8 Macrh 2024
Dear Patrons,
Although it has been too long since I have written one of these newsletters on Latin America, as many of you would be aware, I have not stopped writing, giving interviews (see the following at Green & Red Podcast on Milei’s election in Argentina), working on Indestructible Podcast, and finally, the documentary 'Venezuela: The Cost of Challenging an Empire.' In March 2023 I published an article looking at the forces that overthrew the government of president Pedro Castillo in Peru. A mildly reformist administration, which had its mandate blocked from the very beginning, the writing was on the wall during the early days of Castillo's government that his administration would not last as it displeased both local elites and the incumbent president of the United States. As I wrote in my article published in Eureka Street:
Once in office, with his minister for foreign affairs Héctor Béjar, Castillo withdrew Peru from the Lima Group, a pro-US multilateral body established in 2017 to promote the overthrow of the Maduro administration in Venezuela. After serving for just 19 days, Béjar — a respected left-wing intellectual and ex-guerrilla — was forced to resign after the Navy took offence to comments he made about the civil war Peru had endured during the 1980s.
The credibility of other ministers Castillo had appointed was then called into question. According to Francisco Dominguez, a senior lecturer at Middlesex University, that ‘Congress’s harassment [was] aimed at preventing Castillo’s government from even functioning can be verified with numbers: in the 495 days he lasted in office, Castillo was forced to appoint a total of 78 ministers.’
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