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by mim3@mim.org
Peru has problems that Amerikans cannot begin to understand, unless they are the Amerikans in the Pentagon and State Department intimately involved in creating those problems. The best way to demonstrate this is with a story.
In the midst of a civil war in Peru, the U.S. Government started grooming successors for a regime it had bribed and goaded into brutality. A handsome man of indigenous roots came forward.
"Mr Toledo was born in a poor Andean Indian village as one of 16 brothers and sisters, seven of whom died.
"When his parents migrated to the coastal city of Chimbote in search of a better life, he began work as a shoeshine boy, aged seven. But a scholarship to secondary school led to a university place in the United States. He went on to take a doctorate at Stanford University and establish himself as a respected economist.
"Mr Toledo's wife, Eliane Karp, has been compared to Hillary Clinton . . ."(1)
It's natural for Toledo's hometown to take pride, but even the people of Peru will not understand how much the story of Alejandro Toledo pleases Amerikans. For Amerikans, it would seem that Mr Toledo did what was necessary for success and he proved the myth of the heroic individual struggle so deeply rooted in Amerikan culture.
The above story was from 2001. Toledo took power in Peru and the Amerikan media reported his approval rating of almost 60%.(2) So far, everything makes sense to Amerikans. Everything sounds just like it happens here, which is not surprising, since Amerikans manufactured Toledo to begin with. The trouble is that wanting other countries to be "just like us" does not make it so.
Amerikans may have fooled even the people of Peru to some extent, the same way the Russians and eastern Germans thought kow-towing to Amerika and installing shopping malls make a country rich. Soon the people learned that even this perfect Amerikan success story named Toledo could not create six digit figures of jobs in a country with massive unemployment, poverty and malnutrition. Any doubts that the West had failed to apply enough brain to Peru's situation can now cease. Amerika won't do better than Fujimori or Toledo in the brains department. The real problem is that the Amerikans are not even close to understanding Peru's conditions.
Toledo's approval rating dropped even faster than George W. Bush's after the afterglow of 911. Alejandro Toledo's public approval rating was down to 11.2% when in 2003 he arranged a show trial of a senior citizen from England that he managed to extradite by a surprise Gestapo-like visit from the Spanish police at a Spanish hotel when recently deposed Aznar was trying to show Bush that he meant business on "terror." In the previous 20 years, Adolfo Olaechea had spent 2 weeks in Peru on a honeymoon, but he called himself a "Maoist intellectual," a claim that MIM can assert was extremely dubious, though there were few other Peruvians abroad with his command of English that we of the imperialist countries could speak with about Peru. In any case, this senior citizen proved useful to Peru's authorities as a "Central Committee" member of an organization called the "Shining Path" of Peru that is on the u.$. terror lists.
Adolfo Olaechea spent three months in Peru's maximum security prison in 2003, according to the not so reliable media in Peru. Now he's out on bail but not allowed to go back home to London where he was living for decades as a permanent resident married to a Dutch national.
Oddly enough, and more importantly, now Peru's hardly trustworthy authorities claim that they have the truly absolute leader of "Shining Path" up to 1992 named Comrade Gonzalo coming up for another trial. Past public displays of Gonzalo have turned out to be hoaxes. Today, Comrade Gonzalo allegedly raised his fist in a trial appearance.(3)
This happens against a backdrop where Peru's authorities try to adopt a veneer of inspiration from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. In an effort at balance, the thousands of stories of humyn rights violations by the regime in killing unarmed civilians in the 1980s and 1990s are coming out. While many still blame "Shining Path" communists as "responsible" for 69,000 deaths in the 1980s and 1990s, they have also admitted that the regime carried out about half of the killings.
As of November, 2004, authorities in Peru are not saying they have evidence that Comrade Gonzalo who led the "Shining Path" ever planted a bomb or fired a gun, but that he was the "intellectual inspiration." It seems that putting it that way will serve to intimidate people like Adolfo Olaechea who did not have much to do with "Shining Path" except as a foreign intellectual voice concerned with Peru issues.
The advantage to the regime of course is that it is easier to prove such charges and also it intimidates more people than proving that Gonzalo actually carried out armed struggle. When your approval rating is only 7% as it is now in 2004 for Toledo, you start to think about having to go after a wider range of people. It's an example of why a politician's popularity in an alleged democracy is directly relevant to the options open to that politician.
If Peru's authorities go the other road, they also face difficulties. With a focus on armed struggle by the "Shining Path," the authorities draw attention to the violence of the Fujimori regime and remind the public that he is wanted for criminal charges, that his henchmen are in prison and that there is videotape evidence of bribery of legislators and a paper trail for drug-trafficking. Since the charges against people like Adolfo Olaechea originate under Fujimori, drawing attention to the violence of the 1980s and 1990s can also backfire and remind people exactly why they want to let Adolfo Olaechea go.
Yet another road is to count Adolfo Olaechea as a renegade or informer. In that way, the authorities can let him go with less political cost to themselves but more confusion, and without solving the similar cases that are genuine. If the authorities release Adolfo Olaechea as an informer or capitulator, that won't change the fact that his extradition and imprisonment for the original reasons given was wrong. Those reasons in print will still reflect poorly on the authorities in Peru and still prove how the allegedly democratic system is completely rotten.
The sorts of difficulties like these that lead to convoluted twists and turns hardly discernible to the outside eye are no-win for the rulers in Peru, because they stem from an underlying economic situation that gave at least parity to the rebels as against the Fujimori regime. That is why the real answer is to be found outside the dialogue as seen so far.
To understand how low the approval rating of the Peruvian regime is, this writer had to look up Richard Nixon's approval rating. President Nixon had a 24% public approval rating when he resigned from office in the Watergate disgrace in 1974.(4)
In point of fact, Toledo's approval rating is so low, it's possible that MIM's approval rating in the anti-communist united $tates might be higher than that if we happened to seize power today. After all, MIM would end the Iraq war, legalize gay marriage, rescind the Patriot Act and release prisoners stuck on immigration violations and pot possession, so we would be hated by most but we would get some support. Thanks to Toledo, that's the first time this writer ever had that fantasy. Perhaps in the united $tates, Toledo would have had a three times higher 21% rating as president, but because Peru is in such a difficult situation, the typical Amerikan bourgeois success story cannot get anywhere.
The man before Toledo was also someone that Amerikans would expect to succeed, a modern, full-blooded Japanese man named Fujimori. He proved to be a fascist tied into drug lords. He's up for criminal charges and his henchmen (equivalent of cabinet leaders) went to prison. Despite the successful capture of the leadership of "Shining Path" by Fujimori, Peru did not really get anywhere for the trouble of arresting the only people not corrupted in respect to Peru's needs.
Meanwhile, in the rest of Latin America, people that Amerikans would call "socialists" are coming to power via election anyway. First it was Lula in Brazil. Then Hugo Chavez won his referendum in Venezuela. Highly influential also was the the Socialist victory in Spain after the Al Qaeda attack there. Then on October 31st, Uruguay elected its first "leftist." Leaders in Chile and Argentina would also be beyond Amerikan imagination politically, considering that Amerikans just elected George W. Bush.
The problem in Peru is that it is a little ahead of these other Latin American countries politically, because Peru elected that sort of leader that MIM would call watery in the 1970s and 1980s and the people have debated every shade of "socialism" and "Marxism." Needless to say, Peru would not have had narco-dictator Fujimori or abysmal failure Toledo if the leaders before them had had success to pass along through their parties.
What it all means is that Amerikans may understand Toledo, but they do not have any chance of understanding the situation he faces, and why people in his position become unpopular figleafs for military dictatorship. A Toledo in the United $tates could easily be a senator by now. A Toledo in Peru is helpless except for police and military repression.
The Maoists have experience in situations like this. Mao cleaned up China's drug problem and doubled the life expectancy of his people. Expecting Peru to jump into the lifestyle of Beverly Hills or even just Main Street mall mania is simply not realistic.
Amerikans will have plenty of chances to persuade Peru's people of the beauties of capitalism later, as the Soviet and Chinese examples prove. When the people of Peru are no longer hungry, have minimal medical care, crush the drug trade, enjoy universal education--in others words after the communists succeed in doing what they do--then the people of Peru will start to wonder why they put communists in power to begin with and a new competition more familiar to Amerikans will begin, one which they have won in the ex-Soviet Union and China without an invasion.
Let's face it: Amerikans just do not understand the political competition process at this stage of Peru's development. That's why all their chosen leaders for Peru end up miserable failures.
Peru borders on the kind of lawlessness seen in Somalia and Afghanistan and the people are tired of the fascist solution. The only people who can bring long-term order are the communists, because only the communists have a recipe for long-term progress specific to Peru's conditions. No free market politician could ever surmount the drug trade in Peru, never mind improve jobs, education and health care. Much as that it is hard to hear for Amerikans, that is what has happened historically in Peru with the failure of decades of Peru's partnership with Washington.
If the Amerikans would let Peru go communist and have a thorough land reform, eventually business with Peru would boom, just as it did in all other countries that had successful land reforms--China & Taiwan, Japan and southern Korea. In today's weak global economy, that cannot happen any too soon. If Amerikans are concerned about civil liberties under communist leadership in Peru even while their partners of capitalism and semi-feudalism thus far have shown no such concern, then it would pay for Amerikans to offer to loan the money to buy out the ruling class of Peru for a real land reform and make it more peaceful. The more peaceful the land reform and nationalization of assets can be, the less reason for any violation of civil liberties of Peruvians by Peruvians. Anyone who can see how profitable u.$. trade with China, Taiwan, Japan and southern Korea are today knows it would pay off for Amerikans down the road. All those places had land reforms forced through in the midst of World War II and its aftermath.
Backing off the anti-communism in Peru would not only bring better order and future business, but also, it would prove to all of Latin America that despite a rising mood of anti-Americanism, anything is possible. This would open up possibilities for "wheeling-and-dealing" that Amerikans have not seen before in Latin America. After all, if Amerikans are flexible enough to get over the communist bogey, then this will encourage other Latin American leaders to come up with innovative offers meeting Amerika's needs concerning trade, drugs and terrorism.
Notes:
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/708450.stm
2. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7969938.htm?1c
3. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aK8k35sZEeHg&refer=latin_america
4. http://slate.msn.com/id/32927/