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FTR#1177 The Jakarta Method in Latin America

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ March 29, 2021Post a comment Email This Post Email This Post Print This Post Print This Post
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FTR #1177 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: With the esca­lat­ing rhetoric and impo­si­tion of sanc­tions for Chi­na’s alleged geno­cide against the Uighurs in Xin­jiang province, it is valu­able to recall Amer­i­can-assist­ed atroc­i­ties dur­ing the Cold War.

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have high­light­ed whole­sale slaugh­ter in Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, imple­ment­ed by fas­cists oper­at­ing in an inter­na­tion­al con­stel­la­tion coa­lesc­ing around the USA.

That con­stel­la­tion was termed the Inter­na­tion­al Fascista (or “Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al”) by Hen­rik Krueger, and is detailed in, among oth­er pro­grams, AFA #‘s 4, 19, and 22.

In addi­tion, the role of the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League in the death squad activ­i­ty in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca was set forth in AFA #15. 

In FTR#839, we pre­sent­ed Peter Lev­en­da’s account of his vis­it to Colo­nia Dig­nidad in Chile–a Nazi encamp­ment that served as an oper­a­tional epi­cen­ter for Oper­a­tion Con­dor, a CIA-assist­ed mass mur­der con­sor­tium com­posed of Latin Amer­i­can nations.

The essence of the Con­dor pro­gram was summed up by Argen­tin­ian Gen­er­al Anto­nio Domin­go. (“Sub­ver­sives” were killed for real or alleged: com­mu­nism, athe­ism, Jew­ish­ness or union activ­i­ties.) “. . . . First, we will kill all the sub­ver­sives, then we will kill all of their col­lab­o­ra­tors, then those who sym­pa­thize with the sub­ver­sives, then we kill those that remain indif­fer­ent, and final­ly we kill the timid. . . .”

A very, very impor­tant and superbly writ­ten and doc­u­ment­ed new book–The Jakar­ta Method: Wash­ing­ton’s Anti­com­mu­nist Cru­sade & the Mass Mur­der Pro­gram that Shaped Our World by Vin­cent Bevins–chron­i­cles the slaugh­ter that the U.S. imple­ment­ed in the devel­op­ing world dur­ing the Cold War.

Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read the book.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Review of the oper­a­tional fun­da­men­tals of Oper­a­tion Con­dor; the role of Colo­nia Dig­nidad as an epi­cen­ter of Con­dor activ­i­ties; the 1976 Argen­tin­ian coup; the so-called “Dirty War” that fol­lowed that coup; the role in the Dirty War of Argen­tin­ian mem­bers of the P‑2 Lodge (Admi­ral Emilio Massera, Jose Lopez Rega); the assis­tance giv­en by Ford Motor Com­pa­ny and Citibank in the mur­der of Argen­tin­ian union orga­niz­ers; col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Argen­tin­ian and oth­er Con­dor par­tic­i­pants with the fas­cist “Stay Behind” armies set up by Frank Wis­ner; the assas­si­na­tion of Orlan­do Lete­lier in Wash­ing­ton D.C.; The close rela­tion­ship between the coun­tries of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca; the accel­er­a­tion in the 1960’s of the ter­ror that had gripped Guatemala since the 1954 over­throw of Jacobo Arbenz; how the elim­i­na­tion of peace­ful, pro-democ­ra­cy activists and activism fed the growth of gueril­la move­ments; the birth of the “White Hand” death squad; assis­tance giv­en to the death squads by U.S. Green Berets; the prac­tice of “dis­ap­pear­ing” per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies or dis­si­dents to ter­ror­ize their asso­ciates; the ini­ti­a­tion of whole­sale exter­mi­na­tion of large pop­u­la­tions of indige­nous peo­ple; the ner­vous­ness and inse­cu­ri­ty felt by the Guatemalan dic­ta­tor­ship fol­low­ing the ascent of the San­din­istas in Nicaragua; Pres­i­dent Carter’s tamp­ing down of U.S. assis­tance to Cen­tral Amer­i­can dic­ta­tor­ships; the piv­ot­ing of those dic­ta­tor­ships to gain­ing mil­i­tary aid and train­ing from Israel and Tai­wan; the train­ing of the Con­tra rebels in Nicaragua by Argen­tine mil­i­tary death squad vet­er­ans; net­work­ing of Cen­tral Amer­i­can death squad per­son­nel with Con­dor oper­a­tives in Franco’s Spain; Rober­to D’Aubisson’s ascent in El Sal­vador; the assas­si­na­tion of Sal­vado­ran Arch­bish­op Romero; the mas­sacre of over 900 res­i­dents of the El Sal­vado­ran vil­lage of El Mozote; Ronald Reagan’s appoint­ment of Elliot Abrams as Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Human Rights; Abrams’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of The New York Times’ reportage on the El Mozote as “com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da;” the role of The School of the Amer­i­c­as in the train­ing of death squads; the mil­i­tary coup that brought Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Efrain Rios Montt to pow­er in Guatemala; Rios Montt’s spe­cial affin­i­ty with Ronald Rea­gan; Rios Montt’s imple­men­ta­tion of so-called “Mod­el Vil­lages;” the sys­tem­at­ic destruc­tion of the Guatemalan town of Ilom—part of the geno­ci­dal pro­gram enact­ed by the Guatemalan gov­ern­ment against the indige­nous Mayan pop­u­la­tion (termed geno­cide by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al).

The pro­gram con­cludes with a pre­sen­ta­tion of the points of view of the Guatemalan sur­vivors of the liq­ui­da­tion cam­paigns, per­haps most expres­sive­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed by one Domin­go: “ . . . . I asked them what com­mu­nism was. Domin­go, the own­er of the bus, had this answer: ‘Well, they said they were com­mu­nists and com­mu­nists were dan­ger­ous. But actu­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment are the ones who did all the killing. So if any­one was dan­ger­ous, if any­one was ‘com­mu­nist,’ it must be them. . . .’”

1.  The Jakar­ta Method: Washington’s Anti­com­mu­nist Cru­sade & The Mass Mur­der Pro­gram that Shaped Our World by Vin­cent Bevins; Pub­lic Affairs Books [HC]; Copy­right 2020 by Vin­cent Bevins; ISBN 978–1‑5417–4240‑6; pp. 214–216.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Review of the oper­a­tional fun­da­men­tals of Oper­a­tion Con­dor; the role of Colo­nia Dig­nidad as an epi­cen­ter of Con­dor activ­i­ties; the 1976 Argen­tin­ian coup; the so-called “Dirty War” that fol­lowed that coup; the role in the Dirty War of Argen­tin­ian mem­bers of the P‑2 Lodge (Admi­ral Emilio Massera, Jose Lopez Rega); the assis­tance giv­en by Ford Motor Com­pa­ny and Citibank in the mur­der of Argen­tin­ian union orga­niz­ers; col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Argen­tin­ian and oth­er Con­dor par­tic­i­pants with the fas­cist “Stay Behind” armies set up by Frank Wis­ner; the assas­si­na­tion of Orlan­do Lete­lier in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

The essence of the Argen­tin­ian mur­der pro­gram was summed up by Gen­er­al Anto­nio Domin­go. (“Sub­ver­sives” were killed for real or alleged: com­mu­nism, athe­ism, Jew­ish­ness or union activ­i­ties.) “. . . . First, we will kill all the sub­ver­sives, then we will kill all of their col­lab­o­ra­tors, then those who sym­pa­thize with the sub­ver­sives, then we kill those that remain indif­fer­ent, and final­ly we kill the timid. . . .”

 2.  The Jakar­ta Method: Washington’s Anti­com­mu­nist Cru­sade & The Mass Mur­der Pro­gram that Shaped Our World by Vin­cent Bevins; Pub­lic Affairs Books [HC]; Copy­right 2020 by Vin­cent Bevins; ISBN 978–1‑5417–4240‑6; pp. 217–220.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The close rela­tion­ship between the coun­tries of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca; the accel­er­a­tion in the 1960’s of the ter­ror that had gripped Guatemala since the 1954 over­throw of Jacobo Arbenz; how the elim­i­na­tion of peace­ful, pro-democ­ra­cy activists and activism fed the growth of gueril­la move­ments; the birth of the “White Hand” death squad; assis­tance giv­en to the death squads by U.S. Green Berets; the prac­tice of “dis­ap­pear­ing” per­ceived polit­i­cal ene­mies or dis­si­dents to ter­ror­ize their asso­ciates; the ini­ti­a­tion of whole­sale exter­mi­na­tion of large pop­u­la­tions of indige­nous peo­ple; the ner­vous­ness and inse­cu­ri­ty felt by the Guatemalan dic­ta­tor­ship fol­low­ing the ascent of the San­din­istas in Nicaragua.

3.   The Jakar­ta Method: Washington’s Anti­com­mu­nist Cru­sade & The Mass Mur­der Pro­gram that Shaped Our World by Vin­cent Bevins; Pub­lic Affairs Books [HC]; Copy­right 2020 by Vin­cent Bevins; ISBN 978–1‑5417–4240‑6; pp. 221–228.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Pres­i­dent Carter’s tamp­ing down of U.S. assis­tance to Cen­tral Amer­i­can dic­ta­tor­ships; the piv­ot­ing of those dic­ta­tor­ships to gain­ing mil­i­tary aid and train­ing from Israel and Tai­wan; the train­ing of the Con­tra rebels in Nicaragua by Argen­tine mil­i­tary death squad vet­er­ans; net­work­ing of Cen­tral Amer­i­can death squad per­son­nel with Con­dor oper­a­tives in Franco’s Spain; Rober­to D’Aubisson’s ascent in El Sal­vador; the assas­si­na­tion of Sal­vado­ran Arch­bish­op Romero; the mas­sacre of over 900 res­i­dents of the El Sal­vado­ran vil­lage of El Mozote; Ronald Reagan’s appoint­ment of Elliot Abrams as Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Human Rights; Abrams’ char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of The New York Times’ reportage on the El Mozote as “com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da;” the role of The School of the Amer­i­c­as in the train­ing of death squads; the mil­i­tary coup that brought Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Efrain Rios Montt to pow­er in Guatemala; Rios Montt’s spe­cial affin­i­ty with Ronald Rea­gan; Rios Montt’s imple­men­ta­tion of so-called “Mod­el Vil­lages;” the sys­tem­at­ic destruc­tion of the Guatemalan town of Ilom—part of the geno­ci­dal pro­gram enact­ed by the Guatemalan gov­ern­ment against the indige­nous Mayan pop­u­la­tion (termed geno­cide by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al).

 4. The Jakar­ta Method: Washington’s Anti­com­mu­nist Cru­sade & The Mass Mur­der Pro­gram that Shaped Our World by Vin­cent Bevins; Pub­lic Affairs Books [HC]; Copy­right 2020 by Vin­cent Bevins; ISBN 978–1‑5417–4240‑6; p. 257.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The points of view of the Guatemalan sur­vivors of the liq­ui­da­tion cam­paigns, per­haps most expres­sive­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed by one Domin­go: “ . . . . I asked them what com­mu­nism was. Domin­go, the own­er of the bus, had this answer: ‘Well, they said they were com­mu­nists and com­mu­nists were dan­ger­ous. But actu­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment are the ones who did all the killing. So if any­one was dan­ger­ous, if any­one was ‘com­mu­nist,’ it must be them. . . .’”

 

 

 

Discussion

5 comments for “FTR#1177 The Jakarta Method in Latin America”

  1. It’s look­ing like anoth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­try could be in store for anoth­er round of the “Jakar­ta Method”:

    Peru is head­ing towards a runoff in its pres­i­den­tial elec­tion fol­low­ing the sur­prise first place fin­ish of Pedro Castil­lo, the left­ist can­di­date that was large­ly ignored by the nation­al media until a week before the elec­tion. Castil­lo was run­ning at 6 per­cent in the polls a week before the elec­tion and fin­ished with over 18 per­cent of the vote. So Castil­lo expe­ri­enced a remark­able last minute surge, with Keiko Fuji­mori, the right-wing daugh­ter of dis­graced for­mer pres­i­dent Alber­to Fuji­mori, appear­ing to come in sec­ond place. Fuji­mori also hap­pened to score the high­est neg­a­tives in the race, with 65% of vot­ers hold­ing a neg­a­tive view of her in a recent poll. And yet it sounds like this runoff could be the best chance the deeply unpop­u­lar Fuji­mori has for win­ning the pres­i­den­cy, with the fear of left­ism dri­ving vot­ers who would oth­er­wise nev­er con­sid­er anoth­er vote for a Fuji­mori. Might those deep-seat­ed fears of a left­ist pres­i­dent be shared by oth­er gov­ern­ments in the region? The US per­haps? We’ll see. But that’s the new sit­u­a­tion that just erupt­ed in Peru: democ­ra­cy is once again threat­en­ing to get in the way of the far right’s grip on Latin Amer­i­ca and some­thing will have to be done about it:

    The New York Times

    Peru Elec­tion for the 5th Pres­i­dent in 5 Years Goes to Runoff

    Pedro Castil­lo, a far-left for­mer union activist and teacher, is lead­ing, accord­ing to elec­tion offi­cials.

    By Mitra Taj
    April 12, 2021

    LIMA, Peru — Peru’s pres­i­den­tial elec­tion is head­ed for a runoff, with Pedro Castil­lo, a far-left for­mer union activist and teacher, in the lead, accord­ing to data released Mon­day by the country’s elec­toral body.

    He will like­ly face a right-wing can­di­date in a sec­ond round of vot­ing in June.

    Mr. Castil­lo, a social con­ser­v­a­tive, was one of 18 can­di­dates, and tapped into a wave of anti-estab­lish­ment sen­ti­ment in an elec­tion char­ac­ter­ized by wide­spread frus­tra­tion with the polit­i­cal sys­tem.

    He is like­ly head­ed into a runoff with Keiko Fuji­mori, the daugh­ter of the jailed for­mer author­i­tar­i­an leader Alber­to Fuji­mori, accord­ing to a sur­vey of elec­toral tal­lies by the firm Ipsos for a local tele­vi­sion chan­nel. Trail­ing behind Ms. Fuji­mori is an ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive, Rafael López Alia­ga.

    Either pair­ing would set the stage for a high­ly polar­ized sec­ond-round elec­tion, the results of which could steer the coun­try in rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tions.

    “This is the vote of a coun­try tired, depressed, frus­trat­ed, and also fed up,” Fer­nan­do Tues­ta, a Peru­vian polit­i­cal ana­lyst, said in a state­ment on Mon­day.

    The elec­tion comes at a low point for Peru. Over the last five years, the coun­try cycled through four pres­i­dents and two Con­gress­es and wit­nessed repeat­ed clash­es between the leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive branch­es.

    Three for­mer pres­i­dents have spent time in jail dur­ing bribery inves­ti­ga­tions, includ­ing one can­di­date in this year’s elec­tion; a fourth killed him­self to avoid arrest; and a fifth, Martín Viz­car­ra, one of the most pop­u­lar recent lead­ers, was impeached in Novem­ber.

    His replace­ment, who last­ed less than a week in office, is under inves­ti­ga­tion in con­nec­tion with the fatal shoot­ings of two young men at protests, which led to his res­ig­na­tion.

    With 84 per­cent of the votes tal­lied, Mr. Castil­lo was lead­ing with 18.5 per­cent of the vote on Mon­day after­noon, more than five points ahead of his clos­est rival.

    Mr. Castil­lo, 51, wants to nation­al­ize the country’s nat­ur­al resources to help pay for invest­ments in health care and edu­ca­tion; promis­es to have a top court elect­ed by pop­u­lar man­date; and is propos­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion to favor ordi­nary Peru­vians and not busi­ness inter­ests.

    In the run-up to the elec­tion, Mr. Castil­lo drew large crowds in rur­al towns, but did not receive broad cov­er­age from nation­al media out­lets until polls showed him surg­ing to around 6 per­cent a week before the elec­tion.

    He cel­e­brat­ed his sur­prise vic­to­ry from the pover­ty-strick­en high­land region of Caja­mar­ca, where as a youth he was part of the peas­ant secu­ri­ty patrol that enforces local laws and cus­toms.

    “The blind­fold has just been tak­en off the eyes of the Peru­vian peo­ple,” Mr. Castil­lo told throngs of sup­port­ers in Caja­mar­ca on Sun­day night, wear­ing the wide-brimmed hat of farm­ers in the region.

    “We’re often told that only polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ists, eru­dite politi­cians, those with grand degrees can gov­ern a coun­try,” he said. “They’ve had time enough.”

    Ms. Fuji­mori, who is mak­ing her third bid for pres­i­dent, has been jailed three times in recent years in con­nec­tion with an ongo­ing mon­ey laun­der­ing probe. In this elec­tion, she vowed to stop pan­dem­ic lock­downs and crack down on crime.

    ...

    ———–

    “Peru Elec­tion for the 5th Pres­i­dent in 5 Years Goes to Runoff” by Mitra Taj; The New York Times; 04/12/2021

    “Mr. Castil­lo, 51, wants to nation­al­ize the country’s nat­ur­al resources to help pay for invest­ments in health care and edu­ca­tion; promis­es to have a top court elect­ed by pop­u­lar man­date; and is propos­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion to favor ordi­nary Peru­vians and not busi­ness inter­ests.”

    The guy wants to nation­al­ize the coun­try’s nat­ur­al resources to help pay for invest­ments in health care and edu­ca­tion. He obvi­ous­ly presents a mor­tal threat to the soci­ety. At least that’s how Castil­lo’s agen­da is undoubt­ed­ly going to be per­ceived in gov­ern­ment offices and cor­po­rate board­rooms around the world. Some­thing will have to be done to pre­vent his vic­to­ry:

    ...
    With 84 per­cent of the votes tal­lied, Mr. Castil­lo was lead­ing with 18.5 per­cent of the vote on Mon­day after­noon, more than five points ahead of his clos­est rival.

    ...

    In the run-up to the elec­tion, Mr. Castil­lo drew large crowds in rur­al towns, but did not receive broad cov­er­age from nation­al media out­lets until polls showed him surg­ing to around 6 per­cent a week before the elec­tion.

    He cel­e­brat­ed his sur­prise vic­to­ry from the pover­ty-strick­en high­land region of Caja­mar­ca, where as a youth he was part of the peas­ant secu­ri­ty patrol that enforces local laws and cus­toms.
    ...

    A whole lot of Peru­vians obvi­ous­ly liked what they saw in Castil­lo. His sup­port tripled in the last week of the cam­paign. And you can’t say his sup­port was root­ed in pro­gres­sive social poli­cies. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, Castil­lo is actu­al­ly a social con­ser­v­a­tive who oppos­es abor­tion, same-sex mar­riage, and gen­der per­spec­tive at school, which adds some con­text to his work as a youth as part of the peas­ant secu­ri­ty patrol that enforces local laws and cus­toms.

    It’s part of what’s going to make the inevitable full-spec­trum attacks on Castil­lo so inter­est­ing: he does­n’t fit into the stan­dard far right cook­ie-cut­ter nar­ra­tive that’s been used to such suc­cess else­where that has relied on gross mis­char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of pro­gres­sive social val­ues. Like in Brazil, where Jair Bol­sonaro’s far right sup­port­ers suc­ceed­ed in shoring up Bol­sonaro’s sup­port through vicious social media cam­paigns focused equat­ing left-wing poli­cies to some sort of devi­ous agen­da of fem­i­nism and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. The pol­i­tics of hate works across class. Stud­ies even found that the army of Bol­sonaro sup­port­ers broke down into dif­fer­ent broad cat­e­gories, that includ­ed the “social suprema­cists” who cared about noth­ing Bol­sonaro did as long as he was attack­ing groups like women and the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. What’s going to hap­pen when the left-wing can­di­date is pure­ly left-wing when it comes to eco­nom­ics and is already deeply social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive? How will Castil­lo’s social con­ser­vatism impact not just the glob­al cam­paign against him but also his sup­port among the elec­torate? It’s not like Fuji­mori’s Pop­u­lar Force Par­ty is friend­ly to the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Instead, it’s look­ing like the polit­i­cal divide is urban vs rur­al and deeply eco­nom­ic in nature, although some of Castil­lo’s sup­port also appears to come from resent of the indige­nous pop­u­la­tions against the Euro­pean-descend­ed pop­u­la­tion of Lima, which going to be a mix of eco­nom­ic and social griev­ances. So it’s look­ing like Peru has a surg­ing left-wing move­ment that could end up defy­ing the kind of polit­i­cal blunt force that’s proven to be effec­tive in past, but it’s not clear those tac­tics will work this time around. New awful tac­tics might be required:

    El Pais

    Peru heads towards pres­i­den­tial runoff after vote gives sur­prise lead to Pedro Castil­lo

    Inés San­taeu­lalia
    Jacque­line Fowks
    Lima — 12 Apr 2021 — 11:19 CDT

    Anoth­er Peru spoke up on Sun­day at the first round of the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion – a Peru that is not made up of sophis­ti­cat­ed cap­i­tal dwellers hooked on Twit­ter, and one that was get­ting very lit­tle atten­tion dur­ing the cam­paign.

    Yet this oth­er Peru has man­aged to push a long-shot can­di­date to the top of the pres­i­den­tial race: the rad­i­cal left-wing school­teacher and union leader Pedro Castil­lo was the most-vot­ed con­tender on Sun­day with 18.1% of the votes, accord­ing to an ear­ly quick count by a polling firm whose results were released in the ear­ly hours of Mon­day.

    The same poll placed the con­ser­v­a­tive Keiko Fuji­mori, daugh­ter of for­mer pres­i­dent Alber­to Fuji­mori, in sec­ond place with 14,5% of the votes. If these fig­ures are con­firmed, the coun­try will head towards a June runoff between two can­di­dates whose chances seemed slim just a few weeks ago. Anoth­er con­ser­v­a­tive nom­i­nee, Her­nan­do de Soto, is close on Fujimori’s heels for sec­ond spot and could over­take her by the time the offi­cial count is over.

    Castil­lo rode a horse to his vot­ing sta­tion in Cho­ta (Caja­mar­ca), locat­ed 1,000 kilo­me­ters from Lima. In the cap­i­tal, this can­di­date comes across as an out­landish fig­ure, but in the cen­tral and south­ern regions of the coun­try there is sig­nif­i­cant sup­port for him. This is reflect­ed in the vot­ing: accord­ing to the poll, bare­ly 5% of vot­ers in Lima – which is home to a quar­ter of Peru’s 32.5 mil­lion cit­i­zens – backed Castillo’s Perú Libre (Free Peru) par­ty. But in some of the country’s poor­est regions, sup­port was in excess of 50%.

    Lima against the regions

    The runoff will thus become a bat­tle between Lima and the regions. “The peo­ple are wise, the peo­ple under­stand, I am com­mit­ted to the peo­ple who came out today to the polls to reflect this demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly,” said Castil­lo in state­ments to reporters after the ear­ly count was released. Hun­dreds of peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed all around him as though the coro­n­avirus were a thing of the past.

    The vote has once again evi­denced the pro­found ter­ri­to­r­i­al and social cleav­ages in Peru. “I am very anx­ious about the fact that a far-left can­di­date might go to the runoff,” said Julia Val­divia, 34, stand­ing out­side a school in the upper-class neigh­bor­hood of Miraflo­res in Lima. “If that hap­pens and Keiko Fuji­mori is the oth­er can­di­date, I’ll be forced to vote for her, although I’ve nev­er want­ed to do that. But she would not sink Peru into stag­na­tion, while Castil­lo is going to destroy my coun­try.”

    Some 23 kilo­me­ters from there, in the dis­trict of Vil­la El Sal­vador, Ormil­da Yamaní stood in line with an emp­ty oxy­gen bot­tle in her hands out­side one of the city’s sale points. Her grand­moth­er, who caught Covid-19 three weeks ago, has such low sat­u­ra­tion in the blood that she requires addi­tion­al oxy­gen 24 hours a day. Yamaní comes here twice a day to fill up the bot­tle. “Some­times I arrive at 7pm and I don’t get to the front of the line before 10am,” she explained.

    On Sun­day, between com­ings and goings with the heavy bot­tle, she found some time to go vote for Castil­lo. “I think he has good pro­pos­als for edu­ca­tion,” she said. The sus­pen­sion of in-per­son class­es since March 2020 due to the pan­dem­ic has most­ly affect­ed low-income fam­i­lies.

    A few meters from this spot, in the heart of this work­ing-class dis­trict of the cap­i­tal, dozens of peo­ple stood in line on Sun­day to vote at the pub­lic school Príncipe de Asturias. María, a 36-year-old house­wife, said she vot­ed “for who­ev­er” because no can­di­date ful­ly con­vinced her. Jorge, 29, who works in cell­phone sales, vot­ed for the con­ser­v­a­tive Her­nan­do de Soto “because of his knowl­edge and because he said that the price of [the Covid] vac­cine would be acces­si­ble for those who don’t have it,” allud­ing to De Soto’s pro­pos­al to make the pri­vate sec­tor pur­chase dos­es.

    ...

    Peru­vians went to vote at the height of the pan­dem­ic in that coun­try, which is see­ing a peak of over 380 dai­ly deaths accord­ing to the offi­cial count, although this fig­ure prob­a­bly does not take into account peo­ple like Egusquiza’s cousin, who died at home. The dri­ver said he was going to vote but that he was plan­ning to delib­er­ate­ly check too many box­es in order to inval­i­date his bal­lot.

    The polit­i­cal sci­en­tist José Incio explained in a tele­phone inter­view that in such a frag­ment­ed elec­tion, Pedro Castil­lo is attract­ing vot­ers “who are not adverse to risk, who want some­thing dif­fer­ent and who hope to find a solu­tion to spe­cif­ic needs that the cur­rent sys­tem has failed to help them out with.” Incio also believes Castillo’s sucess rests on his defense of a dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ty for Peru than the one reflect­ed in the media. “If an alien land­ed in Peru right now and only watched tele­vi­sion, it might infer that all Peru­vians look like the ones on TV, who all seem half-Euro­pean, but that is not the case,” he notes.

    Castil­lo vs Fuji­mori?

    If the results of the quick count are con­firmed, Keiko Fuji­mori would go on to the runoff for the third elec­tion in a row. In 2011 she was defeat­ed by Ollan­ta Humala, and in 2016 by Pedro Pablo Kuczyn­s­ki. She is also the most wide­ly reject­ed can­di­date among vot­ers, accord­ing to the polls, which show a rejec­tion rate of 65% for her.

    But a sur­prise left-wing con­tender like Castil­lo could chan­nel all the con­ser­v­a­tive votes towards her, giv­ing Fuji­mori a fresh oppor­tu­ni­ty at a del­i­cate time as she bat­tles cor­rup­tion charges – pros­e­cu­tors want her to serve 30 years in prison for mon­ey laun­der­ing. After a high­ly frag­ment­ed vote in which none of the can­di­dates attract­ed 20% of the bal­lots, that small win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty could be just enough to turn Fuji­mori into the next pres­i­dent of Peru in June.

    Pedro Castil­lo Ter­rones, 51, was born in Caja­mar­ca, one of the poor­est regions of Peru despite being home to South America’s largest gold mine. A leader of a teach­ers’ union, since 1995 he has also been a school­teacher at School 10465, locat­ed in the vil­lage of Puña, in the north­ern Cho­ta province.

    A rad­i­cal left­ist, Castil­lo has pledged to replace the 1993 Con­sti­tu­tion, reg­u­late the media to “put an end to junk TV” and raise bud­get allo­ca­tions for edu­ca­tion and health­care. A social con­ser­v­a­tive, he has posi­tioned him­self against abor­tion, same-sex mar­riage, euthana­sia and gen­der per­spec­tive at school.

    ———–

    “Peru heads towards pres­i­den­tial runoff after vote gives sur­prise lead to Pedro Castil­lo” by Inés San­taeu­lalia and Jacque­line Fowks; El Pais; 04/12/2021

    “Castil­lo rode a horse to his vot­ing sta­tion in Cho­ta (Caja­mar­ca), locat­ed 1,000 kilo­me­ters from Lima. In the cap­i­tal, this can­di­date comes across as an out­landish fig­ure, but in the cen­tral and south­ern regions of the coun­try there is sig­nif­i­cant sup­port for him. This is reflect­ed in the vot­ing: accord­ing to the poll, bare­ly 5% of vot­ers in Lima – which is home to a quar­ter of Peru’s 32.5 mil­lion cit­i­zens – backed Castillo’s Perú Libre (Free Peru) par­ty. But in some of the country’s poor­est regions, sup­port was in excess of 50%.”

    Will Castil­lo man­age to win the pres­i­den­cy with almost no sup­port in Lima? It’s look­ing pos­si­ble. But that’s almost why it’s pos­si­ble the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble could hap­pen too: the most unpop­u­lar can­di­date in the race, Kieko Fuji­mori, just might win. Although note one of the oth­er can­di­dates who came in close behind Fuji­mori: Her­nan­do de Soto, the pri­va­ti­za­tion king. It’s a reminder that part of the rea­son Castil­lo came in first place is because the far right was split­ting the vote:

    ...
    The same poll placed the con­ser­v­a­tive Keiko Fuji­mori, daugh­ter of for­mer pres­i­dent Alber­to Fuji­mori, in sec­ond place with 14,5% of the votes. If these fig­ures are con­firmed, the coun­try will head towards a June runoff between two can­di­dates whose chances seemed slim just a few weeks ago. Anoth­er con­ser­v­a­tive nom­i­nee, Her­nan­do de Soto, is close on Fujimori’s heels for sec­ond spot and could over­take her by the time the offi­cial count is over.

    ...

    The vote has once again evi­denced the pro­found ter­ri­to­r­i­al and social cleav­ages in Peru. “I am very anx­ious about the fact that a far-left can­di­date might go to the runoff,” said Julia Val­divia, 34, stand­ing out­side a school in the upper-class neigh­bor­hood of Miraflo­res in Lima. “If that hap­pens and Keiko Fuji­mori is the oth­er can­di­date, I’ll be forced to vote for her, although I’ve nev­er want­ed to do that. But she would not sink Peru into stag­na­tion, while Castil­lo is going to destroy my coun­try.”

    ...

    If the results of the quick count are con­firmed, Keiko Fuji­mori would go on to the runoff for the third elec­tion in a row. In 2011 she was defeat­ed by Ollan­ta Humala, and in 2016 by Pedro Pablo Kuczyn­s­ki. She is also the most wide­ly reject­ed can­di­date among vot­ers, accord­ing to the polls, which show a rejec­tion rate of 65% for her.

    But a sur­prise left-wing con­tender like Castil­lo could chan­nel all the con­ser­v­a­tive votes towards her, giv­ing Fuji­mori a fresh oppor­tu­ni­ty at a del­i­cate time as she bat­tles cor­rup­tion charges – pros­e­cu­tors want her to serve 30 years in prison for mon­ey laun­der­ing. After a high­ly frag­ment­ed vote in which none of the can­di­dates attract­ed 20% of the bal­lots, that small win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty could be just enough to turn Fuji­mori into the next pres­i­dent of Peru in June.
    ...

    But if Fuji­mori is going to over­come that deep unpop­u­lar­i­ty, fear is her only real tool. And fan­ning the flames of hate-filled fears of fem­i­nism and LGBTQ rights is the kind of proven tac­tic we would nor­mal­ly expect some­one like Fuji­mori to deploy at this point. But that’s not real­ly an option against Castil­lo. The ‘cul­tur­al Marx­ism’ rhetor­i­cal assaults we’ve come to expect are going to have to be replaced with some­thing new. Or per­haps some­thing old: pure ‘com­mu­nism’ fear-mon­ger­ing about eco­nom­ics, because that’s all they’re going to have to work with. Castil­lo is a social right-winger:

    ...
    Pedro Castil­lo Ter­rones, 51, was born in Caja­mar­ca, one of the poor­est regions of Peru despite being home to South America’s largest gold mine. A leader of a teach­ers’ union, since 1995 he has also been a school­teacher at School 10465, locat­ed in the vil­lage of Puña, in the north­ern Cho­ta province.

    A rad­i­cal left­ist, Castil­lo has pledged to replace the 1993 Con­sti­tu­tion, reg­u­late the media to “put an end to junk TV” and raise bud­get allo­ca­tions for edu­ca­tion and health­care. A social con­ser­v­a­tive, he has posi­tioned him­self against abor­tion, same-sex mar­riage, euthana­sia and gen­der per­spec­tive at school.
    ...

    And that’s all part of what makes the elec­tion results in Peru so inter­est­ing. From an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, Castil­lo push­es all the but­tons of the dom­i­nant eco­nom­ic inter­est in that coun­try. Eco­nom­ic inter­ests that obvi­ous­ly aren’t going to be exclu­sive­ly Peru­vian. When a resource-rich coun­try like Peru looks like its about to elect some­one threat­en­ing to nation­al­ize those resources, peo­ple take notice all around the world. Very pow­er­ful peo­ple. All sorts of plans are prob­a­bly being hatched right now to help ensure Castil­lo does­n’t win the run-off.

    And yet the con­tem­po­rary right-wing polit­i­cal play­book all around the world has relied on focus­ing a social issues like abor­tion or LGBTQ rights in order to win over the sup­port of peo­ple who, from an eco­nom­ic per­spec­tive, have no inter­est in sup­port­ing the poli­cies of far right oli­garchs. The jux­ta­po­si­tion of social con­ser­vatism to social pro­gres­sivism has been a proven vital com­po­nent to the poten­tial suc­cess of right-wing politi­cians. But that play­book does­n’t apply in this sit­u­a­tion. What will the glob­al oli­garchy come up with to snuff this out? We’ll see, but some inno­va­tion in the polit­i­cal dark arts — dark arts that can con­vince a pop­u­lace to repeat­ed­ly slit its own throat — may be required.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 14, 2021, 3:22 pm

  2. Pres­i­dent Biden is sched­uled to give his first address to con­gress tonight. It’s a US tra­di­tion that has tak­en on a new lev­el of sym­bol­ic rel­e­vance fol­low­ing the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion.

    And Biden’s speech, regard­less of its con­tent, will undoubt­ed­ly be fol­lowed by what could be con­sid­ered an infor­mal tra­di­tion for con­tem­poary Amer­i­ca: days of howl­ing from right-wing media about how Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion is actu­al­ly a secret­ly ani­mat­ed by Marx­ist ambi­tions to cap­ture and trans­form soci­ety.

    So it’s worth not­ing that, at this very moment, Peru actu­al­ly is expe­ri­enc­ing what could be con­sid­ered a gen­uine swing to the far left. Recall how recent polls showed social­ist can­di­date Pedro Castil­lo surg­ing from almost no sup­port into the lead posi­tion with over 18% sup­port. Well, that sup­port keeps surg­ing and Castil­lo’s lead has grown so large in recent weeks that his vic­to­ry is look­ing like a fore­gone con­clu­sion.

    Keep in mind that Castil­lo was wide­ly seen as the can­di­date who would be open to nation­al­iz­ing major nat­ur­al resource-based indus­tries like min­ing. So this sup­port sig­ni­fies what appears to be a very real shift in Peru­vian pub­lic sen­ti­ments, at least when it comes to the ‘free mar­ket’ eco­nom­ic poli­cies that have dom­i­nat­ed the coun­try in recent decades.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, while Castil­lo him­self is now push­ing back against the idea that he’s plan­ning on nation­al­iz­ing indus­tries and has been dis­tanc­ing him­self from oth­er well-known South Amer­i­can social­ist lead­ers like Hugo Chavez, recent polls showed over half of Peru­vians who intend to vote for Castil­lo are open to a com­plete over­haul of how Peru’s econ­o­my oper­ates. So if a major­i­ty of the 41% who cur­rent sup­port for Castil­lo want an com­plete over­haul of the econ­o­my, that trans­lates to over 20% of Peru­vians nation­al­ly. But, of course, that 20% pre­sum­ably under­states the lev­el of sup­port for a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic over­haul. How high that sup­port for a com­plete trans­for­ma­tion of how Peru’s econ­o­my oper­ates tru­ly is remains per­haps the biggest ques­tion loom­ing over Peru at this moment. But the fact that the lead­ing can­di­date in this elec­tion even has to deny that he’s plan­ning on nation­al­iz­ing indus­tries in the first place is pret­ty remark­able:

    Reuters

    ‘No Chav­is­mo here’: Peru social­ist can­di­date Castil­lo seeks to calm jit­tery mar­kets

    Mar­co Aquino, Maria Cer­vantes
    April 22, 2021 3:00 PM CDT

    Peru­vian social­ist pres­i­den­tial front-run­ner Pedro Castil­lo assured the Andean nation on Thurs­day he would not nation­al­ize com­pa­nies and would hon­or the rule of law, a move aimed at calm­ing jit­tery mar­kets after a sec­ond opin­ion poll showed his lead grow­ing against right-wing rival Keiko Fuji­mori.

    Castil­lo remains in pole posi­tion to win the pres­i­den­cy in a sec­ond round bal­lot set for June, accord­ing to a Datum Inter­na­tion­al poll that showed him gar­ner­ing 41% against 26% for for­mer law­mak­er and three-time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Fuji­mori.

    Peru’s sprawl­ing min­ing indus­try, the world’s No. 2 cop­per pro­duc­er, has expressed some alarm about Castil­lo, who has gained increas­ing sup­port in Peru’s rur­al hin­ter­lands and has pro­posed to redraft the coun­try’s con­sti­tu­tion. read more

    But Castil­lo blast­ed detrac­tors, telling Radio Exi­tosa they had put words in his mouth. “I com­plete­ly reject those that say that Pedro Castil­lo is going to nation­al­ize,” he said.

    Though the poll revealed a yawn­ing lead for Castil­lo, it also showed that 18% of those sur­veyed had yet to set­tle on a can­di­date, while 15% respond­ed that they would annul their bal­lot or would not vote for any of the can­di­dates.

    Peru’s sol cur­ren­cy plunged to a his­toric low on Thurs­day fol­low­ing the pol­l’s release, then recov­ered slight­ly to 3.755/3.759 to the dol­lar, a 1.24% drop. The Lima stock exchange (.SPBLPSPT) tum­bled 2.2% on Thurs­day.

    Castil­lo’s Peru Libre par­ty has promised in fil­ings to the coun­try’s elec­tions agency that it would nation­al­ize “strate­gic sec­tors” of pro­duc­tion, includ­ing the min­ing sec­tor.

    But Castil­lo reject­ed those pro­pos­als, which he attrib­uted to the par­ty’s left­ist fringe, and brushed off those who liken him to Venezue­lan leader Nico­las Maduro.

    “There is no Chav­is­mo here,” Castil­lo said, refer­ring to the brand of gov­ern­ment installed by Maduro’s social­ist pre­de­ces­sor, Hugo Chavez. He urged Maduro to “first fix his own prob­lems” before attempt­ing to influ­ence Peru. “The one who is going to gov­ern is me,” Castil­lo said.

    ...

    ———–

    “World’No Chav­is­mo here’: Peru social­ist can­di­date Castil­lo seeks to calm jit­tery mar­kets” by Mar­co Aquino and Maria Cer­vantes; Reuters; 04/22/2021

    “Castil­lo remains in pole posi­tion to win the pres­i­den­cy in a sec­ond round bal­lot set for June, accord­ing to a Datum Inter­na­tion­al poll that showed him gar­ner­ing 41% against 26% for for­mer law­mak­er and three-time pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Fuji­mori.”

    It’s going to take a major change in pub­lic sen­ti­ment for Keiko Fuji­mori to pull out a vic­to­ry. And it’s not look­ing like threats that Castil­lo will be the cat­a­lyst for that change. Castil­lo is as pop­u­lar as he is despite every­one expect­ing him to nation­al­ize indus­tries. It’s part of what makes Castil­lo’s denials that he’s going to nation­al­ize indus­tries, despite his par­ty’s open sup­port for such poli­cies, so inter­est­ing in the con­text of this race. As we’ve already seen, Castil­lo is actu­al­ly quite con­ser­v­a­tive when it comes to social issues. And here, we’re see­ing him take a more cen­trist stance on nation­al­iza­tions. So Castil­lo seems to have found a win­ning polit­i­cal for­mu­la at this moment in Peru that involves the promise of sig­nif­i­cant left­ist eco­nom­ic poli­cies while avoid­ing becom­ing the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the right-wing’s car­i­ca­tures of social­ist lead­ers:

    ...
    Castil­lo’s Peru Libre par­ty has promised in fil­ings to the coun­try’s elec­tions agency that it would nation­al­ize “strate­gic sec­tors” of pro­duc­tion, includ­ing the min­ing sec­tor.

    But Castil­lo reject­ed those pro­pos­als, which he attrib­uted to the par­ty’s left­ist fringe, and brushed off those who liken him to Venezue­lan leader Nico­las Maduro.

    There is no Chav­is­mo here,” Castil­lo said, refer­ring to the brand of gov­ern­ment installed by Maduro’s social­ist pre­de­ces­sor, Hugo Chavez. He urged Maduro to “first fix his own prob­lems” before attempt­ing to influ­ence Peru. “The one who is going to gov­ern is me,” Castil­lo said.
    ...

    Will this polit­i­cal for­mu­la actu­al­ly suc­ceed for Castil­lo in the end? We’ll see, but as the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, a recent poll found Peru’s eco­nom­ic sys­tem to be at the heart of this elec­tion and more than half of those who intend to vote for Castil­lo say they agree with total­ly chang­ing the eco­nom­ic sys­tem. It was a poll that raised ques­tions of whether or not deny­ing he’ll nation­al­ize indus­tries was actu­al­ly the best polit­i­cal move for Castil­lo, because it sounds like nation­al­iza­tions are pret­ty pop­u­lar:

    Bloomberg

    Peru Sol Hits Record Low as Left­ist Takes Crush­ing Poll Lead

    By Fabi­o­la Zer­pa and Maria Ele­na Viz­caino
    April 25, 2021, 3:02 PM EDT Updat­ed on April 26, 2021, 1:45 PM EDT

    * Pedro Castil­lo widens lead over rival Fuji­mori to 20 points
    * Investors in Peru have moved to dump stocks and bonds

    Peru’s cur­ren­cy took anoth­er bat­ter­ing Mon­day after left­ist pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Pedro Castil­lo extend­ed his poll lead ahead of June’s runoff elec­tion to a crush­ing 20 per­cent­age points.

    The sol dropped 1.2% to a record low for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive trad­ing ses­sion, under­per­form­ing all oth­er emerg­ing-mar­ket cur­ren­cies despite inter­ven­tion from the cen­tral bank. The bench­mark stock index touched a five-month low.

    Castil­lo is backed by 41.5% of peo­ple, com­pared with 21.5% for mar­ket-friend­ly Keiko Fuji­mori, accord­ing to a poll by Insti­tu­to de Estu­dios Peru­anos pub­lished in the dai­ly La Repub­li­ca Sun­day.

    The leftist’s lead ahead of the June 6 vote has spooked investors in Peru, push­ing them to sell every­thing from stocks to sov­er­eign bonds. Since com­ing out of no-where to lead the first-round elec­tion on April 11, Castil­lo, a for­mer school teacher whose par­ty has praised Latin Amer­i­can left­ists such as Hugo Chavez, hasn’t revealed much about his plans for the econ­o­my or about his team of advis­ers.

    The lat­est poll sug­gests that Peru’s eco­nom­ic mod­el is at the cen­ter of the elec­tion. More than half of those who intend to vote for Castil­lo say they agree with total­ly chang­ing the eco­nom­ic sys­tem, while 25.4% of those favor­ing for­mer pres­i­dent Alber­to Fujimori’s daugh­ter say they don’t want any eco­nom­ic changes.

    “Castil­lo is ben­e­fit­ing from a strong desire for change and anti-estab­lish­ment sen­ti­ment,” Alber­to Ramos, chief Latin Amer­i­ca econ­o­mist at Gold­man Sachs, wrote in a note Mon­day. If imple­ment­ed, his inter­ven­tion­ist het­ero­dox pol­i­cy plat­form would entail sig­nif­i­cant risks to the macro econ­o­my, accord­ing to Ramos.

    The poll shows that 21.2% of peo­ple said they would vote blank, and 13.5% were unde­cid­ed. The find­ings were based on tele­phone inter­views with 1,367 peo­ple between April 17–21 nation­wide. The mar­gin of error is plus or minus 2.65 per­cent­age points.

    ...

    ————-

    “Peru Sol Hits Record Low as Left­ist Takes Crush­ing Poll Lead” By Fabi­o­la Zer­pa and Maria Ele­na Viz­caino; Bloomberg; 04/25/2021

    “The lat­est poll sug­gests that Peru’s eco­nom­ic mod­el is at the cen­ter of the elec­tion. More than half of those who intend to vote for Castil­lo say they agree with total­ly chang­ing the eco­nom­ic sys­tem, while 25.4% of those favor­ing for­mer pres­i­dent Alber­to Fujimori’s daugh­ter say they don’t want any eco­nom­ic changes.”

    So over half of the ~41% of Castil­lo sup­port­ers (which trans­lates to ~20% of the elec­torate) want a com­plete eco­nom­ic over­haul. And the rest of Castil­lo’s sup­port­ers are obvi­ous­ly at least fine with some sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic changes. At the same time the poll also found 21% would vote “blank”, a group of vot­ers that does­n’t appear to fear a swing to the left enough to vote for Fuji­mori. So based on this poll, a strong major­i­ty of Peru­vians either want a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic over­haul of the coun­try or at least aren’t over­whelm­ing­ly ter­ri­fied by the idea:

    ...
    The poll shows that 21.2% of peo­ple said they would vote blank, and 13.5% were unde­cid­ed. The find­ings were based on tele­phone inter­views with 1,367 peo­ple between April 17–21 nation­wide. The mar­gin of error is plus or minus 2.65 per­cent­age points.
    ...

    That’s what an actu­al eco­nom­ic veer to the far left might look like. Talk of indus­try nation­al­iza­tions and a com­plete over­haul of how the econ­o­my oper­ates, fueled by a deep sense of despair that the cur­rent eco­nom­ic par­a­digm can deliv­er any­thing oth­er than more pover­ty for the mass­es and plun­dered wealth for a con­nect­ed few.

    So when Pres­i­dent Biden’s calls for high­er tax­es on the rich and large cor­po­ra­tions or more pub­lic spend­ing on infra­struc­ture get inevitably char­ac­ter­ized as Marx­ist takeover of the US econ­o­my and soci­ety, it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that an actu­al polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion that could more accu­rate­ly be char­ac­ter­ized as Marx­ist (or clos­er to it) is actu­al­ly tak­ing place in Peru thanks to the per­sis­tent fail­ures of decades of ‘free mar­ket’ poli­cies. Com­pare and con­trast.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 28, 2021, 4:32 pm

  3. “For The Record: Unit­ed Fruit’s Six­ty Six Years in Guatemala” by Dianne K. Stan­ley (2001) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25601065-for-the-record
    A revi­sion­ist eye­wit­ness his­to­ry of Unit­ed Fruit’s “pos­i­tive” impact on Guatemalan society.(Thought you’d find the title inter­est­ing.)

    Posted by Dianne | June 5, 2022, 2:00 pm

  4. @DIANNE–

    Revi­sion­ist indeed!

    I doubt that Jacobo Arbenz or Unit­ed Fruit’s field work­ers would con­cur.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | June 5, 2022, 2:39 pm

  5. Coups often involve mys­ter­ies. Some­times those mys­ter­ies can involve the iden­ti­ty of and coup plot­ters. But it’s usu­al­ly not a mys­tery as to which side in a civ­il con­flict exe­cut­ed the coup. But that’s part of the mys­tery of the coup in Peru. There’s an unusu­al amount of inter­na­tion­al dis­agree­ment over ‘who couped’.

    But as the sec­ond arti­cle by Ben Nor­ton at Mul­ti­po­lar­ista makes clear, a lot of the mys­tery over who did the coup has to do with the sys­tem­at­ic ignor­ing of some major details in this sto­ry by most of the media cov­er­age of this sto­ry.

    Key details like the fact that Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion allows for both the con­gress to impeach the pres­i­dent but also for the pres­i­dent to dis­miss con­gress and call for new elec­tions. Both pow­ers are in Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion and Castil­lo’s decree was in response to a dec­la­ra­tion by a move by the con­gress to impeach and remove him first. Castil­lo’s dis­solv­ing of the con­gress was in response to that.

    Anoth­er detail is the fact that Gus­ta­vo Bob­bio Rosas — the defense min­is­ter who imme­di­ate­ly resigned in protest at Castil­lo’s decree and released a video call­ing on the mil­i­tary to resist Castil­lo, a move that could be seen as the offi­cial start of the coup — only start­ed that posi­tion on Decem­ber 5, two days before Decem­ber 7 when con­gress announced it’s plans and Castil­lo respond­ed by dis­solv­ing con­gress.

    On Decem­ber 6, Bob­bio met with the US ambas­sador, Lisa Ken­na, who hap­pens to have that kind of back­ground that could come in handy dur­ing a poten­tial coup sit­u­a­tion: in addi­tion to Ken­na’s 9 years as a CIA offi­cer, she served under Trump as exec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the State Depart­ment and was “senior aide” to then-Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo. Don’t for­get that Pom­peo took that posi­tion after serv­ing as Trump’s CIA direc­tor. So Ken­na is some­one extreme­ly well sit­u­at­ed to offi­cial­ly deliv­er the kind of ‘nod, nod, wink, wink’ unof­fi­cial ‘regime change’-related diplo­ma­cy. So a day before the right-wing con­gress issued its decree, the brand new defense min­is­ter had a meet­ing with Ken­na. That must have been an inter­est­ing meet­ing.

    Oth­er glossed over details involves Dina Bolu­arte, Castil­lo’s vice pres­i­dent who swift­ly denounced Castil­lo’s decree to dis­solve par­lia­ment: she was thrown out of Castil­lo’s Perú Libre in Jan­u­ary of 2022. So Bolu­arte went from out of the par­ty to the new pres­i­dent as a result of this con­sti­tu­tion­al show­down between Castil­lo and his right-wing oppo­nents.

    Final­ly, there’s the detail that Castil­lo called for new elec­tions as soon as pos­si­ble. It’s impor­tant to note that the pub­lic approval rat­ings for con­gress has recent­ly been in the sin­gle dig­its, so new elec­tions are called for when a deeply unpop­u­lar con­gress ini­ti­ates the removal of a pres­i­dent. That’s in con­trast to the pol­i­cy Bolu­arte had of ini­tial­ly resist­ing new elec­tions until, in the face of protests, she stat­ed that she would pro­pose mov­ing up elec­tions as soon as 2024. One side of this coup mys­tery was much more pro-new elec­tions than the oth­er and it’s not the side who won. That’s all part of why so many left­ist gov­ern­ments have been call­ing the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion the real coup attempt and one that suc­ceed­ed.

    So don’t expect the issue of how did the coup in Peru to sub­side any time soon. It’s an impor­tant ques­tion. Too impor­tant to expect an hon­est answer unfor­tu­nate­ly:

    The Finan­cial Times

    A coup or not? Peru cri­sis high­lights Latin Amer­i­can polar­i­sa­tion

    Diplo­mat­ic spat over for­mer pres­i­dent Pedro Castil­lo high­lights polit­i­cal divide in Latin Amer­i­ca

    Michael Stott
    Decem­ber 22 2022

    When is a coup not a coup? The answer in Latin Amer­i­ca today depends on your pol­i­tics.

    A coup used to be straight­for­ward. In a script which became depress­ing­ly famil­iar in the last cen­tu­ry, a gen­er­al or mil­i­tary jun­ta would seize pow­er, backed by troops and tanks, and some­times by the CIA.

    Today, the sit­u­a­tion is far messier. Mil­i­tary coups have all but van­ished in Latin Amer­i­ca, but in their place the region has spawned a whole genre of alter­na­tive labels for the removal of an elect­ed pres­i­dent or the sub­ver­sion of democ­ra­cy: the “soft coup”, the “self-coup”, the “judi­cial coup” and even, in the words of for­mer Boli­vian pres­i­dent Evo Morales, “the hybrid war­fare of the inter­na­tion­al right”.

    The cur­rent cri­sis in Peru over the impeach­ment and arrest of for­mer pres­i­dent Pedro Castil­lo and the diplo­mat­ic chasm over how to inter­pret it illus­trate vivid­ly how polarised the def­i­n­i­tion of a coup has become.

    Castil­lo, a for­mer pri­ma­ry school teacher from the Andean high­lands who won elec­tion in 2021 on a Marx­ist tick­et, announced on Decem­ber 7 he was clos­ing con­gress, assum­ing emer­gency pow­ers and tak­ing over the judi­cia­ry to rewrite the con­sti­tu­tion. He hoped to pre-empt con­gress, which was due to vote on a motion to impeach him for alleged cor­rup­tion.

    The pow­er grab failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly when Peru’s con­gress vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to impeach him and swore in vice-pres­i­dent Dina Bolu­arte as his suc­ces­sor. Police then arrest­ed the for­mer pres­i­dent on charges of rebel­lion, trig­ger­ing protests by thou­sands of his sup­port­ers and the impo­si­tion of emer­gency rule by Bolu­arte.

    Did Castil­lo attempt a coup? Bolu­arte quick­ly labelled it as such, along with most of Peru’s insti­tu­tions. Human Rights Watch termed Castillo’s move “a self-coup”. The US, the UK and the EU all recog­nised Bolu­arte as the country’s legit­i­mate leader and empha­sised the need to sup­port democ­ra­cy and pro­mote peace­ful dia­logue.

    Some of the region’s left­wing pres­i­dents, how­ev­er, saw Castil­lo as the vic­tim of a coup rather than the per­pe­tra­tor. The lead­ers of Mex­i­co, Argenti­na, Colom­bia and Bolivia issued a state­ment declar­ing Castil­lo “the vic­tim of anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic bul­ly­ing” and call­ing on Peru’s insti­tu­tions “to refrain from revers­ing the people’s will as expressed in a free vote”.

    Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who called events in Peru a “soft coup”, refused to recog­nise Bolu­arte and offered Castil­lo and his fam­i­ly polit­i­cal asy­lum in Mex­i­co even though some of them are being inves­ti­gat­ed on cor­rup­tion charges. Peru expelled Mexico’s ambas­sador in protest.

    Car­los Mala­mud, a Latin Amer­i­ca expert at the Real Insti­tu­to Elcano in Madrid, said the left­ist out­rage over Castil­lo was part of “a sto­ry of vic­tim­i­sa­tion told by pro­gres­sives over the past decade about how pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ments can be removed from pow­er by coups com­ing from street protests, par­lia­ment or the judi­cia­ry”.

    Exam­ples include for­mer Brazil­ian pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff, impeached in 2016, Morales, who resigned after mas­sive street protests in 2019 and Argentina’s vice-pres­i­dent and for­mer pres­i­dent Cristi­na Fer­nán­dez de Kirch­n­er, found guilty of cor­rup­tion this year.

    This time, López Obrador’s posi­tion on Peru was close to the one adopt­ed by the hard left nations of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and parts of the Caribbean, who issued a state­ment as the ALBA group decry­ing “a polit­i­cal plot cre­at­ed by the rightwing forces of [Peru] against the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Pres­i­dent Pedro Castil­lo, forc­ing him to take mea­sures which were then used by his ene­mies in par­lia­ment to oust him”. 

    Michael Shifter, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Inter-Amer­i­can Dia­logue in Wash­ing­ton, crit­i­cised “a lack of back­bone and steel in tak­ing a stand on what was unques­tion­ably a self-coup [by Castil­lo]”. “They crit­i­cise the jus­tice sys­tem when it goes after a left­ist who is one of their club but they don’t crit­i­cise it when it goes after some­one like [for­mer Peru­vian pres­i­dent] Pedro Pablo Kuczyn­s­ki, who is seen as a neolib­er­al,” he said. “There’s so much hypocrisy.” 

    ...

    ———–

    “A coup or not? Peru cri­sis high­lights Latin Amer­i­can polar­i­sa­tion” by Michael Stott; The Finan­cial Times; 12/22/2022

    “Did Castil­lo attempt a coup? Bolu­arte quick­ly labelled it as such, along with most of Peru’s insti­tu­tions. Human Rights Watch termed Castillo’s move “a self-coup”. The US, the UK and the EU all recog­nised Bolu­arte as the country’s legit­i­mate leader and empha­sised the need to sup­port democ­ra­cy and pro­mote peace­ful dia­logue.”

    Was this a nar­row­ly missed attempt­ed coup by Pedro Castil­lo? Or a suc­cess­ful coup by Castil­lo’s polit­i­cal ene­mies in the far right-dom­i­nat­ed con­gress? It’s being wide­ly por­trayed as a bla­tant coup in the US press, and yet a num­ber of left­ist gov­ern­ments from the region con­tin­ue to sup­port Castil­lo, with Mex­i­co even offer­ing Castil­lo his fam­i­ly asy­lum. Who actu­al­ly did the coup is a sur­pris­ing­ly large ques­tion in this coup sto­ry:

    ...
    Castil­lo, a for­mer pri­ma­ry school teacher from the Andean high­lands who won elec­tion in 2021 on a Marx­ist tick­et, announced on Decem­ber 7 he was clos­ing con­gress, assum­ing emer­gency pow­ers and tak­ing over the judi­cia­ry to rewrite the con­sti­tu­tion. He hoped to pre-empt con­gress, which was due to vote on a motion to impeach him for alleged cor­rup­tion.

    The pow­er grab failed spec­tac­u­lar­ly when Peru’s con­gress vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly to impeach him and swore in vice-pres­i­dent Dina Bolu­arte as his suc­ces­sor. Police then arrest­ed the for­mer pres­i­dent on charges of rebel­lion, trig­ger­ing protests by thou­sands of his sup­port­ers and the impo­si­tion of emer­gency rule by Bolu­arte.

    ...

    Some of the region’s left­wing pres­i­dents, how­ev­er, saw Castil­lo as the vic­tim of a coup rather than the per­pe­tra­tor. The lead­ers of Mex­i­co, Argenti­na, Colom­bia and Bolivia issued a state­ment declar­ing Castil­lo “the vic­tim of anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic bul­ly­ing” and call­ing on Peru’s insti­tu­tions “to refrain from revers­ing the people’s will as expressed in a free vote”.

    Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who called events in Peru a “soft coup”, refused to recog­nise Bolu­arte and offered Castil­lo and his fam­i­ly polit­i­cal asy­lum in Mex­i­co even though some of them are being inves­ti­gat­ed on cor­rup­tion charges. Peru expelled Mexico’s ambas­sador in protest.
    ...

    It’s a mys­tery. Made all the more mys­te­ri­ous by the many key details left out of the cov­er­age of this sto­ry. One key detail after anoth­er that paints the pic­ture of a con­sti­tu­tion­al sys­tem set up for the kind of show­down we just saw play out:

    Mul­ti­po­lar­ista
    Latin Amer­i­ca

    Peru coup: CIA agent turned US ambas­sador met with defense min­is­ter day before pres­i­dent over­thrown

    The US ambas­sador in Peru, Lisa Ken­na, worked for the CIA for 9 years, as well as the Pen­ta­gon. One day before the coup against elect­ed left-wing Pres­i­dent Pedro Castil­lo, Ken­na met with Peru’s defense min­is­ter, who then ordered the mil­i­tary to turn against Castil­lo.

    By Ben Nor­ton
    Pub­lished
    2022-12-14

    The US ambas­sador in Peru, a vet­er­an CIA agent named Lisa Ken­na, met with the country’s defense min­is­ter just one day before demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed left-wing Pres­i­dent Pedro Castil­lo was over­thrown in a coup d’etat and impris­oned with­out tri­al.

    Peru’s defense min­is­ter, a retired brigadier gen­er­al, ordered the mil­i­tary to turn against Castil­lo.

    The coup set off mass protests all across Peru. The unelect­ed regime has unleashed bru­tal vio­lence, and police have killed numer­ous demon­stra­tors.

    Mean­while, the US gov­ern­ment has staunch­ly sup­port­ed Peru’s unelect­ed coup regime, which declared a nation-wide “state of emer­gency” and deployed the mil­i­tary to the streets in an attempt to crush the protests.

    Most gov­ern­ments in Latin Amer­i­ca have crit­i­cized or even refused to rec­og­nize Peru’s unelect­ed coup regime, includ­ing Mex­i­co, Argenti­na, Bolivia, Colom­bia, Venezuela, Cuba, and var­i­ous Caribbean nations.

    The CIA has orga­nized many coups against demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed left-wing lead­ers in Latin Amer­i­ca, from Guatemala’s Pres­i­dent Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 to Chile’s Pres­i­dent Sal­vador Allende in 1973.

    When the Don­ald Trump admin­is­trat­ed nom­i­nat­ed Lisa Ken­na to be ambas­sador to Peru in 2020, the State Depart­ment released a “cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­ten­cy” that revealed that, “Before join­ing the For­eign Ser­vice, she served for nine years as a Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency offi­cer.”

    This impor­tant fact is curi­ous­ly absent from most of Kenna’s bios, includ­ing her page on the US embassy’s offi­cial web­site.

    Under Trump, Ken­na also served as exec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the State Depart­ment and was “senior aide” to Trump’s Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, who pre­vi­ous­ly head­ed the CIA.

    In regard to his work for the noto­ri­ous spy agency, Pom­peo admit­ted in 2019, “I was the CIA direc­tor. We lied, we cheat­ed, we stole. We had entire train­ing cours­es.”

    At a Con­gres­sion­al nom­i­na­tion hear­ing in 2020, Ken­na admit­ted that, as exec­u­tive sec­re­tary, she saw “near­ly all” of the mem­os that were sent to Pom­peo, adding, “I am aware of the vast major­i­ty of” calls made to and by him.

    Ken­na also pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the Defense Depart­ment and served State Depart­ment roles in Iraq, Jor­dan, Egypt, Swazi­land, and Pak­istan.

    When Pres­i­dent Joe Biden entered in Jan­u­ary 2021, he kept Ken­na as ambas­sador in Peru.

    On Decem­ber 6, 2022, Ken­na met with Gus­ta­vo Bob­bio Rosas, a retired brigadier gen­er­al from the Peru­vian mil­i­tary who had offi­cial­ly been appoint­ed as defense min­is­ter the day before. (A local media out­let report­ed that the meet­ing was on Decem­ber 5, but that appears to have been an error.)

    Peru’s Min­istry of Defense pub­lished a pho­to of their friend­ly chat.

    At the time of this meet­ing, it was known in Peru that the noto­ri­ous­ly cor­rupt, oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress was prepar­ing for a new vote to over­throw demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed left-wing Pres­i­dent Pedro Castil­lo.

    Arti­cle 113 of Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion allows the uni­cam­er­al con­gress to remove pres­i­dents sim­ply by vot­ing to declare that they have a “moral inca­pac­i­ty,” in a process known as “vacan­cy.”

    Peru’s con­gress is well known for its extreme cor­rup­tion. In the infa­mous “Mamanivideos” scan­dal, con­gress mem­bers from the far-right Fuerza Pop­u­lar par­ty were filmed brib­ing oth­er con­gress mem­bers to vote against impeach­ing pre­vi­ous right-wing Pres­i­dent Pedro Pablo Kuczyn­s­ki.

    Fuerza Pop­u­lar is run by the fam­i­ly mem­bers of Alber­to Fuji­mori, the far-right dic­ta­tor who ruled Peru with an iron fist from 1990 until 2000. With the sup­port of the US gov­ern­ment, Fuji­mori com­mit­ted geno­cide, ster­il­iz­ing approx­i­mate­ly 300,000 Indige­nous peo­ple, while killing, tor­tur­ing, and dis­ap­pear­ing large num­bers of left­ist dis­si­dents.

    The Mamanivideos scan­dal showed that it is quite easy for Peru’s rich oli­garchs to buy votes in con­gress to over­throw demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dents.

    And as soon as Castil­lo entered office on July 28, 2021, the con­gress tried to do exact­ly this.

    Just one day after the US ambas­sador met with Peru’s defense min­is­ter, on Decem­ber 7, 2022, the right-wing-dom­i­nat­ed con­gress launched a par­lia­men­tary coup against Castil­lo, using arti­cle 113.

    This was the third coup attempt in just over a year by Peru’s con­gress, which in Sep­tem­ber 2022 had a mere 7% approval rat­ing.

    Hop­ing to stop the coup, Castil­lo respond­ed by try­ing to dis­solve the con­gress. This is allowed in cas­es of obstruc­tion­ism by arti­cle 134 of Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion.

    Defense Min­is­ter Bob­bio imme­di­ate­ly denounced the president’s actions. He pub­lished a video resign­ing from his posi­tion (that he had only held for three days).

    In the video, Bob­bio told Peru’s armed forces not to sup­port Pres­i­dent Castil­lo and to oppose his attempt to dis­solve the coup-plot­ting con­gress.

    Bob­bio claimed Castil­lo was launch­ing a “coup attempt,” but in real­i­ty Bob­bio was instruct­ing the Peru­vian mil­i­tary to sup­port a coup against the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent, on behalf of a noto­ri­ous­ly cor­rupt oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress that had almost no sup­port from the pop­u­la­tion.

    While Bob­bio ordered the mil­i­tary to rebel against the pres­i­dent, the US gov­ern­ment prompt­ly attacked Castil­lo.

    For­mer CIA agent and cur­rent Ambas­sador Ken­na tweet­ed, “The Unit­ed States cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly rejects any extra-con­sti­tu­tion­al act by Pres­i­dent Castil­lo to pre­vent the con­gress from ful­fill­ing its man­date.”

    Ken­na failed to men­tion arti­cle 134 of Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion, which states:

    The Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic is autho­rized the dis­solve the Con­gress if it has cen­sured or denied its con­fi­dence to two Coun­cils of Min­is­ters [the offi­cial name of Peru’s cab­i­net]. The dis­so­lu­tion decree con­tains the call for elec­tions for a new Con­gress.

    When Castil­lo moved to dis­solve the con­gress, he cit­ed arti­cle 134 and he made it clear that it was only going to be a “tem­po­rary” clo­sure. The pres­i­dent said new con­gres­sion­al elec­tions would be held as soon as pos­si­ble.

    Ken­na ignored all of this con­text. Instead, the ambas­sador declared, “The Unit­ed States emphat­i­cal­ly urges Pres­i­dent Castil­lo to reverse his attempt to close the con­gress and allow the demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions of Peru to func­tion accord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion.”

    By this, the CIA vet­er­an meant that Castil­lo should sim­ply allow the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress to launch a coup against him.

    The US embassy in Peru sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished an offi­cial state­ment echo­ing exact­ly what Ken­na had said.

    This was Washington’s green light for Peru’s cor­rupt, right-wing-dom­i­nat­ed con­gress to over­throw Pres­i­dent Castil­lo, and for the state secu­ri­ty ser­vices to arrest him, with­out tri­al.

    Mere hours after Castil­lo was impris­oned, the oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress appoint­ed his vice pres­i­dent, Dina Bolu­arte, as leader of the coun­try.

    Bolu­arte promised on the floor of the con­gress that she would cre­ate “a polit­i­cal truce to install a gov­ern­ment of nation­al uni­ty” – that is, a pact with the right wing.

    Bolu­arte had been expelled in Jan­u­ary 2022 from the left­ist Perú Libre par­ty that Castil­lo had cam­paigned with. She proud­ly declared that she “had nev­er embraced the ide­ol­o­gy” of the social­ist polit­i­cal par­ty.

    The day after the coup, on Decem­ber 8, the State Depart­ment gave its rub­ber stamp to Boluarte’s unelect­ed regime.

    “The Unit­ed States wel­comes Pres­i­dent Bolu­arte and hopes to work with her admin­is­tra­tion to achieve a more demo­c­ra­t­ic, pros­per­ous, and secure region,” stat­ed Bri­an A. Nichols, the US assis­tant sec­re­tary for west­ern hemi­sphere affairs.

    “We sup­port her call for a gov­ern­ment of nation­al uni­ty and we applaud Peru­vians while they unite in their sup­port of democ­ra­cy,” the top State Depart­ment offi­cial added.

    In the mean time, the Peru­vian peo­ple were fill­ing the streets, con­demn­ing the coup against their elect­ed pres­i­dent.

    Peru’s police respond­ed with vio­lence, harsh­ly crack­ing down, killing sev­er­al pro­test­ers.

    On Decem­ber 14, the coup regime imposed a nation­al “state of emer­gency” for 30 days, and said it might also declare a cur­few.

    At the same time, the coup regime also said it plans to sen­tence Castil­lo to 18 months in “pre­ven­ta­tive prison,” with­out a prop­er tri­al that resem­bles any­thing remote­ly like due process.

    Just one day before the coup regime made these author­i­tar­i­an announce­ments, for­mer CIA agent and cur­rent US Ambas­sador met with Peru’s unelect­ed leader, Dina Bolu­arte, and reit­er­at­ed Washington’s whole­heart­ed sup­port.

    Ken­na praised the right-wing “uni­ty gov­ern­ment” that Bolu­arte pledged to form, adding, “We hope to strength­en our bilat­er­al rela­tion­ship.”

    Bri­an Nichols, the top State Depart­ment offi­cial on Latin Amer­i­ca, added with a touch of deep irony, “We sup­port the Peru­vian peo­ple and their con­sti­tu­tion­al democ­ra­cy.” He urged pro­test­ers to “reject vio­lence.”

    On the same day, Mex­i­co, Argenti­na, Bolivia, and Colom­bia released a joint diplo­mat­ic state­ment with a com­plete­ly con­trary mes­sage, sup­port­ing elect­ed Pres­i­dent Castil­lo, say­ing he was the vic­tim of “anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic harass­ment.”

    In a press brief­ing on Decem­ber 13, the State depart­ment was asked about the protests in Peru.

    State Depart­ment spokesman Ned Price – who, like Lisa Ken­na, was also a CIA agent – empha­sized Washington’s stead­fast sup­port for Peru’s coup regime.

    “We do com­mend Peru­vian insti­tu­tions and civ­il author­i­ties for safe­guard­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic sta­bil­i­ty,” he said, as Peru’s repres­sive police killed pro­test­ers.

    Instead of con­demn­ing the ram­pant police bru­tal­i­ty, the US State Depart­ment blamed the pro­test­ers them­selves. Price stat­ed, “we are trou­bled by scat­tered reports of vio­lent demon­stra­tions and by reports of attacks on the press and pri­vate prop­er­ty, includ­ing busi­ness­es.”

    “When it comes to Peru­vian Pres­i­dent Dina Bolu­arte, we of course do rec­og­nize her as such. We will con­tin­ue to work with Peru’s demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions, and we look for­ward to work­ing close­ly with Pres­i­dent Bolu­arte and all branch­es of the gov­ern­ment in Peru,” the for­mer CIA agent stressed.

    In addi­tion to serv­ing as a CIA agent for nine years and cur­rent US ambas­sador to Peru, Lisa Ken­na worked as a:

    * polit­i­cal advis­er to the sec­re­tary of defense
    * direc­tor of the Iraq office on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil at the White House
    * deputy direc­tor of the Iraq polit­i­cal office at the Depart­ment of State
    * chief of the polit­i­cal sec­tion at the US embassy in Jor­dan
    * political/military offi­cer at the US embassy in Egypt
    * staff mem­ber at the US embassy in Swazi­land
    * staff mem­ber at the US con­sulate gen­er­al in Peshawar, Pak­istan

    ...

    ————–

    “Peru coup: CIA agent turned US ambas­sador met with defense min­is­ter day before pres­i­dent over­thrown” By Ben Nor­ton; Mul­ti­po­lar­ista; 12/14/2022

    “Just one day after the US ambas­sador met with Peru’s defense min­is­ter, on Decem­ber 7, 2022, the right-wing-dom­i­nat­ed con­gress launched a par­lia­men­tary coup against Castil­lo, using arti­cle 113.”

    It’s hard to ignore the tim­ing of it all: in the face of the con­gres­sion­al dec­la­ra­tion of arti­cle 113 and the impeach­ment of Pedro Castil­lo, Castil­lo respond­ed with his own pow­ers to dis­solve con­gress. It was a show­down both sides had the pow­er to do but Peru’s con­gress ulti­mate­ly won that show­down. Thanks to the back­ing of the mil­i­tary. And now we’re learn­ing that, as this was all play­ing out, the US ambas­sador to Peru met with Peru’s defense min­ster, Gus­ta­vo Bob­bio Rosas, the day before. And this ambas­sador, Lisa Ken­na, has a resume filled with the CIA and CIA-adja­cent posi­tion. It’s that sequence of events that has so many of Castil­lo’s defend­ers sus­pect­ing the events of Decem­ber 7 a CIA-spon­sored day for Peru:

    ...
    When the Don­ald Trump admin­is­trat­ed nom­i­nat­ed Lisa Ken­na to be ambas­sador to Peru in 2020, the State Depart­ment released a “cer­tifi­cate of com­pe­ten­cy” that revealed that, “Before join­ing the For­eign Ser­vice, she served for nine years as a Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency offi­cer.”

    This impor­tant fact is curi­ous­ly absent from most of Kenna’s bios, includ­ing her page on the US embassy’s offi­cial web­site.

    Under Trump, Ken­na also served as exec­u­tive sec­re­tary of the State Depart­ment and was “senior aide” to Trump’s Sec­re­tary of State Mike Pom­peo, who pre­vi­ous­ly head­ed the CIA.
    ...

    And this defense min­is­ter just hap­pened to have been appoint­ed the day before this meet­ing, when it was known prepa­ra­tions were being made for Castil­lo’s impeach­ment. It was obvi­ous­ly a top­ic of that Decem­ber 6 meet­ing:

    ...
    On Decem­ber 6, 2022, Ken­na met with Gus­ta­vo Bob­bio Rosas, a retired brigadier gen­er­al from the Peru­vian mil­i­tary who had offi­cial­ly been appoint­ed as defense min­is­ter the day before. (A local media out­let report­ed that the meet­ing was on Decem­ber 5, but that appears to have been an error.)

    Peru’s Min­istry of Defense pub­lished a pho­to of their friend­ly chat.

    At the time of this meet­ing, it was known in Peru that the noto­ri­ous­ly cor­rupt, oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress was prepar­ing for a new vote to over­throw demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed left-wing Pres­i­dent Pedro Castil­lo.

    Arti­cle 113 of Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion allows the uni­cam­er­al con­gress to remove pres­i­dents sim­ply by vot­ing to declare that they have a “moral inca­pac­i­ty,” in a process known as “vacan­cy.”
    ...

    Anoth­er key detail is the fact that Castil­lo was­n’t push­ing to rule by decree indef­i­nite­ly. Instead, he cit­ed Arti­cle 134 of Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion that allows for the tem­po­rary clo­sure of con­gress based on “obstruc­tion” and pledges to hold new con­gres­sion­al elec­tions as soon as pos­si­ble. Impor­tant­ly, Castil­lo was plan­ning on dis­solv­ing a deeply unpop­u­lar con­gress with sin­gle dig­it approval rat­ings. So we had a deeply unpop­u­lar con­gress threat­en­ing to impeach Castil­lo, with Castil­lo coun­ter­ing with his own threat to dis­solve Con­gress and hold new elec­tions. But it was treat­ed by Ambas­sador Ken­na as if Castil­lo was engaged in an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al coup and tran­si­tion­ing into a dic­ta­tor­ship at the same time Defense Min­is­ter Bob­bio resigned and called on the mil­i­tary to defy Castil­lo’s orders:

    ...
    This was the third coup attempt in just over a year by Peru’s con­gress, which in Sep­tem­ber 2022 had a mere 7% approval rat­ing.

    Hop­ing to stop the coup, Castil­lo respond­ed by try­ing to dis­solve the con­gress. This is allowed in cas­es of obstruc­tion­ism by arti­cle 134 of Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion.

    Defense Min­is­ter Bob­bio imme­di­ate­ly denounced the president’s actions. He pub­lished a video resign­ing from his posi­tion (that he had only held for three days).

    In the video, Bob­bio told Peru’s armed forces not to sup­port Pres­i­dent Castil­lo and to oppose his attempt to dis­solve the coup-plot­ting con­gress.

    Bob­bio claimed Castil­lo was launch­ing a “coup attempt,” but in real­i­ty Bob­bio was instruct­ing the Peru­vian mil­i­tary to sup­port a coup against the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent, on behalf of a noto­ri­ous­ly cor­rupt oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress that had almost no sup­port from the pop­u­la­tion.

    While Bob­bio ordered the mil­i­tary to rebel against the pres­i­dent, the US gov­ern­ment prompt­ly attacked Castil­lo.

    For­mer CIA agent and cur­rent Ambas­sador Ken­na tweet­ed, “The Unit­ed States cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly rejects any extra-con­sti­tu­tion­al act by Pres­i­dent Castil­lo to pre­vent the con­gress from ful­fill­ing its man­date.”

    Ken­na failed to men­tion arti­cle 134 of Peru’s con­sti­tu­tion, which states:

    The Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic is autho­rized the dis­solve the Con­gress if it has cen­sured or denied its con­fi­dence to two Coun­cils of Min­is­ters [the offi­cial name of Peru’s cab­i­net]. The dis­so­lu­tion decree con­tains the call for elec­tions for a new Con­gress.

    When Castil­lo moved to dis­solve the con­gress, he cit­ed arti­cle 134 and he made it clear that it was only going to be a “tem­po­rary” clo­sure. The pres­i­dent said new con­gres­sion­al elec­tions would be held as soon as pos­si­ble.

    Ken­na ignored all of this con­text. Instead, the ambas­sador declared, “The Unit­ed States emphat­i­cal­ly urges Pres­i­dent Castil­lo to reverse his attempt to close the con­gress and allow the demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions of Peru to func­tion accord­ing to the con­sti­tu­tion.”

    By this, the CIA vet­er­an meant that Castil­lo should sim­ply allow the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic, oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress to launch a coup against him.

    ...

    The day after the coup, on Decem­ber 8, the State Depart­ment gave its rub­ber stamp to Boluarte’s unelect­ed regime.
    ...

    So when are the next elec­tions going to be held? Well, in a one-sen­tence AP report from Dec 11, we are told that Bolu­arte gave in to pro­tes­tor demands and said she’ll pro­pose mov­ing up elec­tions to 2024. So we went from Castil­lo pledg­ing new elec­tions as soon as pos­si­ble to Bolu­arte ini­tial­ly resist­ing new elec­tions but then ‘giv­ing in’ to pro­tes­tor demands and pled­ing to pro­pose new elec­tions in 2024. Time will tell if that’s how it plays out. But it sure looks like elec­tions are going to be hap­pen­ing a lot lat­er than they oth­er­wise would have under Castil­lo’s plan.

    Final­ly, note how Bolu­arte already had a falling out with Castil­lo’s Perú Libre (Free Peru) Par­ty in Jan­u­ary of this year. So when we see that even Castil­lo’s Vice Pres­i­dent con­demned his actions, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Bolu­arte was kicked out of Castil­lo’s par­ty at the begin­ning of this year:

    ...
    Mere hours after Castil­lo was impris­oned, the oli­garch-con­trolled con­gress appoint­ed his vice pres­i­dent, Dina Bolu­arte, as leader of the coun­try.

    Bolu­arte promised on the floor of the con­gress that she would cre­ate “a polit­i­cal truce to install a gov­ern­ment of nation­al uni­ty” – that is, a pact with the right wing.

    Bolu­arte had been expelled in Jan­u­ary 2022 from the left­ist Perú Libre par­ty that Castil­lo had cam­paigned with. She proud­ly declared that she “had nev­er embraced the ide­ol­o­gy” of the social­ist polit­i­cal par­ty.

    ...

    In the mean time, the Peru­vian peo­ple were fill­ing the streets, con­demn­ing the coup against their elect­ed pres­i­dent.

    Peru’s police respond­ed with vio­lence, harsh­ly crack­ing down, killing sev­er­al pro­test­ers.

    On Decem­ber 14, the coup regime imposed a nation­al “state of emer­gency” for 30 days, and said it might also declare a cur­few.

    At the same time, the coup regime also said it plans to sen­tence Castil­lo to 18 months in “pre­ven­ta­tive prison,” with­out a prop­er tri­al that resem­bles any­thing remote­ly like due process.
    ...

    The con­sti­tu­tion­al emer­gency was nar­row­ly avoid­ed but now a uni­ty gov­ern­ment is pre­serv­ing Peru’s democ­ra­cy. At least that’s the way most of the West­ern press cov­er­age has treat­ed this sto­ry. But that nar­ra­tive ignores the bru­tal police crack­down on the protests and the 30 day state of emer­gency that still has two more weeks to go. What’s the next phase of this ongo­ing nation­al con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis going to entail? We’ll find out soon, but it sure looks like the col­lec­tive denial of that ongo­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis is going to be a key fea­ture.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 28, 2022, 3:32 pm

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