Anti-imperialist organizations that took part in the Workers’ Summit of the Americas gathered June 12 in Tijuana, Mexico, at the Mexico-United States border in solidarity with the Sandinista, Cuban and Bolivarian Revolutions and repudiating the U.S./OAS-organized Summit of the Americas / credit: Kawsachun News / Twitter
After the Biden administration announced it would exclude Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from participating in the Summit of the Americas—held last week in Los Angeles—organizations based in the United States began collaborating with international organizations to organize counter actions.
Many people on the left had followed the activities of the People’s Summit for Democracy, the well-publicized counter event to the summit the Biden administration hosted. The Summit of the Americas was denounced as a “failure” for not coming up with a plan to address climate change, the debt crisis facing many countries in the Western Hemisphere, as well as increasing inflation and white-supremacist violence in the United States, among other issues.
What some may not know is anti-imperialists held two other counter summits last week: One coalition of mainly Los Angeles-based organizations hosted the Anti-Imperialist People’s Summit of Nuestra América on June 4 as well as a June 8 rally in the city, while another coalition organized the Workers’ Summit of the Americas June 10-12 in Tijuana, Mexico.
The following organizations sponsored the June 4 and June 8 Los Angeles-based anti-imperialist events: Unión del Barrio, Raza Unida Party, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), Frente Sandinista de Liberación Naciónal (FSLN), Socialist Unity Party, American Indian Movement Southern CA (AIM SoCal), Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Bayan SoCal, Palestinian Youth Movement, Witness for Peace Southwest, Progressive Asian Network for Action, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), Los Angeles Movement for Advancing Socialism (LA MAS), Canto Sin Fronteras, Zapata-King Neighborhood Council and Guardianes de la Tierra.
Meanwhile, more than 250 organizations involved in liberation struggles convened and/or endorsed the People’s Summit.
The Workers’ Summit of the Americas in Tijuana was the only event Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan officials could attend. The following organizations sponsored the event: Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación de Baja California (CNTE-BC), International Action Center (IAC), Plataforma de la Clase Obrera Antiimperialista (PCOA), Unión del Barrio, 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, Black Lives Matter – Oklahoma City, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), CODEPINK, Central Bolivariana Socialista de Trabajadores (CBST), Boston School Bus Drivers Union – Local 8751, Fire This Time (FTT), University of Tijuana, Movimiento Magisterial Popular Veracruzano, Federación Bolivariana de Trabajadores del Transporte – Sectores Afines y Conexos (FBTTT), Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), FUNDALATIN, Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), Task Force on the Americas and Centro Community Service Organization.
Both the People’s Summit for Democracy and the Workers’ Summit of the Americas issued declarations (here and here). The Tijuana summit’s declaration announced plans for constituting a committee to convene annual meetings, among other actions.
Below are videos that can be viewed to learn more about each event:
Anti-Imperialist People’s Summit of Nuestra América, June 4
Anti-imperialist organizations taking part in the Workers’ Summit of the Americas gather at the Mexico-US border in solidarity with the Sandinista, Cuban, and Bolivarian Revolutions and send a message of repudiation of the US/OAS Summit of the Americas. pic.twitter.com/RF5XcFsppH
Sônia Guajajara (third from left), an Indigenous-rights campaigner and federal deputy candidate who supports the presidential campaign of the Workers’ Party’s Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva. Here, she appears with other feminist campaigners at a left-wing rally in São Paolo the day after Socialist and Liberty Party (PSOL) candidate for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Guilherme Boulos and PSOL candidate for São Paolo state deputy Ediane Maria were threatened with a gun by a Bolsonaro supporter earlier this month / credit: Richard Matoušek
SÃO PAOLO, Brazil—Brazilians head to the polls October 2 to vote in the first round of what is considered the most consequential presidential election since the end of almost 20 years of U.S.-backed military dictatorships.
“The fundamental choice,” stated an open letter by several Latin American figures, including ousted Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, “isn’t between [the two presidential hopefuls, President] Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, but between fascism and democracy.”
With Brazil being the fifth-largest country by area, along with having the seventh-largest population and economy, the outcome of this election could not only significantly alter the lives of Brazilians, but impact regional politics that have recently swung left as well as the health of the planet.
And it’s not just the outcome that matters.
“Bolsonaro [trailing in the polls] has questioned democracy and camouflaged himself as the great victim of the lack of democracy,” said Danny Shaw, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Professor at the City University of New York, explained to Toward Freedom. “He has preemptively attacked the integrity of the entire voting process.”
Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he would only accept election results if they were “clean,” but that he doubted they would be. Through livestreams, he has spoken to followers about resisting a loss and helping stage a coup. A poll showed high support for a coup among members of the Brazilian Navy and the Air Force, while enthusiasm remained low in the larger army. “But, it doesn’t seem like he has institutional support from within the military to make these things into a reality,” according to Shaw.
“It’s kind of unimaginable,” said Socialist and Liberty Party (PSOL) São Paulo state deputy candidate Ediane Maria, “to see Bolsonaro passing the [presidential] sash to Lula.”
This reporter reached out to Lula’s Workers’ Party and Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party for comment, but they did not reply by publication time.
Brazil’s recent history includes a 2016 procedural coup against Rousseff in favor of her business-friendly vice president, Michel Temer. Lula himself was incarcerated in 2018, which a court has since found to have been unlawful, as well as a separate ruling that banned him from competing in the 2018 election that Bolsonaro won.
In this period, Brazil ranked as one of the 10 largest democratic backslides, according to the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva (left) and current Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (right) are the main contenders in Brazil’s first-round presidential election being held on October 2 / credit: Ricardo Stuckert (left) / Alan Santos / PR (right)
Testing Democracy
If the necessary conditions for fascism are nativism, belief in a social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation, and anti-democratism, Shaw said Bolsonaro meets the criteria of a fascist. Bolsonaro’s government has the “underpinnings and trappings of fascist rule,” Shaw explained. “The unofficial religion of Bolsonarismo is anti-socialism and anti-communism.”
Bolsonaro pressured the electoral commission to allow the military to also count votes, and that has succeeded, according to newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
The PSOL and Folha de São Paulo assert Bolsonaro created a parallel $1 billion budget to buy support in Congress to prevent an impeachment and to fund his campaign.
Bolsonaro has glorified Brazil’s brutal military dictatorships and has conveyed himself to be like Benito Mussolini, including with black-clad motorcycle rallies.
He demanded leftists be “eradicated from public life” hours after a Bolsonaro-supporting farmer murdered his Lula-favoring colleague with an ax. He also called for Workers’ Party supporters to be “machine-gunned.”
This month, an assailant reportedly announced “I am Bolsonaro” while pointing a gun at Maria and her fellow PSOL candidate for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, Guilherme Boulos.
“It was an attack on our democracy, on our freedom of expression,” Maria told Toward Freedom. “You see horror scenes of people who are killed at work, or in the streets just for defending what they believe in. This year, people sense the violence, the fights. We have a president who says, ‘shoot them in the head,’ that encourages and defends mass gun ownership. Thank God it’s coming to an end… this moment of horror that we lived through, this process of violence against our bodies.”
Filipe Campante, professor at Johns Hopkins University, raised it is unclear whose responsibility it would be to evict Bolsonaro from the presidential palace if he opted to stay. No one is certain how such a scenario would play out, and in the disorder, the perceived legitimacy of the handover of power could be damaged. Even if Bolsonaro does give way to Lula, Campante and others have raised important questions about the strength and preparedness of Brazil’s democratic institutions. All key parties have met regularly with the military, which has played its cards close to its chest. As Campante said, this culture of keeping the military close is a sign of a “democracy that’s not healthy.”
A poll last week found 40 percent of Brazilians expect a high chance of violence on Election Day, and 9 percent might avoid voting (at risk of penalties) because of fear.
“If Brazilian [progressives] can [win] given the political climate they’re facing,” explained U.S.-based human-rights and labor-rights lawyer Dan Kovalik to Toward Freedom, “then everyone should be able to do it.” He added it would be an inspiring victory for movements as far away as Europe.
A left-wing rally in front of in São Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art the day after Socialist and Liberty Party (PSOL) candidate for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Guilherme Boulos and PSOL candidate for São Paolo state deputy Ediane Maria were threatened with a gun by a Bolsonaro supporter earlier this month / credit: Richard Matoušek
The Global Implications of a Lula Victory
So far, the Brazilian left has been relatively united in helping Lula win. Maria’s left-wing PSOL, for instance, hasn’t presented a presidential candidate. The Latin American leaders’ letter mentioned earlier was addressed to Ciro Gomes, a centrist candidate polling around 7 percent. The letter asked him to pull out to avoid a Bolsonaro win.
“The Pink Tide seems to be back,” Kovalik said about the recent wave of progressive victories across Latin America. “But I think Brazil needs to be a part of that because other countries—Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua—are under great attack, especially economically, by the United States. To have Brazil’s support again would be huge, both their political and economic support. It’d definitely leaven the movement.”
A red Brazil is likely to not rely on special relationships with strongmen, as Bolsonaro did with former Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, former U.S. President Donald Trump and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A Lula victory, added Kovalik, “would help bring about the multipolar world that we need.”
However, as foreign policy did not form a large part of the electoral campaign, and the global dynamics are different compared to when Lula was last in power in 2010, it is difficult to predict the exact foreign implications of a Lula victory. Lula invited Palestine to the 2010 BRICS summit in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. (BRICS is an acronym that stands for an alliance between the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.) But he also sent Brazilian troops for UN peacekeeping in Haiti, where they abused their power and stayed for years after being asked to leave.
“I think we can expect a more anti-imperialist Lula,” Shaw posited. “Even a neutral Lula would neutralize imperialism” by building a stronger relationship with Caracas and other anti-imperialist governments.
The Brazilian Communist Party bloc at a left-wing rally the day after Socialist and Liberty Party (PSOL) candidate for the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Guilherme Boulos and PSOL candidate for São Paolo state deputy Ediane Maria were threatened with a gun by a Bolsonaro supporter earlier this month / credit: Richard Matoušek
Challenges a Third Lula Term Would Face
However, a commodities boom had buoyed the original Pink Tide that had started in the 1990s and ended in the 2000s. Moreover, Bolsonaro, as Kovalik has said, has “dismantled social programs.” This raises questions about the surmountability of the challenges faced by a new government.
Lula’s last government “broke the cycles,” as Maria put it, “to break barriers, to put the bricklayer’s son and the housecleaner’s daughter into university.”
But Bruno Clima, an architect in the housing-justice group Central Homeless Movement (MSTC) in São Paulo, is worried about current challenges. “Even with the victory of a capable president, lifting the country up will not be easy or quick.”
With limited resources and enormous crises, Lula might struggle to meet such expectations in one term. Some are worried enough Brazilians would lose patience with him after that, and this turn to progressivism could be a bump in a larger turn towards neoliberalism.
For now, Maria sees the upcoming election as a battle between democracy and fascism.
“Our country is hoping that love can win over hate and that we are going to elect Lula in the first round, and elect him well,” Maria said. “We will fight for democracy in Brazil, which has never in my lifetime been as threatened as it is now.”
Richard Matoušek is a journalist who covers sociopolitical issues in southern Europe and Latin America. He can be followed on Twitter at @RichMatousek and on Instagram at @richmatico.
The left-wing candidates of the Pacto Histórico coalition ticket in Colombia celebrated a win Sunday evening in Bogotá / credit: Evo Morales / Twitter
Editor’s Note: This article was updated at 7:40 a.m., June 20.
JUNE 19, 2022—Celebrations took place this evening as people took to the streets of Colombia after left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro was deemed the winner of the second-round election. This victory makes his running mate, Francia Márquez, the first Afro-descendant woman who will serve as vice president once the term begins in August.
The Pacto Histórico coalition candidates won more than 50 percent of votes. Petro’s competitor, Rodolfo Hernández, conceded the election.
“I called Gustavo to congratulate him on his victory and offer him my support to fulfill the promises of change for which Colombia voted today,” Hernández tweeted. The millionaire ran on the League of Anti-Corruption Governors ticket and had been likened to a “Colombian Trump” for his brash manner. “Colombia will always count on me.”
Llamé a Gustavo para felicitarlo por el triunfo y ofrecerle mi apoyo para cumplir con las promesas de cambio por las que Colombia votó hoy. Colombia siempre va a contar conmigo.
— Ing Rodolfo Hernandez 🇨🇴! (@ingrodolfohdez) June 19, 2022
Aminta Zea, a U.S. citizen who observed the elections today, documented Colombians in the southern city of Calí embracing each other, jumping, waving flags and honking horns.
Beautiful to see Colombianos celebrating Petro’s historic win in Cali. Just see for yourself. What a huge and important shift not only for Colombia but also for Latin America and the world!! pic.twitter.com/WC7QQ1e1tp
Petro’s first tweet came within an hour of the announcement.
“Today is a holiday for the people. Let […] celebrate the first popular victory. May so many sufferings be cushioned in the joy that today floods the heart of the Homeland,” he tweeted. “This victory for God and for the People and their history. Today is the day of the streets and squares.”
Hoy es dia de fiesta para el pueblo. Que festeje la primera victoria popular. Que tantos sufrimientos se amortiguen en la alegria que hoy inunda el corazon de la Patria.
Esta victoria para Dios y para el Pueblo y su historia. Hoy es el dia de las calles y las plazas.
Márquez attracted many voters because her campaigns for both president and vice-president prioritized lifting out of poverty and oppression the country’s historically marginalized groups. She won the 2018 Goldman Environmental Prize for her activism.
“This is for our grandmothers and grandfathers, women, youth, LGTBIQ+ people, indigenous people, peasants, workers, victims, my black people, those who resisted and those who are no longer…” she tweeted. “Throughout Colombia. Today we start writing a new story!“
Esto es por nuestras abuelas y abuelos, las mujeres, los jóvenes, las personas LGTBIQ+, los indígenas, los campesinos, los trabajadores, las víctimas, mi pueblo negro, los que resistieron y los que ya no están… Por toda Colombia. ¡Hoy empezamos a escribir una nueva historia!
— Francia Márquez Mina (@FranciaMarquezM) June 19, 2022
What’s Next for Latin America?
This victory marks a shift in the Western Hemisphere. While left-wing revolutions and candidates have over the decades swept states like Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Colombia remained a militarized U.S. ally.
At least one observer had dismissed Petro’s earlier comments against the Bolivarian revolutionary process underway in Venezuela as a way to distance his popular left-wing campaign from a neighboring country many in Colombia have seen as a failure.
Congratulations came pouring through from officials and former officials in Bolivia, Mexico and other states.
Felicitamos al pueblo de Colombia, al hermano @petrogustavo, flamante presidente electo y a la hermana @FranciaMarquezM, primera vicepresidenta afrodescendiente de la historia de ese país por su indiscutible triunfo en las urnas. Es la victoria de la paz, la verdad y la dignidad. pic.twitter.com/fmC8fxvxGA
Los conservadores de Colombia siempre han sido tenaces y duros. El escritor José María Vargas Vila relataba que los dictadores de su país "mojaban en agua bendita su puñal antes de matar". 1/3
Felicito a Gustavo Petro y a Francia Márquez, por la histórica victoria en las elecciones Presidenciales en Colombia. Se escuchó la voluntad del pueblo colombiano, que salió a defender el camino de la democracia y la Paz. Nuevos tiempos se avizoran para este hermano país. pic.twitter.com/FxodCn9Uqx
In May, the United States invited Colombia’s defense minister to Washington to announce Colombia as a “major non-NATO ally.” The South American country’s closest access point to the Atlantic Ocean is the Caribbean Sea. The $4.5 billion in military arms and training the United States has poured into Colombia now remains a question for the incoming left-wing pair that have remarked on changing relations with the United States. Meanwhile, paramilitary violence throughout the countryside, as well as death threats to Petro and Márquez, threaten to amplify tensions in Colombia.
The Petro-Márquez Agenda
While his millionaire competitor—Hernández—claimed to be of the people, Petro said he would call a national emergency upon entering office to address hunger in Colombia. Joblessness, empty bellies and dangerous housing plague the country. The situation prompted last year’s month-long national strike.
Petro had been criticized for announcing he would end oil and gas exploration as well as phase out fossil fuels as a way to address global climate change and transform the economy. Coal and oil shipments account for almost 40 percent of the country’s exports. His announcement worried the industries.
Afro-Colombian activist and community official Victor Hugo Moreno Mina was with Márquez when armed men shot at their group during a meeting in a rural area on May 4, 2019. He said in the following exclusive interview with Toward Freedom that many areas of Colombia’s economy, as well as the societal structure, need to be transformed.
The Petro-Márquez win comes six years after peace accords were signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP), which agreed to put down arms to end decades of violence. Rodrigo Londoño, a former FARC-EP commander, hailed today’s results as a victory for the peace process.
The second-round election was marked by reports of irregularities, as was the first round held on May 29.
Alejandra Barrios, director of Misión Observadores Electoral (MOE), an independent agency that coordinates domestic and international election observers in Colombia, reported some ballots had been marked off before voters had a chance to choose a candidate.
Voter intimidation and threats were cited for low turnout during the first round.
AfroResistance, an organization that supports Afro-descendant women and girls in the Americas, brought delegations into the country to observe both rounds.
“It was [a] clean and fair election in Colombia. Democracy won. Black people won,” the organization tweeted.
Indigenous people protesting on February 8 in the streets of Perú against the parliamentary coup that ousted President Pedro Castillo Terrones / credit: Clau O’Brien Moscoso
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in The Canada Files.
Two months on from the coup against Peru’s democratically-elected President, Pedro Castillo, Canada is providing key support for a regime responsible for the deaths of 58 civilians (as of February 6, 2023).
There is a dramatic contrast between Canada’s chummy relationship with Peru’s de facto authorities and its increasingly hostile treatment of socialist Nicaragua.
President Pedro Castillo’s December 7, 2022 ouster and political imprisonment was followed by threemassacres, with teenagers among the dead. 1,229 reported civilians have been wounded, according to Peruvian health authorities, and an unknown number of arbitrary and mass arrests.
Protests are ongoing, with 72 active roadblock points on national roadways, and an indefinite strike which began on January 4, 2023 in regions of southern Peru continues. A recent poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies showed the Congress with 9 per cent approval rating and 71 per cent disapproved of Dina Boluarte’s presidency. The unrest ignited throughout the country in rejection of the removal and imprisonment of Castillo, and subsequent installation of Dina Boluarte, as well as in rejection of the right-wing Congress, has not gone unnoticed by Canada. Global Affairs Canada has published several travel advisories since the start of the anti-coup mobilizations.
Global Affairs warns of a “volatile” political situation and acknowledges “many casualties”, attributing deaths to “clashes between protestors and the security forces”. In December 2022, mobilizations intensified to the point where Canadians became stranded and at least four humanitarian flights were organized to evacuate Canadian nationals.
Canada expressed ‘deep concern’ in a tweet by Ambassador Louis Marcotte on the day of President Castillo’s removal and its recognition of Dina Boluarte, who was sworn in within hours of Castillo’s arrest, was made known shortly after. Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly then ‘reiterated’ her administration’s “support for the transitional government of President Boluarte” during a call with Peru’s Foreign Minister, Ana Cecilia Gervasi.
Ottawa’s actions closely resemble those of 2019, when the Trudeau government and other CORE group members were first to recognize the coup regime of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia and silent before the brutal repression which accompanied the coup. The similarities between the two cases are countless and it’s worth noting that Canada has the same ambassador for both Peru and Bolivia.
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
The state terror unleashed on protesters and civilians prompted an observation visit to Peru by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Canada acknowledged the visit and report to the Organization of American States (OAS) by the IACHR at a Special Meeting of the OAS Permanent Council. The IACHR is currently drafting the relevant report but published a press release on January 27, 2023, previewing its findings.
The Commission “condemned violence in efforts to disperse demonstrators” and “mass arrests” during the raid on the National University of San Marcos, in Lima. It noted reports of “excessive use of force by law enforcement” by civil society organizations, arbitrary arrests and complaints of “verbal attacks including the use of intimidating, derogatory, racist, and humiliating language” by police who impeded lawyers’ ability to access their clients. Amid reports of sexual violence by officers against women detainees, the IACHR stressed categorical condemnation of the practice as a tool to exercise control. The statement also issued a reminder on the rights of persons deprived of liberty.
Ottawa’s relative silence on the Peruvian state’s widely reported abuses is particularly eyebrow raising given Canada’s good graces towards the IACHR, which derives its mandate from the OAS — an intergovernmental body dominated by the United States and Canada.
OAS
The OAS has in no way contributed positively to the situation in Peru and should be investigated for its role in the December 7, 2022 coup. A High-Level Group delegation of the OAS Permanent Council visit just two weeks prior to Castillo’s ouster failed to avert the crisis. Castillo himself had gone directly to the Secretary General in search of support from the organization.
Fast forward to January 30, 2023, and with no end in sight for Peru’s turmoil, a Special Meeting of the OAS Permanent Council to address the situation was held, at the request of four member countries.
The brief remarks delivered before this council by Canada’s representative to the OAS, Ambassador Hugh Adsett, referred to the IACHR’s “conclusions” but avoided elaboration. Adsett offered no condemnation of the crimes committed against the Peruvian population, as Canada has on many other occasions, particularly when the OAS Permanent Council has met to address the political situations in Nicaragua and Venezuela. Adsett also participated in the gutting and re-writing of a draft declaration, which in its final version received the approval of all members of the aforementioned council, including the United States, the Peruvian regime itself, and with the blessing of OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro.
A call for prompt, supervised elections in Peru is central in the final document, as well as a call for the Peruvian Public Ministry to investigate, prosecute, and punish “those responsible for violations of human rights” — with no mention of security forces and their use of repression against the population. The “excessive use of force by security forces” was cited in the earlier version first drafted by Colombia and Antigua and Barbuda, but was modified in the carefully-worded final version. This version purposely omitted all reference to security forces and didn’t attribute violence or human rights violations to the state, leaving the declaration open to interpretation.
In the face of a mountain of irrefutable evidence of flagrant human rights violations by the Boluarte government, the OAS has expressed its “full support” for Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, a position it shares with Canada and the United States.
Canada and the OAS Target the Sandinista Revolution
During October 2022, just two months before the coup in Peru, Lima was the host of the OAS General Assembly. ‘Human rights’ in Nicaragua topped Foreign Minister Melanie Joly’s agenda at a peculiar time, given the absence of any significant political development in the Central American country that would warrant special attention.
Canada assumed the lead in the coordinated attack on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government in 2021, similar to the shift in U.S.-provided tasks in 2018 when then-Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland led the charge against the Bolivarian government of Venezuela through the now defunct ‘Lima Group’.
Since receiving the baton from Washington in 2021, Joly has made numerous statements aimed at Nicaragua’s democracy and has sought to escalate the regional and international campaign of aggression. This comes in addition to the illegal sanctions regime first introduced by Ottawa in June of 2019. According to Global Affairs, sanctions have been enacted “in response to gross and systematic human rights violations that have been committed in Nicaragua.”
The result of the October OAS General Assembly meeting in Lima was a strongly-worded resolution with a long list of action items to address a non-existent political and human rights crisis in Nicaragua.
Canada has arbitrarily and illegally imposed three rounds of unilateral sanctions against the country which has enjoyed years of political stability, and whose citizens feel the most peaceful out of all countries of the world, according to a Gallup poll.
Canada’s Interests in Latin America
Canadians ought to question why Canada is harassing a country at peace, with the lowest levels of violent and transnational crime in Central America while leading the world in gender parity, as it rubber stamps the excessive use of force and extrajudicial killings by the widely-hated regime in Peru.
The reality is that Canada never wanted Pedro Castillo in power to begin with and saw better allies in his neoliberal opponents. With CAD $9.9 billion in assets, Canadian companies are Peru’s largest investors in mineral exploration. The country’s mining and resource extraction firms are always attentive to political shifts in Latin America because of the direct effect of policy changes on their ability to operate and secure contracts. The ambassador himself made an appearance alongside his constituents of the mining industry, including Hudbay Minerals, at the Canada Pavilion at the PERUMIN 35 Mining Convention.
Post-coup, Louis Marcotte, Ambassador of Canada to Peru and Bolivia, was quick to meet with Peru’s Mining Minister, Oscar Vera Gargurevich, to promote investment by Canadian firms in mining and hydrocarbon, as well as in the development of electromobility. Vera Gargurevich confirmed his ministry’s participation in the infamous PDAC mining convention in Toronto, Ontario, to be held in March, where Peru will seek new foreign investors.
The president of the Peruvian delegation to PDAC 2023, Óscar Benavides, has said that his country’s representatives will be reassuring investors at the Toronto convention and explain the situation in his country and what’s being done to solve it.
Ottawa’s actions amid flagrant abuses by the Peruvian state are consistent with its track record of legitimizing unpopular neoliberal regimes despite overt and well-documented violent repression (Ivan Duque, Juan Orlando Hernandez, Lenin Moreno, Guillermo Lasso, Jeanine Añez). At the same time, it has worked to undermine the governments of Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega, Nicolas Maduro, and Manuel Zelaya, all of which guarded the sovereignty of their respective countries and resources against foreign exploitation. These leaders, through nationalization, have insisted that resources be used to the benefit of their own populations and not for corporate profits.
Similarly, Castillo ran on a campaign which promised to reassert popular control over Peru’s natural resources through nationalization. Despite the difficulties Castillo encountered once in office, his opponents feared that he would renegotiate contracts to the benefit of the Peruvian state over foreign companies—which would affect Canadian plunderers.
Canada Out of Peru
Canada is currently urging Peru to hold new elections which appear likely to be organized by an illegitimate administration and Congress, with involvement of the OAS. In any such scenario, Castillo’s former Peru Libre party may face obstacles in running a candidate, as the party continues to be a target of political persecution and media smear campaigns.
Despite the absence of rule of law and countless human rights violations, it’s unlikely that Trudeau will cease support for Peru’s unelected regime, particularly given his track record in propping up Jeanine Añez and the make-believe Juan Guaido administration. But like Añez, Boluarte could be swapped out any day. A more permanent enemy of the Peruvian people is the Canadian government, Trudeau himself and Canadian financiers in natural resource extraction, who unabated will continue to conspire and sacrifice lives, in order to plunder Latin America and the Caribbean.
However severe the situation becomes in Peru, declarations or intervention shouldn’t be welcome from the human rights-violating Canadian government, which in addition to its historical and ongoing crimes against Indigenous peoples, maintains death sanctions on two dozen countries, at the direction of Washington.
Camila Escalante is a Latin America-based reporter and the editor of Kawsachun News. Escalante was reporting in Bolivia through the year of resistance to the Añez coup regime, which culminated in the presidential election victory of Luis Arce in October 2020. She can be followed on Twitter at @camilapress.
