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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://resumen-english.org/2023/03/who-ousted-perus-president-of-the-poor/">resumen-english.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Who Ousted Peru’s President of the Poor?</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits"></div>By Rodrigo Acuna on March 10, 2023</div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-wrapper2">
<div id="gmail-attachment_22916" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22916" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/3-13-peru.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1" alt="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="300" height="200"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-22916" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Pedro Castillo</p></div>
<p>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.<span id="gmail-more-22915"></span></p>
<p>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, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64648641">60 people have been killed</a>,
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.</p>
<p>According to <a href="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"><em>The Economist</em></a>, Peru ‘remains riven by unrest since the “self-coup” and subsequent arrest of its president in December’. Tom Phillips, <em>The Guardian’s</em> chief foreign correspondent in Latin America, recently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/05/juliaca-under-siege-as-death-toll-rises-in-uprising-against-perus-government">claimed</a> in <em>The Observer</em>
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 <em>The Economist</em> and <em>The Observer</em>
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.</p>
<p>The day before Castillo’s failed manoeuvre to dissolve Congress, the US ambassador to the country Lisa Kenna <a href="https://mronline.org/2022/12/18/peru-coup/">met</a>
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 <a href="https://twitter.com/USAmbPeru/status/1600552518056308736">her Twitter page</a>:
‘The United States categorically rejects any extra-constitutional act
by President Castillo to prevent Congress from fulfilling its mandate.’</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8FPtfTajtA">nervous president had read a statement on camera</a>,
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 —
<a>reportedly</a> 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.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.state.gov/kenna-lisa-republic-of-peru-may-2020/">former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer</a>,
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.</p>
<p>Castillo had triumphed in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/19/castillo-wins-peru-election/">June 2021 presidential election</a>
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 <a href="https://jacobin.com/2021/06/peru-pedro-castillo-human-rights-constitution-state-corruption">wrote</a>:</p>
<p>‘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.’</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<p>Once in office, with his minister for foreign affairs Héctor Béjar, Castillo withdrew Peru from the <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/08/10/lima-group-left-without-home-base-following-peru-and-saint-lucias-withdrawal/">Lima Group</a>,
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 <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1444e5c8-4412-4b58-9561-5c7ed5127de5">forced to resign</a> after the Navy took offence to comments he made about the civil war Peru had endured during the 1980s.</p>
<p>The credibility of other ministers Castillo had appointed was then called into question. According to <a href="https://prruk.org/golpe-in-peru-castillo-under-arrest-people-demand-a-constituent-assembly/?fbclid=IwAR090ljFnF2kGMx6GM8HOtrOBmp7of8RAQ3fxEUsdrOO_yk1yUj6ma1zh6s">Francisco Dominguez</a>,
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.’</p>
<p>Commenting on these developments to <em>Eureka Street</em>, 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 <a href="https://www.upstreamonline.com/production/petroperu-resumes-oil-production-after-25-year-hiatus/2-1-1136618">since</a> he took office by the fascist Congress.’</p>
<p>By August 2021, <a href="https://www.pressenza.com/2023/01/peru-pedro-castillos-achievements-that-the-elite-dont-like/">according to another observer</a>,
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.’</p>
<p>In November 2021, in another important development, the <a href="https://www.upstreamonline.com/production/petroperu-resumes-oil-production-after-25-year-hiatus/2-1-1136618">handover</a>
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 <a href="https://www.pressenza.com/2023/01/peru-pedro-castillos-achievements-that-the-elite-dont-like/">claimed</a>
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.’</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>On January 18, as <a href="https://mronline.org/2023/01/21/perus-natural-resources-cia-linked-u-s-ambassador-meets-with-mining-and-energy-ministers-to-talk-investments/">noted</a>
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 <a href="https://twitter.com/USAmbPeru/status/1610733473391599616">stated</a>
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).</p>
<p>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’, <a href="https://www.thecanadafiles.com/articles/canadas-regime-props-up-perus-and-helps-canadian-mining-companies-exploit-crisis">according</a> to journalist Camila Escalante.</p>
<p>With Castillo’s push for Peruvian ownership of resources and ‘<a href="https://r4d.org/blog/the-management-of-mining-revenue-in-peru/">renegotiation of mining contracts, an increase in company taxes, and potential nationalisation of mines</a>’,
the successful coup against him has certainly removed a threat to US
interests and the profit margins of transnational mining corporations.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/who-ousted-perus-president-of-the-poor">Eureka Street</a></p>
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