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Colombia: Students, unions march against labour and pension reforms in Bogota
Demonstrators marched through the Colombian capital Bogota on Thursday as part of a nationwide protest against economic policies of president Ivan Duque.
Footage shows police fire tear gas on students before they as well as professors and union workers hold a rally.
The demonstration took place after Colombia’s court declared Duque’s budget plan unconstitutional on Wednesday, forcing the government to resubmit the proposal.
The bill law was an important part of Duque’s reform package aimed at attracting investors and reaching IMF goals.
Violent clashes erupt between cartel gunmen and police in Mexico
Intense fighting has erupted in the Mexican city of Culiacán, where masked gunmen threw up burning barricades and traded gunfire with security forces after authorities arrested one of the sons of the jailed former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.
The chaotic scenes in Culiacán, a long-time stronghold for the Guzmáns’ cartel, have increased pressure on President López Obrador, who took office in December promising to pacify a country weary after more than a decade of drug-war fighting.
Venezuela Government Hosts International Commune Congress
Maduro affirmed that popular power is “the soul” of the Bolivarian project.
President Nicolas Maduro addresses the closing ceremony of the International Congress of Communes in Caracas this weekend. (@PresidencialVen / Twitter)
Mérida, October 21, 2019 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The first ever International Congress of Communes and Social Movements was held in Caracas’ Alba Hotel over the weekend.
The gathering was attended by 130 international delegates from 27 countries joining around 600 Venezuelan representatives, according to government sources organising the event.
The congress was held under the slogan “Communes or Nothing” on occasion of the seventh anniversary of former President Hugo Chavez’s influential Strike at the Helm speech, in which he stressed the need to devolve power to the people.
Delegates discussed macro political issues such as national sovereignty and self-determination, as well as more communal-specific topics including communal production and financial systems, as well as the conformation of communal cities and their relationship with local mayors and governors.
Delegates were also joined by the wider Caracas population in a “Great Internationalist Communard March” on Saturday.
Speaking at the close of the event, President Nicolas Maduro explained that the initiative to organise the Congress emerged from the July meeting of the regional left-wing regional bloc, the Sao Paulo Forum.
The president went on to highlight the role of communes and popular power in Venezuela, describing it as “the soul of the Bolivarian project [and] the only road to construct Bolivarian Socialism.”
Venezuelan communes bring together local communal councils into regional decision-making bodies that also incoporate other grassroots community groups, including workers’ councils, feminist or ecological groups, as well as the Bolivarian Militia. Some of the more organised communes have spearheaded recent efforts to overcome the economic crisis by creating self-sufficient community productive units and providing local solutions to problems in the health and food sectors. Their efforts have often led them into conflict with state bureaucracy, private landowners, and local government representatives.
From Caracas, Alberto Maza of Carabobo State’s General Manuel Cedeno Commune explained that “Communes are of strategic importance for the construction of socialism in Venezuela [and also] the fundamental cell for the new mode of production.”
According to Maduro, there are currently 3,173 communes organised in Venezuela, and 25,772 communal businesses have been registered. He also indicated that there are 48,090 communal councils, of which 22,095 are urban, 23,363 rural, and 2,632 based in indigenous territories. It is unclear how many of these communes were represented at the congress.
Last October, Maduro publicly apologised to communal leaders for “half-hearted” progress in the devolution of powers to the communal structures, claiming his mandate has been plagued by mere “speeches and applause” on the issue.
However, his government has since come under continuing fire for pushing forward with privatisations of state land and enterprises in lieu of turning them over to communal organisations.
Crowds gathered for the communard march in Caracas Saturday. (Kelly Carreno / Sputnik)
The final document signed at the Congress congratulated Venezuela’s efforts to build popular power, describing the experiences of self-government as “anti-establishment practices which return power to the people, as well as sharpening efforts to struggle for a different world.”
The declaration also explains that communal organisation is “an important form of resistance against the oppressive plot of capitalism, an emancipatory project against the bourgeois state, and a distinct way of doing politics.”
Concretely, delegates agreed to create an International Confederation of Communes, Social Movements, and Popular Power, a Centre for the Safeguarding and Reproduction of Native Seeds, and a Bolivar-Chavez International Institute for Advanced Studies of Popular Power.
Delegates also plan to form a Popular Network of Alternative Communication, which will divulge information from the varied commune movements in a range of languages, via TV, radio, social networking, video conferences, street art and newsletters.
They also proposed establishing a Venezuela-based Latin America and Caribbean International Popular Economic Commission (CEIPAL), which will “study and articulate efforts in the economic, productive, and technological fields of popular power,” paying special attention to cryptocurrencies and communal barter systems.
A global “Anti-Imperialist Twitter Campaign” was also agreed upon for November 5, as well as a range of events in capitals cities on December 9 and in the context of the #NoMoreTrump campaign.
Similarly, marches in support of the Bolivarian Revolution and against neoliberalism were called for February 27, while a global protest in favour of peace in Latin America is planned for April 2020. Finally, delegates agreed to organise protests rejecting the Monroe Doctrine and international sanctions on June 28, 2020.
Those participating in the Congress also used the opportunity to express their rejection of US-led sanctions against Venezuela, as well as what they termed “the monopolisation” of seeds by multinational firms including Monsanto, Bayer and Syngenta.
The final declaration also expressed solidarity with a number of protests currently being held across the continent.
“Today the peoples are rising up in resistance to imperialist attacks and we are watching the struggles of our Chilean, Ecuadorian, Haitian, Brazilian, Argentine and Colombian brothers and sisters closely,” explained Mervin Maldonado, a United Socialist Party (PSUV) Congress representative.
Whitewashing Neoliberal Repression in Chile and Ecuador
LUCAS KOERNER | OCTOBER 23, 2019
Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, people are rising up against right-wing, US-backed governments and their neoliberal austerity policies.
Currently in Chile, the government of billionaire Sebastian Piñera has deployed the army to crush nationwide demonstrations against inequality sparked by a subway fare hike.
In Ecuador, indigenous peoples, workers and students recently brought the country to a standstill during 11 days of protests against the gutting of fuel subsidies by President Lenín Moreno as part of an IMF austerity package.
One might expect these popular rebellions to receive unreservedly sympathetic coverage from international media that claim to be on the side of democracy and the common people. On the contrary, corporate journalists frequently describe these uprisings as dangerous alterations of “law and order,” laden with “violence,” “chaos” and “unrest.”
This portrait contrasts remarkably with coverage of anti-government protests in Venezuela, where generally the only violence highlighted is that allegedly perpetrated by the state. In the eyes of Western elite opinion, Venezuela’s middle-class opposition have long been leaders of a legitimate popular protest against an authoritarian, anti-American regime. Poor people rebelling against repressive US client states are considered an unacceptable deviation from this script.
‘Crackdown’ in Venezuela
Corporate journalists have never been able to contain their enthusiasm for the right-wing Venezuelan opposition’s repeated coup attempts, which are regularly cast as a “pro-democracy” movement (FAIR.org, 5/10/19).
In 2017, Venezuela’s opposition led four months of violent, insurrectionary protests demanding early presidential elections, resulting in over 125 dead, including protesters, government supporters and bystanders. It was the opposition’s fifth major effort to oust the government by force since 2002.
Despite the demonstrations featuring attacks on journalists, lynchings and assassinations of government supporters, they were depicted as a “uprising” against “authoritarianism” (New York Times, 6/22/17), a “rebellion” in the face of “the government’s crackdown” (Bloomberg, 5/18/17) and a David-like movement of “young firebrands” facing down a sinister regime (Guardian, 5/25/17). Reporters frequently attributed the mounting death toll to state security forces (France 24, 7/21/17; Newsweek,6/20/17; Washington Post, 6/3/17), while generally ignoring opposition political violence reported to be responsible for over 30 deaths.
The pattern was repeated in January, when deadly clashes broke out across the country in the days before and after opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself “interim president” with the US’s encouragement. Corporate outlets described the events as a “violent crackdown” (Independent, 1/24/19), with security forces “spreading terror…to target critics” (Reuters, 2/3/19) and “soldiers and paramilitary gunmen…hunting opposition activists” (Miami Herald, 1/27/19). International journalists based their accounts largely on pro-opposition sources, suppressing inconvenient details that complicated their Manichean narrative, such as the fact that some 38% of protests were violent and at least 28% featured armed confrontations with authorities.
Unlike in Chile and Ecuador, corporate outlets have consistently vilified Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—who won 6.2 million votes, or 31% of the electorate last year—as an “authoritarian” (FAIR.org, 4/11/19, 8/5/19) or a “dictator” (FAIR.org, 4/11/19), justifying the latest coup effort.
Chile ‘Riots’
In recent days, Chileans have taken to the streets in mass demonstrations against the Piñera administration, following a further increase in Santiago’s exorbitant subway fare.
Beginning as high school student–led protests, the movement has escalated into a full-scale rebellion against the savagely unequal neoliberal order, prompting the government to militarize the streets and impose a curfew for the first time since the Western-backed Pinochet dictatorship (1973–90).
Despite the largest protests since the return of democracy, the international corporate media have largely referred to them in pejorative terms such as “riots” (CNN, 10/19/19; CNBC, 10/21/19), “violent unrest” (New York Times, 10/19/19) and “chaos” (NPR, 10/19/19; Vice, 10/21/19), providing a moral casus belli for war against the people.
Revealingly, no major outlets have described the government’s brutal repression as a “crackdown,” nor called into question the legitimacy of Piñera, who was elected in 2017 with the backing of 26% of registered voters.
It’s true that international journalists are beginning to reference allegations of human rights violations reported by Chile’s National Human Rights Institute, including, as of October 23, 173 people shot and 18 dead, among them at least five presumably at the hands of authorities.
However, the victims of state violence in Chile have not received anywhere near the amount of attention international outlets have dedicated to protester deaths in Venezuela, where the dead have been movingly profiled (New York Times, 6/10/17; BBC, 5/14/17)—provided they were not lynched by the opposition.
In two emblematic cases, Manuel Rebolledo, 23, died on October 21 after being run over by a navy vehicle near Concepción, while Ecuadorian national Romario Veloz, 26, was shot dead the day before at a protest in La Serena. Neither men have been mentioned by name in Western press reports.
It would appear that the only worthy victims, in the eyes of US corporate journalists, are those that have propaganda value from the standpoint of Western foreign policy interests. Reporters spontaneously empathize with neoliberal technocrats like Piñera, even as they occasionally chide them for “excesses.”
“Mr. Piñera said that he is mindful of the broader grievances that fueled the unrest… But he seemed to have difficulty coming to grips with the real source of the population’s frustrations,” the New York Times (10/21/19) sympathetically observed, before going on to note that the president has declared “war” against his own people.
The paper of record suggested that Chileans might find the imposition of martial law “jarring,” given that “the military had killed and tortured thousands of people just decades ago in the name of restoring order.” But despite the article being headlined “What You Need to Know About the Unrest in Chile,” the Times did not find it relevant to mention anywhere that state security forces were currently maiming and killing demonstrators in the streets, and allegedly torturing detainees.
The dominant narrative fed to the public is that Piñera’s government has been “inept” in responding to the protests (Economist, 10/20/19; Reuters, 10/21/19; New York Times, 10/21/19), but never criminal or cruel.
No Western newspapers have published scathing op-eds calling Piñera a “dictator” and demanding their government take action to “restore democracy,” as they have done regularly in the case of Venezuela (FAIR.org, 4/11/19). Rather, they counsel the billionaire president to address “inequality,” barring any reference to what is increasingly coming to resemble state terror (New York Times, 10/22/19; Guardian, 10/23/19; Bloomberg, 10/23/19).
Corporate journalists continue to whitewash Piñera, describing him as “center-right” (Guardian, 10/21/19; CNBC, 10/19/19; Reuters, 10/21/19) and concealing his personal ties to murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet and those of his top cabinet members.
Ecuador ‘Violence’
Corporate journalists have shown only marginally more sympathy to Ecuador’s recent indigenous-led uprising against IMF-imposed austerity measures, frequently described in headlines as “violent protests” (CNN, 10/8/19; Guardian, 10/8/19; USA Today, 10/9/19; Financial Times, 10/8/19).
President Moreno has yet to be labeled by the international media as “authoritarian,” despite ordering soldiers to repress demonstrators in the streets, imposing a curfew, suspending basic civil liberties and arresting rival politicians.
Since betraying his campaign promise to continue his predecessor Rafael Correa’s left-wing policies. and embracing the oligarchy he ran against, Moreno has become the darling of Western elite opinion (FAIR.org, 2/4/18).
Like in Chile, corporate outlets have whitewashed Moreno’s vicious crackdown, which left seven dead, around a thousand arrested and a similar figure wounded. However, corporate outlets have been even more nefarious in obfuscating the origins of the crisis in Ecuador.
As Joe Emersberger has recently exposed for FAIR (10/23/19), Western journalists’ favorite lie is that Moreno “inherited a debt crisis that ballooned as his predecessor and one-time mentor, former President Rafael Correa, took out loans for a major dam, highways, schools, clinics and other projects” (New York Times, 10/8/19). In fact, the country’s debt-to-GDP level remains low, though it has increased slightly under Moreno, due not to public works but to his pro-elite policies.
Corporate outlets have for the most part admitted that Moreno has presented no evidence to back his ludicrous claims of Correa and Maduro supporters orchestrating the protests; nonetheless, they have, with few exceptions (DW, 10/14/19; Reuters, 10/12/19), shamefully ignored Moreno’s draconian persecution of Correaist politicians (including elected representatives), which he justifies on the basis of the very same conspiracy theory. This coverage contrasts sharply with the red carpet treatment regularly provided to Venezuela’s US-friendly opposition politicians, regardless of how many coups they perpetrate (Reuters, 4/30/19; LA Times, 4/30/19; Guardian, 2/6/19).
Western Media Gendarmerie
It is not coincidental that Western journalists stand aghast at the violence of the excluded and exploited in Chile and Ecuador, while rationalizing that spearheaded by Washington-backed opposition elites in Venezuela.
This bias has nothing to do with any actual amount of looting or arson. Rather, it is the eruption of the racialized poor into polite bourgeois society’s technocratic body politic that is viscerally violent to local neocolonial elites and their Western professional-class backers.
Ecuador’s protests are the latest in a long line of anti-neoliberal uprisings, which brought down three presidents between 1997 and 2005.
The rebellion exploding in Chile is the largest in over a generation, evidencing the terminal legitimacy crisis of the “low-intensity democracy” crafted by Pinochet to maintain the neoliberal model imposed at gunpoint. The Chilean uprising has genuinely terrified elites, leading the right-wing president to wage war on his own people. At stake is not just the stability of a key Western ally, but more crucially, neoliberalism’s ideological narrative that has upheld Chile as a “success story.”
Corporate journalists will most likely continue to muffle themselves vis-a-vis repressive US client states, in the same way that they systematically conceal the impact of Washington’s sanctions on Venezuela (FAIR.org, 6/26/19), which are estimated to have already killed 40,000 Venezuelans since 2017.
If the first casualty of war is truth, its self-anointed purveyors in the international media have much blood on their hands indeed.
Image caption The final vote count by the electoral tribunal declared Mr Morales the winner
Bolivian President Evo Morales has been declared the winner of the country’s elections, according to the electoral tribunal (TSE).
TSE said Mr Morales had 47.1% of the vote with 99.9% of ballots counted, avoiding a second round run-off.
There were claims of the election being rigged after the vote count was paused for 24 hours.
Second placed candidate Carlos Mesa has called for a second round as has the US, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia.
Mr Mesa had 36.51% of the vote, according to TSE’s website.
Those figures give Mr Morales a winning margin of more than 10 percentage points, meaning that a second round of voting is not required under Bolivian election law.
A spokeswoman for TSE said 0.01% of votes had been voided in the region of Beni with new voting there scheduled for November. She added that these votes are not enough to change the outcome of the election.
Hours after polling booths closed on Sunday, TSE released the first results of the quick count that signposted towards a second round.
Anger mounts in Bolivia over poll result confusion
Evo Morales: Thirteen years and aiming for more
However its website then stopped updating for 24 hours. When it finally resumed, Mr Morales had a lead of over 10 percentage points.
Observers from the Organisation of American States (OAS) expressed concern over the count’s dramatic shift.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionMany people have taken to the streets saying they have no confidence in the country’s electoral authorities
Mr Morales has accused the observers of slandering him by expressing their concerns over the vote.
The European Union on Thursday backed the OAS assessment “that the best option would be to hold a second round to restore trust and ensure the full respect of the democratic choice of the Bolivian people”.
There have been protests across the country since Monday. Following the release of the results, electoral offices in Sucre and Potosi were torched.
A general strike began on Wednesday.
Mr Mesa has urged his supporters to continue protest action and accused the electoral tribunal of manipulating the count to help Mr Morales win.
Many Bolivians say they have no more confidence in the electoral authorities.
Image copyrightAFPImage caption Mr Mesa has called for a second round of voting
Mr Mesa calculates that his chances of winning in a second round would be higher, especially if those candidates who did not make it to the second round throw their support behind him.
With his new win, Mr Morales, already Latin America’s longest-serving president, is set to remain in power until 2025.
Preliminary results in Bolivia’s presidential election indicate it should go to a run-off vote, but the incumbent president Evo Morales has already claimed victory, as CGTN’s Dan Collyns reports from La Paz.
En varias ciudades se registraron choques entre seguidores del presidente Evo Morales y sus detractores. Morales rozaría una mayoría mínima que le aseguraría evitar la segunda vuelta ante su principal rival Carlos Mesa.
Violent protests seek removal of Honduras president
By Freddy Cuevas | AP | Oct. 24, 2019 at 6:09 p.m. GMT-3
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Protests calling for the exit of President Juan Orlando Hernández turned violent Thursday as Honduran police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in the capital.
Protesters blocked roads with burning tires. Windows were broken in downtown businesses.
Government critics have been emboldened by the conviction of Hernández’s younger brother on drug trafficking charges in a New York court this month after a trial during which witnesses implicated the president in the drug enterprise.
The president has strongly denied the claims, which included drug traffickers testifying that they gave $1.5 million to Hernández’s various political campaigns in exchange for protection from security forces.
Salvador Nasralla, a television personality who finished second to Hernández in the last election, leads a coalition calling for the president to step down. They have promised civil disobedience until Hernández is gone and threatened a national strike, but haven’t set a date.
Police in riot gear advance towards demonstrators demanding the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Thursday, Oct. 24 2019. Calls for President Hernandez’s resignation came after his younger brother was convicted on drug trafficking charges in New York and testimony implicated the president in his drug enterprise. (Elmer Martinez/AP)
Political analyst Raúl Pineda, a former lawmaker from Hernández’s National party, said Thursday that Honduras “requires urgent changes.”
Pineda sees three options for Hernández to calm the situation: rectify his behavior, open a genuine dialogue with the opposition or resign.
“If Hernández doesn’t go voluntarily there will be a lot of violence in the streets and Honduras will fall into a terrible total chaos,” Pineda said.
Retired Gen. Romeo Vásquez, who was involved in the removal of President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 before embarking on a political career, said Honduran institutions are not working.
“That’s why it’s time to change the country’s direction,” he said.
Honduras’ Channel 5, an outlet that has traditionally backed the government line, saw one of its most recognized personalities, Renato Álvarez, say on air Thursday that “the path to social peace passes through the president’s resignation.”
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Haiti: Gunshots wound 7 men setting up protest roadblock
Vendors scramble to pack up their goods and get inside, as protesters calling for President Jovenel Moïse march up a road in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Oct. 21, 2019. Anger over corruption, inflation and scarcity of basic goods including fuel has led to large demonstrations that began more than a month ago and have shuttered many businesses and schools. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
By Associated Press | Oct. 21, 2019 at 8:31 p.m. GMT-3
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haitian police said seven young men were shot and wounded early Monday as they set up a roadblock as part of protests in the southern city of Jacmel.
Marc-André Cadostin, director of the southeast department of the National Police, said two of the men, ages 20 and 25, were transferred in critical condition to the capital, Port-au-Prince. The other five men were being treated at a local hospital, he said.
Cadostin said the men were setting a barricade built across a road on fire when unknown suspects began shooting.
He said the motive for the shooting was unknown, although tensions have been rising between government supporters and protesters after months of demonstrations seeking to force President Jovenel Moise to leave office.
With more protesters out on Haiti’s streets Monday, opponents of the president accuse him of complicity in massive corruption and of mismanaging the economy so badly that fuel is in short supply and many businesses have been forced to close by shortages and demonstrations.
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Americas by The Washington Post
Protesters bar Haiti’s president from visiting historic site
By Evens Sanon | AP | Oct. 17, 2019 at 6:49 p.m. GMT-3
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haiti’s embattled president was forced on Thursday to hold a private ceremony amid heavy security for what is usually a public celebration of one of the country’s founding fathers.
Jovenel Moïse and other officials appeared at the National Pantheon Museum in downtown Port-au-Prince as hundreds of armed police officers closed down the surrounding area while protesters who demanded his resignation began to gather nearby.
“This is not how a government should be functioning,” said Mario Terrain, who is 29 and unemployed. “The president is in hiding.”
Moïse left after the brief ceremony to commemorate the death of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, whose rule ended in 1806 following a military revolt. Protesters had prevented Moïse from visiting Pont-Rouge, the site north of the capital where Dessalines was killed and where the ceremony is usually held.
The funeral procession accompanying the body of murdered community leader Josemano “Badou” Victorieux to the cemetery passes by cars burnt during recent demonstrations in the Delmas area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2019. Funerals for 11 of at least 20 people killed were held in six cities, including the capital of Port-au-Prince, where at least two people were injured in a protest that broke out when presidential guards tried to block a road near where hundreds had gathered around the coffins of two victims. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
Anger over corruption, inflation and scarcity of basic goods including fuel has led to large demonstrations that began five weeks ago and have shuttered many businesses and schools. At least 20 people have been killed and more than 200 injured, including one man shot to death on Thursday in one protest. Witnesses said a group of protesters shot the man and injured another who was taken to the hospital when they tried to steal their belongings.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Port-au-Prince and clashed with police while a smaller crowd turned up at Pont-Rouge as they criticized Moïse.
“We dare the president to come,” said 28-year-old Joel Theodore. “It will be his last day in office.”
Violence also broke out in the towns of Leogane and Gressier west of Port-au-Prince, where protesters set fire to government buildings including a police station.
The president held a surprise press conference on Tuesday and said he would not resign as he once again urged unity and dialogue. Opposition leaders, however, said protesters would remain on the streets until he steps down.
On Thursday, Moïse answered only a couple of questions from reporters before leaving the museum.
Peru’s president dissolved Congress. Then Congress suspended the president.
Police keep watch outside the Legislative Palace in Lima on Tuesday after President Martín Vizcarra shut Congress down. (Guadalupe Pardo/Reuters)
By Simeon Tegel | Oct. 1, 2019 at 4:34 p.m. GMT-3
LIMA, Peru — President Martín Vizcarra dissolved Congress. Congress suspended Vizcarra. So who’s running Peru now?
Peruvians woke Tuesday to find their country in political turmoil after late-night moves left the executive and the opposition arguing over which side was in charge.
Pedro Olaechea, the president of Congress, accused Vizcarra of launching a coup. He told reporters that Vizcarra “had to dissolve Congress with this appearance of legality because otherwise he was definitely facing impeachment.”
But influential voices backed Vizcarra’s move. The police and military said Vizcarra remained their “supreme commander,” the Organization of American States offered qualified backing and demonstrators outside the Legislative Palace chanted their support.
Recent polls have found that more than 70 percent of Peruvians, weary of partisan bickering and endless scandal, favored the president shutting Congress down.
A Vizcarra supporter wears Inca clothing to protest lawmakers outside the Legislative Palace on Monday night. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
In a televised address, Vizcarra said the lawmakers’ behavior underlined “the shamelessness into which the parliamentary majority has fallen, completely divorced from the will of the Peruvian people.”
Former Peruvian president dead; shot himself as police attempted to make arrest
At issue is Vizcarra’s anti-corruption crusade, after Peru’s four previous presidents were implicated in Latin America’s massive Odebrecht scandal. The opposition-controlled Congress has resisted his efforts.
On Monday, lawmakers planned to elect new constitutional court judges from a list of 10 candidates, several of whom are allegedly linked to corruption or face unresolved criminal accusations themselves. Among the items on the court’s agenda: A habeas corpus petition seeking the release of jailed opposition leader Keiko Fujimori.
Vizcarra attempted to head that off by calling for a vote of confidence in his government, a move that would allow him to dissolve the Congress. When lawmakers took up the judicial nominees instead, Vizcarra decided their conduct amounted to a rejection of the vote of confidence, enabling him to send them packing and schedule new legislative elections for Jan. 26.
Some lawmakers refused to leave their seats, even as protesters gathered outside. They introduced a motion to impeach the president; when it became clear that they lacked the necessary supermajority, they voted instead to suspend him on the supposed grounds of incapacity, a constitutional maneuver intended for medical emergencies.
They then voted to install Vizcarra’s estranged vice president in his place. Mercedes Aráoz called accepting the job “one of the saddest decisions” of her life.
The corruption scandal started in Brazil. Now it’s wreaking havoc in Peru.
The political crisis comes at a key moment in Peru’s struggle with corruption.
Odebrecht executives are due this week to reveal the identities of more than 70 Peruvian “code names,” mainly members of Congress who received bribes or illegal campaign funding from the Brazilian construction giant.
There’s also the court ruling on Fujimori, the Fuerza Popular leader and daughter of imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori. Several members of her party also face criminal exposure for unrelated corruption allegations.
Law professor Walter Albán, a former head of the Peruvian chapter of the anti-corruption group Transparency International, was dismissive of the congressional holdouts.
“It’s a temper tantrum. It has no legal validity,” Albán said. “It was to be expected, given that many of them are facing the loss of their parliamentary immunity. But they have no chance of hanging on to power.”
The corruption scandal that’s ensnared not one, but three Peruvian presidents
Marisa Glave, a lawmaker from the small leftist New Peru party, backed Vizcarra’s move.
“Actually, what has happened is that we have avoided a coup, a coup against the constitutional court and the president,” she said. “With this dissolution, President Vizcarra has returned the power to the people.”
Police surrounded the shuttered Legislative Palace on Tuesday morning and were allowing only a small number of congressional workers through. Some Fuerza Popular lawmakers also entered, to the heckling of a small crowd of pro-Vizcarra demonstrators.
Given the splintered nature of Peruvian politics and the weakness of its parties, the results of January’s elections remain deeply uncertain. But Fuerza Popular probably faces steep losses.
Glave warned that Peruvians need to remain on their guard.
“These corrupt mafias still exist, and they still have their tentacles not just in politics but in many other institutions, including the judiciary,” she said. “Of course, they will try to fight back.”
Argentina’s economy is collapsing. Here come the Peronistas, again.
Former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, running for vice president in Sunday’s election, waves to supporters at a campaign rally in Santa Rosa. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)
BUENOS AIRES — The peso is falling — and so, it seems, is the sky. Inflation and poverty rates are soaring. National reserves are shrinking fast. In short, Argentina — in a terrible deja vu of crises past — is hurtling once again toward the economic abyss.
But on the bar stools and wooden chairs of Santa Evita, a grill house dedicated to Eva “Evita” Perón, the political heroine who died a Broadway-worthy death in 1952, the customers are retranqui, Argentine slang for cool and calm. Because the presidential election is coming. And the Peronistas — the heirs to the complex populist political machine launched in the 1940s by Juan and Eva Perón — are poised for a massive comeback.
Argentina’s rising poverty becomes key issue in presidential election
Argentina’s increasing poverty rates is becoming a touchstone issue in the country’s upcoming presidential election on Oct. 27. (Reuters)
The ticket heavily favored to win this month has the corruption-tainted former president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, returning to the political stage as the vice-presidential candidate. A larger-than-life Peronista who ruled Argentina from 2007 to 2015, she towers over presidential candidate Alberto Fernández, a former palace adviser and now her lesser-known running mate.
“You could say that Cristina is the continuation of Evita,” said Gonzalo Alderete Pagés, the proprietor of Santa Evita. “Cristina is in our hearts, and we are sure of her return. Where non-Peronistas fail, she succeeds in opening her arms to the working class.”
A woman walks past a vandalized campaign advertisement for President Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires. (Ronaldo Schemidt/Afp Via Getty Images)
In Argentina, this is the season of the Peronista renaissance, built on a coalition of a disillusioned middle class, the left-leaning young and an increasingly angry poor. And as Sunday’s election approaches, the battle lines being drawn here are over populism, inequality and corruption — the same toxic mix now touching off unrest across South America.
Why political turmoil is erupting across Latin America
In Ecuador this month, the government fled the capital before the advance of thousands of union members, students and indigenous protesters demonstrating against austerity measures announced by President Lenín Moreno as a corrective to his populist predecessors. In Chile, cost-of-living pressures and persistent economic inequality have sparked days of the most violent protests seen in years. And in Peru, a political class tainted by corruption is at war with itself, setting up a constitutional crisis and legislative elections in which some candidates are poised to campaign from jail.
In Argentina the Peronistas, opponents say, ran the nation into the ground during their last outing, when Kirchner is alleged to have falsified financial data, raided pension funds, doled out social handouts and solicited bribes even as she forged allegiances with allies such as Hugo Chávez, the father of Venezuela’s socialist state. Though she enjoys immunity from incarceration as a sitting senator, the 66-year-old leftist has hit the campaign trail with nearly a dozen criminal cases against her.
Argentines replaced her in 2015 with President Mauricio Macri, the scion of a real estate tycoon and a onetime darling of Wall Street who promised to drag the economy into the future. Like Moreno in Ecuador, Macri ripped cherished subsidies away from the people and sought the assistance of the International Monetary Fund.
Macri appears with his running mate, Miguel Ángel Pichetto, and wife, Juliana Awada, during a campaign rally in Buenos Aires. (Alejandro Pagni/Afp Via Getty Images)
But the fruits of Macri’s labor are a failed economy that is now more moribund than the one he inherited. The cost may be his job. Should Macri lose Sunday, it would also prove a theory: that only the rough-and-tumble, union-backed Peronista machine can truly rule unruly Argentina.
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‘We always go back’
In its early-20th-century heyday, Argentina, blessed with fertile plains that made it a global breadbasket, was richer than Japan and had more cars than France. But from the ashes of the Great Depression came not a rebirth but a long, slow decline marked by destructive military governments and the populism of Perón.
Since the 1940s, the center of gravity of the Peronista movement — officially, the Justicialist Party — has swung between the political right and left. Today, it encompasses schools of thought across the ideological spectrum, uniting politicians who share only a religious devotion to the nation and to Juan and Eva Perón. So firm is the Peronista grip on the country that even Macri’s surprise pick of a running mate — Miguel Ángel Pichetto, a 68-year-old, anti-immigrant senator — hails from the Justicialist center-right.
“When we have a [government] that excludes Peronism, we always go back to Peronism,” said Felipe Solá, a veteran Peronista widely tipped to be foreign minister in a Fernández-Kirchner administration. “Because that is [our] model of national survival.”
To understand the Peronista surge, drive 1 ½ hours beyond the belle epoque buildings and Parisian-style balconies of elegant Buenos Aires to the low-income suburb of Jose C. Paz.
Sebastian Martínez and Yanina Sánchez voted for Macri in the last election. But they say his withdrawal of government subsidies and soaring inflation have crippled them financially. They’re switching back to the Peronistas on Sunday. (Anthony Faiola/TWP)
Here, Sebastian Martínez bit the hand that fed him.
In 2009, the 38-year-old heavy-machinery operator and his wife, Yanina Sánchez, personally received the keys to their new state-built house from then-President Kirchner.
They also enjoyed subsidies on electricity and cooking gas granted to them under Kirchner’s husband, former president Néstor Kirchner, who traded Argentina’s top job with his wife before dying of a heart attack in 2010.
Yet Martínez voted for Macri in 2015. For one, Kirchner wasn’t on the ballot, having reached the limit of two consecutive terms.
“But we also believed Macri, that he would change Argentina and create a better life,” Martínez said. “That was a lie. All he did was help the rich and forget the poor.”
Macri’s move to curb subsidies coupled with inflation, Martínez said, has more than quadrupled the price he pays for electricity. At the same time, measures taken by Macri to restore faith in the economy — such as the IMF bailout — simply have not worked, while attempts to prop up the peso and improve government balance sheets have burned through reserves and brought a prolonged recession.
In the midst of the downturn, Martínez lost his full-time job at a construction company, and is now putting food on the table for a family of five by bartering cleaning services at slaughterhouses for meat — that is, when he isn’t collecting junk and cardboard on the streets to resell for subsistence cash.
“What kind of life is this?” he asked. “This is what Macri has done to us.”
“I know Cristina robs. But at least we were better off with her,” he said.
A street musician performs in Buenos Aires. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Since the restoration of Argentine democracy in 1983, three of the major economic crises the country has suffered — a brutal bout of hyperinflation in the late 1980s, a catastrophic debt default in the early 2000s and the current economic morass — have all occurred under non-Peronista governments.
Critics say that’s because the Peronistas set economic time bombs before they leave office — spending far more than the nation earns to boost their popularity and influence, while distorting the economy by printing cash.
But that, many here say, is a chronic problem hardly exclusive to Peronistas.
“If I have to find a root for all the crises, it’s that permanently, for the past 100 years, there has been a fiscal deficit,” said Hernán Lacunza, Argentina’s treasury minister. “The state spent more than it collected. You can do that temporarily, but not permanently. And we did it for 10 decades.”
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A woman sits under a poster for presidential candidates in Buenos Aires. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Nostalgia vote
Yet for nostalgia-prone Argentines, the feel-good days of Peronism are a strong draw — so strong that the Fernández-Kirchner ticket scored a 16-percentage-point lead over Macri in the nation’s all-parties primary in August, a result widely seen as predicting the election Sunday. If no candidate wins more than 45 percent of the vote, or at least 40 percent with a 10-point lead, the top two go to a runoff next month in which analysts say Macri might have a chance.
Kirchner, insiders here say, opted to take the vice-presidential slot for pragmatic reasons. She has a strong base estimated at between 25 percent and 35 percent. But her ceiling is low, in part because of her personal scandals. They include a daughter who is purportedly being treated in Cuba for medical problems but who critics say is actually avoiding prosecution at home in a corruption case linked to a safe-deposit box with $4.6 million in cash.
The calculation Kirchner made, analysts said, is that as vice president, she could bring her core voters to the table while allowing Fernández to win the votes of those who intensely dislike her.
Viviana de Matteis, 55, owns a gym in Buenos Aires. She’s seen a 20 percent drop in business over the past year.
“I can’t stand her, but I’m going to vote for them anyway,” she said. “She’s corrupt, but I’m voting with my pocketbook. Macri can’t get anything done.”
Campaign advertising in Jose C. Paz puts vice presidential candidate Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at the top of the Fernández-Fernández ticket. (Anthony Faiola/TWP)
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