PERU
Fujimori is gone, but
Wall Street power remains
By
Monica Somocurcio
After
10 years of repression and eight years of outright dictatorship, the regime of
Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori crumbled in November. The Pentagon lackey
learned a recurring lesson: Even the most crass servants of U.S. imperialism are
expendable when their services are no longer in their master's interests.
Fujimori
has sought refuge in
Japan.
The
post-Fujimori regime in Peru was solidified on Nov. 25 when the newly appointed
interim president, Valentín Paniagua, named a cabinet and fired the top
15 generals of the Peruvian military.
Paniagua,
a long-time bourgeois politician and head of Congress, rose to the presidency
after Congress rejected Fujimori's resignation and instead deposed him for being
"morally unfit." Paniagua is to stay in power until new elections are held next
July
28.
The
new cabinet is filled with darlings of the U.S. State Department. It includes
prominent bourgeois politicians and figures of the Peruvian elite such as Javier
Perez de Cuellar, former secretary general of the United Nations, and Javier
Silva Ruete, a banker and economist who was president of the Andean Development
Corporation and Peru's representative to the International Monetary Fund, World
Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.
Paniagua
also appointed Ketin Vidal as interior minister. Vidal headed the police
"anti-terrorism" unit credited with apprehending Communist Party of Peru
(Shining Path) leader Abimael Guzman in
1992.
Rigged
election sparked mass
protests
Fujimori
was "elected" to a third term as president in May after blatantly rigging the
electoral process. He had already sacked Electoral Court justices who refused to
rubber stamp his run for a third term that violated the Peruvian
constitution.
The
May election won Fujimori very little legitimacy. Thousands of Peruvians
demonstrated in the streets against the blatantly anti-democratic character of
the elections.
While
the U.S. government whined about the elections, it continued to support
Fujimori's government economically and
militarily.
But
Fujimori's regime came to a screeching halt when Vladimiro Montesinos, his hated
second-in-command and head of the secret police, was caught on videotape bribing
a lawmaker. After the videotape was broadcast Sept. 14, Montesinos fled to
Panama with the help of the U.S. government. He later returned to
Peru.
Although
the entire state apparatus is supposedly searching for him on Peruvian soil, he
remains at large. There are charges that he is being protected by members of
Peru's armed forces.
Both
Fujimori and Montesinos face corruption
charges.
Colombia
arms
scam
Another
event that heralded the end of the Fujimori/Montesinos regime was the
"discovery" of a supposed arms sale to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) by rogue individuals in Peru. It was said that
Montesinos himself purchased the arms.
The
weapons were later discovered in the possession of the Colombian military, which
claimed to have "found"
them.
This
preposterous story--that an ideologically motivated counter-revolutionary like
Montesinos would send arms to revolutionaries--was an obvious public-relations
attempt by the Peruvian ruling class opposition to mar the dictatorship's key
figures in the eyes of their Washington masters.
The
Pentagon knows better, of course. The fact that it has not come to the defense
of its former allies means that Washington and Wall Street have reached an
agreement with the new ruling clique in Lima.
The
CIA and the U.S. government undoubtedly knew in advance of the events leading to
Fujimori's demise. There is now a petition by a Peruvian congressional committee
to the U.S. government to disclose any and all CIA information on Montesinos.
"I
find it hard to believe that the great minds of the CIA did not know about the
millions and millions of dollars Montesinos was getting from money launder ing,"
said Congressperson Anel Townsend, a member of the committee on corruption and a
longtime Fujimori
opponent.
However,
not much is being said about what the CIA knew about the videotape and arms deal
that brought down Montesinos. While the firing and subsequent fleeing of
Fujimori has left many Peruvians in either shock or sheer elation, all has
transpired in relative
calm.
The
Paniagua regime is cozy with commercial and capitalist interests, and more
closely tied with the old Peruvian bourgeois elite.
U.S.
authorized Fujimori's
'self-coup'
Fujimori,
by contrast, had originally come from an atypical source--a political party that
did not exist before the 1990 election. He was an unknown in the political
arena, not a member of the small circle of bourgeois politicians that has
governed Peru on behalf of the ruling class for
centuries.
Fujimori
was viewed as the strong, heavy-handed leader Peru needed to put an end to the
guerrilla movements that were becoming more active. And, it was felt, he could
implement IMF-style shock therapy to the Peruvian economy.
The
U.S. government gave Fujimori full authority to do whatever was necessary to
beat back the left and all those who opposed the new economic and political
order. He wasted no time, ending all subsidies and launching a massive
privatization campaign the year he was first
elected.
To
continue the work of implementing this new order without political or legal
obstacles, Fujimori, with the military solidly behind him, dissolved parliament
and canceled the constitution in a 1992 "self-coup."
Along
with Montesinos, the secret police and the military, Fujimori continued the war
against the revolutionary and workers' movements. He proceeded to sign another
agreement with the IMF for continued restructuring.
During
his second term, Fujimori altered the existing constitution to allow him a third
term in office. After the massacre of Tupac Amaru revolutionaries at the
Japanese Embassy in 1997, Fujimori claimed full victory over the
left.
It
wasn't long after that and his quest for a third term that the old bourgeois
political parties and their ruling-class masters demanded to return to their
traditional place in the Peruvian political system. After all, the dirty work
was
done.
But
Fujimori wasn't about to give up power that easily. It took a series of
scandals, of a kind that rarely happen without prior U.S. government knowledge,
for this regime to
fall.
Class
contradictions
intensify
It
won't take long for people to realize that the change in government doesn't
necessarily mean a change for the better for the majority.
"We
need in this moment for the government to make a favorable gesture for the
workers," said Juan José Gorriti, secretary general of the Peruvian
General Workers Confederation. "We have to understand that democratization is
not just about free elections, but it has to do with human rights, and workers'
rights are human
rights."
Can
Peru's ruling elite find a way to impose the IMF's will with a "democratic"
façade? That is the question being posed across Latin America today.
In
neighboring Ecuador, two "democratic" governments have fallen in three years
because of mass mobilizations against IMF-sponsored austerity. And while Peru's
revolutionary movement has suffered setbacks, the example of Colombia's
insurgency must give Peru's mine and factory owners cause for
concern.
Across
Latin America, the contradiction between capitalist exploitation and the demands
of the continent's working people is intensifying. While the struggle in Peru
today is safely within the bounds of bourgeois legality, the movements of the
workers, peasants and Indigenous peoples are bound to break through these
limitations.
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