Late yesterday, a Peruvian judge ordered deposed President Pedro Castillo to serve 18 months in pretrial detention, as he is considered a flight risk. He is charged with rebellion for trying to close Congress, conspiracy, abuse of power and causing serious disturbances of public order. He refused to attend the hearing, and instead charged via social media that the U.S. ambassador had visited the presidential palace and ordered interim President Dina Boluarte to declare a state of emergency and deploy the military “to massacre my defenseless people,” and clear the way for foreign exploitation of the country’s mining wealth.
Boluarte had announced she would try to move up the date of national elections from 2026 to December 2023, but when Congress met yesterday to debate the issue there were not enough votes to proceed. Her government is anything but stable. Today, her Health and Education ministers resigned to protest military and police repression of demonstrators.
Continued violent protests, which are being fiercely repressed by the police and military, are especially widespread in the southern part of the country, although there are a large number of Castillo’s supporters protesting in the center of Lima, surrounded by a military cordon. Yesterday, at least 8 people died in Ayacucho when protesters stormed the local airport, bringing the death toll to 21 after five days of protest.
Police General Osar Arriola charged on Dec. 12 that members of Movadef, the legal arm of the narcoterrorist Sendero Luminoso, are major instigators of the protest marches against the state. As this news service has documented, Castillo is tied into both the Sendero apparatus and to the London-run radical indigenist movement.
In the rest of South America, there is, unfortunately, a predictable division along left-right lines, which is what the Castillo operation in Peru is intended to produce. Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, Costa Rica, the U.S. and Canada are backing interim President Boluarte as a great defender of democracy. On the left, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil’s President-elect Lula are supporting Castillo.
