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Political and Violent Extremists Regrouped for Presidential Power in Peru

Extremistas políticos Perú

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The presidential candidacy headed by the pro-Chavista and pro-dictatorial Pedro Castillo regrouped almost triumphantly — in the first electoral round — the extremist political and violent forces on Peruvian soil.

However, less than a month before the second round that will define the social, political and economic destiny of the country at the polls, polls are narrowing the advantage or showing a technical tie. The opponent, Keiko Fujimori, is reducing her antivote and accelerating her projection.

Although these extreme forces infiltrated and established relations of subway and unconfessed cooperation for years in every social conflict (especially anti-mining) that arose throughout the national territory, now they are showing themselves to be explicit around a single political project with the potential to reach the presidency. Castillo has empowered and regrouped them more and more openly.

His connections in Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia no longer have any restraint in hiding their expectations of triumph within the game of multiple boards that is the hot Latin American politics. It is the external front to which Castilianism would also be functional.

They know that Peru, like Colombia, is a crucial place to be added to consolidate the enormous network of the continental and pro-dictatorial ultra-left.

About this, by the way, enough has already been written. And it is positive that more and more people in the region, regardless of borders, are assuming caution and canceling underestimations about these real threats against liberal democracies and liberties in general.

None other than Sendero Luminoso and its “political” appendix called Movadef (now with a congressional presence) have emerged around Castillo. They are a very resisted actor by the Peruvians for its terrorist barbarism initiated in the eighties and that continues until today via its remnant and narco-terrorist faction in the jungle of the VRAEM (Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers) under the name of “Militarized Communist Party of Peru.”

In fact, one of Castillo’s virtual congressmen, Guillermo Bermejo (initially linked to the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, MRTA, and later to Venezuelan Chavismo) is being prosecuted for his links to this offshoot of the original Shining Path.

As never before, Peruvians are witnessing how these groups that were their savage aggressors in the past and nowadays, are consolidating spaces of power through the electoral tactical window. This is the price of having neglected, among other factors, the ideological struggle that should have been added to the counter-terrorist successes on the military level.

The extremist cocktail of external colors – with Castro-Chavism – and internal colors with the Shining Path and the recycled emerettists increases in flavor with the presence of the ethnocacerist antaurism of Antauro Humala; an ex-military brother of the former president Ollanta Humala and today in prison for the coup attempt in 2005 (where several policemen were killed) against the government of Alejandro Toledo.

This caudillo has contributed to the pro-Castillo coalition a harmful ingredient for political competition: racism.

Perú
Political extremists PeruPedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori signed the “Proclama Ciudadana, juramento por la democracia” (Citizen’s Proclamation, oath for democracy) Image: EFE

From class struggle to race struggle

Apart from the traditional buffoonery of its leader, there is no real democratic preaching or “anti-corruption struggle” underlying the speeches of antaurism. Much less a “libertarian” preaching as its sponsors point out. Zero. Only naivety or reckless political calculation can consider it that way.

The antaurism or reservist radicalism, embodies a dangerous approach that incubates hatred and extreme and pro-violent conflicts. It is not satisfied with the “classist” factor of Marxist class struggle, it also crosses the “ethnocultural” factor via the ethno-cultural’ factor into the race struggle.

Seasoning and inciting the basic social instincts for political polarization, homophobia and even xenophobia -with suspicious links to Chavism anxious to disqualify the peaceful Venezuelan diaspora in Peru- appear as political and electoral weapons.

The effects that these narratives have had on the famous “social conflict” in the last twenty years have not been minor (apart from those mounted against the ‘economic model’ and the Constitution that contains it).

Have those who underestimated and even applauded the supposedly “democratic” and “anti-corruption” pronouncements of Antauro Humala been aware of these risks?

In essence, then, this is Peruvian ethnocacerism with its anachronistic mixture of ethnic nationalism and an imposed absolute collectivization of decisions and results in all spheres. Pure totalitarianism and dosed and “popular” violence.

That organization that set up the political stage in the 2005 uprising in Andahuaylas, having as its symbol the imitation of the fascist eagle on a distorted Andean chakana. A counter-democratic uprising that strained the political system in an attempt to dynamite it in order to raise the ‘coppery race’ and ‘tahuantinsuyana’. An “ethnopatriotic” and racist socialism germinating on the basis of a deformed and false ‘indigenism’.

These extremist forces with old political objectives and no strangers to the threat of violence and intimidation against antagonists and dissidents, will they resort to the manipulation of social tensions via newly established links with criminal groups (as has happened in Venezuela) to consolidate absolute control of the pattern of power?

And there should be no doubt that next June 6, if Castillo and his controllers win the Peruvian presidency, they will try to shape a “new” system of conflicts that will gradually dismantle the already precarious liberal and republican institutions. Against the open society finally.

Political analyst and columnist focused on issues of risk and political conflict, radicalization and violent political extremism // Analista político y columnista enfocado en temas de riesgo y conflictos políticos, radicalización y extremismo político violento

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