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A confidential cable from the U.S. embassy in Lima, Peru reveals a high degree of military and political cooperation with the right-wing government of Alan Garcia. On what the cable describes as his administration’s “wish list” are, “increased training in the U.S. for Peruvian military officers; access to U.S. satellite imagery; and funding to allow the Peruvian navy to participate in multi-national operations.”
The assistance was requested supposedly to combat the drug trade and the Shining Path, a revolutionary guerilla army that was relentlessly attached by the Peruvian government in the 1980s.
But the Peruvian military has a long history of corrupt relationships with drug traffickers. The security forces simply serve to repress any opposition to the capitalist state. In June 2009 they massacred more than 20 Indigenous protestors who were demonstrating against exploitation and environmental destruction in the Amazon.
While this military aid was intended to improve the “internal security” of the servile Peruvian government, it was also part of a larger effort to reassert neo-colonial dominance over the region.
Since the election of Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela in 1998, Latin America has taken a sharp anti-imperialist turn. When this cable was sent in 2007, Peru had one of the few remaining governments in the region that was totally subservient to U.S. imperialism. It remains this way today.
Workers and poor people in the United States should stand in solidarity with the people of Peru, the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, and all other struggles for justice and independence in Latin America.
Click here to read the full text of the cable released by WikiLeaks.
