CIA Coup in Peru Explodes into Violence

Corporate media reports blame Pedro Castillo for the emerging crisis.

By Kurt Nimmo and Ben Norton
Global Research, January 13, 2023
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The USG is busy in South America, making sure the right people are in control of the government. In Peru, there are “clashes between security forces and demonstrators,” as described by the AFP.

It comes as trade unions, left-wing parties and social collectives readied for an afternoon march through Lima, the capital, to denounce a “racist and classist … dictatorship.”

Supporters of ousted president Pedro Castillo are demanding new elections and the removal of current leader Dina Boluarte.

Castillo, a former school teacher and student of Peruvian neurosurgeon and Marxist-Leninist politician Vladimir Cerrón, was impeached last year and held on charges of sedition and high treason after he unwisely attempted to form a new government.

It should be noted that Peru is renowned for its corruption. President Alberto Fujimori was convicted of ordering murders, embezzlement of public funds, abuse of power, and crimes against humanity. He controlled the Grupo Colina death squad. This death squad massacred Fujimori opponents in Barrios Altos and La Cantuta. Fujimori also had a journalist and businessman kidnapped.

Fujimori served as Washington’s man in Lima. He was fully onboard with neoliberal “free market reforms” (selling off public assets for private, corporate gain). In return, the USG, in particular the Clinton administration, turned a blind eye to human rights abuses in Peru.

In Peru’s repressive environment, the Comités de Derechos Humanos (Human Rights Committees) was born and despite the brutality of the Shining Path Maoists, the left began to gain power and influence, in part due to the horrors inflicted on Peruvians by the government and the Shining Path guerrillas. According to a truth and reconciliation commission report, 69,280 people were killed between 1980 and 2000, during the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations.

One day prior to the coup d’état overthrowing Castillo, the USG ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna, met with  Gustavo Bobbio Rosas, the country’s defense minister. Kenna is a CIA veteran and worked with embassies in former tank commander Mike Pompeo’s state department. Her state department bio does not mention nine years spent at the CIA.

In 2019, Pompeo admitted the CIA  lies, cheats, and steals (add murder and torture and you have rounded the circle).

The CIA operates out of USG embassies around the world. Philip Agee details this in his book, “CIA Diary: Inside the Company,” while Allan Nairn explores how the agency went about neutralizing troublesome political opposition in Latin America.

In regard to Peru, the CIA gave ex-Peruvian spook Vladimiro Montesinos more than $10 million over the period of 25 years, ostensibly to fight drugs (much of the money was funneled into an “anti-terrorist” operation), according to Angel Paez, a Peruvian member of the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Montesinos was sentenced to a 20-year prison term for his hands-on involvement in an illegal arms deal to provide 10,000 assault weapons to Colombia’s FARC rebels.

The USG “has staunchly supported Peru’s unelected coup regime, which declared a nation-wide ‘state of emergency’ and deployed the military to the streets in an attempt to crush the protests,” Ben Norton wrote for MRonline in December. “Most governments in Latin America have criticized or even refused to recognize Peru’s unelected coup regime, including Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, and various Caribbean nations.”

However, reading the corporate media, we learn nothing about the CIA’s meddling in Peru or the widespread disapproval of the coup government outside Peru. Instead, US News & World Report insinuates Castillo, with “no experience in elected office or ties to the Lima establishment,” is at the center of the crisis.

The Grand Lady of Propaganda, The New York Times, dwelled on the plight of a “fragile democracy“ betrayed by “supporters of the former president,” supporters accused of “attacks against police stations, airports and factories.”

Indeed, Pedro Castillo was elected by the people of Peru because he is not tied to the ruling elite in Lima, a financial elite wedded to neoliberalism and supremely unconcerned with “the high cost of living and staggering social inequality” for the majority of the population, as Andrea Lobo summarizes.

Socialism has a failed record in South and Latin America. However, this should not dismiss interference by the USG, its CIA, USAID, and “democracy” operations abroad run by presumed NGOs.

These agencies and organizations work together to undermine socialists—or any political group opposed to neoliberal policies—voted into office by impoverished peasants, victims of an elite conspiring with the USG, global corporations, and the neoliberal financial elite to deprive them of their birthright, livelihood, and natural resources.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Copyright © Kurt Nimmo and Ben Norton, Global Research, 2023

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