“Is it not true that you have always been regarded as slaves, and treated with the greatest outrage, with no other right than force, and no more crime than living in your own country?”
Proclamation of Juan José Castelli to the Indians of Peru
When Gabriel Boric, President of Chile, sustains in his speech at Celac in Buenos Aires the book of Jorge Abelardo Ramos, History of the Latin American Nation (which was initially going to be called Latin America, a countrya book that has on its cover an illustration of the independence of Haiti, which was a revolt of black slaves against the colonization of France, and today Haiti is the poorest country in the region and would demand our help, the children eat dirt cookies to live but the OAS does not say anything) is showing the sense of integration that drives many Latin American leaders: there are no foreign or isolated problems, as when Pedro Castillo supports Bolivia’s exit to the Sea: They are thinking together, with awareness and Latin American solidarity. Not only at the “country” level, but at the regional level, with a common, shared history (they did not think otherwise Bolivar either San Martin (illustration), who lived, in exile in France, until the last of his days, thanks to the support of Peru). Hence the support Castillo now receives from the presidents of Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Correa, exiled in Belgium). Castillo was the victim of a coup, which began even before she could assume the government: the peasant patrols spent 45 days in the streets of Lima asking Keiko Fujimori to “recognize” their votes and her voice. Castillo was president because Arenas did not allow himself to be corrupted and did not accept a million dollar bribe that he had been offered to challenge the acts that voted for Castillo. Thanks to the integrity of magistrate Arenas, who did not allow himself to be corrupted, Castillo was president of Peru.
a heartbreaking letter
The same day as the daughter of Pedro Castillo, Yenifer Paredespublishes a heartbreaking letter (addressed to Argentine lawyers) in the Argentine media (Page 12 first, The Republic in Peru later), the INPE (Ministry of the Interior) resolves, through a “communiqué”, limit the access of “foreign” lawyers to the prisons of Peru: one more measure to hinder and hinder (delay) Castillo’s contact with his foreign lawyers (Zaffaroni-Croxatto). These measures are openly unconstitutional, because they reduce an essential right: the right to defense in court. A basic guarantee. But they are also politically directed measures. With first and last name. Which is constitutionally prohibited. The Peruvian State fails to comply with basic guarantees of the criminal process. Does not respect procedural guarantees. They don’t even respect the dignity of a little girl, who was pointed at with a machine gun, to extort her father. That was the only way they managed to get Castillo to turn himself in. Because he never wanted to run away anywhere or give up anything. They could only stage his arrest by threatening to kill his daughters. That’s what the Peruvian state did. Extorting a president with the death of his 11-year-old daughter, so that she would get out of the car. The psychological damage to Alondra is immense.
Meanwhile, as if we lived in a bygone age, advance country He is asking for amnesty for the police and military who are committing serious human rights violations in Peru. At the same time, Mexico (its president, Lopez Obrador) refuses to cede to Peru, the legitimacy of whose government it does not recognize (as do Bolivia and Colombia), the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Group. This in itself reveals a regional and political crisis (there are already more than sixty deaths, the president of Colombia, Petro, described the repressive practices of the Boluarte government as “nazis”, who went so far as to maintain that “Puno – where there were dozens of murders, as in Juliaca – it is not Peru”) on a large scale, on which the OAS has not yet ruled. The trigger for this political and social crisis is the irregular dismissal of President Castillo.
A group of legislators (popular actionand popular renewal) denounces (February 25, 2023) a “continental escalation against Peru”. It is not that there is an “international campaign” (Petro, Lopez Obrador, Evo Morales, Argentina, Chile), against the government of Peru, as the congressmen maintain. It is that serious crimes cannot count on the “support”, the international endorsement or the complicit silence of the countries of the region.
Slaughter
The autopsies of February 23 confirmed that more than 17 civilians were shot dead, fired directly, at close range, breaking any police protocol. They are serious State crimes denounced by the Peruvian press itself (The Republic). It is not that there is an “international campaign” against Peru, as the Argentine dictatorship also maintained, when its atrocious crimes were denounced: that there was a “smear campaign” before the world. But the deaths, torture, disappearances, existed. And they cannot be forgotten. And they begin, in the Peruvian case, then of the coup and explain what its meaning was. And who (and for what) perpetrated it. The invisibility of the deaths in Puno, Ayacucho, Cusco (90% of those murdered were in the regions where Castillo voted) is part of a communication strategy that confuses public opinion about the ideological orientation of the coup in Peru, attributing the “coup” to those who suffered it and still suffer it. It is necessary to dismantle (and understand) this rhetoric. (Not very different from the rhetoric that our States have historically used to persecute and murder the Indians, to steal their lands and deprive them of their cultures -while accusing them, for “being” what they were, of being violent, terrorists , savages, like Pedro Castillo, same treatment, same language- since the times of the conquest of the “desert” and the “pacification” of Araucania). Our colonial rhetoric has not changed that much. To the cholos, to the poor Indians, to the Andean women who understand little about law formal European, we keep killing them. It seems that there are lives that are worth less than others. Or that they are easier to make invisible in the media, like the seventy deaths in Peru: it is necessary that these deaths stop being invisible It seems that in some cultured places in Europe the image (dramatic in itself) of a police tank entering the university (San Marcos, an image that is also characteristic of a dictatorship) has more impact than the seventy bullet-ridden corpses. Europe feels less (has always felt less) the death of the Indians. One of those murdered in Juliaca had 72 wounds from metal pellets. 72.
logocentric and racist
It is worth remembering that “permanent moral incapacity” comes from the “mental incapacity” of the 19th century. It is a logocentric and racist concept, used (not only to illegally “vacate” Castillo, without political prejudice and without the right of defense) but also to criminalize (since the origins of positivist criminology) the “wild” Indians.
When an international mission of Argentine lawyers and legislators traveled to Peru in February to investigate the Juliaca massacre and the murders in Puno and Ayacucho, taking testimony of the bloody state repression (social protest is fought with the armed forces, ammunition is fired of war to unarmed demonstrators) the criminal dictatorship of Dina Boluarte He sent “formal complaints” to the Argentine embassy and to the Holy See, complaining about the presence of this peaceful solidarity mission, which only sought to take testimonies.
On March 13 in the National Congress, the Argentine International Human Rights Mission in Peru will present a detailed report with the record of the murders and the repression. The legal opinion of the defense (Zaffaroni-Croxatto) of Pedro Castillo will also be presented in the same act.