Yesterday (1/19/23) I was reading the New York Times (arguably America’s most prestigious newspaper) and couldn’t find a single article about Peru while able to find several many about Ukraine. It surprised me because it was widely announced that there was going to be a march in Peru starting from different points in the interior of the country joined by a general strike to be called by the La Central General de Trabajadores del Peru (a conglomerate of different labor unions as it is our AFL-CIO). 

The march was going to conclude in Lima, the nation’s capital. The Peruvian government set up roadblocks in many of the different roads leading to the city trying to prevent entry to the city to no avail. The Miami Herald reported on it in today’s (1/20/23) Page 8. Gee, I get the feeling that some people don’t want us to know about the trials and tribulations that white supremacists, and its elitists cohort are going through.

For those of you that are not aware of what’s happening in Peru, after a fiercely contested election where popular forces led by an elementary school teacher and union leader Pedro Castillo defeated elitism and white supremacy in the ballot box and became President in July of 2021. From its inception Castillo was vehemently opposed by Congress and the corporate media. The fact that Castillo is of Indigenous ancestry made him the butt of many jokes and brought out racial hatred in its full splendor.

Pedro Castillo, as stated before, is a former rural school teacher and union leader that after a tumultuous stint as President was deposed on December 7 of last year when the combined forces of the economic elites and white supremacy engineered a Coup. As it is happening throughout the world, White Supremacy elitists don’t accept defeat gracefully especially to “those” people who they consider lesser beings. In United States, Black Americans were considered to be 3/5 human. I am not aware of human quantification in Peru, but it is probably for all practical purposes that estimate or less. White Supremacy is ugly and as the Nazis proved it could be deadly. And guess who met with the Coup plotters before the Coup took place? If you guessed the U.S. ambassador, you are absolutely right.

The struggle that is happening in Peru is in my humble opinion the most significant fight against white supremacy and the elitism it engenders in the world today. In Peru the fight is as clear as clean water. There we have an elite that believed could get away with overthrowing a democratically elected president with minor consequences. They probably never thought that after battering people through hundreds of years these so-called “Indians” would have the internal fortitude to fight back.

The Peruvian intellectual Itzamna Ollantay says in his TeleSur’s blog posted 1/19/23 titled “Peru Indomito,” “Those that plotted and executed the overthrow of President Pedro Castillo, never imagined nor calculated the insubordination that will come about from the rural areas and from the impoverished territories that have been exploited by the State for centuries.

It seems, that one of the motivating factors coalescing the popular insubordination is the outrage caused by the pain that the massacre inflicted on the demonstrators and the growing popular agenda that keeps gaining followers in the national political discourse: Resign all of you in the Coup government, new elections, a new Constituent Assembly, and free Pedro Castillo.

The antidemocratic overthrow of Pedro Castillo was the last drop that exhausted the patience of the popular rural sectors that were already exasperated by the abusive treatment received from the agents of the neoliberal establishment in several of the interior territories throughout the country, thoroughly insulted by the colonizing attitude of the State’s armed forces.”

One of the most perfidious characteristics of white supremacy is dehumanizing non-whites.

Yesterday, the popular forces were celebrating the March to Lima under the name “La Toma de Lima” which loosely translated means “Occupy Lima.” The Coup-installed President Dina Boluarte has led a massacre of 53 Peruvians. The similarities with what have happened in Brazil and in USA is spellbinding. As it happened in both countries the right-wing opposition refused to concede the election. And as it happened in both countries the right-wing opposition worked towards executing a Coup.

What is happening in Peru could determine the speed of the downfall of the worldwide apparatus of white/elitist supremacy. Right-Wing characters are mounting concerted attacks in the several nations where they have lost power democratically as it has happened in Bolivia and Brazil. White supremacy in those countries operate very similar to the modus operandi that they use in the USA but in many cases much more brutal. Hard to believe but that’s the reality when people are expected to remain smiling and on their knees while being oppressed.

If Boluarte is forced to resign we could expect her and many of the coup architects to make Miami, their home. All of them ready to join the fight against encroaching socialism.  And my crystal ball tells me that the defeat of white supremacy is inevitable.

The victory of the popular forces in Peru will be a victory for the whole of humanity. A major step to a more just and better world.