As Peru’s Marxist presumptive president-elect, Pedro Castillo, stands on the verge of being named certified as the official victor of the president election, he is heading for a showdown with the interventionist Samantha Power, the former US ambassador to the United Nations under Barack Obama. While at the UN, Power was a major proponent of U.S. military intervention in the Syrian, Yemeni, and Libyan civil wars.
Castillo has pledged to expel the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from Peru within his first 100 days in office. Power is currently the director of USAID. Castillo’s reasoning is the same that Bolivian President Evo Morales cited in 2013, when he expelled USAID from his nation: USAID has continuously conspired against socialist and progressive governments in Latin America in favor of right-wing and corporatist interests.
Castillo’s Peru Libre (Free Peru) platform also calls for the expulsion of U.S. military bases in Peru and Peru’s withdrawal from the anti-Venezuela Lima Group within the first 100 days of Castillo’s presidency. Peru Libre has charged the U.S. with attempting to establish a military base in the remote Valley of the Rivers Apurímac, Ene and Matero (VRAEM), also known as “Cocaine Valley.” VRAEM is also an area where the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group is active. The expulsion of USAID will likely elicit a response from the notoriously tart-mouthed Power, who often found herself at odds with the UN delegations of Bolivia and Venezuela over U.S. attempts to overthrow their progressive governments.
Peru Libre Congressman-elect Guillermo Bermejo, who is likely to play an important role in Peru’s new foreign policy, stated that USAID “is a sort of ‘legal’ intelligence service of the U.S. in Latin America and they are involved in everything you can imagine: education, health, reproductive policies, agriculture, human rights, environment, economy, defense, and the fight against drugs.”
The party platform describes USAID as working to “fulfill the purposes of imperialism in the region” through using “talent” that “ranges from former political leaders, lawmakers from different parties and even “a liberal sector that tries to sell itself as the left.” The platform also states: “USAID must leave Peru, just as it was expelled from Bolivia. And get out of the disastrous Lima Group, which is a disgrace in international politics. Peru Libre and Pedro Castillo are committed to that.”
Castillo’s party proposes to “deactivate” the Lima Group, which apparently continues to have its administrative functions supported by the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Already, Peruvian media operations funded by USAID’s CIA-connected National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have began attacking not only Castillo, but, in particular, Bermejo, who the CIA believes is a major foreign policy influencer of the incoming government. Bermejo is being accused by U.S.-influenced local media and political figures of having links to the Shining Path. There is nothing to suggest that Bermejo is a Maoist. Quite to the contrary, his past writings have exalted Latin America anti-colonialist leader Simon Bolivar, Cuban revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Ché” Guevara, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. Bermejo’s nickname is also “Ché.”
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and nationally-distributed columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
