perspective of a multipolar world: UNASUR is developing a significant agenda for the construction of a network of interrelations with other regional bodies, such as the Andean Community of Nations (CAN), the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), ALBA-TCP and others. At the same time, it promotes the strengthening of relations with the geopolitical South, especially with the South America-Africa Cooperation Forum (ASA), made up of 55 South American countries and the African Union, aimed at promoting bi-regional cooperation; as well as with the South America-Arab Countries Summit (ASPA), to promote economic and trade exchanges between the countries of UNASUR and the Arab League [15].

For its part, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) emerged in 2011 as a representative mechanism for political coordination, cooperation and economic, social and cultural integration, articulated around the democratic validity and dialogue as an instrument for settling differences, since it recognizes the right of each country to freely define its political and economic system. It is organized under the premise of unity in diversity, to strengthen the common historical construction of struggles for justice, in coherence with the historical transcendence of Bolivar’s project [16]. It advocates for a region free of colonialism, which values its multicultural legacy and vindicates the historical memory of the native peoples. In this line, it emphasizes the plurinational character of several countries.

CELAC is the region’s spokesperson on global issues and has the mandate to promote the region’s insertion in the international arena. In its accumulated history, it has established dialogue with relevant regional blocs, such as the European Union or the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, with whom it has established cooperation agreements; it also holds meetings with strategic countries in world geopolitics, such as the Russian Federation and China, whose forums resulted, for example, in the CELAC-China Action Plan. It is also the region’s spokesperson in global multilateral bodies such as the UN and others.

The architecture of integration with a multipolarity approach

Because of the strategic importance of integration, both for endogenous development and for the region’s relationship with the world, Latin America and the Caribbean came to propose not only a project but an entire integration architecture, composed of multiple mechanisms and initiatives, which reflect the possibility of generating democratic articulations in the midst of different socioeconomic circumstances and from a heterogeneity of economic approaches and political orientations.

Several spaces converge in this architecture of regional integration, which was built in the first three decades of the 21st century: CELAC, generating convergence among the 33 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, regardless of the differences in their political and economic systems, in order to direct the region’s agenda towards the world on that basis; UNASUR, proposing an endogenous South American articulation, establishing political consensus and promoting the development of joint agendas with other intra-regional and Southern instances; for its part, ALBA-TCP contributes the contents of an anti-systemic alternative interrelated with multipolarity, with its practices of economic diversity and with the resignification of exchanges and trade. All of them, in addition to the purpose of building a shared future, focused on the common good, coincide with different nuances in proposals for a new regional financial architecture and the need to reform international financial institutions.

In addition, the impetus given to the aforementioned integration perspective and the results it achieved in the short term opened a scenario for joint actions and common platforms with other previous regional bodies, such as Mercosur, CAN, CARICOM, etc. Moreover, the demonstrations of “unity in diversity” led to a broad convergence with related organizations in 2012, within the framework of CELAC: “The authorities of ALADI, ALBA, CAN, CAF, ECLAC, MERCOSUR, OLADE, AEC, SELA, UNASUR and other mechanisms agreed to avoid dispersion, fragmentation and duplication of tasks, as well as to work together the construction of Latin American citizenship, the expansion of regional trade, the overcoming of asymmetries, energy integration, infrastructure modernization and successful experiences of social inclusion in the region” [17], thus inaugurating one of the most powerful possibilities of change for the region and generating conditions for a modification of power relations in international scenarios.

However, in parallel, with an agenda rooted in neoliberalism, its antithesis was also promoted: in 2012 the Pacific Alliance was founded, a mechanism made up of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru that alludes to integration as a synonym for free trade, anchored in the free circulation of goods, services, capital and people to boost the growth, development and competitiveness of their economies. The Alliance also proposes “to become a platform for political articulation, economic and commercial integration, and projection to the world, with emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region.” [18]. With similar characteristics, the Forum for the Progress of South America (Prosur), promoted by former Colombian President Iván Duque, was created in 2019 with the purpose of replacing Unasur. This is an organization made up of 9 countries, which defines itself as a mechanism for dialogue for growth, progress and development. Its agenda deals with infrastructure, energy, health, defense, security and risk management. Its main projects are focused on infrastructure and the auctioning of energy resources.

Both projects were launched in the heat of a repositioning of neoliberalism, with ostensible expectations of inhibiting integration mechanisms. However, due to their focus on trade and related private actors, the projection obtained is confined to this field and does not venture into the approaches of “multidimensional integration” [19], in ECLAC’s terms. The Pacific Alliance has not expanded; rather, it has been singled out for the weak results of its agenda of rapprochement with Asia, which is one of its priorities, while CELAC exhibits a joint Plan with China and diversified relations in that area. On the other hand, Prosur hardly shows any regional projection. Thus, the threats to the integration processes are real, but they do not come from the integration “success” of these initiatives, but from the strategy of generating gaps on the part of neoliberal governments (as in the case of Unasur) as well as from corporate pressures and the U.S. hemispheric geo-economic project.

“The Pacific Alliance has not expanded; rather, it has been singled out for the weak results of its agenda of rapprochement with Asia […] while CELAC exhibits a joint plan with China and diversified relations in that area”.

In sum, notwithstanding the blows dealt by the conservative restoration that has worsened in recent years, the powerful proposal for sovereign regional integration is still standing. As we shall see below, the conditions are ripe for its reestablishment, with the same strong ideas but with strategies adapted to the times.

The agenda of Latin America and the Caribbean in the dispute for sovereign integration

The most outstanding fact of this first quarter century in the Latin American and Caribbean region is the emergence of a new perspective of sovereign integration which, in accordance with the theoretical and political contributions of the alternative processes to neoliberalism, emphasizes the major objectives of endogenous articulation and the strategic positioning of the region in the world. The advances made by this initiative are iconic, but they are only a foretaste of its great potential.

But it is a proposal in intense dispute, vulnerable to geoeconomic and political power relations, in a context in which neoliberal forces are seeking the fading of geopolitical, multilateral and sovereign bodies in order to prioritize their market alliances for the benefit of the major transnational corporate powers and U.S. hegemony.

Hence the relevance of the repositioning of integration mechanisms, which have the capacity to generate bloc proposals in the face of problems such as foreign debt or the measures of international financial institutions. CELAC, in its reactivation and strengthening plan[20], emphasizes the call to improve conditions in the treatment of foreign debt, as well as the establishment of a more complete mechanism for the treatment of sovereign debt, both in public and private entities. It also calls on the International Monetary Fund to review access policies and surcharges on financial support loans, while urging it to ensure timely access to Special Drawing Rights, with the immediate establishment of redistribution mechanisms for vulnerable and middle-income countries.

In the Latin American and Caribbean region, the conservative restoration has served especially for the repositioning of transnational and national corporate power. It has also favored the consolidation of the power of financial capital and the expansion of market authoritarianism. The financial sector, as an omnipotent factual power, imposes its rules of the game vis-à-vis the States and inflicts inclement interest rates on people; companies apply “first world” prices to their products, while bargaining pennies on labor conditions; the so-called self-regulations are a chimera and trade operates without rules, not to mention the unequal treatment of local production vis-à-vis transnationals. In this context, it is urgent to channel the call to respect multilateralism and the rules related to non-discriminatory trade within the framework of the WTO, formulated by CELAC, as well as to channel the strengthening of the endogenous economy, as proposed by the Council of Economic Complementation of ALBA-TCP 2022[21].

ALBA-TCP is preparing to reactivate the Working Group on the New Regional Financial Architecture and expects to strengthen the performance of the ALBA Bank as a development bank, mainly as regards operational action, considering the needs and availabilities of each member country. As we emphasized above, at whatever scale it is presented, this is a proposal as necessary as it is challenging, since it is a multi-state, public body with a social agenda that emerges in a context in which financial capital is struggling to maintain its exclusive monopoly of that sector.

In fact, it is estimated that the resistance of the financial sector -influenced by the public sector- dissuaded the creation of the Bank of the South promoted by Unasur and left in embryo the proposal for a South American currency, the same one that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva proposes to take up again, probably in a more auspicious scenario. At present, important countries are considering using their own currency in international trade. In the extra-regional framework, a related instance is the New BRICS Development Bank, a multi-state financial institution to assist sustainable development and infrastructure projects that is developing new lines of operations to include the health and social infrastructure sectors.

Brazil is a founding member of the BRICS, an instance of South-South cooperation that encompasses 40% of the world’s population. The integration of Argentina is on the way, which means that two countries of the region will be present in this economic bloc, which is considered to be the largest in the world. The BRICS is an economic-trade association of the most important emerging countries in the world: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, founded in 2009 with the aim of promoting a new international financial order. The BRICS emphasizes the importance of multilateralism and integration, purposes that coincide with the proposals for sovereign regional integration. The BRICS also advocate the reform of international financial institutions. Due to its identity and scope, this is undoubtedly a key actor to be taken into account as a counterpart in extra-regional integration scenarios.

“The resistance of the financial sector […] dissuaded the creation of the Bank of the South promoted by Unasur and left in embryo the proposal for a South American currency, the same one that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva proposes to take up again.”

All instances of sovereign integration propose placing people at the center of economic policies and not the other way around, a common sense principle. However, for several centuries capitalism has placed the accumulation of capital as the central objective of human action, so the conceptual difference is not insignificant. CELAC is preparing to resume a development agenda based on economic, social and cultural rights, which would crystallize in the immediate future in the promotion of programs related to food, health, education, risk management, women’s equality, digital transformation, science, technology and social innovation, space cooperation and others[22]. Along the same lines ALBA-TCP, which has an explicit purpose of prioritizing people over capital, also emphasizes the importance of food sovereignty, even more so in the context of the current global crisis, and proposes a specific agenda that combines initiatives for regional self-sufficiency with the fulfillment of the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals.

As regards post-pandemic economic recovery, both CELAC and ALBA-TCP define it as inclusive, with measures aimed at the democratization of drug production and the elimination of obstacles that hinder fair and equitable access to vaccines as global public goods. This is undoubtedly related to the actions of transnational corporations that monopolize research, patents, production and marketing, while maintaining an inordinate influence on the World Health Organization (WHO). In this same field, the scientific and social initiatives developed by Cuba from the public sector constitute a good practice to emulate, as well as inter-institutional strategies, such as CELAC’s adhesion to ECLAC’s “Integral Plan for Health Self-Sufficiency”.

Another issue of great importance in the regional agenda is the safeguarding of peace, especially in a militarized international context in which the United States, the Military Industrial Complex and NATO -which has Colombia as a global partner-, seek to involve countries in the region in their plans for “infinite war”. In 2014 CELAC declared Latin America and the Caribbean as a peace zone [23], which means that the region must be exempt from militarization, military occupations or the formation of paramilitary corps and bases in other countries. This also involves promoting a culture of peace in regional relations, with non-belligerent approaches to coexistence and preventive security and defense policies. In this regard, it is important to engage in dialogue with bodies that agree on priorities such as denuclearization or the peaceful resolution of disputes, as in the case of the G77+ China, one of the most influential groups of countries on the world stage, in which many CELAC countries participate, which is a good basis for a substantive alliance.

In turn, CELAC ratified its founding purpose of guaranteeing a region free of colonialism and calls for the definitive and peaceful resolution of the colonial conflicts that persist in the region, as is the case of the violation of Argentina’s sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands by the United Kingdom. It also repudiates neocolonial arbitrariness, such as political interference, the use of technological resources to attempt to destabilize third countries and particularly the unilateral coercive measures and illegal sanctions imposed by the United States on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

The strengthening of dialogues with extra-regional partners and the participation in the aforementioned global articulations are key to guarantee the purposes of geopolitical and geoeconomic sovereignty. At the same time, they are a contribution for the region, insofar as insertion in these scenarios allows it to contribute to the strengthening of multipolarity, multilateralism and the establishment of some balance in world power relations. Also relevant is the reactivation of the initiatives of articulation with the South -especially with Africa and Asia- promoted by UNASUR, which opened up new geopolitical horizons, with possibilities of diversifying exchanges in various fields.

In short, Latin America and the Caribbean have opened up a space for thinking about integration from the standpoint of sovereignty, in a context of high historical intensity in which different alternatives are being deployed to change the dynamics of socioeconomic and geopolitical relegation. These are projects aimed at the common good, with far-reaching projections, such as the horizons of Good Living/Living Well and Socialism. But the forces of radical neoliberalism are also at work in the region, articulated with the interests of the global de facto powers, especially transnational corporations and financial capital. These, together with the actors of local political conservatism, show their willingness to resort to all possible stratagems to avoid changes in the countries and empty regional integration of its content.

Integration is in dispute, but it has a solid body of analysis, proposals and, above all, results, thanks to which it is maintained over time and reproduced as an alternative for the future, attached to the sustainability of life and to the approaches of sovereignty and geopolitical justice.

References:

[1] Irene León (2022). La Integración en perspectiva soberana. in Geopolítica de la Integración Latinoamericana. Humanidad en REDH Magazine. No 01. Venezuela. December 2022

[2] The Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America -ALBA-TCP-; the Union of South American Nations -Unasur-; and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States -CELAC-.

[3] Officially, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is an instance of the World Bank, but it operates a whole system of related private arbitration. Most disputes are settled to the advantage of the companies and not the States.

[4] APD. Geoeconomics: The coming global economy. Spain, 07/11/2018 https://www.apd.es/geoeconomia-economia-mundial/

[5] Since the beginning of the 21st century, the region has been experiencing a process of rise of progressive and leftist projects in most countries. However, the region is in dispute and is also undergoing a significant recomposition of neoliberal sectors and even radical conservatives.

[6] CELAC 2022. Argentina. Work Plan. https://www.sela.org/media/3225726/plan ... c_2022.pdf

[7] ALBA-TCP. Declaration of the XI Meeting of the Economic Complementation Council. Bolivia 2022 https://www.albatcp.org/acta/declaracio ... -alba-tcp/

[8] Call for the Reconstitution of UNASUR. La Integración en perspectiva soberana. in Geopolítica de la Integración Latinoamericana. Humanidad en REDH Magazine. No 01. Venezuela. December 2022

[9] Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America -ALBA- https://www.albatcp.org/historia/

[10] Fundamental Principles of the Peoples’ Trade Treaty – PCT https://www.albatcp.org/acta/principios ... eblos-tcp/

[11] Irene León (2022) Las Américas en disputa: elementos que inciden en una Cumbre sin altura. ALAI. https://www.alai.info/las-americas-en-d ... in-altura/

[12] ALBA Bank. Constitutive Agreement. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 2008. https://bancodelalba.org/wp-content/upl ... SPANOL.pdf

[13] Fundamental Principles of the Peoples’ Trade Treaty -PTC-. Bolivia 2009 https://www.albatcp.org/acta/principios ... eblos-tcp/

[14] Pedro Sassone, Retomar el camino de UNASUR. Propuesta de Agenda de Transición. in Geopolítica de la Integración Latinoamericana. Humanidad en REDH Magazine. No 01. Venezuela. December 2022

[15] Both initiatives were promoted by Inacio Lula da Silva, whose government contributed substantially to South American and Southern integration.

[16] CELAC. Declaration of Caracas. “On the Bicentennial of the Struggle for Independence Towards the Path of Our Liberators”. Caracas, December 3, 2011

[17] Agreements of the Latin American Integration Organizations within the framework of CELAC, Uruguay, 2012/08 https://www.comunidadandina.org/notas-d ... -la-celac/ https://www.comunidadandina.org/notas-d ... -la-celac/

[18] Pacific Alliance, Additional Protocol to the Framework Agreement, https://www.subrei.gob.cl/acuerdos-come ... l-pacifico. 2014

[19] Alicia Bárcena. Prologue. Regional integration: towards a strategy of inclusive value chains, ECLAC. Chile 2014

[20] CELAC (2021) Declaration of Mexico City. VI Summit of Heads of State and Government of CELAC. Mexico. http://www.sela.org/media/3223268/decla ... -celac.pdf

[21] Idem 8

[22] Idem 7

[23] CELAC. Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, Havana, January 29, 2014 https://www.gob.mx/sre/documentos/procl ... enos-celac

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... rspective/

A Closer Look at the Far-Right in Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 14, 2023
Cindy Forster

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UJC Union Juvenil Cruceñista BoliviaCadres from the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (UJC), the Bolivian fascist youth group where Luis Fernando Camacho got his start. Grayzone

The far-right is again trying to unleash devastation from their stronghold in Bolivia’s largest city, Santa Cruz, in the lowland department of the same name, this time to liberate from jail the department’s governor, Luis Fernando Camacho. The governor shut down the city for over a month in late 2022 just after the courts had summoned him, and not for the first time, to declare his version of events during the coup of 2019. He refused to respond. Without his deposition, according to the justice system, there is no way to move forward with the case called “Coup d’Etat I” that charges coup leaders with crimes of terrorism. Camacho was finally arrested on December 28th for failure to comply with four summons. In response, another shutdown of Santa Cruz is now being attempted by his loyalists.

Many crimes exist for which Camacho could be charged, but he is awaiting trial in a maximum-security prison for the coup carried out over three years ago. That coup took the lives of dozens of civilians –most of them Indigenous– and ousted leftist president Evo Morales, also Indigenous. Camacho led the coup in the year 2019, assisted by the country’s oligarchy that mounted an elaborate scheme of lies. Camacho’s histrionic and hate-filled speeches whipped millions of anti-Indigenous citizens into a frenzy across the country. As they poured into the streets, Camacho was able to activate the well-oiled paramilitary machinery of the coup. In recent days, we learned he also apparently funded the betrayal of the police and the army. The time of terror began months before the ouster of socialist president Evo Morales, and Camacho was always at the center of planning. De facto president Jeanine Áñez –now serving a sentence for usurping the presidency– was groomed by Camacho. Because she feels that he abandoned her, Áñez just revealed that Camacho was a critical member of her government from behind the scenes. Camacho is awaiting trial in the department of La Paz.

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Luis Fernando Camacho

One year after the violent expulsion of Evo Morales, the prodigious organizing of Bolivia’s Indigenous majority forced a presidential vote that freed Bolivia of the coup regime, in 2020. Since then, new coup attempts with Camacho at their helm have been constant. The Right managed to get him elected governor in Santa Cruz and are now insisting that he continue to govern from prison.

Camacho brought mayhem and mourning to Santa Cruz last November. The city came to a standstill with paramilitary violence in the working-class neighborhoods. Camacho’s thugs torched the regional headquarters of two of Bolivia’s leading social movements –the Federation of Campesino Workers of Santa Cruz and the Workers Federation of the Department– as well as the agency that protects public lands and forests. The building of the government TV channel in Santa Cruz was also stormed, terrorizing journalists and workers. In an echo of the burning of electoral tribunals during the coup of 2019, paramilitaries attacked the institute responsible for the census and for gathering statistics. As they set these fires, paramilitaries in the pay of Santa Cruz elites declared their intention to kill people.

Some analysts say Camacho’s paramilitary forces number around 5,000, contracted by the Pro Santa Cruz Civic Committee. That far-right club of businesspeople –led by Camacho during the coup– is now directed by Rómulo Calvo who was under house arrest and giving speeches at his front door. They use the Nazi salute. Elite youth are part of its paramilitary wing called the Union of Santa Cruz youth or UJC in the Spanish acronym. The attackers had also been recruited from “underneath the bridges” as a working-class individual said to the news cameras – from the criminal underworld. Journalists state that gangs controlled the right-wing blockades. Their practice of extortion was whitewashed as donations to the cause. On one newscast, a skinny, small child who had been collecting such donations managed to shimmy up the side of a bus through the window and into the bus driver’s lap, seeking refuge, as the bus was stopped at the blockade.

Police defense of the poor in Santa Cruz has been lukewarm. The city’s police commander was in a press conference with Camacho on the day the workers’ headquarters were pillaged and burned. As that destruction was taking place, Camacho asserted to the news cameras he was being persecuted. Reversal of the facts is a standard operating procedure for the right, though its efficacy seems to be wearing thin. Police are instructed to provide a barrier between the people and the paramilitaries, a crucial role, and a striking difference from the year of the coup when repression reigned from November 2019 to November 2020 and police served as the right’s hired thugs. In Santa Cruz, the right now insult the police as “traitors” because they have arrested a few aggressors at different moments.

Camacho is a master of false news and fascist rhetoric. He is a hero to the Right in Miami as well as Bolivia. He called his mercenaries burning buildings “neighbors,” then said that the social movements inflicted the damage on their own offices (where campesinos stay free of charge when they visit the city). Some 230,000 middle-class people packed the political meeting that consummated the paralysis of Santa Cruz in November, according to experts that measure the size of crowds. Cabildos or assemblies are the tool Camacho uses to claim a supposedly democratic mandate. MAS senator William Tórrez, an elder, explained, “On the 13th of November a new cabildo took place that violated Article 11 of the Constitution.” In theory, Article 11 “establishes a form of direct democracy with the people,” and in so doing, “the cabildo possesses an essential characteristic which is deliberation.” Collective discussion “makes known the people’s opinions, their demands and their conceptions.” Yet in the Santa Cruz cabildo, “there was absolutely no intervention uttered by a single person” from the crowd gathered there. One of the cabildo’s resolutions, incredibly, gave constitutional power to the so-called Interinstitutional Committee that called the assembly. The resolution charged the private-sector Interinstitutional Committee with carrying forward a federalist project. They also demanded freedom for prisoners who had committed outrages in the preceding days. In the subsequent weeks, the federalism of which they spoke came to sound more and more like a separate nation of Santa Cruz.

Across recent decades, the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee has been beating people bloody on every occasion it has taken the streets. The Committee’s mass appeal rests on racism. Paramilitaries rape and kill their own, much less their enemies. Since the era of the coup that ended in November 2020, international human rights experts have called for arrests and trials of the UJC based on their cruel and deadly actions. Most of them remain free persons under the protection of the elite.

Not the entire Right of Santa Cruz stands with Camacho today. Conservative politician Vladimir Peña, a former Secretary General of the department of Santa Cruz, critiques him for believing he could “wrestle down” the national government, by repeating the street violence that greased the wheels for the overthrow of a constitutionally elected president in 2019. “He’s thinking only of his own political and personal advantage,” said Peña, at a moment when Camacho was defying a court summons and challenging the state to come arrest him in Santa Cruz. “Camacho has been in a bad situation for quite some time, with a terrible record of governance in Santa Cruz, problems of corruption, his Secretary [of Health] in clandestinity – he fled after the revelation of a compromising audio recording. With hospitals closed, precarity across the system of governance, institutional deterioration.” Peña concluded, “across the course of one year and a half” as governor, Camacho “did nothing at all.”

Santa Cruz Mayor Jhonny Fernández, a right-wing politician who has revealed the corrupt practices of other politicians on the right, is another outspoken critic of Camacho. For that, his home was attacked, and his family terrorized, including his pregnant daughter with a high-risk diagnosis. He said he will not participate in Calvo and Camacho’s latest call for shutting down the metropolis “because somebody has to work in this city.” Leaders of the main business associations of Santa Cruz recently said the same, as they watch factories flee the city for other regions of Bolivia after losses of 780 million U.S. dollars caused by the November blockades.

Even if the Right is fractured, its most fascist pole led by Camacho is nothing to scoff at. Chaos is always the lever Camacho uses to revive his political relevance. Last year he launched the city’s shutdown supposedly to shorten the length of time required to prepare an accurate census. That was the point of disagreement on which Camacho parted company with all the mayors and governors of Bolivia –many of them on the Right– to launch a so-called “civic strike.” It was a shutdown of the city by the oligarchs. It brought hunger to the poor, while the elites kept their factories running.

With constant calls for negotiation, the national government showed that Camacho’s insistence on a distinct census date ran counter to the advice of international experts and the decision of every other politician in the country. And in advance of the census results, MAS authorities conceded greater apportionment of political offices and resources to Santa Cruz. A leaked audio recording demonstrated the date of the census was merely a pretext, when right-wingers in a meeting recognized that their demand for a census in 2023 “was an impossibility.”

Reconfiguring mass resistance: Encirclement

In the department of Santa Cruz and also nationally, the masses are creating new strategies that mark a change from the coup year, and may signal a way out of the dominion imposed by the far Right in the city of Santa Cruz.

The poor did not try systematically to remove the right-wing blockades. Instead, neighborhood residents with their greater numbers encircled the blockaded streets.

Right-wing shock troops receive pay (and also liquor and illicit drugs which have led to gang rape and injuries –even death– in fights among themselves). They extort bribes at street blockades to allow individuals to pass through. Governor Camacho is the intellectual author of this behavior, together with the city’s far Right, and their call for escalation raised the number of injuries, as they knew it would.

“As women, we are standing guard here,” said a working-class woman on the barricades erected a bit distant from the blockades. “We, too, have the right to work. Our children have the right to study. They can’t just come here and attack us in this way,” she said, surrounded by other women. “We are not armed, unlike them,” showing to the camera the razor-sharp blades of a pinwheel the size of the palm of her hand and the munitions that had been thrown at them. “They say this is a ‘civic’ work stoppage. Lies! Look at what they have brought us, with the intention to kill.”

In October, news outlets barely reported Camacho’s characterization of the city shutdown he was planning – before it started, he declared it would be “beautiful.” A master of confusion, he insists paramilitary actions are peaceful and that he and his forces are the ones who are wronged.

By contrast, an uproar ensued in corporate media when the poor across Bolivia went to the aid of their brothers and sisters in Santa Cruz, peacefully, claiming their right to do so as Bolivians. The UJC attacked them as they arrived. They brutalized the marchers. When residents of Santa Cruz demanded the right to work, paramilitaries unleashed their fury against them in their home communities. The marches did not stop. From across the vast department, thousands of people with white flags mobilized. Their sheer numbers seem to have stayed the hand of the paramilitaries at various points.

Shutting down for real

Accomplishing the shutdown of the city “with greater seriousness” was another working-class strategy, though largely symbolic. The city is the location of the nation’s largest industrial sector and it stayed in business, at full operational capacity, through all the preceding shutdowns of the Right in Santa Cruz. This time, the poor declared they would monitor the elite closure of the city “for real,” and proceeded to close down access to the plants of the corporate oligarchs, mentioning Coca-Cola and national producers of cooking oil and milk products. The rich cried foul. They took their denunciations to the international forums of the global Right, demanding that the elite’s right to work be respected while denying that same right to the majorities.

The Right stays afloat with the backing of the United States. Even though the poor who vote for socialism massively outnumber the neo-fascist followers of Camacho, the present government brings charges gingerly. Criminals among the Right in Santa Cruz have largely evaded jail. To this point, the justice system has been unable to mount successful trials in cases of egregious human rights crimes committed during the coup year.

United in struggle, the socialist majority versus the fascist Right

On alert practically for the last two years, social movements have foreseen scenarios such the shutdown of cities by the Right. “We will not wait until it’s too late,” said a local leader to the state TV channel. Delegations of hundreds of people made their way to Santa Cruz and ringed the city.

Ovidio Mamani, regional executive of the leadership formation of the Andes called the Ponchos Rojos –an Indigenous vanguard of sorts that has led insurgencies historically and, in the present, served as a presidential guard and first line of defense for the MAS government– informed the nation: “The army of the youth of the Ponchos Rojos has been established.” They have joined in alliance with the organized youth of the department of La Paz and the youth of the city of El Alto. As a unit, the youth wing of the Ponchos Rojos are in training alongside their peers in El Alto. The same is true of the working-class organization of “motorcyclist youth in the Southern Zone of K’ara K’ara” in the city of Cochabamba, which protects the poor rather than attacking them like the paramilitary motorcyclists. “They are on alert, having declared a state of emergency … to protect our nation of Bolivia.”

This initiative responds to realities such as that described by a woman in Plan 3000 –a vast working-class sub-city of Santa Cruz– where “twenty hoodlums appeared in my neighborhood shouting, ‘We’re going to rob everything.’ They’ve recruited Venezuelans, Colombians, who knows from where all they’re bringing in these criminals.” Footage from a security camera showed Camacho’s paramilitaries shattering and breaking the camera. For all the crimes they committed that night in Plan 3000, “There was not a single person arrested. Nobody says a word.”

Neisa Najaya, Beni’s Departmental President of the Movement toward Socialism–Political Instrument, was furious: “This trampling and abuse of our brothers in Plan 3000 has to stop. Please, brother Lucho,” –she was in an assembly of women where President “Lucho” or Luis Arce was the honored guest– “help these brothers, because they will defend the Political Instrument to the death.” The speaker, an older woman, wore the green Indigenous dress of Beni. Thousands echoed her demands across the country in the meetings of the social movements.

Flora Aguilar, the national head of the Bartolina Sisas Confederation of Indigenous and Campesina Women –she is always cradling or breastfeeding her daughter as she addresses the public or raises her fist in the photos– asked President Arce the question being repeated everywhere outside of Santa Cruz: “Why aren’t you sending in the army?”

On October 28th, Indigenous Ayoreos on their ancestral lands were threatened by Daniel Velásquez with a whip in his hand. He is a sub-governor directly appointed by Camacho. Many of the Ayoreos have managed to avoid contact with outsiders in their nomadic life in the scrub forests of Santa Cruz, that are being bulldozed by rightwing ranchers. The sub-governor called the Ayoreos “an open sore.” Most of his victims were women. In various rural communities, the shirtless and furious Velásquez was burning down the homes of people protesting the elite shutdown.

The Ayoreo women did not retreat. In fact, they grabbed his traditional whip or chicote and gave him a small puncture wound in his back that he claims is a human rights violation. The Ayoreos have filed a case charging racism in the courts of the Interamerican human rights system.

With the attacks on social movement buildings, the anger of workers and peasants across Bolivia reached a fever pitch. Former president Evo Morales –who is now the head of the governing party, the Movement toward Socialism or MAS– urged people to avoid “provocations” by the Right. MAS politicians at the national and regional levels demanded respect for the lives and institutions of the people. María Nela Prada, the Minister of the President and highest-ranking member of the cabinet, said to the nation that “Governor Camacho and Rómulo Calvo have their hands stained with blood,” citing the deaths, suffering, racism, intolerance and hunger they caused in the elite shutdown of Santa Cruz.

President Luis Arce insisted the national government would not treat Santa Cruz with the brutality exercised by the coup regime. A certain inaction from the highest levels of MAS suggests they believe a stronger response would play into Camacho’s hand and rally the international forces of the Right to the defense of Camacho.

Camacho and his henchmen continue to announce they are on the path to overthrowing the national government, most recently via a separatist blueprint. The Indigenous take them at their word. The poor are not in any degree conciliatory. Alongside the Bartolina Sisas, other social movements demanded the militarization of the city of Santa Cruz and a state of emergency decreed by the national government.

“Today we stand in resistance to this launching of another coup d’etat,” said Flora Aguilar of the Bartolina Sisa Federation. “We cannot afford to wait and see what they will do next. We want prison for Camacho. We want prison for Calvo. We want prison for all of them who are killing our people. What they want is to create total chaos in our country to carry out another coup d’etat. The government has to wake up. The social movements cannot be fragmented. We must join forces and defend our democracy, our revolution, and our vote that we recuperated in the ballot boxes.”

So far, the patience of the national government and the principled stand of the social movements have held the line. Camacho’s civilian supporters are deciding to stay home, rather than join the marches called to liberate their hero.

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

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 17, 2023 2:40 pm

Unrest Spreads Across Peru After Massacre of Civilians
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 16, 2023
Abayomi Azikiwe

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Calls for the prosecution of coup-President Dina Boluarte while unprovoked killings of dozens in the south of the South American state continues

Since the ouster by the parliament of former leftwing President Pedro Castillo in December, demonstrations demanding his release from detention and the reversal of the military-backed coup have been unrelenting.

Official figures indicate that over the last month some 48 people have died as President Dina Boluarte has attempted to end protests which are seeking her resignation, the immediate release of Castillo and the holding another round of elections.

The impeachment of Castillo was done in a perfunctory manner absent of any substantiative hearings where evidence of alleged crimes could have been presented. A split from the Peru Libre party on whose slate Castillo and Boluarte ran in 2021 encouraged the rightist elements along with the military to take effective power.

Despite the departure of Castillo and Boluarte from Peru Libre, the president maintained widespread support by the electorate concerned about the reforms under which he campaigned during 2021. Castillo retains tremendous support in the southern region of the country among the rural population groups. This region is key to the overall economy of Peru which is heavily dependent upon tourism and the extractive industries.

Castillo, an educator and trade union leader based in the rural areas of the South, was just elected in a runoff vote during mid-2021. During his first year in office, there were several attempts to impeach him over disagreements related to the domestic policies of the country.

After a lull in the demonstrations during the holiday season, the mass protests and acts of civil disobedience have resumed. In response to the unrest, the Boluarte regime has declared a state of emergency and imposed curfews throughout sections of the country.

A general work stoppage was called for aimed at ending the tenure of Boluarte and the present Congress which ousted the grassroots trade union leader on December 7. The broad support for Castillo has been evidenced by the economic and social impact of the mass demonstrations and general strikes which have gripped key regions of the country for more than a month.

Those political interests now controlling the Peruvian Congress are described by the Castillo supporters as completely out of touch with the realities of the workers, farmers and youth within the Indigenous communities.

January 4 witnessed the beginning of an indefinite strike in the departments of Arequipa, Ayacucho, Apurimac, Cusco, Moquegua, Madre de Dios, and Puno. Simultaneously organizations in Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurimac were debating over whether to join the actions.

The General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) held a demonstration in the capital of Lima expressing solidarity with the mobilizations and strike actions in various sections of the country. In addition, the CGTP endorsed the demand for the closing of Congress, the resignation of Boluarte and the holding of general elections immediately.

A report by Telesur on the burgeoning crisis stressed:

“The land Transport Superintendence confirmed the blockade of roads in 46 sites scattered in eight regions of the country. Among them is the blockade of traffic between Puno and Arequipa, two important commercial cities. Currently, the strongest protests are taking place in the southern part of the country. Local media report traffic blockades on the Interoceanic Highway and the Pan-American Highway, as well as protests in Andahuaylas, Aymaraes, and Abancay. In this last region, 70 percent of the population has complied with the national strike, leaving a large number of vehicles stranded on the roads. In the city of Chalhuanca, the police tried to unblock a highway, which led to clashes with the indigenous communities.” (https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0007.html)

Massacre at Juliaca

On January 9, it was reported that 17 civilians were massacred in the city of Juliaca in San Roman province by the security forces in the southeast of the country. Just two days later, protesters marched with coffins of the deceased through the city with signs denouncing Boluarte. When the funeral procession walked past a local police station, the people began to chant “murderers, murderers.”

The supporters of Castillo have engaged in a general strike to emphasize the need to reverse the current political situation inside the country. In response, the police and military forces at the aegis of the Boluarte administration have exercised maximum force to end the protests against the undemocratic character of the regime.

Demonstrations in Peru have focused on closing down airports and roads which facilitate the large tourism industry in the country. Although most of the protest actions have been nonviolent, there were reports that at least one police officer was burned to death after being thrown into a fire.

With specific reference to the attacks by the police on the people of Juliaca, Telesur noted as the events unfolded that:

“The first death was recorded just hours ago (Jan. 9) when 35-year-old Gabriel Omar Lopez was identified. A pellet hit the victim in the head during clashes in the southern city of Juliaca, in the province of San Roman, Puno department. The death of a 17-year-old girl was reported. The initial casualty and injury toll issued by the Health Network was lower but has been updated with the report of 12 dead and 38 injured. In the midst of such a scenario, road blockades are maintained at Puno’s connection points with Arequipa, Cusco and Madre de Dios. According to the Superintendence of Land Transportation of People, Cargo and Goods (Sutran), the blockade affects 20 sectors in the different roads of the region. The roads leading from Puno to Desagüadero, in the sectors of Platería, Acora, Ilave, Juli, Yunguyo and Desagüadero, are blocked. In the city of Puno, the carriers blocked with mobile units different streets, parks, entrances and exits of the city of Lago and the city of Juliaca, in the Yanamayo sector.” (https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Per ... -0016.html)

Meanwhile, Castillo remains in detention as his family has been given political asylum in the Republic of Mexico. Several states throughout the region including Mexico, Cuba, Argentina, Venezuela, among others, have rejected the removal of the former president.

At the same time the Attorney General of Peru announced on January 11 that President Boluarte and Prime Minister Alberto Otarola along with the ministers of defense and interior, are under investigation for genocide. This investigation stems directly from the repressive measures instituted by the regime to halt dissent and public protest since the December 7 removal and arrest of Castillo. The announcement of the investigation took place during the same week as the Peruvian Congress gave a vote of confidence to the Boluarte and Otarola administration.

The Role of the U.S. and Its Allies

There are a number of governments which have recognized Boluarte as president. The U.S. State Department supported the coup against Castillo, who has repeatedly claimed that his impeachment was illegal and that he remains the legitimate president.

In the immediate aftermath of the removal of Castillo, Reuters press agency reported:

“The U.S. government said it welcomed the appointment of Dina Boluarte as President of Peru, who was sworn in by Congress on Wednesday (Dec. 7) in a day that saw ex-leader Pedro Castillo arrested following his ousting from office in an impeachment trial. ‘We commend Peruvian institutions and civil authorities for assuring democratic stability and will continue to support Peru under the unity government President Boluarte pledged to form,’ a U.S. State Department spokesperson said in a statement.” (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/ ... 022-12-08/)

The U.S. has a history of favoring and installing military regimes in Latin America. Although Boluarte is ostensibly a civilian president, from the beginning of her tenure she has empowered the Peruvian National Police and the Peruvian Armed Forces to suppress the democratic and left opposition to the removal of Castillo.

In Bolivia during 2019, a military-backed coup was carried out against socialist President Evo Morales. This move on the part of the right-wing was backed by the administration of former President Donald Trump.

Recently in Brazil, right-wing supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro called upon the military to seize power and arrest the incumbent head-of-state Lula da Silva. Although the U.S. has condemned the attacks on the government buildings in Brasilia on January 8, it is well known that Bolsonaro was influenced by the Trump administration during their tenures in office. Republicans have regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives while Democrats in general have not taken any meaningful measures to halt the destabilization efforts by the State Department and the intelligence agencies around the world.

These methods of destabilization will continue until the threat of U.S. imperialism is eliminated in Latin America. Solidarity efforts from the U.S. antiwar and peace movements could have a tremendous impact in curtailing the interventionist policies of Washington and Wall Street.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... civilians/

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Peruvian peasants advance towards Lima to march against the president

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Hundreds of people mobilized in the Peruvian capital to demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte. | Photo: EFE
Published 17 January 2023

From Cusco, dozens of peasants left for Lima to join the march to demand elections and the call for a Constituent Assembly.

Peasant organizations and thousands of people from different regions of Peru traveled to the capital Lima at dawn on Tuesday to participate in the "March of the Four Theirs" and demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte.

Telesur's correspondent in Peru, Jaime Herrera, reported that peasants are traveling in trucks from the Apurimac region to the Peruvian capital to join the massive mobilization.

Herrera recalled that the indefinite strike in the Apurimac region celebrated its 14th day the day before with a constant social mobilization in defense of former president Pedro Castillo, who was destroyed by Congress at the beginning of December.


From the city of Cusco, dozens of peasants in buses and trucks also left for Lima, to join the march to demand, among other demands, immediate elections and the call for a Constituent Assembly.


In Humay, a town at the foot of the Andes about 240 km southeast of Lima, some 200 residents of Andahuaylas who were traveling this Monday in a caravan of vehicles were blocked by the police to carry out identification checks.

The police cut the Libertadores highway there to prevent passage and arrested four drivers for not having administrative papers in order.

The Ombudsman's Office asked the police forces to allow the passage of trucks with peasants to Lima to participate in the "March of the Four Theirs."


To stop the mobilizations and protests, the Government of Dina Boluarte extended the state of emergency for 30 days on Saturday in Lima, Cusco, Callao and Puno, authorizing the military to intervene together with the police to contain the protests.

It also extended for at least 10 days the curfew from 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. in the Puno region.



Protests in Peru have left at least 42 dead, more than 500 injured and some 300 detained in five weeks, according to the prosecutor's office.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-gru ... -0005.html

Peruvian judge admits request for habeas corpus for Pedro Castillo

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Thousands of Peruvians have mobilized in various regions of the country to demand the release of former President Castillo. | Photo: EFE
Published 17 January 2023

The request for habeas corpus in favor of Pedro Castillo seeks to annul the judicial decision, which imposed 18 months of preventive detention.

The Peruvian Justice admitted on Monday the request for habeas corpus presented by the lawyers of former president Pedro Castillo, with which they seek to annul the 18-month preventive detention that the former president is serving in the Barbadillo prison, east of Lima.

According to Peruvian media, Judge Jorge Luis Ramírez Niño de Guzmán, of the Fifth Constitutional Court of Lima, agreed to consider the request of the defense of former President Castillo, who seeks to annul the resolution of Congress with which the prerogative of political impeachment was lifted. , without having carried out a constitutional accusation.

The resolution of the Peruvian Congress against former President Castillo allowed the then head of state to be dismissed by the legislative body without having been tried or having defended himself against the accusation of alleged "moral incapacity".


The defense team of Pedro Castillo argued in the request for habeas corpus that the parliamentarians "cannot annul the right to political impeachment, for being in flagrante delicto."

They also recalled that the Subcommittee on Constitutional Accusations is prosecuting former ministers Betssy Chávez, Willy Huerta and Roberto Sánchez for this same case.

The request for habeas corpus in favor of Pedro Castillo presented on January 11 seeks to annul the resolution of the Supreme Court of Preliminary Investigation, which imposed 18 months of preventive detention against the former president, as well as the ruling of the Permanent Criminal Chamber that upheld the decision in the first instance.


In the same text, former President Castillo asked the constitutional courts to file a criminal complaint against the Peruvian prosecutor, Patricia Benavides; the director of State Security in the National Police of Peru, General Iván Lizzetti Salazar, and the members of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Accusations, for the alleged arbitrary detention after Castillo's last message to the Peruvian people as president of the country.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-jue ... -0001.html

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

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Re: South America

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 18, 2023 3:22 pm

The Military Shot to Kill in Ayacucho: Forensic Anthropologists

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Protesters rebuke police in Peru, January, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @boltxe

Published 18 January 2023

The facts show the same pattern: they intentionally shot deadly areas such as the head, thorax, and abdomen, which constitutes an indication of crimes against humanity.


On Tuesday, the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team (EPAF) presented a report showing that the military shot with the intent to kill in at least 10 cases of citizens killed during protests against President Dina Boluarte.

Speaking about a sample of corpses of people who died in the Ayacucho region, the EPAF anthropologist Carmen Rosa Cardoza indicated that six people died as a result of shots to the chest, three due to shots to the abdomen, and one as a result of a gunshot to the head.

The facts show the same pattern: the military intentionally shot deadly areas such as the head, thorax, and abdomen, which constitutes an indication of crimes against humanity.

When there is no such intention, gunshot wounds usually occur in the extremities, anthropologist Jose Pablo Baraybar explained.


The tweet reads: "This is a true popular epic. It is the appearance of that other Peruvianness. It is the popular Peru, the Peru of those who are below. They claim the right to build a homeland where they are not seen as garbage. Look, solidarity, courage, dignity."

Gloria Cano, a lawyer from the Association for Human Rights (APRODEH), pointed out that the Peruvian army is not trained to control crowds or use force proportionally. For this reason, the Ayacucho murders reveal that the intention was to shoot in vital areas.

She denounced that the Peruvian military also attacked citizens in Andahuaylas, in the department of Apurímac, where corpses were found with shots to the head, thorax, and neck.

Since Boluarte became president on Dec. 7, 2022, human rights defenders have registered the death of 47 citizens as a result of the repression of the massive demonstrations.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/The ... -0001.html

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Trade union central calls for a national strike against the Government of Peru

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The strike will take place as part of the protests that began in the country since last December. | Photo: GEP
Posted 18 January 2023 (2 hours 5 minutes ago)

The fundamental concentration is scheduled to take place in the Plaza 2 de Mayo in Lima from 4:00 p.m. local time.

The General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) finalizes the details of the national strike called for this Thursday, January 19 in order to demand the immediate resignation of the designated president Dina Boluarte, the early call for elections and a Constituent Assembly.

The fundamental concentration is scheduled to take place in the Plaza 2 de Mayo in Lima starting at 4:00 p.m. local time, for which reason various trade union and social organizations have marched to the capital to join.

For its part, the CGTP denounced that on Monday the Police pressured the National Assembly of Peoples (ANP) not to take place by surrounding the building and threatening the conveners.

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In this sense, the confederation indicated that the police forces intimidated those attending the assembly and imprisoned the leader Teresa Yamile Natividad Villegas Montoya, for "an indictment in Cajamarca, a place she does not know, for what is considered a case of homonymy ”.

In turn, the assistant general secretary of the CGTP, Gustavo Minaya, affirmed that "they are harassing the leaders who intend to enter this place convened by the National Assembly of the Peoples to all the leaders and union leaders of Lima and at the national level" .


However, Minaya stressed that the strike will be carried out forcefully "yes or yes" while denouncing that "this is the way in which they try to prevent this great strike from taking place due to the indignation, the deaths, the lives that They have removed these own troops”.

Demonstrations in Peru broke out last December with the removal by Congress of then-President Pedro Castillo, in which around 50 fatalities have been reported due to violent police repression.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/peru-cen ... -0013.html

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A Real Coup and a Caricature of a Coup: Interview with Héctor Béjar
JANUARY 17, 2023

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The swearing in of Dina Boluarte. Photo: Presidencia Perú.

With more than 60 years of experience in Peruvian politics, Héctor Béjar breaks down, in this exclusive interview, the context and reasons for the coup, and presents a portrait of a country nestled between reality and fiction.

The slow stride of the president on horseback


The rearing horse that “the teacher,” Pedro Castillo, rode in Tacabamba, when he was a candidate for the presidency, ended up not being a metaphor for speed or bravery. With a slow step and a confused pace, his government decided, from the outset, to pursue the strategy of retreat. One step back and another again. Moderating to contain, offering a program for governance to a seditious and insatiable opposition. Castillo’s administration, the most unexpected of the governments of the so-called “second progressive wave,” barely lasted 15 months.

However, it must be recognized that the conditions for his governing could not have been more hostile. After his victory over Keiko Fujimori by just 44,000 votes in the second round of elections, the president himself quickly found himself without a party, disaffected of his own free will, or abandoned by some of his own, while the friendly fire between “sectarians” and “caviars” ended with the fracture of the parliamentary blocs. In addition, a very high turnover of officials and various scandals and complaints turned many ministers into lightning rods, discontinuing all executive policies. We can also add the adverse economic conditions generated by the war in Ukraine, and even the protests in some regions of the transportation sector and other groups that would a priori would make up Castillo’s natural voter base.

To this must be added the hidden work in Congress: from the parliamentary lock on the proposals for health and education reforms, to the motions for vacancy and the complaints for alleged treason against Castillo. In short, his government aroused many hopes, various difficulties, and not a few fears, with the vivid memory of the disappointment caused by the presidency of Ollanta Humala, who appeared, at first, to be a kind of criollo Hugo Chávez.

We spoke with Héctor Béjar Rivera about his assessment of a government which he was part of for a very brief period, serving as minister of foreign affairs. Béjar’s political experience has been anything but brief. For 60 years, he played a leading role in Peruvian politics, from his political-military career, in which he was part of the Revolutionary Leftist Movement (MIR) and the Peruvian National Liberation Army, to his participation in the government of Velasco Alvarado and his agrarian reform policy, as well as in the Constituent Assembly of the year 1978. Béjar intellectual life has been equally prolific, from the creation of the Center for Development and Participation (CEDEP), to the publication of numerous articles, essays, and books, some of which are authentic classics of Peruvian history and sociology.

Lautaro Rivara: Everything seemed to indicate that the Constitutional reform was a demand with broad popular support. Why was that flag lowered as soon as Castillo entered the palace?

Héctor Béjar: It is true that a constituent reform was called for, and the mobilizations continue to call for it it. I have always said that we should not talk about a constituent assembly but rather a constituent process, because under current conditions, an assembly would replicate parliament. We even run the risk that a hastily formed body, in this precarious political situation that Peru is experiencing, could be even worse than Congress itself, giving rise to a Constitution that is even more regressive than that of 1993, created by the Alberto Fujimori dictatorship.

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Héctor Béjar Rivera during his assumption as minister of foreign affairs of Peru.

What must be done then is a constituent process, a work of education and dissemination with rural and urban communities, from the base, and based on the intense popular struggles that are taking place in Peru—which have now intensified—to enact a constitution that is not the result of dubious people or mafia instruments.

And what about the agrarian reform that the former president announced with such conviction?

The reform never existed. It was nothing more than a publicity tool. There were even those who wanted to compare it with the one made by Velasco Alvarado, but that is ridiculous.

Why did some of your old statements generate such a level of virulence in the opposition? How did you foresee your resignation as Minister?

In Peru, there is no right wing: there are mafias. This group of mafias and some political parties gave a real howl of rage when I was appointed foreign minister, so they looked for any pretext to get me out. They used as an excuse two statements I made much earlier, in which I affirmed two things: that the first terrorist acts in Peru were committed by the Navy in 1974, and that the army was related to some acts of the Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path guerrillas]. According to them, this was an insult to the armed forces. They threatened a coup and the government, then barely 19 days old, trembled.

But it is the Navy itself that recognizes this; they published a book in homage to those who, within the institution, carried out those acts of terrorism against General Velasco. One can also ascertain these facts just by reading the newspapers of that time. This was in the year 1974, long before Sendero was born, which operated from 1980 to 1992. During those twelve years, weren’t the Army’s intelligence services able to penetrate the organization? Were they so inefficient? It is clear that to penetrate a terrorist organization you have to practice terrorism: those are their rules. This can be understood by anyone, you don’t need to be a scholar or a specialist.

As a result of pressure from the armed forces, I was prevented from going to Congress. Castillo and his closest circle probably thought that this could aggravate the situation. If my presence endangered the government, it was best to get out of the way. And that’s what I did with my resignation.

The deep state

The last few years of Peruvian politics seem to have made something clear: the political structure is rotten. Six presidents in seven years, the dramatic suicide of a former president, a judiciary that is like the dog in the manger: it neither governs nor allows itself to be governed. An omnipresent last name, which went from democracy to de facto government, later recycling itself again under a precarious rule of law: Fujimorismo, a monster with multiple heads and parties that has been marking the pulse of domestic politics for the last 30 years. A Constitution, of unholy origin, that protects and shields what really matters: the apparently untouchable neoliberal economic model. These are some of the deep sewers that flow under the Peruvian State.

Contrasting readings have been circulating for weeks about the country’s political system. The right affirms that Peru shows the failure of presidentialism in Latin America, while other sectors affirm that Peru is an example of the chronic problems of a parliament with inappropriate powers and prerogatives, such as in other formally presidential countries. What is your analysis of this tense power relationship between the executive and the legislature, and what kind of political reform do you imagine could solve this fundamental problem?

The 1993 Constitution is a bad result of a disastrous coup, and of a tangled negotiation between Mr. Fujimori—de facto president at that time—with the OAS and with the international community. From there came a legal text full of patches, which has elements of Fujimori’s de facto presidentialism; he wanted, and finally managed, to perpetuate his power.

But on the other hand, international pressure introduced some interesting elements, such as the ombudspersons, habeas data, the court of constitutional guarantees—now the Constitutional Court, etc. However, at this point it is clear that this Constitution is useless. It also has a famous economic chapter that shields and makes foreign investment invulnerable and exempt from taxes in Peru. It is a device that no longer works. The discussion on human rights, for example, has come a long way from 1993 to date: there are human rights that have been incorporated into other laws in Latin America, and the world, while this simply does not exist in Peru.

All this is what must be explained, what must be worked out with the country’s working-class voters. This Constitution, already patched up in 1993, has been patched up more. This Congress, which supposedly does not want the Constitution to be touched, has made more than 30 modifications that Peruvians are not even aware of. Some of these modifications annulled existing rights, such as the right to referendum.

And what is happening with the judicialization of politics? Already in the last elections, 10 of the 18 presidential candidacies had ongoing legal proceedings. Is what we see in Peru a local singularity or can it be considered a national chapter of a regional lawfare enforcement strategy?

There are both. After the Velasco government, the Peruvian armed forces were denationalized and lost quality: their training is no longer what it was before, not only from a strictly military point of view, but also from their national and general culture. Corruption was introduced into the army and also into the police. However, they know that they cannot carry out a coup d’état directly: there is no favorable environment in Latin America or in the world for that. But like everyone in the world knows, the style of coups has been changing. Today we have a “PM” in Peru, a media party, very active as well as monopolistic and concentrated, a “PF”—the party of the prosecution—and a “PJ”—the party of the judiciary. These three parties, along with Congress, are the four major actors that govern Peru, as they have the big local and foreign capital backing them.

This network of power has caused Castillo to be harassed, stigmatized, prosecuted, accused of 5,000 things, before he was even president. Which is not to say that Castillo is a neat, pure popular leader, or anything similar. Castillo is for me a character that would require a much more detailed analysis. At the same time, what is being done to him is an abuse, absolutely illegal. The fact is that the nation’s prosecutor and legislature will have the luxury of having him imprisoned, under “preventive detention,” for a period of three years. We have reached such a point of politicizing justice that you can go to jail and the judge can take three years to find out if you are guilty or not of any crime.

How many coups were there?

As already happened in the dramatic situation that culminated in the coup d’état in Bolivia in 2019, the latest events in Peru gave rise to as many hypotheses and theories as there were analysts, operators, and opinion specialists in these generous South American lands. Roughly speaking, these conflicting interpretations (not just mere theories, but decisive motives for political action—or inaction) are organized into three large groups. The first is that of those who characterize what happened as a self-coup perpetrated by Pedro Castillo, followed by the restoration of democratic normality with the assumption of the next person in the line of Constitutional succession, Dina Boluarte. There were even those who dared to compare Castillo with Fujimori.

A second group of readings points to the existence of “two coups,” interpreting both Pedro Castillo’s speech on December 7, as well as his dismissal through parliament and the subsequent inauguration of Boluarte—here considered a de facto or illegitimate president—as interruptions of democracy. This theory is closely related to the one that spoke of “two conservatisms” and called for not taking sides in the decisive ballot between Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former dictator, and the candidate of Peru Libre, himself, on June 8, 2021. Various “progressive” media echoed both hypotheses in Peru and in the world.

The third interpretation underlines the existence of a single coup, consummated through parliament with the ousting, after two unsuccessful attempts, of the now ex-president. From this point of view, the coup would follow a clear regional pattern, with precedents such as the parliamentary coup against Fernando Lugo in Paraguay and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

Let’s recap the facts: was there a coup? two? Who perpetrated it?

I think there is a cartoon coup and a real coup. The cartoon coup is that of Mr. Castillo. Until now he has not said what happened, and no one can say for sure. But it is a merely anecdotal fact: that of a president who, without prior announcement, in front of the cameras of a national broadcaster, reads a small piece of paper with a trembling hand, ordering the men of the armed forces to close Congress to form an emergency government and to reorganize the powers of the State.

In the first place, it must be said that the closure of Congress is a national demand [now]: except for the congressmen themselves, everyone demands it. The declaration, in this sense, fulfilled a widespread demand. The same is true of the highly corrupt judiciary: in my opinion, it should not only be reorganized, but totally dismantled. But the naive and childish way in which he announced these measures is a mystery to me. So one has to wonder what happened, how did he decide it, why, and with whose participation and influence.

But all this is nothing more than a misleading anecdote, which distracts us from the central fact. This is not a coup. The coup d’état came later, when Congress, violating all the rules, dismissed him in a matter of minutes. Within a few hours you had Castillo in prison, and Dina Boluarte, apparently prepared for the occasion, assuming the presidency of the Republic. In a short time, Boluarte declared a national emergency, refused any dialogue, and began to govern the country in a practically dictatorial manner, as constitutional guarantees were interrupted throughout the country. At this moment, any police officer can break down the door of my house and enter it without explanation: all Peruvian men and women are now in the same situation.

And what do you think about the alleged participation of two key actors: the Peruvian armed forces and the OAS, which in the figure of its Secretary General Luis Almagro had a very timely visit to the country a few weeks before the coup?

Today everything is possible. Everything is imaginable. I still wouldn’t bet on any hypothesis. The newspaper La República published an article stating that Castillo, along with the last defense minister appointed, General [Emilio] Bobbio, asked the general commander of the Army for his resignation the day before the coup. According to that newspaper, after a meeting of all the commanders of the Joint Command, which includes the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, the uniformed officers agreed to reject the president’s request, deciding there to remove him. Although it does not expressly say so, the newspaper suggests that we would be in the presence of a coup defined by military actors.

Now, what does the OAS have to do with this matter? The curious thing is that, at least publicly and as far as we know, the OAS has defended Castillo, because he did not affect the interests of the United States in any way. When Castillo went to the Summit of the Americas he spoke of an “America for the Americans,” echoing James Monroe’s famous phrase. There was a clear message there. And when the OAS mission was in Peru, it dedicated itself to criticizing the opposition more than Castillo himself. With the information we have, it seems difficult to assume that the OAS has been a promoter of this. I still think, and of course I may be wrong, that this is mainly a local event, carried out by local actors, who mobilized for rather local interests.

It is obvious that our cavemen-like right wing and certain military groups hate Castillo because they do not accept their own people. Some military chief leaked information stating that as long as there are armed forces in Peru, the left will not govern the country. The problem, then, is no longer just communism, as they said before. Now, it is the entire left that is rejected by these people.

The assumption of Boluarte has been strongly resisted, both by the citizens from the depths of Peru and by different presidents and leaders of the region. Today we see attempts at mobilization with notable peaks of mass involvement and radicalism. There are dozens of fatalities from the repression. How might this situation evolve in the coming weeks? Will the protests reach a climax? What mediate or immediate way out do you imagine for the crisis?

Today we see a comedy, a bad comedy, in which the press, including a so-called “progressive” press, is filled with furious attacks against Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia, or Argentina, even against the OAS, arguing that today the whole world is against Peru. This occurs with respect to the international level and the complaints about the Boluarte government.

Regarding the popular response, we have to adjust things here: it is not about the people in general, although they are very active among significant sectors. The popular classes, in general, are looking at what is happening with more or less indifference, as usual. They find themselves disconnected from the political world and from all these events. But the mobilized sectors, it is clear, are not going to pay attention to the state of emergency and will continue protesting. I find it hard to believe that Mrs. Boluarte does not know that the continuation of these measures will bring more deaths and more blood. And I find it hard to imagine how she could appoint such a right-wing cabinet, linked to the financial oligarchy of [Pedro Pablo] Kuczynski, without any political capacity or willingness to dialogue.

If Boluarte does not leave power, she will lead the country to a tragedy. What she and her circle expect from her is that the people get tired and demobilize, forget about their problems, and continue like this for at least two more years of government. But there is no historical precedent in Peru that supports this strategy.

The misguidance of the left

Lautaro Rivara
: Rare are the occasions in which a text written 60 years ago can still illuminate the present of a country. This is the case of the book Perú 1965: Notes on a Guerrilla Experience, written in the El Frontón island prison between 1966 and 1969 by Béjar himself, when he was part of the [Peruvian] ELN. He wrote there:

…Due to the insufficiency and lack of continuity of theoretical work, the Peruvian left as a whole cannot display an interpretation of Peruvian reality based on serious studies… This is part of the tradition we have received and is what still prevents us from clearly envisioning social changes.”

What has happened to the Peruvian left in recent decades? Why couldn’t he clearly read the latest social changes, from Pedro Castillo’s unexpected electoral victory to this popular insurrection on the horizon? Béjar assures us that the social structure of the country has been radically transformed in recent times. But perhaps the many “Perus in Peru” continue to determine the many lefts—rural and urban, Lima or provincial—that inhabit the body politic. To these insoluble problems, we must add the presence of a hysterical right that accuses anyone who expresses the slightest disagreement of being a terrorist or communist.

What is the current state of Peruvian social movements, regardless of what happens at the government level? How do you escape from this tangle, the brief interregnum of the Castillo government?

The social movement has grown tremendously. In Peru there is a political left, which is in the political apparatus, in the political system, and there is what we could call a “social left,” which is not left in terms of strict political awareness, but has many social activists who feel they are leftist, have highly articulate political ideas, and are highly honest people. There are thousands in contemporary Peru. In this sense, the social movement has grown a lot. But we cannot sanctify these processes. In this country, corruption runs through everything, including sectors of the social movement.

But the truth is that the social movement is stronger and more active than a few decades ago: we see it today, in its great capacity for mobilization, in its ability to influence the government. This movement does not wait for slogans from political parties: it is capable of reacting positively and spontaneously.

You mentioned, in a recent interview, that there was a positivist left in Peru, which thought in terms of civilization and barbarism. At the same time, much has been discussed about the apparent non-existence of an Indigenous movement, at least comparable to its counterparts in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, or Guatemala. What is the state of the debate on plurinationality in Peru? Does it seem like a possible and reasonable perspective to reorganize the state? What is the situation of the Indigenous and campesino [peasant]–Indigenous movement?

There are claims and slogans about plurinationality, but we have not yet had a serious discussion about it. In the social panorama of Peru, which is quite complex and varied, we can establish various Indigenist tones and positions. The strongest and most conscious movements of their indigenismo—or their indianismo, depending on the perspective—are the native peoples of the Peruvian Amazon, who recognize themselves as communities with their own identity. This is the case of the Ashaninkas and the Aguarunas, for example. These and other peoples speak around 200 languages, and some of them cover a significant extension of the national territory, from the central Amazon to southern Peru.

The other strong pole, with a great presence and identity, is the Aymara, in the highlands near Bolivia, on a border that is only political and where cultural exchange is very strong. With the Quechuas, the situation is different. Peru was the center of Spanish colonialism in South America. The Quechuas were subdued, but they established some form of identification with the colonial regime and had their own chiefs and curacas for 300 years. The well-known exception was that of Tupac Amaru and his revolution. But this did not happen with the rest of the aristocracies, of the Quechua elites, who were utilized more or less by the colonizers.

Then there are other nationalities, now disappeared or less visible. The vortex of the current rebellion is in the territory of the Charcas, in the Apurímac area, in the south-central departments of Peru. These people have always been very brave. They have their tradition, although they do not recognize themselves as a people, but rather as Apurimeños or Abancaínos and also as Peruvians. Then, we have the people from the north, from Cajamarca, from the land of Castillo: more acculturated people, more influenced by the Spanish of the colony.

In short, the situation is quite varied, and seriously raises the possibility of building a plurinational state. We still don’t know how it could work, nor what nationalities would eventually be recognized. But there is a demand, and it is even accepted by certain cultural elites, for a new Constitution that can accommodate a plurinational and multicultural landscape, although there is also active opposition from the most fossilized sectors of the right.

It seems then that the Indigenous question and the campesino question appear closely linked to the regional question, and above all to the political and administrative centralization in Lima, excessive even in a continent where centralization around the port cities is a highly exacerbated phenomenon.

Yes, Lima is absolutely dominant. But Lima is also provincial. People from all over Peru are also there.

Finally, how do you see the country in its regional context?

I always believed that the best way to fight is continentally. Intensifying regional ties is now much easier; technology gives us all the facilities to do so. It is a shame we do not have Latin American publishers like we did many years ago. We have media like Telesur, a very important example, but perhaps we can do something more in terms of communication. Other political forces on the continent have had very significant political achievements, which we still have not assimilated, while others, like Peru, shine for their inefficiency. Everything possible must be done to remove the debate from its daily political contingency. We have to have a more in-depth political debate, of longer duration, more continental and also more global.

(ALAI) by Lautaro Rivara

https://orinocotribune.com/a-real-coup- ... tor-bejar/

A Year After Oil Spill in Peru, Repsol Evades Multi-Billion Dollar Lawsuit
JANUARY 18, 2023

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Worker wearing protective suit in an area flooded with oil. Photo: Andina-Repsol.

Repsol’s La Pampilla refinery has been exonerated from a $4.5 billion fine; Peru’s courts cited a conflict of interest.

Nearly 12,000 barrels of oil spilled into the sea off the Peruvian coast a year ago, wreaking havoc on the ecosystems of two protected natural areas and 48 beaches in the districts of Ventanilla, Santa Rosa, Ancón, Aucallama, Chancay, and Huacho.

The disaster, which occurred on January 15, 2022, during the unloading of crude oil from a ship at Terminal Multiboyas No. 2 of Repsol’s La Pampilla refinery, caused the death of thousands of fish, mammals, and birds, according to a report by the organization Oceana Peru.

The Ombudsman’s Office points out that the catastrophe affected more than 10,000 families, including around 2,500 fishermen as well as tour operators and people who carried out commercial activities dependent on the sea.

“Everything changed abruptly when that hydrocarbon tide appeared that little by little killed the birds and fish that had the coastal marine zone as their habitat, from the beach to the west, at a distance of 5 nautical miles,” said Luis Garrido Chávez, president of the Association of Artisanal Fishers of Ancón (APESCAA), quoted by the Andina news agency.

Delayed response

Oceana complained that there was no timely response to the disaster, as it took three days for any response, and these were carried out by personnel without proper training and adequate protection.


Cleaning crews working to remove oil from a beach attached to Ancón, January 22, 2022. Carlos Reyes / AFP.
Therefore, the crude oil spread more than 100 kilometers north of the La Pampilla refinery. “If we had a good valve and an adequate monitoring system, the spill probably would not have gone beyond Ancón (25 kilometers) and it would have been easier to contain it,” said Juan Carlos Riveros, Oceana’s scientific director.

The affected area was initially reported to be 2.5 square meters. However, it was later explained that the spill covered up to 11,000 hectares.

Current situation
The declaration of an environmental emergency for this disaster expired last October, explains the Ombudsperson’s Office. Until then, says the institution, there was no medium- or long-term management plan that would allow the cleanup work to continue in a planned and comprehensive manner.

In that month, the Agency for Environmental Evaluation and Control (OEFA) indicated that 71 of the 97 sites impacted by the spill continued to be affected by petroleum.

On January 5, Repsol published an announcement claiming that the conditions were set for the reactivation of fishing and the reopening of beaches affected by the spill.

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Cleaning teams work to remove oil from a beach attached to Ancón, January 20, 2022. Cris Bouroncle / AFP.

“New sampling of beaches, water, sediment and marine life show that 100% of the places analyzed comply with international standards and national regulations,” the company wrote on social media.

According to the oil corporation, the sampling work was carried out between October and November by Environmental Resources Management, “one of the most prestigious international companies in environmental management.”

However, the head of the General Directorate of Environmental Health and Food Safety (DIGESA) of the Ministry of Health, José Ramos, dismissed the claims of the oil company.

“Repsol is not a health authority,” Ramos said. “The hydrocarbon settles in the sand, and when people enter the sea they walk in it, but it also contaminates the air and, therefore, can affect families who are comfortably receiving the sun’s rays. The damage will not be seen immediately.”

12 months after the disaster, pollution continues to affect fishers. In the district of Ancón alone, almost 70% of the finishing boats remain out of work.

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A dead bird floats near Ancón, February 16, 2022. Cris Bouroncle / AFP.

“It is frustrating to have an immense sea behind you and not be able to enter to catch a fish, because you would be threatening public health… It is as if part of our life had died,” lamented a fisherman recently interviewed by Oceana.

This situation has also affected the mental health of those in the fishing industry, as the uncertainty due to the lack of work, and therefore the lack of income, is compounded by the little interest of the authorities in resolving the problem.

Of the 48 affected beaches, 25 are for recreational use. However, a DIGESA sanitary evaluations to measure compliance with international hydrocarbon standards for this type of beach is still pending.

Call to action

Faced with this situation, the Ombudsperson’s Office asked the state for “articulated and continuous action, which also incorporates measures in the medium and long term, by the competent entities to address environmental and social impacts,” without prejudice to the obligations of the La Pampilla refinery.

“Permanent monitoring and studies are required in the affected areas, which will allow immediate measures to be taken to protect the environment and health—even more so when we are in the summer season and we are witnessing abnormal waves,” said Lissette Vásquez, Deputy for the Environment, Public Services and Indigenous Peoples of the Ombudsperson’s Office.

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The Italian oil tanker Mare Doricum that caused the oil spill at the Repsol refinery. Ernesto Benavides / AFP.

Another of the pending issues, says the ombudsperson’s office, is fair compensation to more than 10,000 people engaged in businesses related to maritime activity, directly and indirectly affected by the spill.

The sanctions against Repsol

In the midst of these pending challenges after the spill, it was learned that Repsol’s La Pampilla refinery has been released from a million-dollar fine; courts cited a conflict of interest.

Seven Administrative Sanctioning Procedures were initiated against Repsol for violations of environmental regulations related to this ecological disaster. Currently, one is being processed and six resulted in fines totaling more than 70 million soles (just over $18.3 million), reports La República, which had access to documents on the case.

Of these six fines, three are being challenged before the OEFA’s Environmental Control Court (TFA) and the other three are within the deadline to file a challenge, which expires on January 31.

This occurs while a conflict of interest was revealed in the case, since the technical secretary of the TFA, Angélica María García Gilio, is the wife of Adolfo Eugenio Huapaya Venegas, an industrial hygiene and safety engineer at the La Pampilla refinery.

Just last Saturday, January 14, the OEFA announced, through a statement , that García was being released from the position she had held since March 2021. “This decision has been executed immediately, upon learning that she has a marital relationship with an official of the company Repsol,” wrote the OEFA. “In this sense, the necessary investigations have been initiated, in accordance with current legal regulations, safeguarding the interests of the State and respecting due process.”

“When things like this happen so obscurely, one may think that if there is no complicity, at least there is a very weak hand to sanction Repsol’s conduct to date,” Oceana’s Riveros commented in this regard, without mentioning the judicial corruption that might also be behind the process.

In addition to the sanctioning procedures, in August of last year, the 27th Specialized Civil Court of Lima admitted for processing the lawsuit against Repsol, for damage compensation, filed by the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property.

The compensation requested amounts to $4.5 billion and, in addition to Repsol, the lawsuit names other companies such as Mapfre Global Risks, Fratelli D’Amico Armatori SPA, Mapfre Perú Compañía de Seguros y Reaseguros SA, Refinería La Pampilla SAA, and Transtotal Agencia Marítima SA.

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Peruvian Movements Organize Caravan to Lima to Intensify Protests
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 17, 2023
Tanya Wadhwa

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A march against the Dina Boluarte government and Congress in Lima on Saturday. Photo: OjoPúblico / Renato Pajuelo

Indigenous and peasant leaders have called for a ‘March from the Four Corners’ to Lima to intensify ongoing protests against the coup and the de facto government of Dina Boluarte


Thousands of people from Peru’s North, Central, South, and East regions have departed their homes in caravans headed towards the capital, Lima, to intensify protests against the coup and to call for de facto president Dina Boluarte’s resignation. The delegations composed of peasant, Indigenous, social, and trade union organizations are en route to Lima as part of the second ‘Marcha de los Cuatro Suyos’ or ‘March from the Four Corners’ to bring the voices of Peru’s marginalized communities to the capital.


The march was announced on January 10 by Indigenous and peasant leaders and already several groups of protesters have reached the capital. Meanwhile, thousands of members of the Aymara and Quechua Indigenous communities, as well as members of various social organizations and trade unions, departed in caravans from different provinces to Lima on January 16.

The first massive ‘March from the Four Corners’ was organized in July 2000, against the fraudulent re-election of Alberto Fujimori. In July 2000, thousands of Peruvians traveled to Lima from the four corners of the country and protested for three days demanding Fujimori’s resignation.

Regional presidents of the Single National Union of Urban and Peasant Patrols Movement (Central Única Nacional de Rondas Campesinas – CUNARC) reported that hundreds of thousands of their members from the long-neglected countryside of Peru, who feel represented by Castillo, were coming to Lima. Many said that they would stay in Lima and continue peaceful demonstrations until Boluarte resigned. The peasant movement has called for nationwide protests for January 19.


On January 14, the government of Dina Bolarte announced that it was declaring a state of emergency for 30 days in the departments of Lima, Puno and Cusco, as well as in the Callao, Andahuaylas, Tambopata, Tahuamanu and Mariscal Nieto provinces and the Torata district. These are the areas where massive anti-government protests have been taking place since January 4, following the resumption of an indefinite national strike after the New Year break.

The state of emergency permits the suspension of certain constitutional rights and has seen an increase in the militarization of the territories which have seen large mobilizations. Several caravans have already been stopped by Peruvian security forces, and some arrests have already been registered.


The struggle continues

On Sunday, January 15, on the first day of the 30-day-long state of emergency, Indigenous and peasant communities along with members of various popular movements, social organizations and trade unions hit the streets and blocked over 120 roads and 20 highways in at least 10 regions of Peru. According to reports from local media, Cusco and Puno were the regions with the greatest number of blockades. The Pan-American South, the Pan-American North, the Central highway, the Apurímac-Cusco-Arequipa Road Corridor, and the South Interoceanic Road Corridor were also among the major highways blocked by protesters.



The protest actions were organized as a part of ongoing nationwide protests demanding the release of former President Castillo, the immediate resignation of de-facto President Boluarte, the dissolution of the right-wing dominated unicameral Congress, fresh general elections, and the establishment of a Constituent Assembly to change the country’s 1993 Constitution, which was written and imposed under the far-right dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori (July 1990–November 2000).

Meanwhile, in the capital Lima, hundreds of citizens held a massive march from Lince district to Miraflores district to pay homage to the fatal victims of the state repression of anti-coup protests in recent days, condemning the Boluarte government for the unleashing brutal repression and demanding her unconditional resignation.


According to various human rights organizations, in the over a month of protests, at least 50 protesters have died as a result of brutal repression by public security forces. In addition, at least 450 people have been severely injured, hundreds have been arbitrarily arrested, dozens of social leaders have had their homes searched and/or received death threats.


Nevertheless, the Boluarte government continued to respond to the demonstrations with violent police and military repression. Incidents of strong repression were registered in various cities on Sunday.

“Boluarte sold herself”

The Boluarte government has been widely unpopular since its inauguration. According to a recent survey conducted by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), 71% of Peruvians disapprove of the Boluarte regime. Additionally, 88% of citizens reject the work of the right-wing opposition majority Congress. Similarly, 60% of people consider that Castillo should be released, and 58% consider that the security forces have been using excessive force in repressing social protests. Likewise, 69% are in favor of convening a Constituent Assembly to replace the current Constitution.


The president of the CUNARC, Santos Saavedra Vázquez, in an interview with Tiempo Argentino, explained why Dina Boluarte, who also came from a popular sector, had been rejected by the people who elected her alongside Castillo.

“Dina Boluarte was part of the presidential ticket along with President Castillo. They won together. However, the long coup plan of the right did not work. So they needed to destroy him from the inside and some of the actors who were close to the president, win them over and wait for the right moment. And Mrs. Boluarte did it: she sold herself early. She went to the other side clandestinely, of course, and from there the losing party in the elections (Fuerza Popular, led by Keiko Fujimori) offered her all its apparatus of criminalization and the experience of murder and dictatorship that Peru experienced in the 1990s, a plan that they are applying now. She totally sold herself to her adversary, leaving aside her principles, her loyalty to her project, to the very people that made her win. That’s why the people don’t believe her. She does what Parliament tells her, what the press tells her, what this mafia group that we have in the institutions tells her. She has radically crossed over to the other side. The right has always had that habit in our country: they lose the elections but end up governing,” said Saavedra Vázquez.

It is worth noting that immediately after taking office, Castillo’s Vice-President, Boluarte, entered into a political alliance with the right-wing to govern and formed a “government of unity” with them.

Saavedra Vázquez added that with the ongoing protests, Peruvians hope to achieve Boluarte’ resignation, Congress’ closure, and a transitional government that calls for elections this year, not next year.

“People, who had been silent, have come to agree with us because the country can no longer bear bloodshed and killings on a whim of the de-facto president and Congress. They are threatening to stay but we don’t know how long they will last because the people will respond with everything. The next few days will be very forceful, overcoming fear and everything that is happening, the people will resist,” said the president of the CUNARC.

One year of Repsol oil spill

January 15 also marked one year since the massive spill of 12,000 barrels of crude oil in the Ventanilla sea by Spanish transnational company Repsol, which is considered one of the largest oil environmental disasters in Peru. The devastating oil spill polluted over 1.7 million square meters of soil and 1.2 million square meters of ocean, tarred 21 beaches in four municipalities on Peru’s Pacific coast, and killed a vast variety of marine wildlife, besides incurring huge economic losses to fishing and tourism industries.

According to the Peruvian Ombudsman’s Office, twelve months after the spill, Repsol still has to complete the cleanup of the affected areas and compensate those affected. The Ombudsman’s Office pointed out that in October 2022, when the declaration of environmental emergency expired, the Agency for Environmental Assessment and Enforcement (OEFA) determined that 71 of the 97 sites impacted by the spill continued to be affected by hydrocarbons. Additionally, it noted that more than 10,000 fishermen and others engaged in businesses related to maritime activity, who were directly and indirectly affected by the spill, are waiting for fair compensation.



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... -protests/

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Poll: Peru’s Coup Regime Overwhelmingly Unpopular
January 16, 2023Dina Boluarte, Peru

71% of Peruvians disapprove of the unelected President, Dina Boluarte, says a new poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP). The same survey shows that 60% consider the anti-coup protests to be justified.

The country’s congress, which carried out the coup against Pedro Castillo, has an even higher rate of rejection, the IEP stated, “At the beginning of 2023, the Congress of the Republic is only approved by 9% of respondents, while 16% approve of the president of Congress, José Williams”. These figures represent an increase in the disapproval rating of 8% compared to the previous month.

Regarding the anti-coup protests and ongoing general strike, 60% consider the mobilizations to be justified, among young people that rises to 72 percent. 58 percent said that there has been repression, by the regime, against protesters.

Peru has experienced mass protests ever since the coup against Pedro Castillo last December, their demands are; resignation of the coup regime, new elections, constituent assembly, and the release of Pedro Castillo (currently detained without charge in Lima). The new regime has killed almost 50 protesters, mostly in the indigenous Andean regions in the south of the country.

Thousands of protesters from the south are expected to arrive in Lima tomorrow to demand the resignation of Dina Boluarte in what is the biggest escalation in these protests yet. Many fear a new round of repression leading to many more deaths.

https://kawsachunnews.com/poll-perus-co ... -unpopular

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Indomitable Peru
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 17, 2023
Ollantay Itzamná

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There is no certain hypothetical scenario in the short term for Peru in mourning between the state weapons and the streets. The only certainty is that this criminal state conjuncture unveiled what for centuries the State and official Peruvianity tried to hide: racism and authoritarianism are constitutive elements of the State and of bicentennial Peru.

Those who plotted and executed the overthrow of President Pedro Castillo in Peru December 7, never imagined, nor calculated, the popular rural insubordination in and from the impoverished and plundered territories of the bicentennial republican state.

At some point it will be understood what factors activated this simultaneous and sustained massive and unprecedented collective action in the history of the country. Regularly, even the historical accumulation of social force is activated and agglutinated around some nuclear leader. In this case, there is no leader.

It seems that one of the unifying elements of the popular uprising is the indignation at the pain caused by the massacres, and the growing popular agenda that is gaining space in the national political narrative: Everyone resign, new elections, new Constituent Assembly, Castillo released.

The anti-democratic dismissal of Pedro Castillo was the last straw for the patience of the rural popular sectors who were annoyed by the abusive actions of the business agents of the neo-liberal system in different territories in the interior of the country, including the colonizing and abusive presence of the Peruvian nation-state itself.

Lima’s intellectuals overwhelmed by reality. Regional intelligentsia almost silent.

With honorable exceptions, Lima’s intelligentsia have always been loyal to the interests of the bicentennial “project of internal colonialism” established by the Peruvian Republic. Not only did it try to install from the hegemonic academic institutions the fiction of the Peruvian national project in the imaginary of the middle class and popular sectors, but it expressly intellectualized the congenital racism of the bicentennial Creole State, expelling from the theoretical and narrative corpus of official Peru the presence of the peoples of “all bloods” as citizens or socio-political subjects.

Now that the popular rebellion has broken out, with its own narratives, the Lima intelligentsia have opted to discredit and “terruque” the Quechua and Aymara people who have mobilized in the streets. Failing to delegitimize them as authentic socio-political subjects in the country of darkness, they now simply watch from the sidelines.

The majority of regional intellectuals are also confused at this mournful and overloaded juncture, between loyalty to the State and companies that pay their salaries and sensitivity to the pain of their blood brothers and sisters afflicted by the criminal State.

Corporate press repudiated by mobilized sectors

The corporate press based in Lima has been virtually exposed in its constitutive racism by the mobilized actors in the streets, who, cell phones in hand, have been showing live everything that the Lima press has hidden or tried to obscure.

If the popular rejection of the corporate press was already growing even before the massacre of the 50 Peruvian men and women mobilized, now, this growing rejection became popular repudiation. Even going so far as to expel corporate reporters from the social protest events, and in some cases even physically attacking their facilities and infrastructure.


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Army and National Police without authority, forced to kill their own family members.

The political and economic elites of Peru, having lost control of the impoverished population’s behavior (through the manipulation of fears and desires), through their media, proceeded to exercise their ultimate weapon of historical colonial control: punishing and chastising the insubordinate population via mano militari. In less than two months, the usurper president has issued three states of emergency, including a curfew. But, the mobilized population, far from being frightened by the massacres, continued, even during curfew hours, self-convening, blocking roads, occupying public and private spaces and buildings.

The mobilized population lost their fear of the State’s weapons, and the State lost its authority even with its monopoly of violence. Currently the main highways of the country, several departments, provinces and districts are in a State of Emergency, but rivers of people of all bloods continue to arrive in Lima to participate in the national strike.

Desperate oligarchy

The Peruvian oligarchy, unable to build state authority throughout the territory of Peru, survived two centuries of republic between the fear of “brutality of the Indians coming down from the hills” and the exercise of its violent authoritarianism (punishing, chastising the rebellious Indians).

At the moment, they have punished and chastised the peoples and popular sectors mobilized in the streets, with 50 people murdered by state bullets, but the insubordinate “plebs”, far from being frightened, roar with more force and advance directly, from different routes of the country, to the very political and economic heart of the Peruvian oligarchy: the city of Lima.

In this dismal and tense situation, the usurper Dina Boluarte, who no longer controls any decision in the Executive, is only waiting for the fatal moment of her fall and her immediate imprisonment for dozens assassinated and wounded.

Those who make the political and military decisions in the country are the two former military men strategically placed in power by the Peruvian oligarchy: the President of the Council of Ministers and the President of the Congress of the Republic.

There is no certain short-term hypothetical scenario for Peru in mourning between the state’s weapons and the streets. The only certainty is that this criminal state conjuncture unveiled what for centuries the State and official Peruvianness tried to hide: racism and authoritarianism as constitutive elements of the State and bicentennial Peru.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/01/ ... able-peru/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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