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Will Peru Return to the Western Fold?
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14731 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1988 |
2,859 Words |
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Howard J. Wiarda and Ieda Siqueira Wiarda
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Young, decisive, impatient Peruvian President Alan Garcia Perez is called Caballo Loco (Crazy Horse) by his dwindling band of admirers in this third-largest South American country. The charismatic Garcia once loved appearing on the presidential palace balcony to the cheers of destitute farmers to tell them that their generations-long misery was about to end and that, during his administration, theirs would be a shining future. But this shining future seems now to be overshadowed by a bloody Shining Path. The terrorist group Sendero Luminoso is a growing menace in large areas of the country and for an ever-larger number of Peru's 20 million citizens.
These self-styled Maoist guerrillas are only one of the many calamities plaguing Peru, which is potentially one of South America's richest countries. Garcia's promises from the palace balcony fueled far greater expectations than could possibly be fulfilled, and his brand of economic populism and international America-baiting fueled far greater economic disasters than accomplishments. Possibly as a sign of the dire straits in which he finds himself, Garcia has very recently offered hints that he may well change course and seek rapprochement with the West after all.
One can understand why, in highly nationalistic Peru with its long history of anti-imperialism Garcia might want to play the nationalist, anti-American game at the rhetorical level. This tactic enables him to keep the Peruvian far Left at bay and buys him time to, presumably, carry out more sensible policies. The United States would then turn the other cheek, continue the flow of aid, and hope that the next Peruvian administration would be better. It is a familiar pattern in dealing with Latin American populists.
But Garcia's trouble is that he was anti-American not just in public but also in private. In successive sessions he managed to insult Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. He thus turned what might be termed "acceptable" and preeminently political anti-Americanism into stupid and self-defeating actual anti-Americanism. Shultz was reportedly so incensed after his meeting with Garcia that subsequently, whenever a request for aid came from Peru, he would throw it into the wastebasket.
Confronted with a 100 percent (monthly) rate of inflation, however, Garcia has recently begun to call for sharp austerity measures. He has hinted that he may ask the United States to help with the guerrillas, and he may even be willing to reconsider the wisdom of proclaiming the benefits of nonalignment and the folly of denouncing the United States for a host of alleged evil machinations against Peru and the Third World.
The earlier fulminations against Yankee imperialism, the flirtation with the Nonaligned Movement, the courting of destitute peasants, and the very recent hint at a possible rapprochement with the Western world must all be viewed in their peculiarly Peruvian context. Thus, few who know Peru were surprised at Garcia's strident calls for an independent (read, anti-American) stance during his presidential campaign and his early speeches as chief executive in 1985. After all, this Sorbonne-educated lawyer had spent his formative years as a protégé and admirer of the intellectual Haya de la Torre, organizer of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). This initially radical-leftist party generated
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