[The U.S. troops arrive amid an upsurge of Peru’s underclass.
Peru’s mostly rural, poor, and indigenous majority elected the
recently deposed Castillo as president in 2021, they are now calling
for Boluartes, (his unpopular replacement) removal.]
[[link removed]]

THE IMPLICATIONS OF NEW US TROOP ARRIVALS IN PERU  
[[link removed]]


 

W. T. Whitney
June 9, 2023
CounterPunch
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The U.S. troops arrive amid an upsurge of Peru’s underclass.
Peru’s mostly rural, poor, and indigenous majority elected the
recently deposed Castillo as president in 2021, they are now calling
for Boluarte's, (his unpopular replacement) removal. _

The USS John P. Murtha (LPD-26) (foreground) and BAP Pisco (AMP-156)
(background) conduct a joint training exercise in the eastern
Pacific., U.S. Navy – Public Domain

 

Beginning in June, detachments of U.S. troops will be arriving in Peru
and staying until December 31, 2023. Peru’s Congress, supported by
only 6%
[[link removed]] of
Peruvians, on May 26 approved a resolution
[[link removed]] introduced
in January that “authorized the entry of naval units and foreign
military personnel with weapons of war.”

U.S. military personnel are heading for Peru on a training and
advisory mission. U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force troops will be active
throughout that country. Most of them apparently will stay for less
than the allotted seven months. They are bringing weapons and
equipment. The U.S. Southern Command appointed
[[link removed]] a Peruvian
general as “deputy commanding general-interoperability.”

They arrive following massive popular protests that erupted in
reaction to Peru’s rightwing Congress on December 7, 2022 having
ordered the arrest of the democratically-elected President Pedro
Castillo. His politics were progressive. The protests provoked violent
military and police repression; over 70 Peruvians were killed.
Demonstrations peaked in February, but will revive in July, according
to reports.

Castillo remains in prison, and his replacement, former Vice-President
President Dina Boluarte, is widely reviled. The Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights recently issued a report
[[link removed]] documenting
“serious violations by the police and military” that took place
shortly after she became president. Peru’s Public Ministry,
investigating “the presumed crime of genocide,” required that
Boluarte testify
[[link removed]] on
June 6.

The U.S. troops will be arriving amid an upsurge of Peru’s
underclass. Peru’s mostly rural, poor, and indigenous majority did
elect the inexperienced Castillo as president in July 2021. They are
now calling for Boluarte’s removal, new presidential elections, and
a Constituent Assembly. Six of ten Peruvians regard the current
political crisis as stemming from “racism and anti-indigenous
discrimination,” according to a recent poll
[[link removed]].

Resumen Latinoamericano reports that the U.S. forces heading to
Peru will include
[[link removed]] 25
Special Forces troops arriving with weapons and equipment and 42 other
Special Forces troops charged with preparing Peru’s intelligence
command for “joint special operations;” 160 additional U.S. troops
will be utilizing nine U.S. airplanes.

Eventually, 970 U.S. Air Force and Special Forces personnel will have
taken part in the U.S. Southern Command’s so-called “Resolute
Sentinel 23.” Previous U.S. military interventions in Latin America
have been similarly named. The phrasing of this intervention’s
official purpose 
[[link removed]]is odd: “to
“integrate combat interoperability and disaster response training in
addition to medical exchanges, training and aid and construction
projects.”

The coup government, under whose auspices the U.S. troops will be
operating, is a creature of conservative political parties and the
business establishment. In April it announced plans to privatize
lithium mining
[[link removed]], thus
reversing President Castillo’s efforts to nationalize the processing
of lithium. The government is easing the authorization procedures that
enable foreign corporations to extract copper. Lawyer and former
Castillo advisor Raúl Noblecilla cites control over Peru’s mineral
wealth as to why U.S. troops are in Peru; their presence there reveals
“how lackey
[[link removed].] and
sell-out governments function.”

Academician Jorge Lora Cam states that “the usurper government
[[link removed]]”
seeks to “deepen extractive plunder with blood and fire … unify
the right with left-leaning elements infected by neoliberalism … and
prepare for permanent political power.” He adds that under the
auspices of “political criminals,” the country’s economy is
newly “at risk because Peru’s foreign debt now amounts to $100
billion dollars.”

The imminent arrival of U.S. military forces provoked other criticism.
Former foreign Minister Héctor Béjar insisted that, “the spurious
government
[[link removed]] was
using the presence of these troops to intimidate the Peruvian people
who have announced new protests for July.”

A spokesperson for the Communist Party of Peru – “Patria
Roja” explained
[[link removed]] that,
“the entry of U.S. troops in Peru is an affront to our sovereignty
and represents explicit backing by the U.S. government of the
nefarious Boluarte regime, which is responsible for repression against
the Peruvian people.”

The U.S. military, of course, has long interacted with its Peruvian
counterpart. Instances include: military exercises in 2017
[[link removed]],
“Regional Emergency Operations Centers” in 2018
[[link removed]],
a “naval mission in 1920
[[link removed]],”
U.S. Army involvement “from 1946 to 1969
[[link removed]],”
and U.S. training of thousands of Peruvian military personnel from the
1940s on. TeleSur in 2015 reported
[[link removed]] that,
“Hundreds of Peruvians protested Wednesday … against the
[anticipated] arrival of 3,200 [U.S.]soldiers with ships, airplanes,
and various kinds of weapons.”

Peruvians are hardly alone as a targeted people. Some 800
[[link removed].] U.S.
bases are distributed throughout the world, and “173,000
[[link removed]] troops
[were] deployed in 159 countries as of 2020.” The setting is of
military intrusion extending over decades in Peru and now across the
world. What’s the cost and how are payments arranged for?

The projected U.S. military budget for FY 2024 exceeds $1.5 trillion,
according to a recent analysis
[[link removed]].
There are two sets of military activities and each requires its own
funding approach. The U.S. government has to pay for potential war
against enemies like China and Russia and for military operations
elsewhere.

To portray China and Russia as threats to the U.S. status quo garners
so much attention as to spark fellow-feeling for the military-
industrial complex, and the funding flows. Rationales for the other
kinds of involvement may lack crowd appeal. They are: shoring up the
worldwide capitalist economy, serving corporate interests, and
countering leftist insurgencies.

We conclude that congressional and tax-payer generosity in response to
exaggerated threats to the U.S. status quo and to the worldwide
capitalist system may translate into so much funding that enough is
left over to pay for U.S. meddling in the other countries.

Panama may be one of them: The Biden administration may be on the
verge of sending
[[link removed]] U.S.
troops to the Darién region of Panama “to counter illicit drug
trafficking, human trafficking, and irregular immigration.”

_W.T. WHITNEY JR. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist
living in Maine._

_COUNTERPUNCH is reader supported! Please help keep us alive
[[link removed]]._

_The CounterPunch website is offered at no charge to the general
public over the world wide web. New articles, from an independent
left-leaning perspective, are posted every weekday. A batch of several
articles, including the Poet’s Basement, and Roaming Charges by
Jeffrey St. Clair, are posted in the Weekend Edition. After the
initial posting, these articles are available in the archives which
can be searched by using any of the search boxes on the website.
 CounterPunch also publishes books, and published a newsletter and
magazine from 1993 to 2020.  The COUNTERPUNCH+ Subscriber area of
our website features subscriber content and access._

_Donate to CounterPunch [[link removed]]_

* Peru
[[link removed]]
* U.S. Navy
[[link removed]]
* democracy
[[link removed]]
* Politics
[[link removed]]
* Racism
[[link removed]]
* imperialism
[[link removed]]
* War Games
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]