Peru: Former president Garcia kills himself to avoid arrest

[Guest Indiana]

LIMA – A former Peruvian president has died after shooting himself in the head after police arrived at his home in the capital Lima to arrest him in connection with a bribery investigation.

Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez, 69, was president of Peru from 1985 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2011. He also served in Congress.

On Wednesday morning, García shot himself in the head in his bedroom when the police were preparing to arrest him for allegedly laundering assets linked to the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. He was then taken to a hospital in Lima where he was given cardiopulmonary resuscitation three times before entering the operating room.

Peru’s current President Martin Vizcarra announced García’s death: “Dismayed by the death of former President Alan García. I send my condolences to his family and loved ones,” Vizcarra posted on Twitter. He ordered three days of national duel.

https://santiagotimes.cl/2019/04/17/peru-former-president-garcia-kills-himself-to-avoid-arrest/

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

I was in Lima, Peru, in 1985 the day he was installed into office as President, and the Lima airport was a madhouse of people trying to get out of the country. 

I, my wife, and my newborn son were among them, at the airport to escape.

In addition to a $50 exit visa for Americans, ,  had to pay one of the airport mafia $50 to get my and my wife's airline tickets validated and  stamped.  

They went to the head of a very long line, and jumped the counter and "chatted" with the agent, and returned my tickets to me, validated and stamped.

Alan Garcia robbed the Peruvian people blind, but then again they knew he was a communist, and they voted for him.

 

[JW Insider]

On 4/20/2019 at 10:09 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Alan Garcia robbed the Peruvian people blind, but then again they knew he was a communist, and they voted for him.

Corruption is at least as rampant among leaders of South American countries as it is in the United States. We can see this from recent examples in Colombia, Brazil, etc., too.

But I just thought I should point out that he was not a communist. There is a communist party in Peru that hasn't gotten very far recently. But Alan Garcia was not a communist. In fact, he was a neo-liberal who ran well to the right of the Socialists. His party is considered center-left or moderate. Not that he wasn't corrupt. Parties in many countries run with promises that appeal to the socialist ideology just to get votes, but then they get in office and make deals to benefit themselves and rich cronies.

Not much of a comparison, but it reminds me of how Hitler ran a "revolutionary" campaign against imperialism, and outside interference, even labeling his party a socialist party to trick people into voting for him. But he quickly ran to the very conservative right, and began his imperialist warmongering.

In Garcia's case, it was probably more similar to a Hillary Clinton (cf. Garcia) running against a Bernie Sanders (cj. Barrantes Lingan, for example). When Garcia's first presidency ended in 1990 he was defeated by Alberto Fujimori, who ran strongly against all Socialists and Marxists and farther to the right than "centrist" Garcia. Fujimori was considered a social conservative and neo-liberal at the same time. He privatized public companies and signed contracts that allowed foreign countries (US allies, etc.) to take advantage.

Fujimori was convicted, during his presidency, for things like murder, kidnapping, embezzling millions, stealing $15,000,000 from the Treasury to give to his head of security. He rewrote the constitution to help his children, and his daughter (Keiko) ran for president in 2011. In 2018, Fujimoro's attempt at getting pardoned was overturned, and his daughter "was detained by police as part of an investigation surrounding the Odebrecht scandal and money laundering allegations that involved her 2011 presidential campaign." (wikipedia). Note that this is the same Odebrecht scandal that has brought down Garcia.

A pattern to watch out for, which we Westerners fall into all the time, is to hear about a third world scandal and immediately think of communism and socialism. Although extreme financial scandals, and hyperinflation have been just as common in right-wing governments, the West tends to play down right-wing scandals and blow up left-wing scandals. This is the way our corporate backed news is filtered through Western sources and the sources of Western allies. (Look at LIMA, for example - the alliance, not the Peruvian capital.)

Countries get a lot more Western support and become Western allies when they show they are willing to shift resources to a few people at the top. Keeping a large populace in a country poor is a proven military strategy. Controlling wealth through a few people at the top who are in bed with Western corporations is a win-win for the West. The World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] are notorious for dangling money to these types of elite and elite-supporting leaders in an effort to gain leverage over their financial system and resources, which allows for many years of financial control through debt, debt relief, and a continual encroachment of Western corporations into a country's resources and future financial infrastructure. (Guiado in Venezuela, for example, began talks with the IMF and promised more US control of oil exports.) And it's not just them. Look how Germany can loot the retirement funds of a country like Greece and then put them on "austerity" (sanctions) to keep them that way -- and control the narrative about how Greek people are just lazy and lying around in the sun. (This was a propaganda push heard for a couple of years in the USA.)

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

The World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] are notorious for dangling money to these types of elite and elite-supporting leaders in an effort to gain leverage over their financial system and resources, which allows for many years of financial control through debt, debt relief, and a continual encroachment of Western corporations into a country's resources and future financial infrastructure.

In.a review of the movie Inside Job, I wrote the following:

As one senator (Ron Paul) pointed out, since the total bank bailouts eventually came to $17,000 per person, with no discernable economic benefit, you might have just given the money directly to the individual Americans. The results could hardly have turned out worse, and might well have turned out better. Debts would have been paid down, new purchases made, small businesses started. 

There is a reason that Big Business used to be counted in the triumvirate with religion and politics. 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

On 4/20/2019 at 10:09 PM, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

Alan Garcia robbed the Peruvian people blind, but then again they knew he was a communist, and they voted for him.

Back then, 1984, I did not follow politics and was as ignorant as a slug about such things.

My ex-wife's sister married a Belaunde in the Peruvian Presidential Palace, and it was her uncle by marriage that was the President, replaced by Allen Garcia.

They told me Alan Garcia was a communist, and I took that at face value.

At this time Peru was engaged in a minor civil war with the "Shining Path", who were blowing up Power transmission towers in the Lima environs.

My main concern was getting my wife and newborn son out of country.

I did not begin learning about terrestrial politics until 1988.