From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS:Peru's Attempt to Quell Uprising
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:52:49 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

Peru: military coup aimed at crushing popular uprising

By Charles Knight

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited.)

President Alberto Fujimori of Peru ordered a military crackdown
April 5 as he dissolved Congress and suspended the constitution.
He accused the elected lawmakers of blocking his IMF-imposed
economic program and blunting his counterinsurgency war against
leftist rebels.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bernard Aronson was in Peru at
the time of the coup, sparking speculation that the U.S. gave
prior approval. He left the same day, and the Bush administration
tried to distance itself from Fujimori. It froze most of the $275
million in aid to Peru for this year. But in mid-March--when
similar measures were already in effect for most of the
country--Aronson warned that the communist "Sendero Luminoso
[Shining Path] could seize power by 1997 if the United States
denies military aid" to Peru.

Fujimori's action extended to the capital area the military rule
prevailing for months in the rest of the country. In January the
president issued some 120 decrees imposing supreme military
authority on most of the country. This included military
censorship of the press and authority to shut down schools and
universities. The decrees also sharply cut union rights.

These new measures reflect frustration by Fujimori in conducting
the counterinsurgency war, which in 12 years has caused 25,000
recorded deaths and thousands more "disappearances" at the hands
of the military. The Bush administration could use the new
situation to decide it's time to intervene directly, or wait a
short time and then restore aid. It has dictated Fujimori's basic
program of crushing the insurgency and imposing a "free market"
economy on Peru despite the widespread hardship it has caused.

Prisoners in danger of massacre

Fujimori ordered the army and police to surround the Canto Grande
prison near Lima, where more than 600 Sendero Luminoso members
are incarcerated, and at Lurigancho prison half a mile away,
where several dozen guerrillas are held. Many fear a massacre,
like in June 1986, when more than 300 striking prisoners were
killed.

Police have rounded up anyone suspected of "sympathizing or
knowing about" the Sendero Luminoso movement, including lawyers
who have defended guerrillas. Numerous opposition members of
Congress have also been arrested. Former President Alan Garcia is
in hiding. Armored personnel carriers surrounded the Congress and
patrolled the capital's main avenues. Police and army units
searched pedestrians in the downtown area.

Fernando Olivera, a leftist Congressional representative,
declared legislators would hit back by removing the president.
But when he and supporters tried to enter the Congress building,
he was seized by troops and carried away. Troops dispersed the
remaining crowd by threatening to shoot them.

In mid-February Sendero Luminoso guerrillas organized an armed
work stoppage that shut down the capital for half a day. The
government responded by deploying 30,000 police and troops in the
and arrested hundreds of "terrorist suspects."

Peasant agriculture has been wiped out by both the war and a U.S.
credit and aid program that replaced local production with
imported U.S. products. The population of Lima, the capital, has
doubled to 8 million, as peasants poured in escaping the war and
starvation.

Meanwhile those who remained in the countryside have survived by
producing and selling raw coca leaves for cocaine production. The
U.S. has combined its counterinsurgency theme with a bogus "war
on drugs." Peruvian Senator Javier Diaz Canseco of the United
Left Party said in New York recently that coca leaf production
could easily be channeled for non-narcotic use, and even for use
in overcoming addiction. He said the so-called "drug war" was a
pretext for U.S. efforts to dominate the region militarily and
economically.

Fully half of Peru's population lives in extreme poverty. Its
economic condition is desperate: To pay the enormous debt imposed
by U.S. banks the IMF has forced the Fujimori regime to cut back
all state services and lay off tens of thousands of workers.
Combined with the war and starvation in the countryside, these
measures have aroused the mass of the population against the
government.

Peru, with 23 million people, has the largest armed forces in
Latin America except for Brazil, which has a population of 150
million. Despite that, the people's war now has the government on
the defensive.

                               ###

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper. A
10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World,
and send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212)
255-0352. You may contact Workers World editors on New York
Transfer or PeaceNet at "workers."

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