Thanks to Louis for forwarding the article. Unless someone convinces me
otherwise, I would recommend great reservation regarding the Peru
elections, even though the N. American media is already including it in the
"pink tide".
Candidate Ollanta Humala now claims affinity with Chavez and Morales (and
even Kirchner or Bachelet) and the only polling firm considered reliable
predicts him likely to emerge as the leader in the first round of voting
Sunday, and that he will likely face neo-liberal Lourdes Flores in a second
round. A losing third place is predicted to go to Alain Garcia of the APRA
party, often cited in "standard" textbooks as the historical example of a
vaguely leftish popularist party, mixed with corruption/mismanagement and
today more like "liberal" in the US sense.
But Humala's political background is of extreme ultra-nationaliasm and
racialism -- his father, a lawyer, founded a fringe party that promotes
these ideas and Ollanta was an activist for the party until just a few
years ago (including an attempted military coup with a handful of followers
in 2000). Just when and how far his ideas have changed from the lunatic
fringe is unclear (Ollanta's brother is running as the fringe party's
candidate against his brother).
Humala's personal background and experience is also quite different. He
grew up in a middle class suburb of Lima, went to one of the elite private
High Schools and then directly to the national military college. Recently,
serious charges have surfaced that the unit he commanded as a Captain
engaged in local massacres and other acts during the war against Sendero
Luminoso. The charges are only now being investigated...Humala's rise has
been a 'bolt from the blue' which also indicates the instability and
fragility of Peru's political processes. It is not known what he stands
for and he has had no real political experience. As in many developing
countries, Peru's policy-based political parties collapsed when power
radically shifted to the Bretton Woods institutions and other forces
outside of electoral reach.
All this is far from, say, Chavez or Morales (and, as I understand it, even
they evolved quite a bit during their many years of building their movements).
Paul
Louis P. forwarded:
NY Times, April 7, 2006
Growth's Caprice Angers Some Peruvians
By JUAN FORERO
ICA, Peru, April 1 Business has been good for José Chlimper, owner of a
vast farm carved into the desert here, where workers churn out 50 tons of
asparagus a day for markets in the United States and Europe. Production is
expected to double by 2009, and the seasonal work force tripled in just
five years.
