In Latin America, ex-officials, officials, and even sitting presidents question the drug war, but the Peruvian government is increasingly out of step with calls for reform.
As per tradition in Latin American politics, election season means vicious personal attacks against individuals running for office. In Peru, the 2011 campaign season saw Ollanta Humala of the Peruvian Nationalist Party attacked for his friendship with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, as well as for the legacy of his brother Antauro, currently in prison for leading a failed uprising in January 2005 that left several police officers dead in the Andean town of Andahuaylas.
In July, students, political activists, human rights workers, and average citizens in Lima, Peru, joined a march entitled “Ni indulto ni impunidad, asesinos a prisión,” or “No pardons or impunity, murderers to prison.” The event occurred just two weeks before the presidential inauguration of leftist Ollanta Humala Tasso. Humala’s victory has led countless activists across Peru to herald a new era of democracy, freedom of expression, and most of all victory over Fujimorismo.
If the Shining Path is permitted to reconstitute itself as either a political movement or a drug trafficking outfit, new Peruvian President Ollanta Humala will almost certainly guarantee himself a legacy of failure.
Left-wing candidate Ollanta Humala emerged the victor in the most highly polarized and contested presidential elections in Peru’s recent history, in which polls showed the candidates in a statistical dead heat going into the June 5 vote. Humala won with 51.5 percent of the vote, while his opponent, Keiko Fujimori — daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, now serving a 25-year sentence for human rights violations committed during his 10-year authoritarian regime — received 48.5 percent.
Ollanta Humala’s presidential victory is not a mandate for radical change, but a mandate to address the concerns of the provinces
A world without nuclear weapons but that retains the ability to reconstitute them is considered by many an important step on the path to Global Zero.
The presidential elections were a deeply polarizing political process, that pitted Ollanta Humala’s nationalist policies against the conservative program of Keiko Fujimori.
The United States is apparently backing right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori in the Peru presidential race to keep the forces of Chavez at bay.
Ollanta Humala navigates between competing charges that he’s too left and that he abused human rights as a military commander.