[News] Who Ousted Peru’s President of the Poor?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

resumen-english.org
<https://resumen-english.org/2023/03/who-ousted-perus-president-of-the-poor/>
Who Ousted Peru’s President of the Poor?
By Rodrigo Acuna on March 10, 2023

Pedro Castillo

In the last two months, the political crisis in Peru has regularly made it
into the mainstream media. On December 7 of last year, the democratically
elected Peruvian president Pedro Castillo was removed from power after he
attempted to temporarily suspend Congress hours before his third
impeachment hearing.

As the first person from an impoverished rural background to become
president in Peru, Castillo had found widespread support in the country’s
poorer regions. His ousting has sparked mass demonstrations and blockades
across the country, with protestors calling for President Dina Boluarte,
Castillo’s vice-president who replaced him, to step down and for early
elections to be called. As of mid-February, 60 people have been killed
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64648641>, the majority of
whom were protesters killed by state forces. But the country’s copious
copper resources, coupled with the interests of multinational mining
corporations, have left many wondering about United States’ involvement.

According to *The Economist*
<https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2023/02/02/the-only-way-out-and-its-not-guaranteed-is-an-election-as-soon-as-possible-perus-deadly-unrest>,
Peru ‘remains riven by unrest since the “self-coup” and subsequent arrest
of its president in December’. Tom Phillips, *The Guardian’s* chief foreign
correspondent in Latin America, recently claimed
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/05/juliaca-under-siege-as-death-toll-rises-in-uprising-against-perus-government>
in *The Observer* that the city of Juliaca has ‘been taken over by teams of
anti-government rebels who have been in open revolt against President Dina
Boluarte’ — and yet Phillips failed to provide a shred of evidence that the
protesters could reasonably be classified as ‘rebels’. Reports like those
found in *The Economist* and *The Observer* fail to discuss basic questions
that should always be asked when reporting on Latin American politics — for
example, what were the policies of ex-president Pedro Castillo and what
were the true motivations for his removal? What are the political
ideologies of Dina Boluarte, who is now in power? And what is the position
of the US regarding the change of regime in Peru? Further queries might
focus on why Peru has been engulfed by such widespread demonstrations in
the wake of Castillo’s impeachment and imprisonment, and what are the
socioeconomic origins of the demonstrators versus those who have taken
power. The answers to such questions inevitably expose political
machinations of a kind seen far too often in Latin American political
history.

The day before Castillo’s failed manoeuvre to dissolve Congress, the US
ambassador to the country Lisa Kenna met
<https://mronline.org/2022/12/18/peru-coup/> with the minister of defence
Gustavo Bobbio Rosas. The details of what was discussed in that meeting are
not officially known; however, the following day, on 7 December 2022, Kenna
wrote on her Twitter page
<https://twitter.com/USAmbPeru/status/1600552518056308736>: ‘The United
States categorically rejects any extra-constitutional act by President
Castillo to prevent Congress from fulfilling its mandate.’

Kenna’s statement was made in reference to Castillo’s action earlier in the
day, prior to his arrest. With his hands clearly shaking, the nervous
president had read a statement on camera
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8FPtfTajtA>, attempting to use Article
134 of the constitution to temporarily close down Congress for
obstructionism to his government. But without the support of his ministers
and the military, the impeachment process went ahead. Castillo was detained
by local police and his own security team — reportedly on his way to the
Mexican embassy in Lima to seek political asylum — and imprisoned in the
same prison that holds ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

As a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer
<https://www.state.gov/kenna-lisa-republic-of-peru-may-2020/>, Ambassador
Kenna’s comment backing Peru’s right-wing controlled Congress is not
surprising. Castillo represented everything the US as well as local elites
in Lima have historically abhorred.

Castillo had triumphed in the June 2021 presidential election
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/19/castillo-wins-peru-election/>
by a small margin of 44,000 votes over the hard-right candidate Keiko
Fujimori (daughter of the jailed ex-President). Castillo, unlike his
political competitor, came from humble roots, the son of illiterate peasant
farmers. Prior to running as a presidential candidate, from 1995 until
almost the time of Peru’s massive teachers strike in 2017, in which he
played a key role as a union organiser, Castillo worked as a rural school
teacher in the town of Puña in the north of the country. Reflecting on his
life after winning the election, Castillo wrote
<https://jacobin.com/2021/06/peru-pedro-castillo-human-rights-constitution-state-corruption>
:

‘It was a great accomplishment for me to finish high school, which I did
thanks to the help of my parents and my brothers and sisters. I continued
my education, doing what I could to earn a living. I worked in the coffee
fields. I came to Lima to sell newspapers. I sold ice cream. I cleaned
toilets in hotels. I saw the harsh reality for workers in the countryside
and the city.’

Criticising the 1993 constitution established under the US-backed Fujimori,
Castillo said: ‘It treats healthcare as a service, not a right. It treats
education as a service, not a right. And it is designed for the benefit of
businesses, not people.’ At the end of his statement the president-elect
declared: ‘No more poor people in a rich country. I give you my word as a
teacher.’

Once in office, with his minister for foreign affairs Héctor Béjar,
Castillo withdrew Peru from the Lima Group
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/08/10/lima-group-left-without-home-base-following-peru-and-saint-lucias-withdrawal/>,
a pro-US multilateral body established in 2017 to promote the overthrow of
the Maduro administration in Venezuela.  After serving for just 19 days,
Béjar — a respected left-wing intellectual and ex-guerrilla — was forced to
resign <https://www.ft.com/content/1444e5c8-4412-4b58-9561-5c7ed5127de5>
after the Navy took offence to comments he made about the civil war Peru
had endured during the 1980s.

The credibility of other ministers Castillo had appointed was then called
into question. According to Francisco Dominguez
<https://prruk.org/golpe-in-peru-castillo-under-arrest-people-demand-a-constituent-assembly/?fbclid=IwAR090ljFnF2kGMx6GM8HOtrOBmp7of8RAQ3fxEUsdrOO_yk1yUj6ma1zh6s>,
a senior lecturer at Middlesex University, that ‘Congress’s harassment
[was] aimed at preventing Castillo’s government from even functioning can
be verified with numbers: in the 495 days he lasted in office, Castillo was
forced to appoint a total of 78 ministers.’

Commenting on these developments to *Eureka Street*, political commentator
and Peru Liber affiliate Didier Ortiz notes that Castillo launched an
agrarian reform (the second since the rule of progressive military leader
Juan Velasco Alvarado in the 1970s); however, ‘any advance on this project
was put on an indefinite pause due to the coup’. He adds: ‘Castillo’s
presidential powers were abrogated piecemeal every month since
<https://www.upstreamonline.com/production/petroperu-resumes-oil-production-after-25-year-hiatus/2-1-1136618>
he took office by the fascist Congress.’

By August 2021, according to another observer
<https://www.pressenza.com/2023/01/peru-pedro-castillos-achievements-that-the-elite-dont-like/>,
the Presidency of the Council of Ministers stated it would commence the
collection of all debts amounting to millions of dollars owed to the
National Superintendency of Customs and Tax Administration (SUNAT). Based
on this decision, two private mining giants, ‘one of them 53 percent
US-owned’, would have had to pay ‘multimillion tax debts [that had] never
been collected by previous governments.’

In November 2021, in another important development, the handover
<https://www.upstreamonline.com/production/petroperu-resumes-oil-production-after-25-year-hiatus/2-1-1136618>
of Block 1 in the Talara basin to the state-owned energy company Petroperú
occurred. After a 25 year-long hiatus due to privatisation, Castillo claimed
<https://www.pressenza.com/2023/01/peru-pedro-castillos-achievements-that-the-elite-dont-like/>
this was a ‘big step of returning Petroperú to productive activities’ which
would eventually ‘produce to supply the national market, benefiting
millions of Peruvian families.’

Not surprisingly, none of these policies were supported by Peru’s
ultra-right Congress, which twice attempted to bring impeachment
proceedings against Castillo before finally succeeding.

On January 18, as noted
<https://mronline.org/2023/01/21/perus-natural-resources-cia-linked-u-s-ambassador-meets-with-mining-and-energy-ministers-to-talk-investments/>
by journalist Ben Norton, Kenna met with Peru’s minister for energy and
mining alongside the country’s vice-minister of hydrocarbons and the
vice-minister of mining. According to Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines,
the meeting with Kenna revolved around ‘investment’ opportunities and plans
to ‘develop’ and ‘expand’ the extractive industries. Interestingly, earlier
in the same month, Kenna stated
<https://twitter.com/USAmbPeru/status/1610733473391599616> on her Twitter
account that the Biden administration was giving the Boluarte regime an
additional $US8 million to support the reduction of illegal coca
cultivation (a source of cocaine).

Beneath the surface of Peru’s volatile politics lie its rich deposits of
natural resources, particularly copper, gold and other metals, as well as
Liquified Natural Gas — all of which are strategically highly important and
in increasing demand in the world’s current political climate. In the shift
towards renewable energy sources, for example, copper is essential in the
storage and transport of that energy — indeed, with its unique and
versatile properties, copper is arguably the most important metal to modern
civilisation. BHP, Rio Tinto and Glencore, the world’s three largest
transnational mining corporations, have extensive operations in Peru and
given the lucrative profits involved, it is not surprising that the
industry supported the removal of Castillo as did the Trudeau government
given ‘Canadian companies are Peru’s largest investors in mineral
exploration’, according
<https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/canadas-regime-props-up-perus-and-helps-canadian-mining-companies-exploit-crisis>
to journalist Camila Escalante.

With Castillo’s push for Peruvian ownership of resources and ‘renegotiation
of mining contracts, an increase in company taxes, and potential
nationalisation of mines
<https://r4d.org/blog/the-management-of-mining-revenue-in-peru/>’, the
successful coup against him has certainly removed a threat to US interests
and the profit margins of transnational mining corporations.

>From Ortiz’s perspective, the ‘Peruvian population has grown accustomed to
changing presidents on a yearly basis so I cannot imagine Boluarte staying
in office beyond 2023.’ For now, the anti-government protests in Peru and
their violent repression by security forces appear to have no end in sight,
with vast numbers of people calling for Castillo’s liberation, new
elections and the redrawing of a new constitution. While time will reveal
if some or all of these demands are met, it should be clear the hard-right
forces that removed Castillo last year have the backing of Washington.

Source: Eureka Street
<https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/who-ousted-perus-president-of-the-poor>
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