Not content with conning the gullible natives in Ecuador to elect its favoured candidate to the Presidency (assuming the vote was honest and Dominion had nothing to do with counting it) the empire is now focusing its resources to undermine, and if possible politically destroy, the recently elected government of Pedro Castillo in Peru.

The insistence of native peoples on acquiring a semblance of political influence in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia – countries carved out by criollos after the collapse of the Spanish colonial empire, where descendants of the conquered Incas still constitute the decisive majority of the population – is anathema not just to the local white ruling class but also to its North American protectors.

The balance of power between the politically unsophisticated native peasantry and their experienced criollos overlords, who wield effective mechanisms of social control developed over centuries of successful minority rule, is shifting constantly. If social democracy is defined as a system where interests of the majority are acknowledged and respected, after the seeming electoral defeat of the popular alliance rooted in the policies of Rafael Correa in Ecuador earlier this year that country has definitely regressed to oligarchic rule. Bolivia, which for more than a decade was led by populist President Evo Morales, was briefly reconquered by the oligarchy in 2019. The operation was a crude and blatantly illegal coup in which the rapacious North American robber baron Elon Musk played a leading part. But to the surprise of many, in Bolivia the coup regime eventually was defeated electorally and a government respectful of the traditions and interests of the governed, to the chagrin of Washington, is now again in place.

Until the recent election of Pedro Castillo, Peru was traditionally ruled either by military dictatorships reflecting at various times both extremes of the political spectrum, or by conservative civilian coalitions representing the interests of the entrenched criollo oligarchy. The mostly poor and disenfranchised native population had no significant say in the governance of their country. With the election of Castillo, a school teacher of humble background but intense dedication to redressing the historical grievances of the poor, darker skinned majority the political balance in Peru has shifted drastically.

President Pedro Castillo has the unpleasant distinction of being the current target of the imperial Andes rollback campaign. The heavy artillery barrage is being led by the nearly forgotten writer Mario Vargas Llosa, the 2010 recipient of the mostly devalued Nobel Prize for Literature, and in 1990 neoliberal presidential candidate who lost in the run-off to crook Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori’s daughter Keiko was the candidate Castillo defeated in the presidential election in June of this year.

The reason for the globalist empire’s predilection for Llosa as its standard-bearer in this smear campaign is easily discerned if we recall his self-description, as quoted in an Atlantic magazine puff piece a few decades ago: “…Vargas Llosa presented himself as a champion of enlightenment in a sad, benighted land. He explains in his memoir: ‘Although I was born in Peru (“through an accident of geography,” as the head of the Peruvian Army, General Nicolás de Bari Hermoza, put it, thinking that he was insulting me), my vocation is that of a cosmopolitan and an expatriate who has always detested nationalism, which strikes me as one of the human aberrations that has made the most blood flow.’”

That having been said, Llosa’s obnoxious put-down of the Peruvian native Castillo as a “profesor de segundo de primaria,” a nasty play on words meaning “a second rate primary school teacher” who “has no ideas and does not even realize where he’s ended up,” clearly was delivered in the context of racial tensions inherent in the Peruvian society. Regrettably Llosa, with a rather modest literary opus to his credit, lacks the self-critical objectivity of Somerset Maugham who, in a moment of candour, honestly described himself as “a writer in the very first row of the second-raters.”

Whatever one may think of Maugham’s talents, the English writer’s humble self-appraisal in fact fits Llosa perfectly.

Predictably, the principal issue that has emerged in Llosa’s ideologically neoliberal critique of the Castillo government is the future of Peru’s mining industry, which accounts for about 15% to the country’s GNP and constitutes about 60% of its exports. Obviously, it is an attractive booty for the transnationals and they are loath to tolerate interference with their profit taking by peasant “deplorables” and their elected President Pedro Castillo. Similar points of contention had emerged in Ecuador with oil exploration conducted on land inhabited by the native population and in Bolivia, with regard to the mining and marketing of lithium. By resolving these disputes in favor of the indigenous people, presidents Correa and Morales respectively had largely sealed their political fate.

It is apparent that Castillo is taking a similar approach toward Peru’s mining industry by indicating that he would veto mining megaprojects favoured by foreign transnationals unless they obtained the support of the native populations whose habitat could be disrupted by their implementation. Ominously, Castillo has invoked also the concept of “social utility” as a criterion for approving future industrial mining projects, a retrograde philosophy that endears him neither to his neoliberal critic Llosa nor to the rapacious transnationals who are eager to extract Peru’s natural resources and run away with the profit.

Concomitantly with Llosa’s neoliberal tirades, the new and clearly uncooperative Castillo government is being subjected to a series of political ambushes designed to hobble it. Insinuations are being spread that the real power behind Castillo’s throne is political operative Vladimir Cerrón and that “inept” Castillo serves as no more than his front man. A senator aligned with the oligarchic bloc is publicly disparaging prime minister Guido Bellido Ugarte, alleging that he is incompetent and the laughing stock of members of his own cabinet. The “approved” Ipsos polling agency, the imperial deep state’s favourite propagator of public opinion survey disinformation, has announced that 61% of Peru’s population believe that Castillo lacks leadership capacity and is incapable of solving the country’s problems. It makes one wonder whether anyone actually voted for Castillo only a couple of months ago.

There are also hints that reliable imperial pawn Llosa is being cultivated as the new Latin American “elder statesman” who will be entrusted with whipping errant colleagues into line. The dubiously elected Ecuadorean government just last week decorated its Peruvian kindred spirit with the Order of Merit of the Grand Cross. Armed with such shiny awards, Vargas Llosa launched into another tirade, well beyond the territorial limits of his Andean turf, against Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, accusing him of plotting re-election to a second term. It is a not so veiled allegation against López Obrador, who has been in the imperial crosshairs for some time. Students of Mexican history are well aware that an attempt to engineer another term in office is what led to the political downfall of President Porfirio Díaz early in the twentieth century.

It remains to be seen how much longer Llosa will continue to clown around, obeying his master’s voice and casting stones at others. His name has been noted on the long list of corrupt “investors” who were outed after the Pandora Papers scandal broke out. It is hardly surprising to see neoliberal adept Llosa in such distinguished company.

It is all a question of “values,” of course.

Socialists Pedro Castillo, 51, and Dina Boluarte, 58, belatedly were announced Peru’s president and vice-president by Peru’s National Electoral Jury, on July 19. The former farmer peasant turned teacher and unionist Castillo, and attorney Boluarte are the Free Peru party’s candidates. They assume power on July 28. JNE proclamó a Pedro Castillo como el próximo presidente de la República | La República (larepublica.pe)

Free Peru supporters show their glee during the victory announcement of their candidates. Foto: John Reyes / La República

Free Peru opponent Keiko Fujimori, of the far right-wing Popular Force party, recognized that victory as “the law”, and encouraged her many violent followers to cease all forms of violence. Keiko Fujimori faces up to 30 years imprisonment for various criminal charges: illegally receiving bribes, money laundering, illegally taking money for her 2011 presidential bid, and for leading a criminal organization. She is out of prison on house arrest after 15 months of pre-trial detention as a high flight risk. The prosecution will soon seek a trial. (See background: Peru’s New President, Socialist-Worker Pedro Castillo: Right-Wing Contesting — Strategic Culture (strategic-culture.org))

Keiko Fujimori is the daughter and former “First Lady” of Alberto Fujimori, president from 1990 to 2000. He has served about half his 25-year prison sentence for several crimes of corruption and for ordering the murder of 25 persons by a secret death squad composed of military personnel.

Following the June 6 run-off election, it took ten days for the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) to announce that 100% of the votes cast showed Castillo and Boluarte had barely won with 51.125% to 49.875% of the votes, just 44,058 over their opponents.

JNE then took more than a month to check and re-count of ca. one million of the 17,627,100 votes cast for one or the other candidate (plus 1,108,039 blank and null ballots). Keiko Fujimori’s many lawyers had filed at least 800 acts claiming massive fraud in areas where Castillo had overwhelming support. Her supporters protested, often violently, before electoral jury officials, and beat many of Castillo’s supporters.

The new government—led by teacher, unionist and peasant farmer Castillo—is expected to make many social and economic reforms in keeping with their promises of putting the people before profiteering, and domination by the United States. This development, coupled with that of the Movement Toward Socialism landslide victory in Bolivia, last October, is expected to encourage like-minded peoples’ parties in many countries, especially in Latin America.

President Pedro Castillo at a rally. Foto: Aldair Mejia/La República

On the tenth day of counting 18,856,616 ballots, teacher-unionist-socialist Pedro Castillo, 51, Free Peru party candidate, won the presidential election by 44,058 votes. He had 8,835,579 to his opponent, Keiko Fujimori, 46, 8,791,521 votes. There were 1,108,039 blank and null ballots.

President Pedro Castillo dio un mitin en el distrito de Socota, en Cajamarca antes de viajar a Cutervo. Foto: Aldair Mejia/La República

His virulent rival, the right-wing Popular Force party that she founded, refuses to accept her close defeat, the third time trying for the presidency. Due to her wild charges of hundreds of thousands of “fraudulent” votes for her opponent in 800 “acts” (polling places). She has a slew of prominent lawyers filing legal-like papers daily, hoping to find a court that will overturn the majority decision.

The National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) announced on June 16, at 15:19 that 100% of the votes showed the winner to be Castillo.

This is an historical election results for Peru, and an outstanding inspiration to workers like Castillo throughout Latin America, at least. Non-politician Pedro Castillo is to take office on July 28.

(See background piece for this election run-off, and the candidates’ roots. Peru General Election Campaign: Tight Race Between Left and Right — Strategic Culture (strategic-culture.org))

Peruvian voters were faced with two extremes unlived before, and many were unhappy that a moderate candidate did not make the run-off. Peruvians had the choice of taking a chance with a major change in the economy towards benefiting the poor and the working class, or bringing in the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence for ordering the murder of 25 persons by a secret death squads whose killers were military men, in addition to massive corruption, receiving bribes and other crimes committed while his daughter was his First Lady and advisor.

On October 10, 2018, Keiko Fujimori was arrested on charges of money laundering, illegally receiving money for her 2011 presidential campaign, for receiving bribes, and for leading a criminal organization. She was sentenced to three years pretrial detention as a “high escape risk”. The prosecution seeks 30 years imprisonment. Keiko Fujimori was released on bail under house arrest, on May 5, 2020.

In the April 11 general election, Castillo led the race of 18 candidates with 19% of the voters. He had never engaged in parliamentary politics. Keiko Fujimori, a congress-woman from 2011-16, took second place with 13.36%. She had come in second in two presidential elections. In 2011, she barely lost to Ollanta Humala with 51.5%. In 2016, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski squeaked by with 50.12% of the voters.

From the start of counting the votes following 12 hours of casting ballots on June 6, who led had been nip and tuck. One or the other candidate had led by from 0.1 to 0.5% of votes. Following a short-held lead by Pedro Castillo, Keiko Fujimori led in urban areas. She held the lead throughout Sunday evening and early Monday. Later in the day with more rural votes counted, the tide turned in Castillo’s favor. Fujimori then claimed that his party had “distort[ed] or delay[ed] results that reflect the will of the people.” How this was to have happened was not forthcoming, but she called upon her supporters to protest. Keiko Fujimori acusa al partido de Castillo de “estrategia” para “distorsionar los resultados” (cnn.com)

Peru’s currency (sol) “headed to its biggest drop in more than a decade and the S&P/BVL Peru General Index fell as much as 5.8%, the most since November, with mining companies and financial firms among the hardest hit. Overseas bonds were steady in light trading while the cost to insure against a default edged higher…after investor favorite Keiko Fujimori saw her early lead over leftist opponent Pedro Castillo fade overnight and in the early morning. With almost 93% of votes counted [Sunday morning], Fujimori had 50.1% support to 49.9% for Castillo, a former farmer and then school teacher and union organizer from the Peruvian highlands. Castillo traded places once 94% were counted: 50.07 to Fujimori’s 49.92%.” Peru Stocks, Sol Plunge With Presidential Vote Too Close to Call (yahoo.com) Peru’s presidential runoff election too close to call (beaumontenterprise.com)

Vote counting slowed. Over a three-day period, only 200,000 votes were counted. One day, only 451 votes were counted. In one example of alleged “fraud”, a village where 197 people voted, only one favored Fujimori. Vote counters, election observers and ONPE found no fraud. The U.S.-pro Organization of American States also stated that there had been no fraud, interestingly.

While Fujimori won every district in Lima’s capital region, the unionist teacher, who had led an important teacher strike, in 2017, whose parents are analphabet peasants, is overwhelmingly supported in the countryside. Castillo stands for reforming the economy with greater state control over markets and natural resources; curtailing mining; a 30% cut for public works and social welfare from corporation profits gained from the use of fossil fuels; and increasing pensions and wages. Fujimori wants more of the same “free market economy”, and spreads fear of “communism” taking over the country internally.

The corporations and White House favorite is also supported by Peruvian middle and upper class urban women simply because she is a woman. Fujimori is supported by celebrities, wealthy players on the national soccer team, and the nation’s most famous author, Mario Vargas Llosa. The former communist sympathizer turned extreme conservative won the Nobel literature prize. He even campaigns for her without regrets. For him, she is the best of the “lesser of evils”. He added
that her conduct is “very decent”, and that the National Electoral Jury (Jurado Nacional de Elecciones/JNE), to which Fujimori has appealed, should grant her the presidency given that “fraud has been committed”. Elecciones 2021: Mario Vargas Llosa: “Creo que Keiko Fujimori ha actuado de una manera muy decente” | La República (larepublica.pe)

Keiko Fujimori in prison, and awaiting the conclusion of judicial investigations into crimes of corruption, accepting bribes, leading a criminal band. She is out on house arrest. Pérou: la cheffe de l’opposition Keiko Fujimori retourne en prison | Pureactu.com

Fear of Violence Influences Election Campaign

Pro-Fujimori elitist backers dirtied the last days of the campaign attempting to connect a massacre of between 16 and 18 people, including two children and eight women, to Pedro Castillo.

A revived Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), using the name Militarized Communist Party of Peru, was accused by Defense Minister Nuria Esparch to have murdered them in Vraem. Peru: Congress Convenes Session To Investigate VRAEM Massacre | News | teleSUR English

The details of what actually happened have not been provided. Military authorities say some 500 guerrillas control much of the area in central Peru where they lord over cocaine production. Authorities claim that these “communist terrorists” demanded that there be no voting, and spread death threats. Leaflets passed around read:

“Peruvian People: Boycott bourgeois elections, because it is not your way. Don’t go to vote. Whoever votes for Keiko Fujimori is a traitor, a murderer of Vraem, of Peru.”

Nevertheless, neither the police nor the military have shown any evidence that Shining Path committed the murders, or how such brutality could “help” a socialist unionist worker gain the presidency. Vraem: Ministerio Público abre investigación por asesinato de 18 personas en presunto ataque terrorista | ACTUALIDAD | TROME

Local people in San Miguel del Ene village told independent reporters that moments before the attack, electric and telephone services were cut-off. They said this occurs when the military prepares to raid narco-traffickers.

The town’s Justice of the Peace Leonidas Casas Marmolejo was one of the first authorities to arrive on the scene of the murders in a bar know to facilitate prostitution. He said:

“How is it possible that the Joint Command affirms [who has] responsibility for the murder of 16 people when they have never visited us, they have not bothered to talk to the population. San Miguel del Ene is practically forgotten by the authorities and the State,” Judge Casas told La República.

Judge of the massacred town: “First investigate before speaking out” – Archytele

Corporations and the mass media used this calamity to further smear the campaign of Free Peru’s party candidate Pedro Castillo, while Keiko Fujimori said that as president she would assure that “communism does not occur in Peru”. Castillo expressed solidarity with the families, and said the massacre was an act of terrorism.

The most read social medium in Peru, wayka.pe, with 1.5 million daily hits, wrote of how this election-of-the-century is saturated with fear messages, especially those by businesses spreading the witch-hunt cry: “socialism leading to communism” and “communism is poverty” on outdoor illuminated panels, on billboards and store windows, on vehicles and in advertizements.

Elecciones 2021: Fake news y psicosociales – Wayka

Claiming that “communism is poverty” is a non-sequitur given that it is neo-liberal capitalism, for which Fujimorism stands for, that has caused a fifth of the nation to live in poverty. A socialist economy has never been tried, but facts, truth, reality is irrelevant when it comes to Keiko Fujimori, who is desperate to avoid going to prison for up to 30 years. Some political science experts expect that if former President Alberto Fujimori’s daughter did win, she would endeavored to quash the indictments against her. She has declared that if elected president she would pardon her father, who has served half his sentence.

One Fujimori supporting corporation, El Grupo Comericio, owns between 70% and 80% of television stations, magazines and newspapers. For these media, Keiko Fujimori is their president. The socialist, whom these media consider a “communist”, “terrorist”, “Shining Path” member or sympathizer, gets no objective news coverage. Prensa – Grupo El Comercio

El Grupo Comercio recently fired or forced to resign a dozen reporters for not following its electoral editorial line. Its attacks upon Castillo are so flagrant that Peru’s Ethical Tribunal complained that it is violating media rules of objectivity. Pronunciamiento-003-2021-TDE.pdf (tribunaldeetica.org) principales de la capital apelan al miedo.

“Communism Generates Misery and Poverty”. Los carteles que se pueden ver en avenidas

Fujimorism mobs are attacking prominent figures on the streets who stand by Pedro Castillo. Some of their houses are surrounded and threats are shouted. A totalitarian atmosphere is shaping, according to one of the few dailies not in Fujimori’s pocket.

Keiko Fujimori and her rich backers are endeavoring to destabilize the country, to prevent Pedro Castillo from assuming the presidency, or lay the basis for his overthrow once in office—a strategy she may have learned from the CIA and her years in the United States. National Endowment for Destabilization? CIA Funds for Latin America in 2018 | Analysis | teleSUR English

Fujimori got a college education in business administration. She married a U.S. American, Mark Villanella, an IBM consultant. She was involved with the Mossack Fonseca firm tax evasion shelters known from the Panama Papers. When she first ran for the presidency, she hired the former New York City mayor and Donald Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as an advisor. Keiko Fujimori Hires Giuliani as Advisor on Citizen Security in Peru | Fox News

The moderate daily, The Republic, June 14 editorial calls indirectly upon the Popular Force party to stop creating “instability”: “The chaos caused by a sector that intends to review what has been revised, to open up what is already legally closed and, finally, to deduct votes from the rival, in order to win, cannot be answered with indifference.” Hasta el último voto | La República (larepublica.pe)

Waya wrote that this election will be remembered for “citizen polarization, the psycho-socials, the false news and the fear campaigns that have been deployed at the national level to direct the vote towards the presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori.”

For the business elite, its media, the police and military leaderships, the only real danger to “democracy”, as they say, is Pedro Castillo. All the endemic pro-capitalist political corruption, bribes, swindles, murders compare not when confronting socialism, which aims to equalize rights and benefits, end military “solutions” to struggles resisting poverty, injustices, and wars for profit.

Sixty-three retired generals and other high-ranking officers issued a communique demanding the resignation of the head of the election board, warning of the danger of a Castillo victory and calling for the “strengthening of confidence in the armed forces and the police.” The Defense Ministry felt compelled to issue a statement in response deploring the use of official military symbols in the communique.

One day before the final count, June 14, Peru’s Armed Forces stated their respect for the constitutional order and disassociated themselves from this version of a coup d’état.

“We regret the political use of the Armed Forces because this not only undermines their institution but also generates alarm, anxiety, and division at a time when the country requires unity and calm,” the Defense Ministry said. Peru’s Armed Forces Disassociate Themselves From Coup Attempts | News | teleSUR English

In the last days of this campaign, both candidates concentrated on promising total battle against the corona virus, which has taken 189,316 (June 14) Peruvian lives. Peru leads the world in percentage of deaths per capita: 572.3 per 100,000. Of its 33.3 million population, nearly two million have been infected. The country closest to deaths per 100,000 population is Hungary with 305.

Peru’s ethnic makeup (self-identified) is 60% mestizo; 27% indigenous (85% are Quechuas, the remainder are Aymaras and Amazonians); 5% white, ca. 2% black/mulatto, 6.7% others.

Voting is mandatory in Peru for all persons 18 to 70. There are 25,193,971 registered voters. Turnout at 74%, lower than 82%, in 2016. Those caught not voting pay either 22, 44 or 88 sols ($5.50, $11, $22) for the poorest to those not poor. In 2019, the average monthly income per capita was 1,035 per capita. The poorest had only 278 sols. A fine for the poorest is eight percent of that.

The poor throughout Latin America will be watching with hope to see what this feisty farmer-teacher-unionist will attempt to accomplish as a socialist president. Peru’s rich, its military and police leaderships, and Wall Street/Pentagon/CIA will be watching too.

By Daniel ESPINOSA

Keiko Fujimori, the political heiress to the jailed Peruvian former dictator Alberto Fujimori, appears to have lost her third election in a row. This time, she has been defeated by Pedro Castillo, a leftist teacher from the rural Andes who narrowly leads in a deliberately delayed poll. Facing a possible 30 years sentence for an array of corruption-related charges, Keiko is now challenging hundreds of thousands of ballots already deemed to be valid.

In a move that resembles former US President Donald Trump’s recent defeat and subsequent rejection of election results, Fujimori is going for a hat-trick: she has called “fraud” on the two last elections after losing, both times without success.

This time, only a small suburban elite, a concentration of corporate outlets controlled by the El Comercio Group and several ultraconservative publications are on Keiko’s side. However, she is attempting to compel the masses into the streets in a  move that is as irresponsible as it is dangerous – and which bears distinctive echoes of Trump inciting his fanatics to storm the US Capitol.

So far, the Peruvian military has respected its mandate as a non-deliberative body, and has avoided interfering in the political contest. Even the Organization of American States and Human Rights Watch, two bodies which normally side with right-wing candidates in Latin America, have openly rejected Fujimori´s accusation of fraud, and called for a swift resolution of her weak complaints. For their part, international observers agree that the poll was clean.      

Fujimori firmly controlled the Congress from 2016 to 2020, shaping years of political turmoil in what many saw as a bitter revenge for not winning the Presidency back in 2016, when she lost a hard-fought second round against the now infamous Pedro Pablo Kukzcynski, who now lives under house arrest for bribery.

In the last years of a congressional term where her party, the highly disciplined Fuerza Popular, enjoyed a comfortable majority and many allies, Keiko directed everything, from an impeachment push to the advancement of measures deemed essential by her powerful corporate backers.

In 2018, for example, her party blocked a law that would have informed consumers about high levels of dangerous food additives in many popular snack products, risking the profit margins of a business tycoon, Dionisio Romero Jr., who covertly donated millions of dollars for Fujimori’s past campaigns. He did so by taking backpacks filled with cash to Keiko and her close advisors.

But the years of political control also brought to light revelations regarding Odebrecht and illegal financial backing like the one mentioned above: millions of dollars from the Brazilian corporation tied to Lava Jato and the Peruvian banking and corporate elite went unaccounted for, or was “smurfed” into many fake and smaller backers, fractioning the money in lesser and legal donation amounts.

This year’s presidential election in Peru should have ended a few days ago, as over 98% of votes have been tabulated. But Fujimori´s denunciations of fraud, disingenuously accepted as legitimate by the conservative press and sectors of the country’s political establishment, have completely stalled Castillo’s validation as president. Today, Peru is waiting for a decision that might “take weeks,” risking a dangerous surge of social turmoil in the streets.

A disgraced corporate media empire drives communist apocalypse panic

A fear campaign targeting Lima, where slightly less than a third of Peruvians live, has driven the political polarization of Peruvian society to degrees rarely seen in decades.

But the deed did not go unnoticed: just a few days ago, a dozen journalists were fired or forced to resign from the most important TV channel in the country, America Television, part of the El Comercio Group, drawing the attention of regulators and the public alike. The local institution for ethics in journalism had grown alarmed by the evident degradation of the Peruvian press, where more than 70% of the news are owned and controlled by the mentioned corporate conglomerate, and called for a review over the way journalism is conducted the country, and emphasized the need to reform it.

La campaña mediática contra Castillo se centra ahora, además del miedo al comunismo, en la amenaza de aumento del dólar.

Las portadas contra el candidato de Perú Libre se repiten todos los días en la mayoría de los periódicos. pic.twitter.com/0ewOSNMJg7

— Marco Teruggi (@Marco_Teruggi) June 5, 2021

The aggressive propaganda campaign driven by Keiko’s campaign warned Peruvians of a “communist” apocalypse if Pedro Castillo was elected, sowing panic among the upper and middle classes of Lima, spawning irrational hatred that tore friendships and families apart. The intensity of the red-scare propagated by El Comercio, the rest of the mainstream media and the right-wing establishment, reflected the paranoia of the local aristocracy, an achievement in psychological war that nevertheless failed to stymie a Castillo victory.

Fujimori supporters cry “fraud” and say they won’t accept a Pedro Castillo presidency. pic.twitter.com/u2dxFQ4ori

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) June 11, 2021

Mysterious and expensive illuminated billboards suddenly appeared across the busiest avenue of Lima cautioning the public about how “Socialism leading to Communism,” “Communism is Poverty,” and about the need to “Defend Freedom and Democracy.” The defense of the country against the evil specter of communism was equated with voting for Keiko Fujimori, who, like Jair Bolsonaro before her, campaigned while wearing the national soccer jersey. Just as “anti-Americanism” was equated with promoting socialism during the Cold War in the US, here in Peru, leftists are widely demonized as “anti-Peruvian.”

Estos carteles anticomunistas peruanos son tan estúpidos que parecen en verdad cubanos o una traducción de alguno de Rusia de los años 30 sobre la transición al comunismo pic.twitter.com/bdjjErcFIk

— Pablo Stefanoni (@PabloAStefanoni) April 27, 2021

Beyond the public relations scare campaign that played out in the street, major corporations threatened their employees with the loss of their jobs if they failed to vote for the right-winger, an intimidation campaign that is technically illegal in Peru and in most democracies.

The hysteria among Keiko’s base has reached the point where many are not only convinced that the country is falling not only into the hands of a stereotypical communist dictatorship, but also into the hands of the Shining Path, a brutal Maoist insurgent group that was totally defeated and mostly destroyed in 1992 under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori.

A highly suspicious massacre that took place in the jungle locality San Miguel del Ene on May 23, where sixteen people where murdered, including two children, reopened wounds and memories of the bloody years of terrorism that ravaged Peru.

En @ensustrece: MONTAJE EN TORNO A UNA TRAGEDIA. La versión oficial en relación a la masacre perpetrada en San Miguel del Ene, en el corazón del VRAEM, es desmentida por testigos y autoridades locales. #Peru #Hildebrandt pic.twitter.com/8PFRsAylVe

— Semanario Hildebrandt en sus trece (@ensustrece) May 28, 2021

A mysterious massacre fuels Keiko’s anti-communist campaign of fear

The attack in San Miguel del Ene was immediately attributed to a narco-terrorist group that splintered from the Shining Path more than a decade ago to pursue the cocaine business. But the Militarizado Partido Comunista del Peru (MPCP), as the remnants of the Shining Path calls itself these days, has not been known to engage in political attacks like the aforementioned massacre.

Mysteriously, flyers were found at the site of the massacre with an ominous message that could have only benefitted one of the candidates in the race: “Don’t vote for Keiko Fujimori…”

The Peruvian military’s assessment that the disappeared Shining Path were “definitely” responsible for the killings drove public fear to new heights, and propelled Keiko’s popularity. Yet the military failed to consider that the Shining Path and MPCP are bitter enemies, or that the former group’s leadership is either long dead or in prison. Further, the investigation into the massacre had been fully in the hands of the police – not the army.

Predictably, the pro-Keiko El Comercio media conglomerate seized on the army’s version of the killings to determine the Shining Path’s culpability ipso facto. When independent reporters went to the scene of the crime, however, they heard testimony that raised serious questions about the official story.

Instead, every local in a hundred miles around San Miguel del Ene, the village where sixteen were brutally murdered, provided testimony completely at odds with the official version. Villagers said they knew the narco-terrorists well, referring to them as “cousins” and “uncles” when they enter their towns. They explained that killing civilians in such fashion would not only deprive the narcos of workers for their coca fields, but also risk alienating the people from those localities, which they depend on for information, services, and labor.

Among many other details disregarded by the mainstream press and authorities, many witnesses told the independent Peruvian outlet Hildebrandt en sus trece that moments before the attack, phone and electrical services were cut-off. Locals said this happens every time the military is about to initiate a raid against the narco-traffickers. One female survivor described the attackers as “normal” people, dressed not like terrorists, the police or the army.

Immediately after the killing, three to five attackers were seen fleeing the scene in motorcycles – a vehicle not normally associated with narco-gangs – in the direction of a locality called Valle Esmeralda, where a military detachment is based.

As expected, the papers comprising El Comercio’s pro-Keiko tabloid empire ignored every piece of witness testimony detailed above.

Is the fear of Castillo justified?

During the first round of voting, a whopping 70% of voters did not choose either Pedro Castillo or Keiko Fujimori. Despite that fact, neither candidate attempted to moderate their tone to appeal to a wider constituency until the very end of the campaign.

Although the talk about nationalization of natural resources and key industries is obvious red line for the country’s conservative right-wing, Castillo has also been notoriously inconsistent, telling one thing to certain audiences in his tour around Peru, and then another to television cameras, concerned authorities and opposition journalists. Castillo’s economic gaffes during several press conferences highlighted his urgent need for PR support and careful political management.

Even after Castillo toned down his rhetoric, only a small portion of the undecided segment of voters said they would consider voting for him. Many had been convinced that Vladimir Cerron, the avowedly Marxist leader of Castillo’s party, Peru Libre, was calling the shots from behind the scenes. In fact, one of the main themes of the right-wing propaganda blitz of recent weeks has been presenting Cerron as the real power behind Castillo’s throne.

The focus on Cerron was particularly damaging given that a criminal verdict against him was recently lifted by a notoriously unscrupulous judge. Issued during the most heated days of the election, the decision appeared suspicious, and now poses a serious risk of inflaming an already explosive situation by sending more people to the streets in opposition to Cerron’s return to political influence.

Peru Libre is constituted in part by education syndicalists like Castillo, but also maintains loose ties to MOVADEF, a political movement that seeks amnesty for convicted terrorists. Its members actively participate in different branches of the same public syndicate as the left-wing teacher and de facto President. This is why many citizens taken in by the right-wing media’s fear mongering regard the surge of Peru Libre as a “terrorist threat.”

However, the accusation is simply baseless. In reality, Castillo was a “rondero” who helped lead peasant civilian militias that were officially recognized by the Peruvian government to defend small towns in the Andes against the Shining Path terrorist cells during the 1980s and early ’90s.

Indeed, the stigmatized MOVADEF members do not promote violence; instead, they advocate political participation and reconciliation between fully rehabilitated former terrorists and the citizenry at large.

Following a deluge of anti-communist propaganda aimed at reviving the ghosts of modern Peru’s darkest days, and without an impartial or remotely professional press to counterbalance it, the country is entering into dangerous territory. History, however, seems already written: international institutions, and even establishmentarian entities, are rejecting Keiko’s caustic ploys and recognizing Pedro Castillo as the next president of Peru.

thegrayzone.com

The current election in Peru between two extremely opposite candidates is uncannily similar to Ecuador’s on April 11. Nearly at the last minute, the millionaire conservative Guillermo Lasso, former banker and Coca Cola director, won the run-off election over socialistic candidate Andres Arauz, 52.5% to 47.5%.

Arauz had led the pack of 16 presidential candidates during the first round with 32.7% of the vote over Lasso’s 19.74%. Arauz was Union of Hope (UNES) candidate, a new party that former President Rafael Correa (2007-17) and Arauz had started.

Indigenous leader, Yaku Pérez, had come in third during the run-off. His decision that his supporters should vote blank in the run-off made the difference in favor of the millionaire, a sad example of how “identity politics” can be used as a tool for big capital.

While there is no “indigenous identity” third candidate in Peru’s June 6 run-off, the two candidates remaining are as far apart as Lasso and Arauz. The winner will assume the presidency on July 28.

Pedro Castillo propone que los ministros sean elegidos por sus sectores PLTC | La República (larepublica.pe) Foto: John Reyes / La República

Pedro Castillo Terrones, 51, a rural schoolteacher and peasant farmer surprisingly led the race of 18 candidates on election day, April 11. The leftist candidate for Peru Libre (Free Peru) party obtained 19% of the votes. His party’s logo is the teacher’s pencil.

Coming in second place is Keiko Fujimori, 46, with 13.36%. She is one of many rightest candidates. She ran on the Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) party, which she founded in 2011 as a successor to her father’s party. Alberto Fujimori ruled between 1990 and 2000.

Congreso de la República del Perúderivative work: Athenchen (talk) – Keiko_Fujimori.jpg, CC BY 2.0, 

Fujimori’s daughter has remained faithful to her father throughout his presidency and in prison. During Alberto Fujimori’s reign, he ordered death squads to massacre peasant opponents to his dictatorial rule. Charged with 51 crimes, Fujimori received a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption, which he began serving in 2009.

Although this election had more presidential candidates (18) than ever, 28% of voters do not want any of them, according to a poll by Institute of Peruvian Studies. Seventy percent of the 25,193,971 registered voters cast ballots. In 2016 elections nearly 82% voted.

Peru has 33 million people, 60% of whom are considered mestizos (Indigenous-Spanish mix), 26% are indigenous (15% Quechua descendants of Incas, along with several other original peoples, including half-a-million Aymaras); six percent white; four percent black; and several thousands of Chinese, Japanese, Arabic descent and others.

Peru Libre won 37 seats in the 130-member legislature with 14% of the votes.

Fuerza Popular won 24 seats with 11% of the votes, down from 37 in 2011 elections, and from an absolute majority in 2016 with 73 seats.

Fuerza Popular logo represents only its candidate, Keiko Fujimori

Castillo was able to best another leftist candidate, Veronica Mendoza of Junta (Together with Peru) party because peasants can identify with him, His discourse is that of a “man of the people” while Mendoza’s is more academic. She was also in congress and people are sick of politicians. Castillo led an important teacher’s strike in 2017. His spent only $8000 on his campaign before the run-off.

Castillo advocates an economic model similar to Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. He will nationalize strategic natural resources, and review mining projects. He also proposes a new constitution. He has contradictions socially by arguing against abortion and gay marriage, and is against gender equality as an issue in the educational curriculum.

The media hadn’t counted on Castillo having a chance. However, in the final days of the election, he rose in the polls despite mass media’s depiction of him having links with MOVADEF. (Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights) (1)

Keiko Fujimori is the business class’ “democratic option”. She promotes neo-liberalist policies, and sees the United States as Peru’s strongest ally. Indigenous peoples remember her as the loyal daughter of the president who forced 300,000 indigenous women and 20,000 indigenous men to be sterilized under the so-called “voluntary surgical contraception” program.

According to Wikipedia, Forbes, IMDb & Various Online resources, Keiko Fujimori’s net worth is $1-5 Million at the age of 44 years old. “She is one of the Richest Politicians who was born in Peru…She earned the money being a Professional Politician.” These corporate sources do not mention her criminal involvement in money laundering and bribes she received for which she was imprisoned pending trial.

Major Issues: Political Instability, Covid-19, Recession, Corruption, Immigration

In the last five years, there have been four presidents. Only one, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was actually elected. In 2015, he renounced his dual U.S. citizenship to run for the presidency. He narrowly beat Fujimori’s daughter, Keiko, in June 2016. Kuczynski resigned in March 2018 after two attempts to impeach him—first for taking moneys illegally from the Brazilian Odebrecht construction company, then another corruption charge plus widespread discontent that he pardoned the mass murdering president, Fujimori, in December 24, 2017, for “humanitarian” reasons.

On October 3, 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the pardon, and Fujimori was returned to prison. Kuczynski was imprisoned in pre-trial detention in April 2019 for receiving bribes from Odebrecht. Later placed in house arrest due to health conditions, some of his property was seized by the court.

Following Kuczynski’s resignation, the first vice-president, Martin Viscarra, replaced him. More independent than most in the legislature, he promoted reforms against corruption in the congress and judiciary causing outrage among politicians and judges.

Peru is one of the worst affected nations in the Americas by the COVID-19 pandemic. Socioeconomic circumstances are a main cause of this. One-third of the population live in overcrowded homes; 70% of the work force have informal jobs with few or no benefits or tax payments; only half of households have refrigerators or freezers and many people must find/buy food on a daily basis.

Due to a second wave of corona infections by January 2021 intensive bed occupancy rose to 90%. Medical workers struck due to harsh work conditions.

President Vizcarra instituted stay-at-home orders. He provided relief funds. GDP fell 30%. Massive inequality, an inadequate health-care system, and corruption in the health ministry in applying vaccines has caused many deaths. Today, nearly two million inhabitants have been infected, and 65,000 have died.

In September 2020 Congress opened impeachment proceedings against Vizcarra on grounds of “moral incapacity”, accusing him of influence peddling. Although there were insufficient votes to remove him, his reputation as an effective leader plummeted.

On November 9, 2020, congress impeached Vizcarra a second time, declaring him “morally incompetent”. This time, he was removed from office. Some of those who voted against him had been targeted for their corruption.

Congressman Manuel Merino succeeded him. There is so much corruption—politicians are infamous for such—that many commentators and ordinary people believed charges against Vizcarra were trumped up. Some media called the process yet another coup. These developments incited massive protests, and grew once policemen murdered two demonstrators. In further protests, police injured demonstrators and three dozen journalists, shooting some with shotgun pellets and tear gas. On the fifth day of Merino’s presidential tenure, he resigned. One of the few congressmen who voted against impeaching Viscarra, Francisco Sagasti, was named president by a split legislature.

Sagasti had been chief of the World Bank’s strategic planning division. As such, the centrist promotes capitalist austerity policies. Sagasti leads the Morado Partido (Purple Party). He has concentrated on improving measures to combat Covid-19. The U.S. approves his economic and foreign policies.

Keiko Fujimori studied business administration in the United States where she lived off and on for many years. Upon returning to Peru, she worked with her father. She took over the position of first lady (1994-2000) once the president divorced his wife, Susana Higuchi. Keiko was in congress from 2006 to 2011 when she ran for the presidency. She came in second place then, as in 2016.

On October 31, 2018, Keiko was sentenced to 36 months preventive imprisonment for obstruction of a judicial investigation into money laundering and bribery with intent to change witness testimony. She was released to house arrest on January 11, 2019. She was later returned to prison. When hospitalized with corona, she was again released to house arrest, and once recovered could campaign for the presidency.

Public prosecutor José Domingo Pérez seeks a 30-year sentence for her accepting $1.2 million from the Odebrecht real estate/construction firm, which illegally financed her political party. An agreement was reached between Odebrecht and Peru’s Justice Ministry in 2019. That agreement would allow Odebrecht to continue working in Peru with public work contracts once it turns over documents and testimonies that show how Keiko Fujimori and ex-presidents received money illegally that they were offered.

According to Wayku, Fuerza Popular congresswoman Martha Chávez is attempting to get the current parliament—largely conservative and rightest—to change that agreement to favor her presidential candidate. “Martha Chavez would have Odebrecht to stop confessing how Keiko received illicit money – Wayka”.

Immigration

On March 9, 2015, President Barak Obama declared Venezuela a threat to national security, and invoked the first of escalating sanctions against hundreds of Venezuelan companies, individuals, vessels and its oil.

Due mainly to increasingly severe sanctions under Trump’s regime, Venezuelans lack food, medicines and other necessities, even oil/petroleum to sustain bare minimum living standards. As such, since 2015 over one million people flee annually to neighboring countries.

Peru has over one million Venezuelan refugees. Peru’s armed forces joined with Ecuador’s under the right-wing Lenin Morena government to prevent more migrations by posting soldiers at their borders to Colombia.

Many people worry that the U.S. will punish them if they back Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro. Today, U.S. sanctions all Venezuelan exports (92% oil, most of the rest is gold), and most of its imports, as well as freezing its assets in U.S. and England banks. This aggression is compounded by the U.S. (and 70 of its allies) recognizing Juan Guaídó as president of the country.

Guaidó was elected to the 2015 congress on a Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) ticket with 26% of the votes in Vargas state (350,000 population.) On January 23, 2019, the 35 year-old assemblyman simply announced he was taking over the presidency, on an interim basis, without any election.

U.S. and England recognize only Guaidó as having “the right” to use Venezuela’s state funds that they have frozen. The assumption is that he will one day become president, by hook or crook, probably through a U.S.-backed military coup.

Guaidó has called for U.S. military intervention, and there have been a handful of clumsy coup attempts. Recent polls of Venezuelans living in the country showed only 4.1% consider him capable of ruling their nation.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The mass media and rightest politicians think they can get their candidate, Keiko Fujimori, elected by smearing Castillo as a supporter of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path).

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) was established by interim president Valentin Paniagua, in November 2000, following Fujimori’s abdication. The dozen investigators are part of the Establishment. They investigated actions by the Shining Path, Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), and the military-police.

At its peak, Shining Path had 10,000 insurgents and dominated nearly half the country. It killed many government police and military but also many peasants not aligned with it.

MRTA’s most ambitious and proclaimed action, and the major cause of its eventual demise, was taking over the Japanese embassy residency. During a party celebrating Japan’s emperor’s birthday on December 17, 1996, 14 members of the guerilla group, led by co-leader Victor Polay Campos, captured 800 dignitaries (politicians, diplomats, military officers and rich businessmen).

During negotiations, the rebels released all women, and most of the men, keeping only 72 hostages. MRTA sought the release of 450 imprisoned members of their organization.

U.S. military in the area assisted the Peruvian army with various rescue plans. Finally, on April 22, 1997, a 140-man Peruvian army commando team raided the residency. The rebels did not wish to kill hostages. The only casualties were themselves, one hostage and two soldiers. All 14 rebels were killed on Fujimori’s orders, half of them executed.

On August 28, 2003, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission “reported on the estimated 70 000 deaths, assassinations, torture, disappearances, displacement, employment of terrorist methods and other human rights violations executed by the State, Shining Path, and MRTA. The report concluded that there is both “institutional and individual accountability, as well as identifying racial and cultural factors that became a catalyst for conflict.” The CVR investigation was financed by some of $360 million discovered in foreign accounts, which had been stolen by Fujimori officials.

A 2019 study disputed CVR casualty figures, reporting instead “a total of 48,000 killings, substantially lower”, and concluded that “the Peruvian State accounts for a significantly larger share than the Shining Path,” more than the 28% attributed to the military and police reported by CVR.

Alberto Fujimori

Although Fujimori won the July 2000 runoff with a bare majority, irregularities led most of the world’s governments to shun his third swearing-in on 28 July. Daily demonstrations took place in front of the presidential palace for many weeks. As a conciliatory gesture, Fujimori appointed former opposition candidate Federico Salas prime minister. Opposition parties in Congress refused to support this move, and former President Toledo led the campaign to have the election annulled.

On 13 November, Fujimori left Peru for a visit to Brunei to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. On 16 November, Valentín Paniagua took over as president after the pro-Fujimori leadership lost a vote of confidence. On 17 November, Fujimori traveled from Brunei to Tokyo where he submitted his presidential resignation via fax. Congress refused to accept his resignation, instead voted 62–9 to remove Fujimori from office on the grounds that he was “permanently morally disabled.” Japan granted him exile status and citizenship. Where and when Fujimori was born is still a contested issue—either in Japan or Peru.

CC Search (creativecommons.org)

Wanted in Peru on charges of corruption and human rights abuses, Fujimori maintained a self-imposed exile until his arrest while visiting Chile in November 2005. Fujimori believed conditions in Peru were favorable for him to run for the presidency. Chilean authorities arrested Fujimori, however, when Peru requested his extradition, which happened on September 22, 2007.

In December 2007, Fujimori was convicted of ordering an illegal search and seizure and was sentenced to six years imprisonment. In April 2009, he was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad. This was the first time that an elected head of state had been extradited to his home country, tried, and convicted of human rights violations.

He faced a third trial in July 2009 over allegations that he illegally gave $15 million in state funds to Vladimiro Montesinos, which the disreputable former president admitted. Fujimori admitted guilt in another corruption trial in September. He received another six-year sentence, however under Peruvian law all prison sentences run concurrently.

Role of the United States

A United States Establishment organization, Council on Foreign Relations, 2009 background piece on Shining Path shows that “Washington pursued a policy of lending money and giving military aid to Peru to help the country’s government wage war against Shining Path. This policy continued even after President Alan Garcia’s administration defaulted on some of its loans, despite a longstanding U.S. policy making a country ineligible for aid if it failed to repay military assistance debt for more than a year.”

Peruvians march in protest of 3,677 U.S. Marines entering their country. Photo: Telesur/Rael Mora.What are U.S. Marines Doing in Peru? | Blogcritics

One of the last measures of President Obama’s reign was a permanent military presence in Peru. In December 2016, President Kuczynski let the U.S. build a military base in the Amazons. The U.S. Southern Command and the company Partenon Contratistas signed off a plan allegedly to assist the country during “natural catastrophes”, “under the sheepskin of the Centre for Operations for Regional Emergency”.

United States domination over Latin America began in 1823 with the “Monroe Doctrine”, part of U.S. “manifest destiny” so declared in 1812: expand America’s white man’s control of lands. In 1846-48, the U.S. warred upon Mexico and stole its northern half, which is now: Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Just between 1869 and 1897, the U.S. sent naval warships to Latin American harbors to intervene in internal affairs 5,980 times. (2)

“The United States no longer needs to launch wars to conquer and assert its hegemony on Latin American soil; now the region is brought to heel by far subtler means: through initiatives of covert militarization. In addition to its war against terrorism, Washington is using the fight against drug trafficking and its alleged commitment to respecting human rights as covers for intermeddling in the internal affairs of other countries… Peru is a vital platform to enable the United States to consolidate its plan to dominate the whole of South America,” wrote Ariel Noyola Rodríguez.

“Military cooperation between Washington and Lima is not restricted to setting up military bases; the United States has followed up by fully integrating itself into the [Peruvian] security and defense apparatus. Pursuant to authorization by Peru’s Ministry of Defense, special operation units of the Joint Command of Armed Forces, the Command of Intelligence and Joint Special Operations and the Special Unit, VRAEM, received training from U.S. forces between May and September 2016. …In tandem, the Peruvian forces have led countless joint military exercises with the United States.”

President Joe Biden has focused little on Latin America other than to encourage Mexico to prevent migrants from entering the U.S., and to continue sanctions against Venezuela, because of the “tyrant” Nicolás Maduro rule.

Biden’s administrations has not publically taken a position on the current election, but Peruvian activists mean that the “neighbor in the north” is quietly backing Keiko Fujimori. The National Endowment for Democracy, which works to subvert leftist governments worldwide, spent nearly $650,000 in Peru in 2020.

Pedro Castillo seeks an end to U.S.’s domination over its “backyard”. He also proposes to expel the Drug Enforcement Administration, and to end the phony “war against drugs”, which causes massive murders and more drugs. So much sovereignty is not for Keiko Fujimori.

Current Election Campaign

On May Day, the working class’ historic victory day, at Pedro Castillo’s request, he and Keiko Fujimori held an improvised debate in the plaza of his hometown and where he teaches, Choto. The northern city of some 50,000 was lively with mainly Castillo supporters.

The key issues discussed concerned: corruption, corona, the economy and crime. Castillo criticized the neoliberal economy for not providing decent working and living conditions for the majority, for the lack of adequate medical care generally and specially during the corona pandemic. His party will propose a new constitution that would make tax-supported medical care for all a human right.

Fujimori defended the current private health care system and the neo-liberal economy.

Castillo’s government would revise transnational contracts that exploit natural resources. The state, he said, would take 30% of the profits and protect the earth as much as possible. Fujimori said the current recession is not due to neo-liberal policies but to “lack of management”.

Regarding social insecurity and crime, Fujimori proposed greater punishments, while her opponent proposed more and better education.

Free Peru party and Pedro Castillo say they are receiving death threats. Extreme rightest presidential candidate of Popular Renewal party Rafael Lopez Aliaga contends that Pedro Castillo “shall not become president”, as he would never allow elections again. Castillo would be another “authoritarian Maduro” and run Peru like Venezuela and Cuba. Much of the MSM as this one, La Razón, regularly quote right-wingers, who maintain that Castillo is with Sendero Luminoso and its imprisoned leader, Guzman.

Castillo denies this. “We are not terrorists, communists or chavistas” [Hugo Chavez], he asserted.

Center-Liberal Popular Action party decided not to take a position on whom to support.

Keiko y Castillo, cara a cara por primera vez en Chota.. Imagen: EFE Cómo fue el debate en Chota entre Keiko Fujimori y … | Página12 (pagina12.com.ar)

On May 5, Castillo’s Peru Libre and Mendoza’s Junta agreed to cooperate. Veronica Mendoza said: “What is at stake is not only Castillo Terrones’ victory, but of putting a brake on mafia and authoritarianism”, and she asserted that she doesn’t want a government with “people who are able to sabotage even vaccines.”

Castillo later stated that the controversial educational curriculum gender matter is not an issue in his campaign and that the future congress should decide on that, a concession rendered Junta.

On May 1, the average of eight polls gave Castillo a 43% chance of winning over Keiko Fujimori with 35%. The remainder say they will vote blank or are undecided. Two days following the debate, Fujimori had caught up with 37% to her rival’s 38%, an average of 12 polls. On May 12, Castillo was ahead 47% to 32%.

Notes

(1) MOVADEF – Movimiento por Amnistía y Derechos Fundamentales and Elecciones 2021: Pedro Castillo, el dirigente del Conare – Movadef que encabeza el boca de urna de las elecciones | POLITICA | PERU21

The Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights was founded in 2009 to agitate for the release of political prisoners, including members of Shining Path. Its leader, Abimael Guzman, has been in prison since 1992. In 2012, MOVADEF gathered 350,000 signatures on an amnesty petition. The secret police maintain that Castillo is associated with MOVADEF and MSM reports as such. Supporting amnesty for these political prisoners does not necessarily mean one supported crimes of murdering peasants not involved in warfare.

(2) See my book ”The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert”, especially chapter 18, “United States Military Empire”. The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert: Ridenour, Ron: 9780996487061: Amazon.com: Books

China is rapidly surpassing the United States as the most influential nation across Latin America, in the U.S.’s own backyard. This is not a boast by the Chinese government. It is the considered assessment of the five star admiral who heads U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) in his testimony on March 16 to the SenatUe Armed Services Committee.

For almost 200 years since President James Monroe first adumbrated it in a regular message to Congress in December 1823, successive generations of U.S. policymakers and the American people have taken it for granted that the entire vast continent of South America, as well as giant Mexico, the small and much-put-upon nations of Central American and the Caribbean have been and should always remain the United States’ backyard, with all the supposedly evil and repressive powers of the Old World kept out of them — in the sacred names, of course, of Democracy, Freedom and Free Trade.

In fact, with the exception of a handful all too brief eras of genuine shining idealism and goodwill under Presidents Ulysses S. Grant (1869-77), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) and John F. Kennedy (1961-63), U.S. domination of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Western Hemisphere has been characterized, not by benign neglect but rather by a monstrously malign attention.

The repressions and depredations that President Porfirio Diaz, with the enthusiastic support of Wall Street and the City of London inflicted on the Mexican people during his 35 year reign of terror from 1876 to 1911 now known as the Porfiriato defy belief: Almost 10 million peasants were driven off their land and national life expectancy crashed to only 30 years when it was 50 in the neighboring United States. At the same time, $1.5 billion in U.S. business investment (and these were 19th century dollars) flooded in.

A new era of holier-than-thou heavy-handed intervention came with America’s first systematically imperialist President Theodore Roosevelt. TR was a ludicrous joke as a soldier and military leader. He charged up San Juan Hill in Cuba in 1898 managing to avoid getting himself shot and then in the first years of World War I endlessly tried to embrace the United States in World War I from almost the start: He imagined that a San Juan Hill-style cavalry charge across the Western Front would break the German Army. Had he had his way, 2 million American boys would have been plowed under to fertilize the fields of Belgium and Northern France — for nothing.

But in the Western Hemisphere, TR was far more effective: He waged shameless aggression against the nation of Columbia carving out an entire secessionist state from it so that the United States could build and control the Panama Canal — an essential step on America’s rise to global sea power. And the first Roosevelt also established the dark 20th century precedent that the nations of Central and South America needed the guiding hand of U.S. imperialism to whip them (literally) into shape. He dignified this policy of aggression and imperial exploitation with the title “The Roosevelt Corollary.”

Woodrow Wilson, an ugly anti-African-American racist of the most deep and implacable nature, initiated a new era of catastrophic interventions in the hemisphere, first in Mexico and then across the Caribbean region as well. This state of affairs continued through the 1920s.

The now revered and deified President Dwight D. Eisenhower knowingly approved an open CIA war to topple the genuine democracy of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954: It was an international crime that unleashed far worse — a generations-long Dark Age of genocide, mass rape and the slaughter and enslavement of children against the ancient Mayan peoples of the entire region. The late Irish political philosopher Conor Cruise O’Brien, before he became a neocon in his dotage, strikingly commented that continuing U.S. repression and crimes against humanity across Central America far exceeded anything the Soviet Union inflicted in establishing its security zone of friendly states in Central Europe after World War II.

President George Herbert Walker Bush’s no-nonsense toppling of the corrupt and genuine ugly but also small time thug Manuel Noriega set the tone for the generations since: The name Bush approved for the invasion “Operation Just Cause” perfectly reflected the combination of total, confident and unhesitating self-righteousness and instinctive readiness to ignore all standards of international law and fair play that successive U.S. leaders and policymakers have always felt about invading and toppling any government they like across Latin America.

However, all that was the story of the 19th and 20th centuries and already in this still young 21st century, things are finally changing at last: Overlooked in the entire U.S. Mainstream Media (MSM) SOUTHCOM chief Admiral Craig Feller’s honest, blunt and outspoken message to the Senate Armed Services Committee made this vividly clear. (Though in my long experience, almost all of the senators who heard it will have forgotten everything the admiral said after their three or four post-hearing martinis.)

One can certainly disagree with the tone of Admiral Fuller’s comments which focused on the advances and alleged iniquities of Russia and China rather than the ongoing disastrous bipartisan policies that that the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden administrations have all systematically and consistently followed to repress and undermine democracy across Latin America in nations both great (Brazil) and small (Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia) as well as those in between (Colombia and Venezuela).

However, the sense of challenge, danger and alarm that the admiral tried to convey comes across all too clearly:

“I feel an incredible sense of urgency,” he said. “This Hemisphere in which we live is under assault. The very democratic principles and values that bind us together are being actively undermined by violent transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and the PRC and Russia. We are losing our positional advantage in this Hemisphere and immediate action is needed to reverse this trend.”

China is building, has bought or now controls outright 40 major ports across Latin America, the SOUTHCOM commander said. And now, in addition, COVID-19 is wrecking political stability across the continent, the admiral said.

“There is an accelerating spiral of instability gripping the region as the pandemic has increased the region’s fragility. Latin America and the Caribbean have suffered among the highest COVID-19 death rates in the world,” Feller said. “According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), per capita income in Latin America will not recover from the pandemic until 2025.”

To America’s strategic horror, China has launched a $1 billion COVID-19 aid offensive across Latin America to build influence in the region and is already rapidly advancing toward their goal of economic dominance in the region within the next 10 years, the admiral said.

“In 2019, the People’s Republic of China surpassed the United States as the leading trade partner with Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay and is now the region’s second-largest trading partner behind the United States. From 2002 to 2019, PRC trade with Latin America soared from $17 billion to over $315 billion, with plans to reach $500 billion in trade by 2025,” the admiral said.

China’s economic rise in Africa has been much commented upon and studied in the West. However its parallel rise in trade, business and influence in Latin America has been comparatively ignored. But it is happening. It is real. And it is changing the destiny of a continent.

A team of 85 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Peru on June 3 to help the Andean nation tackle the coronavirus pandemic. That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced another tightening of the sanctions screws. This time he targeted seven Cuban entities, including Fincimex, one of the principal financial institutions handling remittances to the country. Also targeted was Marriott International, which was ordered to cease operations in Cuba, and other companies in the tourism sector, an industry that constitutes 10 percent of Cuba’s GDP and has been devastated globally by the pandemic.

It seems that the more Cuba helps the world, the more it gets hammered by the Trump administration. While Cuba has endured a U.S. embargo for nearly 60 years, Trump has revved up the stakes with a “maximum pressure” strategy that includes more than 90 economic measures placed against the nation since January 2019. Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s ambassador to Canada, called the measures “unprecedented in their level of aggression and scope” and designed to “deprive the country of income for the development of the economy.” Since its inception, the embargo has cost Cuba well over $130 billion dollars, according to a 2018 estimate. In 2018-2019 alone, the economic impact was $4 billion, a figure that does not include the impact of a June 2019 Trump administration travel ban aimed at harming the tourist industry.

While the embargo is supposed to have humanitarian exemptions, the health sector has not been spared. Cuba is known worldwide for its universal public healthcare system, but the embargo has led to shortages of medicines and medical supplies, particularly for patients with AIDS and cancer. Doctors at Cuba’s National Institute of Oncology have had to amputate the lower limbs of children with cancer because the American companies that have a monopoly on the technology can’t sell it to Cuba. In the midst of the pandemic, the U.S. blocked a donation of facemasks and COVID-19 diagnostic kits from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma.

Not content to sabotage Cuba’s domestic health sector, the Trump administration has been attacking Cuba’s international medical assistance, from the teams fighting coronavirus today to those who have travelled all over the world since the 1960’s providing services to underserved communities in 164 countries. The U.S. goal is to cut the island’s income now that the provision of these services has surpassed tourism as Cuba’s number one source of revenue. Labeling these volunteer medical teams “victims of human trafficking” because part of their salaries goes to pay for Cuba’s healthcare system, the Trump administration convinced Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil to end their cooperation agreements with Cuban doctors. Pompeo then applauded the leaders of these countries for refusing “to turn a blind eye” to Cuba’s alleged abuses. The triumphalism was short lived: a month after that quote, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil begged Cuba to resend its doctors amid the pandemic. U.S. allies all over the world, including in Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Italy, Honduras and Peru have gratefully accepted this Cuban aid. So great is the admiration for Cuban doctors that a global campaign has sprung up to award them the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Trump administration is not just libelling doctors, but the whole country.  In May, the State Department named Cuba as one of five countries “not cooperating fully” in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The main pretext was the nation’s hosting of members of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN). Yet even the State Department’s own press release notes that ELN members are in Cuba as a result of “peace negotiation protocols.” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called the charges dishonest and “facilitated by the ungrateful attitude of the Colombian government” that broke off talks with the ELN in 2019. It should also be noted that Ecuador was the original host of the ELN-Colombia talks, but Cuba was asked to step in after the Moreno government abdicated its responsibilities in 2018.

The classification of Cuba as “not cooperating” with counterterrorism could lead to Cuba being placed on the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, which carries tougher penalties. This idea was floated by a senior Trump administration official to Reuters last month. Cuba had been on this list from 1982 to 2015, despite that fact that, according to former State Department official Jason Blazakis, “it was legally determined that Cuba was not actively engaged in violence that could be defined as terrorism under any credible definition of the word.”

Of course, the United States is in no position to claim that other countries do not cooperate in counterterrorism. For years, the U.S. harbored Luis Posada Carriles, mastermind of the bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane in 1976 that killed 73 people. More recently, the U.S. has yet to even comment on the April 30 attack on the Cuban Embassy in Washington D.C., when a man fired on the building with an automatic rifle.

While there are certainly right-wing ideologues like Secretary Pompeo and Senator Rubio orchestrating Trump’s maximum pressure campaign, for Trump himself, Cuba is all about the U.S. elections. His hard line against the tiny island nation may have helped swing the Florida gubernatorial campaign during the midterm elections, yet it’s not clear that this will serve him well in a presidential year. According to conventional wisdom and polls, younger Cuban-Americans – who like most young people, don’t tend to vote in midterms – are increasingly skeptical of the U.S. embargo, and overall, Cuba isn’t the overriding issue for Cuban-Americans. Trump won the Cuban-American vote in 2016, but Hillary Clinton took between 41 and 47% percent of that electorate, significantly higher than any Democrat in decades.

As an electoral strategy, these are signs that Trump’s aggression towards Cuba may not pay off. Of course, the strategy might not be just about votes but also about financing and ensuring that the Cuban-American political machinery is firmly behind Trump.

The strategy has certainly not paid off when it comes to achieving the goal of regime change. The Trump administration is arguably farther from achieving regime change in Cuba now than the U.S. has ever been in over 60 years of intervention. During Trump’s tenure, Cuba calmly transitioned from the presidency of Raul Castro to that of Miguel Díaz-Canel. In 2019, Cuban voters overwhelmingly ratified a new constitution. These aren’t signs of a country on the brink of collapse.

All Trump has achieved is making life more difficult for the island’s 11 million inhabitants, who, like people all over the world, have been battered by the economic impact from coronavirus. Tourism has collapsed. Income from remittances has tanked (both because of new U.S. restrictions and less income in the hands of the Cuban diaspora). Venezuela, once a major benefactor, is mired in its own crisis. But Cuba’s economy, which was forecast to contract by 3.7% before the pandemic hit, has been through worse, particularly during the 1991 to 2000 economic crisis known as the “special period” after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A change in the White House would bring some relief, although Joe Biden has staked a rather ambivalent position, saying he would restore relations as President Obama did, but adding that he was open to using sanctions as punishment for Cuba’s support to the Venezuelan government.

It’s clear that from now until November, and perhaps for four more years, the Trump administration will pummel its island neighbor. Cuba will continue to seek global condemnation on the blockade (the 2019 UN vote was 187 against vs 3 in favor—the U.S., Brazil and Israel) and continue to show what a good neighbor looks like. It responded to these latest provocations in the way that only Cuba does: with more global solidarity, sending Covid-19 healing brigades to Guinea and Kuwait a day after the June 3 round of sanctions. A total of 26 countries now have Cuban medical personnel caring for their sick.

That is the kind of goodwill that money just can’t buy and it greatly presents a stark contrast to the Trump administration’s shameful behavior during the pandemic. Back in March, as Cuban doctors arrived in Italy, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa tweeted: “One day we will tell our children that, after decades of movies and propaganda, at the moment of truth, when humanity needed help at a time when the great powers were in hiding, Cuban doctors began to arrive, without asking anything in return.”

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After the socialist tide swept Latin America, progressive governments backed the Palestinian plight and eschewed close relations with Israel. Some progressive leaders, including Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua severed relations with Israel over its maltreatment of the Palestinian population of Gaza. With Morales being recently overthrown by a right-wing military coup and Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, on the political ropes due to crippling US-led sanctions, Israeli counter-insurgency mongers are frequently seen in Latin American capitals where right-wing, even neo-Nazi influenced regimes govern. Using almost Talmudic logic, the Israeli government believes that in order to battle pro-Palestinian governments having friendly relations with Iran it is acceptable to deal with the likes of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who, in the past, has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Israel’s security legacy in Latin America stands as an infamous record of supporting genocidal dictators. With the advent of the “Socialist Spring” in Latin America, the Israeli death merchants largely adopted a lower profile or sought out new prospects in Africa, the Balkans, and South Asia. With Bolivia’s Morales being the last of the “Socialist Spring” leaders falling in the “southern cone” of South America, Israeli counterinsurgency merchants saw a new market open when the Bolivian junta’s Interior Minister, Arturo Murillo, welcoming Israeli assistance to beef up the capabilities of his newly-formed death squad, the “Anti-Terrorist Group” (GAT), which he said was aimed at battling “terrorists.” In typical fascist parlance, “terrorists” in this case, are Bolivians loyal to ousted President Morales, who, after a brief exile in Mexico, now enjoys political asylum in Argentina, as well as Morales’s fellow native indigenous peoples: the Aymara (Morales’s ethnicity) and the Quechua, Chiquitano, Guaraní, and Moxeño.

Interior Minister Murillo’s reason for choosing the Israelis as his security advisors was stated in an interview with Reuters. He said, “They’re used to dealing with terrorists. They know how to handle them.” Murillo was, of course, referring to Israel’s brutal repression of the Palestinian people, a record of inhuman treatment that Israeli military and intelligence companies have managed to package, with equipment and advisers, as an export commodity. Murillo’s commitment to establishing an Israeli-style surveillance state in Bolivia was made clear in his warning to a group of Argentine human rights officials who arrived in Bolivia to see, first hand, the human rights abuses directed against members of Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party and indigenous peoples. Murillo warned the Argentines and other foreign officials in declaring: “We recommend these foreigners who are arriving to be careful. We are looking at you. We are following you. There is no tolerance for terrorism, sedition or armed movements. Zero tolerance.” The warning is practically a carbon copy of that delivered by Israel to international aid workers who have tried to bring relief supplies to the people of Gaza.

The Israelis had the advantage of quickly arriving in Bolivia to offer their services from neighboring Brazil. Brazil’s President Bolsonaro and his foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, are Christian fundamentalist fanatic supporters of Israel. Both are disdainful of Muslims, including the Palestinians, who, they claim, are not a people with a right to nationhood. Araujo’s background should be anathema to Israelis. However, because Binyamin Netanyahu government decided to create a Faustian alliance with all enemies of Palestinians and Muslims, even if they are neo-Nazis and white supremacists, Israel has made common cause with individuals like Bolsonaro and Araújo and it is assisting them in their genocide of Amazonian Indians.

Israel has no problem with maintaining close relations with Araújo, even though his father, Henrique Fonseca de Araújo, served as the Attorney General of Brazil between 1975 and 1979 under the Brazilian dictatorship of General Ernesto Geisel, the son of German immigrants. Together, Attorney General Araújo and Geisel prevented the extradition to Germany of Gustav Franz Wagner, the deputy commander of the infamous Sobibor extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Sobibor’s only reason for existence was to exterminate Jews. Known as “The Beast,” Wagner was responsible for the extermination of 200,000 Jewish inmates. After the war, Wagner escaped from Italy to Syria, and, ultimately, with a Brazilian passport issued under the name Gunther Mandel, escaped to Brazil. Attorney General Araújo’s refusal to extradite Wagner to Germany, where he faced a death sentence, did not protect “The Beast” for very long. In 1980, Wagner was found dead under suspicious circumstances in Sao Paulo. A knife was driven into his chest.

Israel also maintains a close security relationship with Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benitez. Benitez delighted the Israelis earlier this year when he announced that Paraguay recognized Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah as terrorist groups. In May 2018, Paraguay further pleased Israel when Benitez’s predecessor, Horacio Cartes announced that Paraguay would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Relations soured after Benitez changed announced in September 2018 that the embassy would be moved back to Tel Aviv. The announcement coincided with the opening of a Palestinian embassy in Asuncion. Israel was furious and it closed its embassy in Asuncion in protest. Since Benitez declared Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist organizations, relations between Israel and Paraguay have been patched up. Israel does not mind Benitez’s family background, just as it overlooks that of Brazil Foreign Minister Araújo.

Benitez is the son of Mario Abdo Benítez Sr., the private secretary of Paraguay’s military dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner. The son of a Bavarian immigrant to Paraguay, Stroessner welcomed two Nazi refugees to Paraguay: Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous “Angel of Death,” who performed grotesque experiments on the inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, and Edward Roschmann, the equally-infamous “Butcher of Riga.” Roschmann, who oversaw the mass murder of Latvian Jews in Riga, entered Paraguay from Argentina with papers bearing the alias name of Federico Wegener. Mengele was granted citizenship by Stroessner under the name of José Mengele.

One of the most shameful examples of Israeli assistance to commit genocide was in the 1980s in Guatemala. There, Israeli advisers, using advanced surveillance equipment, helped dictator Efrain Rios Montt, a member of the California-based Christian fundamentalist cult called the “Church of the Word,” to carry out the elimination of entire Mayan Indian villages. One million Mayan Indians were affected by the Israeli inspired and supported genocide. Not only did Israelis help Montt murder tens of thousands of Mayans, but it helped him gain power in his 1982 military coup. Similar Israeli assistance was seen in military coups in Venezuela in 2002, Honduras in 2009, and Paraguay in 2012. In 1983, the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather” reported that Israel “taught the Guatemalans how to build an airbase. They set up their intelligence network, tried and tested on the West Bank and Gaza, designed simply to beat the ‘Guerilla’.” A Guatemalan court later tried and convicted Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity. Yet, none of Montt’s Israeli collaborators faced punishment. One of Israel’s security advisers in Guatemala at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Amatzia Shuali, reportedly said, “I don’t care what the Gentiles do with the arms. The main thing is that the Jews profit.”

In the style of the Nazis, Montt’s military shot every resident of the Mayan village of Dos Erres and burned it to the ground. Israeli-made Galil rifles were found at the scene of the war crime. Today, some of the grandchildren of the victims of Montt’s war find themselves on the receiving end of Israeli surveillance technology sold to the United States as they attempt to seek asylum at the US southern border.

It may become harder for members of US academia to research, write about, or discuss Israeli support for genocidal regimes in Latin America. On December 11 of this year, Donald Trump signed an executive order prohibiting federal funds to US colleges and universities that permit any criticism of Israel and its policies. Such campus activities are now labeled by the White House as “antisemitic.”

With more than a “wink and a nod” from their collegial “caudillo del Norte,” Donald Trump, seven right-wing South American leaders have launched the Forum for the Progress of South America (PROSUR), which aims to eradicate all vestiges of Venezuela’s late president, Hugo Chavez, and Brazil’s wrongfully-imprisoned past president, Inacio Lula da Silva. PROSUR seeks to replace the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), which was created by Chavez and Lula in 208 to counteract traditional American hegemonism in Latin America enforced by the neo-colonial Organization of American States (OAS).

Leaders from seven right-wing South American governments – Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, and Guyana – recently gathered in Santiago, Chile, under the auspices of billionaire Chilean president Sebastian Pinera, to sign an accord creating PROSUR. One of the goals of the new bloc is to integrate the defense, security, and crime prevention infrastructures of the members. If that sounds like an embryonic recreation of the infamous Operation CONDOR of the 1960s and 70s, it very much has such potential. CONDOR was an alliance of the intelligence and security services of South American military dictatorships, nurtured by the CIA, that is believed to have been responsible for 60,000 murders, 30,000 “disappeared,” 400,000 wrongful imprisonments, and countless acts of torture.

Bolivia and Uruguay, members of UNASUR that support Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, against the Central Intelligence Agency-groomed and -installed presidential pretender, Juan Guaido, did not join PROSUR, and, instead, elected observer status in the group.

Pinera and Colombia’s right-wing and narco/paramilitary-backed president, Ivan Duque, were the architects behind PROSUR. Seeing a chance to bury the legacies of Chavez and Lula, the two presidents invited all but Maduro’s government to join the pact.

Ecuador, which joined PROSUR, served as the headquarters of UNASUR. In 2014, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa opened the $65 million headquarters in Quito. Today, with right-wing governments and, as with the cases of Brazil and Colombia, far-right wing governments, taking over most of South America, the UNASUR headquarters sits largely abandoned. Moreno ordered UNASUR to abandon the building and promised to turn it into a university. After UNASUR Secretary General Ernesto Samper left his post in 2017, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru suspended their membership in the bloc, dealing it a fatal blow.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno quickly abandoned his commitment to the ideals of Correa, Lula, and Chavez and embraced the caudillo politics of the right-wing South America presidents. Moreno, whose first name is in honor of Vladimir Lenin, plunged a knife into UNASUR when he said it was the creation of “perverse politicking of the self-styled 21st-century socialists.” After Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru withdrew from UNASUR, with the obvious prodding of the Trump administration, the stage was set for creating a new right-wing and pro-US alliance of neo-fascists, grifters, and oligarchs.

Moreno, who served as Correa’s vice president, has abandoned the socialist policies of his predecessor. Moreno not only welcomed US Vice President Mike Pence to Ecuador with open arms but sought the re-opening of the former US intelligence airbase at Manta, which had been closed by Correa in 2009. Moreno’s defense minister announced that what would replace the Manta airbase would be a “Security Cooperation Office.” In 2018, Moreno withdrew Ecuador from one of Chavez’s most-prized creations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

Ironically, Moreno, who bears the first name of the founder of the world’s first Communist nation, reversed many of Correa’s policies aimed at reducing the influence of Ecuador’s oligarchs and banks. Correa, who now lives in exile in Belgium, faces imprisonment in Ecuador in a political jihad launched by Moreno that is not unlike that of the Brazilian right-wing that targeted Lula and his successor, Dilma Rousseff. Present at the inauguration of PROSUR in Santiago was Argentine president Mauricio Macri, the one-time business partner of Donald Trump, who has done everything possible to imprison his predecessor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Now an Argentine senator, Kirchner and her husband, the late President Nestor Kirchner, were partners of Chavez, Lula, and Correa in creating UNASUR.

Uruguyan president Tabaré Vázquez, who sent an observer delegation to PROSUR’s inaugural summit in Chile without joining the group, criticized the new group at a United Nations conference in Buenos Aires. Vázquez said that South America already had regional organizations, including the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELADE), and the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI). However, like Moreno of Ecuador, Vázquez criticized the creation of UNASUR, saying, it “had a certain political ideology.”

Presidents Mario Abdo Benitez of Paraguay Martin Vizcarra of Peru have also steered their countries firmly into the right-wing camp. Both presidents joined their colleagues in Santiago for the PROSUR summit.

One surprise leader who signed on to PROSUR in Santiago was David Granger, the president of Guyana. Granger, as a former Brigadier General in the Guyana Defense Force, likely felt at home with individuals like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, a former Brazilian paratrooper whose spoken Brazilian Portuguese reflects that of an uncouth Army veteran combined with a street thug. Granger has made common cause with ExxonMobil to lay claim to oil reserves in Guyana’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which are also claimed by Venezuela. Granger has brandished his right-wing allegiances by ignoring Guyana’s Constitution and postponing a March 19, 2019 required election to 2020. It was the defection of Granger’s coalition government’s parliamentary backbencher, Charrandas Persaud, to the opposition in a no-confidence vote that originally triggered the election. Rather than comply with the Constitution, Granger’s government, accused Persaud of being a US citizen, not eligible to sit in parliament. Persaud also received death threats. Yet, according to the Western corporate media, Guyana is being threatened by an “undemocratic” Maduro government in Venezuela.

Just as PROSUR seeks to eliminate the vestiges of Chavez, Lula, Correa, and Kirchner in South America, there has been an attempt by Washington to also wipe out two other Chavez regional projects, ALBA and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Both organizations include Venezuela’s allies in the Caribbean region. Trump recently invited the leaders of five Caribbean nations – Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Saint Lucia – to his Mar-a-Lago billionaires’ club in Palm Beach to seek their commitment to isolate the Maduro government of Venezuela and support the Guaido puppet regime. In order to entice the leaders to sever all financial links with Venezuela, including their participation in the PetroCaribe program that provided them with subsidized Venezuelan gasoline and oil, Trump offered nebulous loan guarantees through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a Wall Street contrivance with major national debt pitfalls attached.

Trump has a major real estate project in the Dominican Republic. Allen Chastanet, the prime minister of Saint Lucia, is the incoming chairman of the Caribbean Community. He will be expected to wean away from Venezuela its last remaining allies in the organization.

Trump and his team of neocons, including national security adviser John Bolton and Venezuela regime change envoy Elliott Abrams, who was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal and who benefited from a cover-up bolstered by Attorney General William Barr, will now concentrate their efforts on overthrowing Maduro and subjecting his last remaining allies, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, Uruguay, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada to regime change operations.

This is a routine scenario in Latin America: a politician losing public support tries to improve his public image at home and abroad with the help of the United States. The «helper» pursues its own interest and national sovereignty is the price to pay. No doubt, Peruvian leader Humala is one of the politicians controlled by Washington. He is ready to do anything in order to preserve his position.

According to the GfK (the International Institute of market and social research) poll conducted in September, the President’s approval rating dropped to 12%, the lowest result since he took office. The disapproval rating of the President reached 85%. Thecorruption scandal regarding the First Lady damages the Humala’s image. Nadine Heredia is being investigated for suspected money laundering. The funds were allegedly used to finance President Ollanta Humala's election campaign. Humala and the tycoons of his inner circle want Nadine as the next president to continue the implementation of neo-liberal reforms launched by her husband. These plans fan the flames of discontent even more.

The US President Barack Obama has said recently that Lima is a reliable ally of the United States. He also praised Peru as the «envy» of the world for its impressive economic growth. US officials spare no effort singing praises to the President Humala. Being grateful, he, in his turn, cooperates with Obama to facilitate the accomplishment of the geopolitical mission, which envisages Peru as a US foothold in Latin America. The Humala’s policy aimed at betrayal of national interests has evoked growing indignation in the country. In some cases, people throw stones and eggs at the President chanting the word «traitor».

The intensification of the Pentagon and US special services activities in the country further spurred the hostility towards the President. In early September, thousands of Peruvians hit the streets to protest the «friendly» port call of US aircraft carrier George Washington. They demanded to put an end to military cooperation with the United States. The action culminated in burning a US flag outside the United States’ embassy. Many people recall that seven years ago, when the President led the Peruvian opposition, Humala expressed concern over US permanent military presence in the country and the plans to build more facilities for the United States armed forces. Those days he slammed the new rules introduced to allow foreign military presence on Peruvian soil. Humala was angry with the US plans to expand Plan Colombia throughout the whole region. The plan envisaged getting a hold of strategic areas in Amazonia to put the neighboring countries, including Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia under control. Thus, step by step the United States was trying to transform Peru into its «strategic partner».

Today, the Peruvian President has drastically changed his policy implementing the very same ideas of his predecessor Alan Garcia that he used to call «unpatriotic». The leadership of Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and other countries of the region openly express concern: Humala has widely opened the door to let the United States get a foothold in Amazonia. There are US military bases in Peru: Iquitos, Nanay and St. Lucia. According to Argentinian journalist Atilio Borón, there are six more US secret military facilities used to fight drug trafficking and terrorism. This estimate excludes three Peruvian port cities permanently used by the US Fourth Fleet.

Marines and US special services operatives use the facilities located in the valleys of Apurímac and Ene rivers. The US propaganda paints this region as a hotbed of instability known for criminal activities allegedly conducted by drug cartels, separate formations of Sendero Luminoso (once a powerful guerilla group) and illegal gold miners. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) statistics, hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and other drugs are daily exported from Amazonia to the United States and Europe.

The Peruvian army and national police have always been capable to counter drug trafficking on their own, but the US propaganda effort has been too strong. Peru has capitulated and agreed that Amazonia is the region the real threat emanates from. That’s how the United States has joined the operations against terrorism and drug trafficking in Peru.

It’s really surprising that the intensive activities of the United States in Peruvian Amazonia have not brought any tangible achievements over the last ten years. The US presence is growing, but the results are dubious: the cocaine produced in Peru is frequently confiscated in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador. The US Drug Enforcement Agency and State Department use the successes achieved by «populist regimes» in the fight against drug trafficking only to blame them for inefficiency!

At the same time, the United States spares no compliments for Peru. The US Ambassador to Peru Brian A. Nichols has stated recently that the government of Humala leads the fight against drug trafficking in Latin America. According to him, «Last year was a landmark year, several records were broken for coca leaf eradication, interdiction of chemical inputs, and control of cocaine ready for export, so Peru is the leader in the region», he told Andina news agency. The ambassador said 25,000 hectares have been cleared so far this year and he believes that the last year’s figures would be surpassed. «We fervently hope we will break the record of 31,000 hectares eradicated last year», he affirmed. Nichols said the United States analyzes the new scenario and will submit an opinion later. He reaffirmed that both nations are «allies and friends» against drug trafficking. «Peru is firmly committed to act not only within its territory, but at the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations (UN)», he pointed out. This way ambassador Nichols confirmed that Humala should unconditionally support the US international stance on the problem of drug trafficking.

Experts note that the Pentagon gives priority to small military facilities in Peru because they can hardly be associated with full-fledged forward operating bases. Americans call them cooperative security locations (CSL) or forward operating sites (FOS). These facilities are often used to provide cover for the activities of Central Intelligence Agency, US military intelligence and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Formally these sites built by the US Army engineering units are under the operational control of Peruvian armed forces. In reality, the United States calls the shots. The CSL and FOS sites could be transformed into large operating bases, if need be. The sites are limited in size. It allows the military and political leadership of Peru to negate the obvious fact of US military presence in the country.

The foreign ministries of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia believe that the strengthening of the US military presence in Amazonia is a threat to their national security. The number of US military instructors is growing and more arms are transported to the country under the pretext of the need to fight drug trafficking. The intelligence gathering activities have been intensified. The Brazilian part of Amazonia has become the key target for the US special services. After the spying scandal, when it was revealed that Brazil’s top leadership was under US surveillance, the United States started to increasingly use the opportunities provided by the «regional ally» to monitor the events in that country. 

Today Brazil is going through a serious social and economic crisis. The Obama administration has toughened its policy towards the government of Dilma Rousseff. The US efforts to make the Brazilian President resign with the help of thoroughly orchestrated «protests» of opposition and agents of non-government organizations have failed. It’s worth to note that the United States tried to revive the debates on «the problems of Amazonia» against the background of protests. The initial thesis was evident: it’s impossible to cope with the «destructive tendencies» in the region without the United States.

USS George Washington visited Peru in early October. The real mission of the aircraft strike group will hardly become known in the near future. No one in Peru can say for sure what kinds of personnel and equipment were transported by the aircraft carrier to the military sites in Amazonia. This issue is widely discussed by Peruvian media. Media networks offer different versions, including the Pentagon’s plans to prepare back up facilities to disperse the nuclear weapons in case of world war. No one of those who have participated in the discussions has expressed any doubt that the Pentagon can undertake such a hazardous adventure. And that is the most disturbing fact.

Foto: RT