Rightist Keiko Fujimori has just been declared winner of Peru’s presidential race in her fourth try. Canada supported a coup she benefited from and backed her father’s usurpation of power.
On Friday Peru’s electoral court declared Fujimori president after a three week count of a narrow vote won by securing a greater proportion of ballots cast by Peruvians outside the country. Ottawa offered its “congratulations” to Fujimori and declared it “is committed to deepening cooperation on shared interests such as mutual economic growth and regional security.”
In the second round Fujimori defeated left-wing Congress member Roberto Sanchez who was in President Pedro Castillo’s cabinet. Castillo was impeached and jailed in December 2022. Ottawa immediately backed the removal of an elected president whose government called the Canadian backed anti-Venezuela Lima Group “the most disastrous thing we have done in international politics in the history of Perú.”
Partly due to an unrelenting sabotage campaign, Castillo was ineffective in pursuing his agenda of lessening the country’s gross inequities. Among other positions, Castillo vowed to reform the constitution adopted by Keiko’s father, Alberto Fujimori.
Canada helped Washington consolidate a coup that sparked a furious popular backlash. Ottawa defended an unelected Peruvian regime that suspended civil liberties and imposed a curfew while deploying troops to the streets. Security forces killed over sixty mostly Indigenous protesters opposed to Castillo’s ouster.
At a special meeting of the Organization of American States hours after Castillo was arrested Canada’s representative to the OAS noted, “Canada would like to express its deep concern over President Castillo’s attempt to dissolve congress and establish a government of exception in Peru. Such destabilizing actions run directly counter to the recommendation of the OAS high level group and risk jeopardizing Peru’s adherence to democratic norms.” According to the Canadian government, the ouster of the elected president was a step forward for democracy.
Castillo’s ouster was justified on the grounds the former union leader declared an “exceptional emergency government” and sought to dissolve Congress to pre-empt its bid to impeach him. The constitutional legitimacy of Castillo’s actions was dubious. But his opponents’ plan also undercut constitutional norms and they wanted the vice president to rule for the remainder of Castillo’s four and half year term. He at least called for immediate elections. Additionally, Castillo’s approval rating was significantly higher than the Congress that removed him (30% versus 10%).
Global Affairs and Canada’s ambassador to Peru Louis Marcotte worked hard to shore up support for Dina Boluarte’s replacement ‘usurper’ government. In the two months after Castillo’s ouster Marcotte met president Boluarte, the foreign minister, vulnerable populations minister, production minister and mining minister. The diplomatic activity reflected Ottawa’s commitment to consolidating the shaky coup government, which was rejected by many regional governments and had multiple ministers resign.
Most of the hemisphere took a different tack. In “Canada takes sides as hemisphere splits over who rules Peru” the CBC reported nine days after Castillo was ousted that the US, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica expressed support for Boluarte while Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, Barbuda, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Venezuela and Colombia all expressed some opposition to Castillo’s ouster.
While Canada blamed Castillo for the political crisis, other governments in the region criticized the Peruvian opposition for not allowing Castillo to govern. His opponent in the second round of the presidential election, Keiko Fujimori, refused to even recognize Castillo’s 2021 election victory while the media and business elite attacked Castillo viciously.
The military and police brutally suppressed the uprising against the elected president’s removal. Ottawa assisted the elitist and racist reactionary forces.
As detailed in my and Owen Schalk’s Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy, Ottawa backed Alberto Fujimori when he organized an “autogolpe”. In April 1992 Canada refused to condemn Alberto Fujimori’s “self coup” against Peru’s elected congress. The coup was a way for Fujimori to push through neoliberal economic reforms and empower the military, police and National Intelligence Service (SIN).
On April 5, 1992, the Peruvian military took control of “Lima’s streets, the Congress, and the Palace of Justice, television and radio stations, newspaper and magazine offices, and some party and union headquarters.” Fujimori then broadcast to the nation that the military coup was required to replace the “chaos and corruption” and the “existing institutional order,” which had been rendered dysfunctional by “party elites.”
Fujimori organized the coup with Vladimiro Montesinos, his SIN (secret police) chief and a long-time CIA contact, and elements within the military that supported a Pinochet-style regime. After the coup, Fujimori granted greater impunity to Peruvian soldiers combatting rural guerrillas, which led to a huge increase in sexual violence by state forces.
Fujimori had tacit or overt support from much of the military and business sectors and from Washington. Following a coup that granted Fujimori “complete dictatorial powers” Washington and the OAS publicly urged the president to restore representative democracy. But this was a formality since they took no other action.
Canada, meanwhile, did not issue a clear-cut statement of condemnation. On April 6, Bill Fairbairn of the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America sent a letter to External Affairs secretary Barbara MacDougall calling on Ottawa to condemn Fujimori’s actions. On April 7, MacDougall released a statement noting “concern” about the events in Peru.
That concern dissipated as Peru became one of Canada’s closest business partners on the continent. In collaboration with the World Bank, Fujimori instituted a structural reform program that opened huge areas of Peruvian natural resources to foreign companies. “In 1991,” writes José de Echave, “registered mining rights covered 2,258,000 hectares; in 1997—a peak year—they reached 15,597,000 hectares.” During the early 1990s Canadian mining holdings in Peru grew from three to 98 properties.
When the leftist Túpac Amaru guerrilla group took dozens of foreign diplomats hostage at the Japanese embassy in Lima in 1996, Canadian JTF-2 special forces reportedly participated in the US-led rescue effort. It left all 14 guerrillas dead, including many of them reportedly executed.
In 1998, Fujimori came to Canada on a four-day state visit “aimed at boosting trade relations between Canada and Peru.” Activists and human rights groups urged Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to speak out about Fujimori’s abuses, but Chrétien refused to do so. Instead, he stood next to Fujimori at a joint press conference, assured the press they had “already discussed the issue,” and allowed Fujimori to make the outlandish claim that “fortunately we have arrived to the point (in Peru) where human rights are respected.”
After ten years Fujimori stepped down in 2000 following an election that was so blatantly rigged that he lost US and OAS support. When US and Canadian officials shunned Fujimori’s third inauguration ceremony, his days were numbered and months later he agreed to a transition of power.
The roots of $11 billion worth of Canadian mining assets in Peru were laid in the aftermath of Fujimori’s April 1992 coup. There’s no doubt that Ottawa follows closely the industry’s political interests in the country.
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