Peru Is In Bad Shape Now

 

PERU

Uncle Porky and the Spoilers

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned three years ago over allegations of bribery and corruption. Last year, Peruvian lawmakers impeached his successor, President Martín Vizcarra, for botching his country’s coronavirus response and, again, bribery allegations. Former Congressional Speaker Manuel Merino briefly became interim president before protesters forced his resignation and legislators appointed Francisco Sagasti to become the South American nation’s head of state, the third in the span of a week.

Now voters have a chance to wipe the political slate clean. On April 11, they’ll head to the polls to elect a new president, explained the Americas Society / Council of the Americas.

Will the voters seize the opportunity? Many don’t seem enthusiastic. None of the candidates have drawn the support of more than 20 percent of the electorate (Sagasti is running for one of two vice-presidential offices) so a June 6 runoff is expected.

The track record of Peruvian leaders in recent years might be one reason that voters aren’t excited about their options. The country has the second-highest rate of coronavirus deaths on the planet. The economy shrunk by almost 13 percent last year. Peruvian politicians also steered vaccines to their friends and cronies, sparking widespread anger, the New York Times reported.

“The people have little confidence in the government, for obvious reasons,” National Intercultural University of the Amazon International Relations Professor Miguel Hilario-Manemina told the New Humanitarian.

The current frontrunner in the race is Yonhy Lescano, who wants to expand the government’s role in the economy, particularly in the natural gas and mining sectors, according to Argus Media, a British news organization that covers petrochemicals. The business community fears that Lescano and other left-leaning politicians could destroy the sector. Those concerns have already pushed down the value of Peru’s currency relative to the US dollar.

Lescano’s main rival is George Forsyth, 38, a former professional soccer player. “My youth is a plus point, I have the energy and the drive, and I represent a fed-up generation that no longer believes in politicians,” he told Reuters in an interview. “That ‘sameocracy,’ those old-school politicians, are afraid of us.”

But Forsyth is not really an outsider. His father is now Peru’s ambassador to Japan – which has close ties to Peru – and his mother is a former Miss Chile.

Another contender is the right-wing Rafael López Aliaga, a businessman and staunch Catholic. Known as Uncle Porky, Aliaga owns the monopoly on the train that takes tourists to Machu Picchu, the Incan historical site, wrote Al Dia, a local news outlet.

Peruvian voters want leaders who inspire confidence. Unfortunately for them, Peru’s next president doesn’t need to clear that hurdle to win.

Argentina's 1976 Coup-What The US Knew

 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2021-03-23/argentinas-military-coup-what-us-knew?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9fcb5efb-937e-4c13-9e3a-90897fe629e7

A Spring Cleaning In Bolivia

 

BOLIVIA

Spring Cleaning

Bolivian authorities arrested former interim President Jeanine Añez and some of her government’s former ministers over the weekend, a move condemned by the opposition and civil rights group as political persecution by the country’s ruling socialist party, Financial Times reported.

Añez and the ministers were arrested on charges of terrorism and sedition over their roles in the mass protests that forced former President Evo Morales to flee the country in November 2019.

Morales had sought to win a fourth consecutive term during the presidential elections that year but the vote was marred by irregularities. Following the resignation of Morales’ vice-president and head of senate, Añez, then a conservative provincial senator, was sworn in as the interim leader.

The conservative politician criticized the allegations adding that Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party “decided to return to the methods of dictatorship.”

Human rights activists, meanwhile, said that there was no evidence that Añez and her ministers had committed any crimes.

Tensions have increased since MAS candidate Luis Acre won last year’s presidential elections: Morales and his party maintain that the November 2019 events were a “coup d’état.” They have cracked down on opponents and issued arrest warrants for officials of the previous interim administration.

Brasil Healthcare System Near Collapse

 

Brazil: Healthcare System Nearing Collapse Amid Surging COVID-19 Cases

1 MIN READMar 4, 2021 | 20:59 GMT

What Happened: Brazil reported a record 71,000 new COVID-19 cases and 1,900 deaths on March 3, with Intensive Care Units (ICUs) now at capacity in 18 of the country’s 26 states, Reuters has reported. In response to the surge in COVID-19 infections, several Brazilian states including Sao Paulo have entered into partial lockdowns. 

Why It Matters: The recent rise in COVID-19 cases in Brazil is due to the spread of a more contagious homegrown variant of the virus dubbed P1, along with the relaxing of social distancing measures across the country. Should the Brazilian healthcare system be overwhelmed, it is likely that there will be a backlash against the government.

Background: The P1 COVID-19 variant first appeared in the Amazonas state of Brazil at the beginning of January. Preliminary studies have also shown that the variant appears to be more contagious and infects people who have already recovered from other versions of the virus.

Read More:

• In Brazil, Bolsonaro's COVID-19 Rift With Congress Will Stall Tax Reforms (March 27, 2020)

Brasil: The Color Of Pride

 

BRAZIL

The Color of Pride

Brazilians of African descent became the majority racial group in their country almost a decade ago.

Today, many refer to Brazil as a “post-racial” society. There is a tradition of elites encouraging folks of different skin tones to intermarry, for example. Officials in the administration of right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro have denied that racism exists in Brazil.

But it would be wrong to think that Brazil has somehow surmounted all the challenges that racial differences can help engender, noted Cherwell, the student newspaper at Oxford University.

Less than a quarter of the lower house of the Brazilian Congress is Black, for example, according to Reuters. Last year, the country adopted rules to funnel more funding and airtime to Black candidates for office in 2022 to change the situation.

In response, Black resistance to racism and prejudice in Brazil is on the rise. Communities called “quilombo,” for instance, an African term referring to fugitive slave groups formed before slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, are springing up throughout the country, Time wrote.

A host of recent municipal elections won by candidates of color suggest that Black and mixed-race politicians were also taking advantage of the demographic shifts and are seeking to capitalize on the new rules at the ballot box, added the Wall Street Journal.

Ironically, the new rules might have led more than 42,000 incumbent Brazilian politicians who ran for office last year to change their racial identification to Black from another identity, usually white, in 2016, said University of Florida Political Scientist Andrew Janusz in the Conversation.

The statistics raise questions about whether these now-Black politicians understand the group whose identity they now claim to share, Janusz argued. Today, Black Brazilians are more likely to be killed in police encounters than their white compatriots. They are more likely to die from the coronavirus. The shutdown of Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival due to the pandemic has been a blow to the Afro-Brazilian community, too, both financially and emotionally, Conde Nast Traveler wrote.

But some Brazilians, after viewing themselves as mixed race, realized only recently that they, in fact, were Black after watching the racial tensions escalate in the US over the past year. “I didn’t think I was Black,” local politician José Antônio Gomes told the Washington Post. “But now we have more courage to see ourselves that way.”

Next year’s presidential election will give voters a chance to decide whose views on race they prefer – those of Bolsonaro’s view or his critics. The number of votes, not the color of those who cast ballots, will decide who wins.

Argentina-Crossing The Line-Vaccination Corruption

 

ARGENTINA

Crossing the Line

Thousands protested across Argentina against the government of President Alberto Fernandez over the weekend following revelations that a privileged few in the country were jumping ahead of long lines to receive the coronavirus vaccine, Merco Press reported.

Argentinians expressed outrage after it emerged that some government officials, former leaders’ families and their cronies were receiving the inoculation. Currently, only health workers and vulnerable people have a right to access the vaccine.

The scandal has already led to the resignation of Health Minister Gines Gonzalez Garcia and forced the government to publish a list of 70 individuals that received the vaccine.

The country of 44 million has recorded more than two million confirmed cases and about 52,000 deaths from the coronavirus. Meanwhile, Argentina has received more than 1.2 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine as well as 904,000 from China’s Sinopharm.

The government said that about one million people have been inoculated, according to Agence France-Presse.

Other leaders in the region have been getting into trouble over the same issue.

In February, two ministers in Peru resigned over allegations that they shared scarce vaccine doses with relatives and allies, the Miami Herald reported.