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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/15/the-coup-that-is-taking-place-in-peru/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/15/the-coup-that-is-taking-place-in-peru/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The Coup That is Taking Place in Peru <br></h1>
<span class="gmail-post_author_intro">by</span> <span class="gmail-post_author"><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jscrllrn20021/" rel="nofollow">José Carlos Llerena Robles – Vijay Prashad</a></span>- June 15, 2021<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<div id="gmail-attachment_205947" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://2vynjo3oi9ijs29xb3fmjtn1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Screen-Shot-2021-06-14-at-10.01.36-PM-680x471.png" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="469" height="325"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-205947" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Keiko Fujimori and Fernand Rospigliosi.</p></div>
<p>Pedro Castillo of the Perú Libre party has already begun to receive
congratulations from around the world. It is beyond doubt that he won
the June 6 presidential election. The Peruvian Electoral Authority –
ONPE – <a href="https://www.resultadossep.eleccionesgenerales2021.pe/SEP2021/EleccionesPresidenciales/RePres/T">announced</a>
the final results: Castillo won 50.137% of the vote (8.83 million
votes), while his opponent in the second round Keiko Fujimori of Fuerza
Popular won 49.893% (8.78 million votes). This is with 100% of the
votes. By all accounts, Fujimori has lost the election.</p>
<p>However, Fujimori – the candidate of the right – has refused to
concede. In fact, she has hired the very best of Peru’s legal minds to
challenge the election results. Within hours of the election tallies
being available, Fujimori’s team <a href="https://gestion.pe/peru/politica/keiko-fujimori-fuerza-popular-presento-recursos-de-nulidad-para-802-actas-nndc-noticia/">filed</a>
134 challenges within the window of opportunity; they have another 811
challenges in hand. Anyone who knows the Peruvian legal fraternity will
realize that some of the most important <a href="https://peru.as.com/peru/2021/06/10/actualidad/1623333910_757038.html">names</a>
are on the Fujimori roster: Echecopar; Gersi; Miranda & Amado;
Payet, Rey, Cauvi, Pérez; Rodrigo, Elías & Medrano; Rubio Leguía
Normand; Rebaza, Alcázar & De las Casas. In Lima alone the team had
over thirty lawyers at work. The Fujimori team had <a href="https://redaccion.lamula.pe/2021/06/07/fuerza-popular-abogados-elecciones-impugnacion-de-actas-estudios-juridicos/redaccionmulera/">assembled</a>these
lawyers before the vote, anticipating the possibility of a Castillo
victory and the need to tie him up in the courts. The white collar legal
army put in place a racist lawfare strategy; their entire game has been
to invalidate the votes that are at the core of Castillo’s support
base, namely the indigeous communities of Peru.</p>
<p>The United States appointed a new ambassador to Peru. Her name is
Lisa Kenna, a former advisor to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a
nine-year veteran at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a US
Secretary of State official in Iraq. Just before the election,
Ambassador Kenna released a video, in which she spoke of the close ties
between the US and Peru and of the need for a peaceful transition from
one president to another. The “presidential transition sets an example
for the whole region,” she <a href="https://twitter.com/USEMBASSYPERU/status/1380926581812703235">said</a>,
as if anticipating a serious challenge. If anyone would know about
interference in the electoral process in Latin America, it would be the
United States.</p>
<p>It would also be key members inside the team of Keiko Fujimori, such
as Fernando Rospigliosi. Rospigliosi, a former interior minister under
President Alejandro Toledo, <a href="https://elcomercio.pe/politica/elecciones/fernando-rospigliosi-las-veces-que-cuestiono-el-papel-de-fuerza-popular-en-anteriores-campanas-noticia/">joined</a> the Fujimori team for just this kind of contest (for years, Rospigliosi had been very <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VekMY3mXkCI">critical</a>
of the crimes committed by Fujimori’s father, President Alberto
Fujimori, who is now serving a prison sentence). Working with the US
embassy is on the resume of Rospigliosi. In 2005, the former
left-leaning military officer Ollanta Humala was set to enter the
presidential race in April 2006. Every indication suggested that Humala,
who had attempted a coup against Keiko Fujimori’s father President
Alberto Fujimori in 2000, has mass support. Some even thought that
Humala would follow both Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales to draw Peru
leftwards. In that period, Rospigliosi went to the US embassy to seek
support in preventing a Humala victory in 2006.</p>
<p>On 18 November 2005, Rospigliosi and ex-Director of National Defence Ruben Vargas came for <a href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05LIMA5061_a.html">lunch</a>
to the embassy. They offered their “concern over prospects that
ultranationalist Ollanta Humala is establishing himself as a political
force to be reckoned with.” Rospigliosi and Vargos both worked for an <a href="http://chs-peru.com/">NGO</a>
called Capital Humano y Social (CHS), which was under contract with the
US government’s Law Enforcement and Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS).
Both Rospigliosi and Vargas asked the US embassy to urge their
communications contractor Nexum to “monitor coverage of Humala and
promote anti-Humala news and commentary in the coca regions.” They
wanted the US embassy to use its considerable resources to undermine
Humala. This is old fashioned dirty tricks.</p>
<p>The US was worried about Humala, about his <a href="https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06LIMA951_a.html">statements</a> against the US military presence in Peru and his <a href="https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05LIMA4271_a.html">ties</a>
to Hugo Chávez. What Rospigliosi and Vargas said to the US embassy
pleased them. Humala lost the election in 2006. He would win in 2011,
beating Keiko Fujimori; but by 2011, Humala had estalished himself as a
candidate of the neoliberals, someone that the US saw as harmless and
useful. On 19 May 2011, Humala signed a text that yoked him to the
neoliberal agenda (“Compromiso en Defensa de la Democracia”). At the
gathering, he was <a href="https://elcomercio.pe/politica/gobierno/mario-vargas-llosa-reitero-su-respaldo-ollanta-humala-traves-video-noticia-759984/">blessed</a> by Peru’s right-wing godfather, the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.</p>
<p>Vargas Llosa is a key figure here, using the prestige of his 2010
Nobel Prize for literature as weight. As results came in that Pedro
Castillo has swept rural Peru, Vargas Llosa disparaged voters in the
rural areas; he <a href="https://www.pagina12.com.ar/348153-elecciones-en-peru-mario-vargas-llosa-y-su-esfuerzo-por-demo">warned</a>
that Peru would become like Venezuela and that it would a catastrophe
for Peru. Marinated in the bile of racism, Vargas Llosa joined other
intellectuals of the extreme right to belittle the Peruvian
working-class and peasantry, hoping that such remarks would give
sufficient cover to the coup process underway inside the ONPE.</p>
<p>Everything seems prepared: the US ambassador with CIA credentials, a
dirty tricks man with a habit of going to the embassy for help and with a
record of asking the US to malign the left, a grand old man with an
allergy to his own people, and a candidate whose father was backed by
the oligarchy when he conducted a self-coup in 1992.</p>
<p>Pedro Castillo continues to hold the streets. The crowds will gather.
They do not want their election to be stolen. But there is fear in
Peru. Darker forces swirl about. Will the people be able to defeat them?</p>
</div><p>
<em>José Carlos Llerena Robles is a popular educator, member
of the Peruvian organization, La Junta and representative of Alba
Movimientos Peruvian Chapter.</em>
<em>Vijay Prashad is Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, Director of
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and Chief Editor at
LeftWord Books. His most recent book is <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/product/washington-bullets/">Washington Bullets</a>, with a foreword by Evo Morales Ayma.</em>
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