Peru: Pressure from the Right and the Military Obtains the Resignation of Foreign Minister Pedro Castillo | Héctor Béjar had only been in government for 19 days

From Lima

Under pressure from the right and the military, the government of the chancellor of Pedro Castillo, the ex-guerrilla and sociologist Héctor Béjar fell.. The right is happy, feels empowered, puts more pressure on the government and calls for further changes in the cabinet. Béjar resigned after a TV show published his statements on Sunday evening, given before being appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on July 29, in which he indicated that the Navy had committed terrorist acts and had been trained by the CIA. The right reacted furiously. The Navy, reviewing rules that say the armed forces are not deliberative, issued a statement harshly criticizing the chancellor. The Defense Minister, former police non-commissioned officer and lawyer Walter Ayala, has publicly supported the Navy and its statement, despite it being an open military challenge to civilian power. Before resigning, Béjar met Castillo. The president remained silent.

At the time of sending this memo, his replacement had not been named. Former Foreign Minister Manuel Rodríguez Cuadros, a career diplomat who already held the post in the government of Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), was mentioned. In 2011, he tried unsuccessfully to run for president of a center-left party. In the midst of the crisis, Rodríguez Cuadros met twice with President Castillo on Tuesday.

Béjar was silent in this crisis. Before his resignation, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement in which it said that the foreign minister’s statements published by the press were made before he became minister and “have been manipulated, edited, cut and released. of their context in order to discredit and obtain the censure of the minister ”. A little after, the chancellor has resigned. He found no support in the government.

The CIA and the Shining Path

“Terrorism in Peru was launched by the navy, they were trained for it by the CIA”, It was Béjar’s declaration that put the political, media and military right on a war footing. He had said so in November of last year, during a virtual conference. At the same conference, he claimed that the Shining Path, the Maoist armed group that launched an armed struggle in 1980 that lasted until the 1990s, had been “largely the work of the CIA”, although that he made it clear that he had no proof of the latter.

In an angry and provocative statement, the Navy accused the foreign minister of making false statements, which it called “an affront to the men and women who have fought and continue to fight terrorist crime “. The Navy took advantage of the case to firmly defend military action in the internal war and to discredit those who question it for the multiple violations of human rights – kidnappings, torture, disappearances, assassinations and massacres of peasant communities – in which the Navy has played a leading role.

Taken out of context, Béjar’s statements were presented as if he was blaming the Navy instead of Sendero for starting the internal war, but in reality he was not referring to this historical episode, but to earlier events. In January 1975, when the country was ruled by the left-wing General Juan Velasco, an admiral close to Velasco who had recently been appointed head of the navy and joint command, which was opposed by senior naval officials who conspired against Velasco, he was the target of a terrorist attack when a bomb was planted in his house. Velasco was overthrown in August of the same year.

In 1977, in the military government of right-wing general Francisco Morales Bermúdez – condemned in Italy for his participation in the Condor Plan, but protected in Peru from extradition – a Cuban fishing boat was sunk and another damaged by bombs planted by divers. . The Navy had the personnel and the equipment to carry out these attacks. The military government did not investigate the attack. According to US State Department cables revealed by WikiLeaks, the US Embassy reported that these attacks were carried out by the Navy. Béjar was referring to these historical facts when he said that the Navy had initiated terrorism in Peru. On the other hand, the relationship of Peruvian intelligence services, like that of the Navy, with the CIA, to which the former foreign minister referred, is well known.

The Right and the Media

His statements about the Navy, terrorism and the CIA, taken out of context by his accusers, were the latest episode in the offensive against Béjar. Before these statements became known, Fujimori had submitted a request to parliament to question him, with the aim of censoring him. They questioned him because of his guerrilla past, his left-wing activism and his announced commitment to regional integration. and the distance it took from the start with the bankrupt Lima group.

“This is a right-wing conspiracy, with the support of the media. They don’t want foreign policy to change, they want to block any attempt at a Latin American integration policy. A concession is made to militarism, the Navy’s statement is unacceptable. With this, the right is strengthened and democracy loses, ”he told PageI12 the former Andean parliamentarian and sociologist Alberto Adrianzén.