 Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, CodePink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday 730pm Eastern 430pm Pacific on CodePink YouTube. Sunday, April 11, we'll see Peruvians and Ecuadorians go to the polls to elect respective presidents for their countries. Peruv's first round elections are Sunday, Ecuador's second round elections are on Sunday and more to talk about that in another broadcast as CodePink will have an election observation mission in Ecuador starting tonight actually. So regarding Peru, and their first round presidential elections which also will include congressional elections. We are joined today by Francesca Emmanuel to discuss the elections this Sunday in Peru and let me tell you a little bit about her before we start our conversation. Francesca is a Peruvian sociologist, born and raised in the province of Ica four hours from Lima. She is currently a research assistant at American University in Washington DC, where she is pursuing doctoral studies in anthropology. As 15 years, her op-eds and articles have been published in numerous Peruvian newspapers. She is currently a regular columnist for the Progressive Peruvian Publication, La Ica. Prior to academia, Francesca was the correspondent for Telesur in Washington DC, and a communications director for the Peru based nonprofit Promsex, which advocates for LGTBI rights and women's reproductive rights. Her most recent piece in English is on the coup in Bolivia and was published by the magazine Red Pepper. Welcome Francesca, I'm so glad you had time to talk with us today. Thank you, Terry. So I'm talking with you from Nicaragua, which this is not a virtual background this is literally what Nicaragua looks like this time of day and this time of year and you are joining us from Washington DC and I'm, I'm so pleased you have time for a conversation. I think for our audience why, why don't you start us off with the current political context in Peru. We in the United States are not hearing a whole lot about the upcoming presidential elections. I think most of us understand there's been corruption charges and an impeachment against the prior president there's an interim president. So thank you all of you watching 18 presidential candidates for Sunday. So let's talk a little bit about how this mix of candidates and the political context that has created this slate for Sunday. Yeah, first, this is a very important electoral battle. And it's very important for Peruvians, at least for the next five years but it's really important for the whole region. And on April 11, as you said, in Peru, we're going to have presidential elections and elections for Congress too. And there are 18 candidates that are running for presidential for the, for the presidency. Among those 18 candidates, there's an statistical tie between six candidates according to the polls. That's a lot. That means that most of this, I mean, all of these six candidates have, they have chances to reach the runoff. And five of these six candidates are right wing or extremely right wing. There is only one of six of these six candidates that is a progressive leftist candidate, and her name is Veronica Mendoza, and she runs with the party together for Peru. You were asking about the context. So last November, we had what we call parliamentary coup. Our president, Martin Vizcarra, was kicked out from a decision in Congress. And then there was the facto president for a few days. And after several demonstrations against this move and against this illegal move, people will say in Peru, this president resigned, this, the facto president resigned. But in this process, there were massive demonstrations and these people were brutally repressed by these, the facto president and the military forces. Two people died from this repression to young men, and thousands of people were injured. Along with, with, with these demonstrations against the school, there were other demonstrations in different parts of the country against the, the, the, the liberal policies have been taking place. So this is pretty much the context that is leading us to these new elections. And of course, people in Peru are sick of candidates who are deeply corrupt. And, and most of the candidates that are running this time have accusations, many of them already in the courts against them for corruption for irregularities in, in, in financing their campaigns and so on. And one of the, well, two things that I'm thinking of now with your comments. The legislative coup against President Vizcarra was basically, he was impeached on corruption charges, correct? That, that's correct. Nevertheless, sorry, go ahead. No, no, I said, hey, no, I mean, we're, I think we're all familiar with what we call today soft coups legislative judicial economic various forms of coups short of flat out military change in power. And go ahead, I'm sorry. I have a slight delay with my wife, I am sorry. And you also mentioned that a number of the candidates if not all of them have some form of corruption hanging over them. For instance, Kiko Fujimori, she's under house arrest. She's the former president's daughter and is currently running as a presidential candidate under house arrest. It's crazy. If you want, I can go over the those like five right wing candidates so we can like, that'd be great. That'd be terrific. Yeah, so, so there are three candidates of those five that are directly connected with Alberto Fujimori as you said, he is our former dictator in Peru. And, and he is serving 25 years in prison. Among the crimes he committed. He sent power paramilitary groups to kill thousands of indigenous. Also, there were like 270,000 women, indigenous women who were forcedly sterilized sterilized during his presidency. So, as you said, his daughter, a cake of Fujimori is running in this in these elections is her third time running. She reached the runoff in the past elections in 2016. As you said, also she is serving provisional imprisonment I don't know if you call it that way because her party was financed illegally by real estate Brazilian construction company called other branch. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so she's offering a tough hand. She's also one of her policies is to pardon her, her father. And, and yeah, she's running even though she's under investigation. Then you have another candidate. His name is Rafael Lopez Aliaga. He represents the, the, the stream right wing akin to a Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the US that this is a very dangerous candidate. He's part of the Opus Dei, and he's a multimillionaire, Alberto Fujimori that I dictate a recent dictator gave him the, the, the concession and if you call it that way but he permit this Rafael Lopez Aliaga this candidate to have the monopoly of trains that take tourists from Cusco to Machu Picchu for almost 10 years. And, and this Rafael Lopez Aliaga has many members of the Fujimori party in his new party. So he's extremely connected to Alberto Fujimori to to his whole legacy and ideology. As I said, he's part of the Opus Dei. He's against any rights that protects LGBTQ rights. He has said that if, of course, he's against abortion and he has said that if a girl and sorry for your audience, if a girl gets pregnant, because she was raped, he would put those girls in one of his five stars hotels because he's also the owner of a chain of hotels and, and these girls would stay there until they give birth and then they would decide if they will give the baby to the state for adoption or if they will keep the baby. So those are the type of statements that this candidate says. And, and, and then, well, he has, he, he has an investigation because he hasn't paid in $28 million in taxes, despite he's a multimillionaire. That's why he's a multimillionaire. Yeah. And this was discovered recently because of this campaign. And there we have we have another candidate that is also very connect presidential candidate that is also very connected to the Fujimori group. His name is Fernando de Soto and in the past few days he has become the candidate of the economic groups in Peru. So, so now they the major media in Peru are interviewing him are putting him on display in order to like gain his support or help him to reach the second round. He is a neoliberal economist who was an advisor of Alberto Fujimori during his presidency and he was also an advisor of Keiko Fujimori when she was running in the previous election. He supports the neoliberal policies. He thinks, for example, he said yesterday that if he if he wins, he will make the public the private sector, the main responsible or the only responsible to import COVID-19 vaccines. Because the private sector according to him is much more efficient than than the state. So those are, if you want to make it. Wow. Okay, so, yeah, my first comment is it seems like the Fujimori political sector has in one way or another numerous several candidates. Basically, they're kind of covering their butts to see, you know, they could win from several different positions or from several different candidates. Wow. You know, as I've been following and researching what's coming on in Peru on Sunday, you know, it doesn't sound good but listening to you it's like really almost impossible to believe. So I guess my first, there's two things I'd like you to elaborate on one, the leftist candidate because you mentioned before we went live that you've worked on a letter for her with her that our audience should hear about. Also, with 18 candidates with the public perceiving all of them pretty much or at least 17 of the 18 of them corrupt from various degrees of corruption. So the 18 candidate I think what I read yesterday. Lasano has just over 12% of support in the polls. So how does any and then. So I guess pretty much for the Peruvian people are guaranteed on Sunday, there will be no first round winner because you have to win 50% or more. So the 18 candidates that's not possible for anyone to do. So after Sunday you take the top two, and that goes to a head to head election, our second round election on June 6, I believe. So how do you see this playing out, because as I'm looking at this and listening to you as well, it doesn't sound like any one candidate has plurality that whatever happens on Sunday. So I'm kind of just going to have political capital. How do you see the country being led and managed come June 6. Well, of course will depends on who wins. If I follow your, your questions and I understand the confusion because it's even for us. I mean there are other two candidates among those sex and one of them. As you mentioned the leading candidate, let's say that 1212% of support is is really nothing there are, there's around like 28% of the population of the electoral population in Peru is undecided still. So that's probably the biggest, the biggest demographic that can influence the outcome on Sunday. Yeah, definitely so these next days are crucial for the decision that this 2428% of the population will make so this candidate you that you were talking about he is a member of action popular action. And that was the leading party in the parliamentary cool, the legislative cool that we were talking about. So the president that the fact of president that we had in November, it's part of this party that that is leading the presidential polls, let's say. And it's kind of like a schizophrenic because there were massive demonstrations against this party, and this party acted in a horrible way. I'm repressing people and I told you to be too young men died as a result. But these candidate they found a candidate that has been a member of Congress for 20 years and he was one of the leading voices against monopolies in Peru, nevertheless he didn't have anything to stop monopolies in Peru there are several several monopolies as a result of then decades of neoliberal policies starting basically with Alberto Fujimori, for example, 78% of the printed media belongs to one company. 78% I think percent of the beer of beer that is is consuming produce in Peru belongs to one company. And I can give you a whole list. There's a, there's like monopolies in in in pharmacies in in drug stores and so on. The guy was one of the leading voices against these monopolies and because he was part of a committee in Congress for 20 years that was supposed to protect consumers, and he was talking against this, this, this corporations and so on but he didn't have anything so they became to lead the to lead the their party to to run for presidential election because you know he's well known. But he also belongs to a party that supports neoliberal policies to and there's another candidate who was a former soccer player who has almost no experience in in politics who is running and and he was a supporter supported by the economic groups but since since he hasn't been a very good speaker in debates that support has been like channeling to all to the other candidates that told you about it also these candidate the soccer former soccer player have members of the Fujimori party in his party. So it's like they have all their bases covered. Yeah. Yeah. And as they said, Veronica Mendoza is the leftist progressive candidate. She's running with a very austere campaign. She, she is not supported by the corporation. Tell me. I was going to say us just for our audience austere meaning she is not. She doesn't have a lot of funding versus an austerity vision for the country and the economy. Just austere meaning her campaign is very. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, no, no, that's okay. I don't know. It's great that you mentioned because in fact her. She's not an austerity supporter. The opposite. She is proposing a contraceptive call policies. That means like investing, increasing the investment in in the public sector from the public sector, right. It's something that she has been attacked for because according to these other candidates, the state or the public sector shouldn't spend more is the private sector that will save the Peru Peruvians from the huge economic prices that we are in. In the past year, there has been an increase by 27% in poverty are our unemployment has more than doubled in the past year. We have it sad because Peru has been portrayed as like a paradigm for Latin America as this country that has been growing particularly by the IMF by the World Bank. We were like this wonderful example, very, a very close ally to the US in the region, but since the pandemic has started, we've been seeing that that growth, never spread out never reached the working class population. We are, we are the worst country in terms of deaths from COVID in the world. The Financial Times published some data yesterday for excess deaths from COVID and we are on top per capita. Wow. It's, it's really bad. And, and at the same time we had the worst lockdown in the whole world. Our people have been in their houses forced to be in their houses for over a year with the military on the streets, forcing people to, to not leave their house not even for emergencies with curfews that were enforced. And this has been happening for the past year. Nevertheless, we have all these deaths. And it's extremely sad. The private sector has been controlling oxygen, medicinal oxygen, and working class people weren't able to buy this oxygen that now went up and it costs like $3,000 per like gallon or something. And, and for example, one of the proposals of this progressive candidate, Veronica Mendoza is that the state has to control for, for a little while, the production and distribution of oxygen so it's not a business anymore. And all these candidates, even the media is like attacking her for this measure that is like a measure with a public health perspective. So, so yeah, this is, this is the sad situation. It's just to digress a bit. It's been really fascinating and devastating and sad at the same time to watch the past year. It's been a little over a year now, March 2020 with the pandemic and watching those nations with pretty much privatized economies specifically with health care versus those nations with at least a combination of nationalized health care in private or fully nationalized. The responses have been so completely different and the success stories have been, it's just been so obvious when there is national health care, state health care, and everyone has access at least to fundamental care. The survival rate is completely different versus in privatized systems and I, and the lockdown, keeping people physically and emotionally imprisoned in their homes has not been healthy either. And so I'm happy that you're sharing or I shouldn't say it's not happy, but I think it's really important to hear of these problems in Peru with privatized health care. So let's talk a little bit more about Veronica, the Mendoza, the leftist candidate because you were explaining to me before we went live, you've been involved in a letter. And let's talk about that a bit. Yeah, so as I told you before, the main attack against Veronica Mendoza, who actually is a former congresswoman. She was a congresswoman for five years, five years ago, and she ran with Ollantomala, who was her president. And after one year, this Ollantomala presidents run with a platform, a leftist platform, and as soon as he won the presidency, his leftist platform was gone, and he started supporting extractivism and mining projects and so on. So Veronica Mendoza resigned from the party after one year as a congresswoman, precisely because there were several demonstrations and protests in indigenous communities against a mining project. So since then, she has been well known in the country. And now it's her second time running as a president. In 2016, she ran and she almost reached the runoff. But Keiko Fujimori got some, like, percent more. And so Keiko Fujimori went to the runoff instead of her. So now her platform is still a leftist platform that wants to diversify the economy, that wants to go over the contracts, the bilateral also agreements that Peru had with the U.S., for example, or with a contract with mining that are actually damaging not only communities but also our environment in Peru. And of course, like a big proposal of increasing public investment, but her main attack or the main attack that the mayor media is using against her is that first, her proposal is not viable. Her proposal is like a leftist that will bring Peru to poverty. Actually they are saying that will make Peru another Venezuela. One of the big attacks against her because she's a leftist is that she will make Peru another Venezuela. In fact, a few days ago, one of the major newspapers had in their front page the picture of President Nicolás Maduro and saying, we were with Chavistas, Veronica Mendoza, or we were with Chavismo, Veronica Mendoza, just because she said that she doesn't recognize, recognize Guaidó, and that she will try to find other ways and not the Grupo de Lima to have negotiations and conversations with between the government of President Nicolás Maduro and the opposition. But just because she said that, which is something that everybody knows that Guaidó is not the president of Venezuela, she has been like an attack again saying that she will make Peru another Venezuela. So coming back to the letter, this letter was written by economists and academics here in the US explaining that her economic program is solid, that it's not a crazy economic program, and actually is aligned with other countries like the US, countries in Europe are doing to revitalize to make the economy recovered. And yeah, in Peru, I don't know why the major media is not taking that as their regular way to go in an economic crisis, contraceptive measures. And this letter was published today in two major media outlets in Peru, and let's see how the trolls are going to react because of the attack. It's fascinating to hear, oh, she's going to make Peru another Venezuela. When you hear that in the media, that rhetoric, you know, for me, I don't know about you, but for me, it's like, well, does that mean they intend to support sanctions on the country? As a, you know, as a form of warfare to squeeze the public into, or at this point it would be a threat, you know, as to how to vote on Sunday. Yeah, I mean, no, there's like a huge disinformation campaign, fake news, going around all the media, major media, supposedly serious media. I mean, they had never talked about the sanctions in Venezuela, but there's another like disinformation campaign debate in the major media about importing vaccines. In Peru, I mean, most of the people probably now think that we don't have enough vaccines because the public sector has been incompetent in having contracts to import those vaccines. I mean, they are not talking about the scarcity and the inequalities, global inequalities that exist, and we are part of those developing countries that are not receiving vaccines because we're not the US, because we are not Europe. But that debate doesn't exist. According to all candidates and media, everything would be solved if we let the private sector to have negotiations with the pharmaceuticals and import those vaccines. Well, we know that doesn't work. And we can just look at the example in the United States to show how lack of access to affordable healthcare, much less state healthcare allowed so many people to die. So I wonder if we could take the last few minutes, Francesca, I'm so pleased that you have had time today for this conversation, really important conversation that hasn't been a lot of focus on the Peruvian elections in the United States. Let's talk about the different possible scenarios with the elections and I guess we should probably look at Sunday and then beyond to June 6. What are the regional ramifications of the Peruvian elections if they, if they go right, if they go left, or how do you see the results of the election affecting the region. Well, I mean, if Peru goes left, it will be a huge shake of the geopolitical landscape in our region. Peru, as I said before, has been for decades, one of the strongest allies to the US. So this is major and this is very crucial and I'm really shocked of why it hasn't international media has been paying enough attention in this elections probably because they are super confusing as we Yes, they really are. Yeah, they are. And if it goes, if it goes right, it's, it's horrible for people in Peru already. The right wing candidates that I mentioned have said that they would go over of those mining projects that were not approved because they had serial serious flaws, because they, they, they were going to contaminate indigenous populations and so on. And they said that under this economic crisis they have to check those projects and probably approve them right away, because it's more money is needed more foreign investment is needed while the economic as proposal is completely different. And it would make a huge, huge change, not only in the in the geopolitical situation in our region, because we will have another president from the left. And this is, this is something that hasn't happened in my lifetime. I'm very excited if that happens. If it doesn't happens, at least it would happen like in in the US right it's like she has been putting on the agenda, very important policies. Exactly. And like, like Bernie Sanders did running and afterwards so so this is getting a narrative out there. Exactly. Exactly. But I really, really hope that that she reaches the runoff. She has been voted as the best debater in all the presidential debates. She is really the most prepared candidate. And she has, and she has a strong team of academic economy, all people from the last and very, and very well educated people who, who are from like indigenous communities to people from LGBT by IQ groups. And, and, and it's a solid solid program that will help to, to take away the neoliberal decades that have been putting us like in this whole that we are right now and we can see now with the, with the deaths and the crisis from this pandemic. So, Francesca, I hope that you will come back and talk with us next week and maybe deconstruct the results from Sunday and we can talk about what the possibilities are for June 6. It would be a wonderful post first round election conversation. I would like to give you more certainty. But as I said before, there, there is a still 28% of the population who is still undecided and there are so many candidates. And I'm hopeful that, that, that, that, that she will reach the, the runoff for our people. She is proposing also a new constitution. She wants to protect rights of Afro Peruvian people indigenous people she's proposing a whole perspective of when something that, that hasn't happened before. And will, it will like help not only Peru, as I said, the whole region. Yeah, it's a, the possibilities are pretty exciting. So let's have you come back and we'll deconstruct Sunday, the 11. And I just want to remind our audience that you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America. This is code pinks weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. We broadcast every Wednesday, 730pm Eastern for 30pm Pacific, and also be sure to listen to code pink radio every Thursday, 11am Eastern on WBAI out of Washington, New York City, excuse me and WTFW out of Washington DC the program simulcast on both, both stations on Thursday mornings. And again, thank you so much Francesca. And I wonder if you could send me the link for the, for this letter for Veronica Mendoza and I will post it for our viewers I'll post it in the program notes so that they can take a look at that. Sure. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Bye bye.