On the Peruvian elections:

.S. Meddling in Peruvian Presidential Race?By Jeremy BigwoodLink: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/227/1/Something smells funny about the recent denunciation of maverick Peruvianpresidential candidate Ollanta Humala for alleged human rights violations.Before the accusations, Humala was riding high as the leading candidate inPeru's presidential elections. Investigations illustrate that Humala'saccusers are subsidized by the US Government funded Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).Washington may be interfering in this election to protect its own interests.**The former army officer heads a nationalist and anti-neoliberal coalitionbetween his new Peruvian Nationalist Party and the ten-year-old center-leftUnion for Peru party. Humala, a mestizo, was never part of Lima's whiteruling elite which has traditionally run the major institutions of thecountry. He is often derided for being an upstart "cholo" (indigenous),which sheds light on the colonial racism still inherent within Peruviansociety. So much of Humala's support comes from the impoverished non-whitemajority who has suffered from the "neoliberal reforms" of the unpopularsitting president Alejandro Toledo.Humala has met with Evo Morales, Bolivia's recently-elected indigenouspresident. Like Morales, Humala supports the commercialization and expandedinternational marketing of coca leaf products while at the same time beingstrongly against the cocaine trade. He also favors greater control by Peruover the exploitation of its natural resources. In the case of its largenatural gas fields, he would demand that the government receive at least 49percent of the profits and has made similar proposals for Peru's miningindustry. He has also promised to hold a national referendum on therecently-signed free trade deal with the United States, which is widelybelieved to favor U.S. corporate interests over those of Peru.This type of talk has not only scared Peruvian elites and multinationalbusiness interests, but has also drawn the ire of influential policy wonksof the neoliberal "Washington Consensus," who fear of another country goingto a left-talking "anti-imperialist" populist candidate—especially after thespectacular December victory of Morales in neighboring Bolivia. Yet unlikeBolivia's Morales, Humala is a relative newcomer to politics, which has leadsome people to fear that if elected he could turn out to be a disappointmentin the mold of Ecuador's discredited Lucio Gutiérrez, another army officerwho sold himself as a populist during elections. Regardless, even "liberals"and academics have joined the right-wing chorus in Washington of professinga preference for an electoral victory by right-wing candidate Lourdes FloresNano over Humala. Washington was unified. Humala had to go.Humala has also met with Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez. Both weremilitary officers who led failed military uprisings against their respectivepresidents – Chávez in 1992 and Humala in 2000. But unlike Chavez'sVenezuela, Peru has no major oil deposits.On Feb. 15, Humala was accused of a series of war crimes. The chargesincluded forced disappearance, torture and attempted murder that are allegedto have taken place when he commanded a jungle counterinsurgency base in1992 at the height of the bloody civil war with the extremist Maoist ShiningPath and Guevarist MRTA that engulfed Peru through much of the 1980s and1990s. It is a charge that Humala vehemently denies, but it is a charge thathas stuck and rapidly knocked him down to second place in the polls.The "non-governmental organization" (NGO) that led the charge against Humalawas the National Coordinator for Human Rights <http://www.dhperu.org/>, theumbrella organization for several human rights groups commonly known as the"Coordinadora." Whether or not the Coordinadora's charges are true orfabricated, nobody in the press has investigated its history or who backsit. Is the Coordinadora merely a disinterested and neutral human rightsorganization doing its job, or was this denunciation the result of anothermore nefarious hidden agenda?To anyone following Latin America recently, it should come as no surprisethat the accuser, the Coordinadora is an "NGO" that has been funded by theU.S. government for years.Although it is not mentioned in the Coordinadora's "officialhistory<http://www.wola.org/andes/Peru/Peru_Coordinadora_eng.pdf>"written by the Washington, D.C. based nonprofit called the Washington Officeon Latin America, it has been funded by both the Agency for InternationalDevelopment <http://www.usaid.gov/> (USAID) and the smaller NationalEndowment for Democracy <http://www.ned.org/> (NED) on and off for more thana decade. While both USAID and NED are civilian entities, they are largelycontrolled by the State Department and are indispensable instruments of U.S.foreign policy.Does U.S. funding of a foreign "NGOs" affect their behavior? Andrew Natsios,USAID's former head,stated<http://www.usaid.gov/press/speeches/2003/sp030521.html>unequivocallyin a widely distributed 2003 speech that even foreignUSAID-funded contractors and NGO's "are an arm of the U.S. government." Andthe role of the much smaller NED was made clear when Allen Weinstein, one ofits founders stated in a 1991 Washington Post article that, "a lot of whatwe do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."During some of the years that USAID funded the Coordinadora, the moneypassed through the USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Lima.USAID's OTI offices – just as their name indicates – are devoted to"political transitions" and are temporarily located only in countries wherethe U.S. government has an interest in either "regime change" or inpolitically and economically shoring up its allies.OTI offices exist or have existed in several Latin American and theCaribbean countries, including Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Haiti.Not surprisingly, the biggest OTI office worldwide is in Iraq. In bothVenezuela and Haiti over the last few years, USAID's OTI has contributed farmore money to "NGOs" working for the U.S.'s political and economic intereststhan the more notorious yet much smaller meddler, the NED.According to an email from the USAID's press officer, USAID has given theCoordinadora some $762,750.00. But Francisco Soberón, the Coordinadora'sdirector, told Upside Down World that such grants have "happened in thepast—but right now for us at the Coordinadora there is nothing at all." Buthe later said that "some [of the] other organizations that are members ofthe Coordinadora have received or are presently receiving" funding. One ofthese, APRODEH,received<http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-cutting_programs/transition_initiatives/country/peru/rptFinal.pdf>atleast $53,246.39 from USAID. One-year-old Freedom of Information Act requests to USAIDto determine the exact amounts of all of the grants have not yet beenanswered.Soberón denied that the Coordinadora has received funding from NED, but theNED's own website<http://www.ned.org/grants/04programs/web-lac04.html>lists it undertheir list of grantees and former grantees. However, there isno indication of how much it received or when. At the time of this writing,telephone requests to NED's press officer Jane Riley Richardson forinformation on the exact amount of funding have not been answered. Neitherhave a series of FOIA requests to NED been responded to. However, ifVenezuela and Haiti are any guides, NED funding of the Coordinadora hasprobably been considerably less than that of USAID.What has been the Coordinadora's role vis a vis the U.S. Embassy? Accordingto a declassified State Department response to the Freedom of InformationAct, as early as 1993, Coordinadora officers weredebriefing<http://jeremybigwood.net/FOIAs/Huallaga-COORDINADORA-USAID/index.htm>theU.S. embassy in Lima about their trips to the conflictive areas of Peruwhere insurgents were still active. Given the U.S. government's assistanceto the Peruvian government during the counterinsurgency war, suchdebriefings could have been considered as spying.Is the U.S. getting anything out of this funding? The Coordinadora's Soberónresponds with an emphatic "no," adding that "we do not accept conditionsfrom anyone." But with the denunciation of Humala and his resultant drop inthe polls, it looks like the U.S. may have gotten a lot for its money.###*Sources linked to in this article:*http://www.usaid.gov/press/speeches/2003/sp030521.htmlhttp://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-cutting_programs/transition_initiatives/country/peru/rptFinal.pdfhttp://www.ned.org/grants/04programs/web-lac04.htmlhttp://peru.indymedia.org/news/2005/12/22776_comment.phphttp://www.usaid.gov/pubs/cbj2002/lac/pe/527-001.htmlhttp://jeremybigwood.net/FOIAs/Huallaga-COORDINADORA-USAID/index.htm