Headline: Marxist congressman named as Peru’s prime minister

Sub-headline: Pedro Castillo alienates moderate allies by picking hardliner Guido Bellido

The reader need only look at who the Financial Times reporter quotes :

“Bellido is a disastrous appointment,” said Rodolfo Rojas, director of Sequoia, a political risk consultancy in Lima.

“In 24 hours, Castillo’s political capital has gone up in smoke. “You simply can’t touch the Shining Path nerve in Peru. It was a bloody terrorist sect and its actions are deeply embedded in the psychology of Peruvians,” he added.

Or how the financial sector and other ‘respectable’ economic actors have reacted:

…

Peru’s stock exchange and sol currency have plummeted since Castillo’s victory and analysts expect them to fall further on Friday because of increased political instability. Wealthy Peruvians have already shifted billions of dollars out of the country.

…

Pedro Francke, a former World Bank economist tipped to be Castillo’s finance minister, was not included in the cabinet and the position was left unfilled. Francke was spotted late on Thursday night walking away alone from the theatre where Castillo swore in his ministers. It was unclear whether he declined a role in government or failed to secure the job.

…

“The risks to Peru’s economic recovery are high as brinkmanship with congress will be extreme,” predicted Nicolás Saldías, Latin America analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, saying there was “a significant risk of capital flight leading to a currency depreciation in the coming days and weeks”.

…

Peru is the world’s second-biggest producer of copper, home to mines owned by foreign companies including Anglo American, Glencore, Southern Copper Corporation and MMG. On Thursday, Anglo American’s chief executive Mark Cutifani played down the threat of higher taxes and royalties under the new government, saying his dealings with Castillo and the new administration had been “pretty positive”.

https://www.ft.com/content/ddd6904c-7390-4d71-820c-7fbadda5e5d8

That copper is a valuable even strategic metal – how long before America, and its indigenous allies in Peru begin the project of subverting this government, with the help of ‘Paula Muñoz, a political scientist at the University of the Pacific in Lima‘. and Former interior minister Carlos Basombrio? ‘Many observers’ an anonymous collective of the concerned! Enter: Vladimir Cerrón, the shadowy leader of the Marxist-Leninist Free Peru party that propelled him to power. To heighten the Political Melodrama.

And this prediction

“He will struggle to pass legislation . . . meaning the proposals that markets most worry about are unlikely to become reality,” Oxford Economics predicted.

This whole report is formulaic, under the guise of reportage. It evoked in this reader a kind of  déjà vu. But the reader needs to note, that Evo Morales has welcomed Pedro Castillo, as part of the the rise of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas! Subcomandante Marcos, and Chiapas, Mexico was just a beginning, of the rise of The Indigenous as a political force. A subject unaddressed by Gideon Long’s reportage, but a fulfillment of the legacy of Simón Bolívar!

Political Observer