 Welcome to what the app is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, a popular resistance broadcast partnership with Black Alliance for Peace, Haiti, America's team, Code Pink, Common Frontiers, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Friends of Latin America, Interreligious Task Force on Central America, Massachusetts Peace Action, and Task Force on the Americans. We broadcast Thursdays at 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, right here on YouTube Live, including channels for the ConvoCouch, Popular Resistance, and Code Pink. Post-broadcast recordings can be found at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Telegram, RadIndyMedia.com, and now under Podcasts at popularresistance.org. Today's episode, National Strike Day 40, a conversation with human rights activists in Peru. And before we start, I just want to make a special note to all of you that this episode is basically a follow-up conversation to our February 2nd episode with Peruvian activists Anahi Daran and Eliana Carlin. And since February 2nd, I have visited Peru on a human rights observation delegation with Mission de Solidaridad Internacional y Derechos Humanos. We were there February 7th through February 13th. So I want, we have two activists joining us from Peru, and I'm really, really excited for you to meet them. Our first guest that I will introduce is Clavo Brian Moscoso. She is an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace in the Haiti Americas team. She's originally from Barrios Altos Lima. She grew up in New Jersey and now lives between both countries. And our second guest is Leynar Ayala Basilo. And I had the opportunity of meeting and working with Leynar in Cusco. Let me tell you a little bit about him. He works in the legal area of the organization Human Rights Without Borders Cusco, Peru. It is a non-governmental organization that is part of the National Coordinator of Human Rights of Peru, which works in the defense and promotion and education of human rights in the region of Cusco. Also, the organization is carrying out legal processes related to the criminalization of protesters by state repression. And for me, personally, that was a big reason that repression of protesters was a big incentive for our mission to go and witness a human rights violations in Peru. So before I start our conversation with our guests, I want to share just a very brief background introduction for all of you. And I have to say, Clow, this was taken from your Black Agenda article of 15 February, which for the audience, I will share the link in the notes, the program notes for you. So just briefly, because the February 2nd episode is in details, everything that has unfolded in Peru since December 7. We gave a very, very lengthy detailed timeline in that episode. So following up on that episode, here we go. On December 7, 2020, two right-wing coup removed Peru's President Pedro Castillo Torrones from power. The predominantly poor indigenous rural and Amazonian communities resoundingly and overwhelmingly voted for Castillo, rejecting outright the neoliberal regime installed by the previous governments. Violence not seen since the Alberto Fujimoro dictatorship, 1990 through 2000, has been led by the Peruvian armed forces under orders of coup leader Dina Bolarte, the Fujimorista Fuerza Popular Party, and other political factions. It's been over 67 days since the parliamentary coup led by the right-wing forces of Fuerza Popular with their puppet Dina Bolarte now commonly referred to as usurper assassin at the helm. And so I think also, Clow, in your article, it says there's more people have died than there have been days of the parliamentary coup government. So that's a pretty key factor. So with that, everyone, I would like you to meet our guests. And I think perhaps where should we start? I guess let me just tell you a little bit about the delegation I was on. And then I would like Clow to talk to us about her experience. And then I'll have you meet Lainer as well, because I worked directly with him in Cusco, taking testimony from state oppressed victims. So the delegation that I was on was February 7 through 13. It was organized in Argentina. So there were 19 of us, 18 Argentinians, and me being the sole representative of the United States. And we went specifically as civilians and not particularly affiliated with any organization, because we did not want to have any sort of political definition attached to us as individuals and attached to our work. So it was a very open, non prejudiced observation. We started in Lima. We met with university students. I will mention at that particular meeting, the national police were waiting for us to arrive. They sat across the street from the university the entire time we were inside. So that is, you know, really clear what the intention is. I will also mention in Lainer and Clow can probably attest to that. Most of what we saw, most of what we heard and most of what we saw was oppression by the national police force, not the actual military, national military. And I think this is an important point to make, because this is a model that's being used across the Americas to militarize the civilian police. So the militarization is occurring right down in local communities. And it also allows for governments to say their own military has not turned on the population. So the repression is happening right from the community level up with police. And we see this in the United States as well. It's a model being used across the Americas. So we did have that, you know, that the police watching us while we were at the university. We did our initial press conferences with San Marcos in Lima. We did meet with several agricultural cooperatives, took testimony from Campesinos, who were in from other provinces of Peru in Lima to protest, and to also meet with us and share their testimony. One thing that was profound that we participated in was a march on Thursday, the ninth, at Plaza Dos de Mayo. And there was, I don't know, a thousand plus protesters. We were asked to our delegation was asked to join the protest to provide basically to hold the center and provide basically, I guess, what those of you in South America would call a Primera linea. So if and when the police started to advance shut down and shut down the protest, we would be could stand all 19 of us between the police and the protesters and at least give them some freedom to freely leave. The protest got, as I said, maybe about a thousand people. And maybe a half hour. And then at that point, the police did start to advance to break it up. So it's very, very clear that it does not matter if a protest is peaceful or not. The government and the police allow it to only get so large and to last so long before it is dispersed. Now, we did not that particular evening, we didn't experience any arm fire, any tear gas, and we do believe because of what we heard from protesters that it would be because of the delegation's presence. But it was very clear to the police, we're not going to let it last for very long or let it get so big. After that, Friday, we broke into smaller groups and were sent throughout the country. I was sent with one other gentleman, an Argentine gentleman, Raul Juarez. He's actually a priest in Argentina. And we were sent to Cusco, which is where we worked with the Human Rights Without Borders organization. And we worked with Lainer there. And we did two days of testimony. And he was profoundly helpful in encouraging people to come and visit with us, share their stories, and allow us to formally take their testimony and all the evidence that each had collected, including videos and photographs and hospital admittance forms and arrest forms, all that kind of data. So for me personally, it was a very, very intense trip. It was extraordinarily important to go. It is very, very clear that to me, and I think that Clow and Lainer will attest to that, that this is not just today improved. This is 500 years of colonialism, state oppression, oligarchy in Latin America and the Caribbean. It's a continuation. It is not anything new. And I think, for me, that was the most profound and most difficult thing to accept, particularly when we had opportunities to speak with people of Andean, original people, as we say in Latin America, Indigenous, as we would say in North America, was really profound. So with that, I'd like to have our two guests join the conversation. And maybe, Clow, we can start with you because you have been in Peru working with Black Alliance for Peace and Black Agenda Report. And why don't we start with your experiences and what you've been sharing via Black Agenda Report and Black Alliance for Peace? Thank you, everyone. Thank you for having me and for this discussion and for Lainer. I think the work that both of you are doing and just human rights organizations and activists and independent cross-semiagrant has been so important because, like you read from my article and just everything you've been seeing, the human rights violations are happening daily. There's not a single day that there has not been a massacre, that there's not been one death, that there hasn't been a beating, that there hasn't been this appearance. We've gotten videos from our comrades that are dressed in military garb in helicopters taken from Ayacucha. Who knows where they are? We still don't know the location of so many of our comrades. All we can say is that this, like you said, Terry, this has not changed one bit for 500 years. This is the same situation that has been going on. And I think largely because of that and because of President Castillo has been saying this the whole time since his election, since his campaign has been saying no more poor people in a rich country. This is what motivated the vast majority of indigenous campesino-amazonian communities up and down all of Peru in the north, central, and southern regions of Macro de Gionas, as we say. Even in Lima, the poor regions of Lima overwhelmingly voted for Castillo. Because we understand that our lands continue to be pillaged and raped. Just last year, Spanish company Repsol, petroleum company, there was a huge, it's almost just, I forget exactly what date was, but almost exactly a year now, or a little bit over a year now. There was an oil spill up the coast due to, I believe it was a hurricane in Indonesia, so obviously Pacific Ocean was vastly connected, right? A cause in oil spill that Repsol has yet to pay and pay any of the taxes, any of the fines that they've gotten, and now under the crew regime, they've been forgiven all fines. So they no longer have to pay for the lives that are still, so many of our fishermen communities that used to live daily from the fish no longer. And what does the state provide them? Nothing. They have not provided them anything except just corporate giveaways, right? I believe just yesterday, the age of retirement went from 65 to 75, just like that. No conversation. It's just, it's full dictatorship. This does not, this is not going to stop until we actually bring this down. And so a few weeks ago, here in Lima, the Consejo Plurinacional de San Juan Pinzullo was formed, the Plurinacional Council of San Juan Pinzullo. Right now it's being, the vast majority of the people that are involved are the social leaders, union leaders, delegations from the 25 regions throughout Peru. It's being organized predominantly from the southern and not just southern but outer regions of Lima. And collectives and auto self-forming coalitions and organizations are following the lead of our compañeros. So right now we're going through a moment of understanding and really sussing out through a lot of the infiltration of the organizations that have been happening. We're seeing that a lot of the, for a lot of retired police are coming back, coming out of retirement to be what we call here, fairness, which is a specific unit in the national police, but essentially they just come back as just as civilians. And they're the ones that go into the marches, start throwing rocks, start instigating to get a rise out of the police. And that's when they start shooting tear gas or start shooting rubber bullets. So these infiltration is what they're basically used to provoke the police. They are, yes, they're agent provocateurs, right? So in the U.S. they always talk about these outside infiltrators, right? The struggle in Atlanta right now to stop Pop City, which Black Alliance for Peace is also deeply involved in. They use the same language, right? The protesters are terrorists. They are outside infiltrators. Who are these people coming into Atlanta? They don't talk about the rich black misleadership class that buys up Atlanta, or which we call the comprador class. They don't talk about the private corporations, right? Black rock. How much money do they have invested in Atlanta? And how much money is being invested to build that cop city, right? So there's a situation here, right? So they call us terrorists. They've never actually given any evidence to the fact that there's any financial institutions or zero evidence has been given for this. But you see every single day the newspapers, terrorists, you know, like constantly in these newspapers that were not being paid off during the Castillo administration now have been receiving their bonuses again in U.S. dollars. So quickly going to work to spread propaganda for the coup regime. Let me ask you something. And later, please feel free to comment on this as well. So, Clow, what I consistently heard in meetings in Lima and Cusco vote, the majority of the people that voted for Pedro Castillo, that want to change in government on all levels are in the southern provinces. The southern part of Peru is lands rich in natural resources, lithium and water specifically, but other resources as well. The Valarte government, when it took power December 7th, Dina said she would finish Castillo's term through 2026. That is now going to be through 2024. She tried, I understand, to have election presidential elections December of 2023. The Congress nullified that voted against it. So to me, and in listening to people who are watching their land be exploited, them pushed off, murdered to get off it. The current government, this coup government now has basically until 2024 to privatize everything. Public infrastructure, public institutions and natural resources. Basically, they have until 2024 to create a fully privatized, full neoliberal government and economy. And to me, that's very similar to what we saw in Honduras in 2009 and again in Bolivia in 2019. And that's why I say this goes back to 500 years of governments and oligarchy controlling all the institutions and all the natural resources. Is that, that's part to me, a big part of what's 100%? Yeah, absolutely. So they basically have been waiting three decades since the end of the Chamori dictatorship, patiently waiting on the sidelines, getting a wishlist ready of all of the things that they're going to do once in power. And since December 7th have been one by one unleashed in every single thing. So the 93 Chamori dictatorship by law privatizes our resources, our infrastructure, absolutely everything you can think of. A lot of people on the ground here, exactly like Chile, but even with Chile, they did not privatize the copper. Here they did. Here they absolutely privatized everything. So even with Chile, I'm not by any... With the Pinochet Constitution. With the Pinochet Constitution. So that's one thing that people on the ground say here. Even Pinochet was not as tyrannical as for Jimori. And so just, I believe it was just a few years ago that one of the large, which is projected to be one of the largest reserves of lithium in the world was found in Puno, in the southernmost region, which is closely connected. They're neighbors with Bolivia. And so I've seen since 2005 what a government for the people can actually achieve for the people with the nationalization, industrialization of their natural resources and those profits or all of those, all that income coming in from those resources, going to the community, going to healthcare, going to infrastructure, going to education. Things that here, especially people in Puno, don't have. They look to their neighbors in life so we can have it like that because we are very similar. And these are, especially in Puno, it's very much a Naimada community, though not entirely. So they see what their brothers have struggled for and what they've actually been able to achieve and continue to achieve once there is a power, a government and power that actually serves the interests and needs of the people. So that is exactly, a lot of the state contracts, the Portato de Leis, are such expire later at the end of this year in 2023, which is exactly why the happened when it had to happen. Lisa Kananu understood, Southcom, Commander General Laura Richardson, they all understood exactly what needed to take place so that after 30 years of the contracts that Pujimori first installed, that they would continue those same contracts even under even harsher neoliberal policies than the first time around. So that's exactly right. This is that, you know, on paper, the Pujimori dictatorship ended, nothing has changed. So, thank you, Clown. So, Lainer, let's talk about how all of this is affecting the people in your community and, you know, with, with the... All right, Terry. Thank you very much for the invitation. And above all, I want to thank you for using this international media and caring about the critical human rights situation in my country. In my region of Cusco, we have a vulnerable population whose human rights have been violated by the largest companies in the world, as Clown said. We have the mining, large extractive mining industry. We also have labor, which imports and exports hydrocarbons. We must bear in mind that these territories, according to Amnesty International's records, more than 70 or 80 percent of the population lives with these chemicals in their bodies. So that's how far that we have done. So our state is the point of segregating selective, being selective and criminalizing people for simply reporting these facts. So this is, as Clown says, that we are living with a dictatorship in which just a few people want to impose themselves on the population. And even more so, there are some people who experiencing this criminalization and persecution, not only from the state, but also from these large mining companies. They are trying to criminalize this by applying complaints, 200,000 souls imposed on people as fines in the case of someone. And when we defend these people, they criminalize Oskar Maria Wonka in 2012. And during the judicial decision, they began to say that the procedure is from IKA. Just imagine the level of prosecution imposed on human rights defenders in my community. These are people who live off of agriculture and not just mining, people who identify themselves as original peoples or indigenous peoples. These people are tired of this repression. It's not something new now. And that's not just from the time of the Fujimori dictatorship, but they have lived in complete neglect and oblivion for 500 years. And these people from their different committees and platforms and their grassroots organizations have come out to demonstrate against the violence, the repression, and the defenseless situation in which they've been left by the state. And fascism has been a strong line of their argues. And they point to places with the interior, Yakucho, Puno, Oskar, where I am. They have unleashed social conflicts that I don't see a visible, I don't see the end in sight. And it's already been a few months. And more than 1,500 civilians have been wounded. In Cusco, we have the human rights without borders has tallied more than 800 people injured. And these are not small injuries. These are impacts of firearms. And often they're afraid to go to the hospital because they get separated and discriminated against in the hospitals. What is happening now is that when they show up at the hospital, the hospital works together with the prosecutors and the forces of law and order, they get set aside and they begin to investigate them for causing public disturbances. Now there are several people who are in preventive custody for nine months, saying that simply since they are the children of people in the Comuneros, the community organizations. So if you, it's like saying that other people have civil rights, but they don't. And when you belong to a native community, you get this kind of treatment. So this is what people are experiencing now. I understand that the executive branch instead of supporting these just demonstrations is encouraging the forces of law and order and the military to repress them. And they say they congratulate them saying that they're giving good service. And this is the criminalization of protesters. And unfortunately that is what we're experiencing. And I could give you more details later about the cases that we're looking about with the leaders and also some minor children and their cases of repression and a citizen who didn't even participate in the demonstration, but who was tortured by the military forces and also paramilitary abuse as well. Thank you, Terry. Thank you. So I guess I will just share, since I was in Cusco with Lainer, that we spent two days taking testimony from, yes, or yes, from victimized repressed people. Most of the people we talked to were students, some as young as 15. And that was pretty profound. It's hard for me to imagine how a police force of its, you know, doing that to its own children. And we also, it was very, very clear, and I cloud this goes back to the whole neoliberal project, I think, was very, very clear that anyone who is even one step to the left of center or even centrist is considered a threat to the state, a terrorist, a communist. And there's just a complete attempt to shut down all those voices. Union organizing and their leaders, Campesino organizing, student organizing, all of that is being shut down. Their leaders are attacked and then they go after, you know, the members of the organizations. And we specifically saw that in Cusco with a student organization. And we did take all their testimony. I will also say just for the audience, I will include our delegation preliminary report in the notes as well as a link to see some of the photographs that we took. Not evidence, but just things that, you know, we took on the street ourselves as delegation members. So what have we overlooked here? I mean, it's, what more should we expand on? I mean, the state oppression is enormous. You know, there's one thing I should mention about that with state oppression, because there is a national state of emergency in place. For some people, you won't overtly see the oppression and the disruption. For example, when we used the airport in Lima and then I also used the one in Cusco, you can no longer drive in to the airport. They're controlled by the military. Whoever takes you to the airport drops you at the curb on the carterra in front. And then you have to show your ID, your passport, or your sedula, and your boarding pass to the national police in order to enter the airport parking lot. And then you can walk to the departure terminals. We experienced that Lima to Cusco and Cusco back to Lima. When we arrived on international flights, we were able to have people come in and pick us up inside the airport, but they had to stay in their cars and they could only drive to the international wing for arrivals. They could not go in and drop us curbside inside the airport for departures. That's just one, you kind of look at that as one small thing, but it also is huge in the military control of the country at this moment. So, Clow, you are still in Lima. What's happened this week in Lima since we all left on the 13th? Same escalation of violence. So you said you were in Plaza Los Amayo before, a few nights ago, which they tried not to do to the center in Plaza Los Amayo, but they started gassing us and started taking all the food that was donated to us. They immediately started arresting people using batons and started shooting the rubber bullets. So that's an escalation of violence has been happening. What also has been happening is more reports have been coming out of the massacres in Ayacucho. Various reports in Nariquifa and in Puno, and I'm sure more reports are going to keep coming out in Puzco, I'm sure. There have been reports that are coming out and video reports. Next week I'll be traveling to Puno with some of the delegations from the Consecro Curio Nacional and we'll also be filming, taking accounts, helping making some videos to start distributing immediately. And so where can the audience find your videos? Where can the audience find your reporting, why don't you show them? Yeah, you can find the reporting that I've been posting. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you. So you can find the reporting that I've just been posting independently on my Twitter account, it's at Yunin's Ghost. And Flakka that in the program also republishes everything. Thank you. Black Alliance for Peace has been republishing absolutely everything. So if you can't find it on my own, they'll actually have everything that I've been posting. And so yeah, so next week we travel to Puno. And we'll see, we understand too that a lot of the delegations that have been coming up from the South are now going back to the South with a change of strategy. And we've been seeing here, so I guess it was a couple of days ago that the coup regime declared the center of Lima state of emergency. No protests allowed anymore, near exactly, near the area that you were in. And I have to say I was right behind you guys when you had that line with the rest of the delegation. I was filming you guys. As we were, as we were being walked, corralled out, a couple streets down on Lampa, they did start tear-dassing people there because there was no international delegation. Yeah, we heard that, we heard that. Yeah, absolutely. They didn't want to do it in front of international press or the cameras, but they had no problem doing a few streets down the road. We've gotten a couple reports coming in from folks that day that people were injured. And as a compañero, Lena was saying, one of the compañeros I met here, who's originally from Ayacucho, and migrated to Lima for educational opportunities for her children, but has been saying, I think she's only been here for a couple of years now. But when we were talking, she was just crying the whole time about how much racism she has experienced here since coming. And she's, she's seen that there's her families just, they're not advancing in any way, right? Even though her son is able to take several classes and everything like that, these are opportunities. I lost your audio. There, you're back, I think. Okay, okay, perfect. Okay, so, you know, she was just explaining to me how, how bad things have been here since she's gotten here. And one of, a few weeks ago, she had gotten hit with her own bullet, and she tried to go to the hospital, but they, like compañero Lena was saying, the Fiscalía, the Central Prosecution here, already started making announcements, right? They opened up an investigation against her, so she had to, she had to leave and try to get healthcare elsewhere, right? So we, this is something we've been seeing with a lot of her compañeros. They don't go to the hospital, but we try to get independent medical brigades, or really any first aid to try to help them outside of the hospital, because they don't want to go through an investigation. Just carrying a placard in the middle of the street does not, should not carry a death sentence. And, but this is what's been happening to our people. Thankfully, and this is great news that I can actually report out, one of the compañeros from Moncavelita, who was shot at with a tear canister to his head, who had been in ICU for the past few weeks since January 28th, he actually finally woke up yesterday. He's not speaking, but slowly we're all very much hoping and behind our compañero that he will actually recover. And he won't be speaking about what happened that day. That was the same night on January 28th that our compañero, Victor, was killed and shot at close range from the National Police. That same night we had several injuries and volandos case. He was in the ICU and in a coma, but thankfully, like I said, he just woke up. So that's, that's something that, you know, we've been celebrating the past couple of days. But yeah, that's the repression continues. And also too, yeah, like you were saying, right in the, with the airports, the military is there and asking everyone for IDs. There is the Escuadrón Verdeven, here, which is a part of the National Police as well. So anywhere you're in the center, anytime you're in the center, they see you and feel like asking you for your IDs, we just have to give it to them. No questions asked, right? So certainly the multiple meetings that we've had where you guys had the press conference as well, every time people start leaving and they look like they're not from Lima, they get asked for their IDs. So they look like they're not from Lima because they're not white, quote unquote. Because they're not white. It's that racial profile. I mean, it is over racial profile. Exactly. You have any sort of indigenous features. Yeah, you're, we saw that directly, particularly in Cusco, we saw that directly. Yeah. So everyone, I want to really, I want to give a huge shout out to our interpreted day, Jill Clark-Gallup, who so graciously has donated her time. She can stay with us for about five more minutes. So I would, is there, while we have her here, Lainer, is there anything we should that you want to add in a couple minutes? Well, no. See, let me know. Yes, very clearly. This discrimination and racism has become a line in the demonstrations. And furthermore, it has convened these, gotten these demonstrations to be larger in a certain way, because in the peace marches, we prove the discrimination and segregation here in Cusco, even more for the original peoples who came to work, some who came to work with the police. They detained 10 people and they're investigating them for rioting and for disturbing and obstructing the public way. So there's a line of stigmatization and normalization of this behavior. And we, within a rule of law, should not allow this. This is why my request for you in the international media is to publicize this, because that's a great alternative for getting out of this conflict that we're experiencing. The people who hold power are judge and jury. That's a great problem. We have in our region, particularly in the south. And thank you very much, Terry. And I also thank Jill, the interpreter. I know that there's much more that we would like to discuss, but this has been an interesting session, and I hope we get to do this again. A warm embrace to all. Thank you, Lainer. And I'll just remind the audience that Lainer's driving us, joint has joined us live from Cusco, Peru, and the Klaus is in Lima. Lainer mentioned normalization. And that's so true. The normalization of the violence, the normalization of the racism, 500 years of normalization of this attitude and behavior. And it's so, so overt. And also, I would just share that the two things that we heard, our delegation heard the whole six days we were there from all ranks, all the factions of protesters don't abandon us. And also, as Lainer has said, get the news out into the international community. There is state and control of the media and private or, you know, as in the United States, the major media outlets are owned by private individuals and corporations, and they, of course, are all have a right wing narrative. And so that is a big part of what we are attempting to do today. So I want to thank both of you so much for making time to join us. You are so busy doing great work. And we will continue to uplift your work and your voices. And I hope you can join us again. We can keep, you know, following up on what is happening in Peru. And so just for the audience, I want to remind you that Clow, or Brian Moscoso, is with Black Alliance for Peace. You can follow her on Twitter. I'll share her Twitter handle. And as she said, you can follow her through Black Alliance for Peace on their website. Black Alliance for Peace is also, I'll remind all of you, a broadcast partner of this program. So we're honored to have one of their members with us today. And then Lainer, of course, is in Cusco working with human rights without borders. And you will see a good part of his work in our delegation preliminary report, which I will also put that link in the program notes. It is currently in Spanish. For those of you who are English only, for the time being, please translate via DPOL. And we are working on an English version of the report that I just wanted to, we just returned on the 13th, 14th and wanted to get the information to the international community ASAP. So right now it is Spanish only, but we all want the world to see it. So I'll just remind the audience you've been watching what the F is going on in Latin America in the Caribbean. We are a popular resistance broadcast. You can catch us on YouTube every Thursday, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. YouTube channels include the Convo Couch, Code Pink Action, and Popular Resistance. Or post-broadcast recordings can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So thank you, everyone, for joining us this week. And thank you again to our guest. And a huge thank you to Jill Clark-Gallup for her interpretation today. So we'll see you all next week. Thank you so much.