The U.S. rulers support Fujimori because his government is dutifully protecting the interests of Wall Street and other capitalist investors. This means opening the country to freer imperialist plunder, imposing draconian austerity measures on Peru's population, and keeping working people in line through repressive means.

Fujimori enacted "antiterrorism" laws during his 1992 "self-coup," when he dissolved Congress and put the courts under his thumb. Anyone accused of "terrorism" is dragged into "faceless" courts, where neither prosecutors nor the judges can be seen. The trials often last 10 minutes. No witnesses or police can be cross-examined, and lawyers can only see their clients on the day of the trial. Many of these victims of capitalist justice are locked up at the Castro prison in Lima or at the harsher Yanamayo penitentiary in Puno, high in the Andes.

The Fujimori government is a classic Bonapartist regime. Originating in a period of social crisis, such a regime tends to concentrate power in a strong executive branch that balances between two contending class forces, neither of which is secure from challenge by the other. This centralization of executive power is presided over by a "strong man" - in this case Fujimori - who presents himself as standing above the conflicting classes and exerts a certain independence of action, in order to maintain the power of the dominant social layer.

The Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), which continues to occupy the Japanese ambassador residence in Lima, is demanding the release of some 400 of their comrades. While the MRTA has weakened their just demand through an ultraleft political course - carrying out dramatic military actions that relegate working people to the role of spectators - the Fujimori government, with the blood of working people on its hands, has no right to talk about terrorism. It should immediately release all these prisoners.

The purpose of the antidemocratic measures of the Peruvian regime is to solve the country's economic catastrophe on the backs of working people and in favor of the profit-hungry local capitalists and their imperialist masters, especially in Washington and Tokyo.

Toilers throughout Latin America today are subject to attacks on democratic rights, brutal exploitation, and the sucking of the wealth they create into the coffers of imperialist banks and other financial institutions. Today almost 191 million people in Latin America - 45 percent of the population - live below the official poverty line. In Peru, 9 out of 10 people are unemployed or underemployed.

Peru's current foreign debt has soared to $30 billion, 22 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product, up from 16 percent in 1990. Last year, Fujimori signed a new "letter of intent" with the International Monetary Fund in which he promised to impose even more drastic cuts in public services, unemployment compensation, and retirement benefits. These measures also aim to complete the sell-off to private investors of state-owned enterprises, with the accompanying lay-offs of thousands of workers.

To continue paying the foreign debt, the regime in Lima has opened up the country's natural resources and labor power to wider imperialist exploitation. The main natural resources that have been targeted for sale to imperialist investors are minerals, natural gas, and oil. Peru is a major producer of copper, silver, gold, zinc and lead. In early 1996, Mobil Corporation and Royal Dutch/Shell acquired the gas deposits, one of the largest in the world. Canadian and U.S. monopolies have been granted exploitation rights in some of the mining projects in northern Peru. The selling of shares in the state-run oil enterprise is set to be completed in the next two years, with 1,500 oil workers slated to lose their jobs. These and other austerity measures have met resistance from workers and farmers.

The labor movement in the United States and around the world should respond by offering solidarity to fellow working people in Peru.

Free all political prisoners now!

Cancel the foreign debt of Peru and of the entire Third World!  
 
 
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