Will Peru's next president come from Sonoma County?

[Judi Lynn]

Will Peru's next president come from Sonoma County?
By GUY KOVNER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 6:03 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 6:03 p.m.

An as-yet unannounced candidate for president in Peru’s 2011 election — an Amazon tribal native educated at Stanford and Oxford universities — already has a campaign base in western Sonoma County.

If that scenario seems mind-boggling, you’d have to consider the resume of the candidate, 39-year-old Miguel Hilario-Manenima, who speared giant catfish in the Ucayali River as a boy, got an education in Sonoma County and is now completing his Ph.D. in anthropological sciences at Stanford.

From hunting with a blow gun in the jungle as a Shipibo-Konibo tribesman to handling cell phones, computers and honing a doctoral dissertation, Hilario-Manenima’s life spans cultures and continents.

But his Christian faith and commitment to preserving Peru’s biologically rich rainforest and protecting 10 million indigenous people never wavered.

“It’s a message of change,” Hilario-Manenima said in a Sebastopol coffee shop, wearing a Peruvian folk shirt. “We have the dream of changing Peru. We want to bring hope.”

Working at the Inter American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. and serving as minister of indigenous and ethnic affairs, a Peruvian cabinet post, ushered him from campus life into the realm of bureaucrats wearing suits, ties and leather shoes.

More:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20091115/ARTICLES/911159979?&tc=autorefresh

[rabs]

1. Nice article Judi, thanks for posting

He sounds like the Peruvian version of Ecuador's Rafael Correa.

Will be watching how his campaign develops. The replacement of "Two Breakfasts" will be elected in April 2011.

So far Hilario-Manenima is not on the radar in Peru.

(btw, where did the term "Two Breakfasts" come from? Have looked around but have found nothing definite.)

[EFerrari]

2. Really interesting story. Stanford is a haven for right wing war criminals

but they do have a good anthro program.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I think the key to this article, and possibly--and I stress possibly--the key to

Hilario-Manenima's candidacy--is that the article never once mentions the name Ollanta Humala--leftwing socialist candidate, ally of Morales, Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, who nearly beat corrupt dirtbag and US tool, Alan Garcia, in the last election.

Notice how this paragraph is carefully (and I suspect sneakily and deliberately) constructed to omit Humala's name:

"Garcia cannot seek re-election, and the field for the 2011 race so far is dominated by familiar faces, including former president Alejandro Toledo and the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a prison sentence for corruption."

The ruse is the word "including." The Santa Rosa Press Democrat is owned by the New York Slimes, and is quite as slimy as its parent 'news' monopolist. I am quite familiar with the Press (so-called) Democrat, and shit-rag, corpo-fascist propaganda tool and other such epithets come to mind. They do not promote anything innocently, and this would be especially true of a US-educated self-proclaimed candidate for president of Peru, unknown in Peru, endorsed by SSU President Ruben Armiñana, and planning to raise $20 million for his campaign "some of it in California."

The presidency of Peru is of absolutely vital importance to US-based global corporate predators and war profiteers. The current president, the extremely corrupt Alan Garcia--who recently sent a helicopter gunboat (no doubt paid for by US tax dollars) to mow down indigenous mining protestors--and the US "free trade for the rich" deal with Peru that Garcia signed, has been one of the very few "victories" for our corpo-fascists on a continent that is experiencing an overwhelming, historic, leftist democracy movement. Garcia has ended up with an approval rating like Bush's, 25%. The rightwing in Peru is disgraced. So now they have to find another US stalking horse to defeat Humala. (??)

Another key--to the article publisher's intent, and possibly to who and what Hilario-Manenima may be fronting for--is the next paragraph:

"A Peruvian journalist, Augusto Alvarez Rodrich, wrote in March that the ultimate front-runner may be from outside the pack. 'There are indications that people are eager for something new,' he wrote, suggesting it might be 'a strong character who is considered center-left with close ties to the poor.'”

A lot of people are called "journalists" by corpo-fascist 'news' monopolists who are nothing more than scribes for the CIA. I will need to find out more about this particular "journalist," to make a more secure judgment, but I am struck by what may have been a planted idea, that Peru needs someone from "outside the pack." Rodrich describes this mythical person as "the ultimate front-runner." With $20 million ("some of it from California"), I suppose an unknown candidate could leap to the head of the "pack" and become the "ultimate front-runner." Money, and corpo-fascist backing, can make miracles, as we have learned here in the U.S.

I want to stress once again that it may be unfair to associate Hilario-Manenima with the slimes who are publishing this article and promoting him. He may be innocent of their slimy political intentions. And I'm trying not to hold Stanford against him. But I am suspicious that he may be the US corpo-fascist/CIA candidate for president of Peru, being "groomed" to defeat the left (and Ollanta Humala in particular) in the next election in Peru. Being indigenous does not exempt him from being used. Nor does being an "environmentalist." There are real environmentalists and there are corpo-environmentalists, as I have learned from hard experience. I don't know enough about Hilario-Manenima to tell which kind he is, but I do know this: Stanford Business School has been at the forefront of "green-washing" PR methods--putting a pretty face on corporate destruction of the environment. It is also associated with the Gap clothing empire (and their sweatshops--one in Honduras, by the way--as well as the Gap founders' redwood forest destruction in northern California). Stanford University is a big school, to be sure. And Hilario-Manenima may not have anything at all to do with slimy corporate practices. But still.

I know I'm sounding a bit like Antony in "Julius Caesar" ("...but Brutus is an honorable man.") I'm just worried, and suspicious--and I think I have good reason to be.

As I said, the Press (non-) Democrat and its slimy owner, do not promote anyone or anything innocently. The PD has had next to nothing to say about Latin America until now. Mainly, they just reprint Associated Pukes propaganda. (I haven't noticed that they run Simon Romero.) But they have been bad--really bad--slitheringly (fake liberal) bad on a lot of other issues, and their parent 'news' monopoly has been virulently and disgustingly propagandistic on the South American left.

In addition to being one of the last bastions of US-dominated "free trade for the rich," and being one of only two corrupt US allies in all of South America (the other being Colombia), Peru is also vital to the corrupt, failed, murderous US "war on drugs," which is being rejected and kicked out of many South American countries. The US "war on drugs" has two purposes, and neither of them is drug interdiction. It is a war profiteer boondoggle. And it is being used for a major US military buildup in South America, whose purpose we can only guess at, but which is looking like "Oil War II."

This article on Hilario-Manenima mentions none of this--the three most important issues in Peru's relationship with the U.S. Free trade (for the rich). The "war on drugs." And Peru siding with the U.S., against the rest of the continent (Colombia excepted) on crucial issues of Latin American sovereignty and solidarity. And, in addition to everything else, Peru (via Garcia) has recently been used in a "divide and conquer" strategy regarding Chile's granting of access to the sea to Bolivia. Chile granted sea access to Bolivia in the context of the Bushwhack effort to topple the Morales government in September 2008, and Peru, instead of settling the matter in the spirit of solidarity and peace, has taken it to the Hague and is stirring up war issues from a hundred years ago.

This article is bland in the extreme, and smells of "neo-liberalism" in its failure to mention critical issues--the ones having to do with the US/Bushwhack rape of Peru--and in its characterization of the issues that it does mention. (For instance, it says that mining and logging are "a flashpoint" because of "violent protests by indigenous groups," but fails to mention the helicopter gunship that was used against the protestors!). It leaves out the name of the actual front-runner in Peru--the strong leftist candidate--and substitutes the fantasy of an "ultimate front-runner" who hasn't even declared his candidacy yet.

Does Hilario-Manenima really think that a philosophy of "everybody wins" works against predator corporations? Are statements like this typical of him: “It’s a message of change. We have the dream of changing Peru. We want to bring hope”? Or were his more substantive remarks edited out?

Will he continue Peru's taking filthy lucre from the Pentagon for guns and helicopter gunships to enforce "free trade for the rich"? Will he enforce "free trade for the rich" (or some bad "eco-tourism" version of it)? Will he side with the rest of South America (Colombia excepted) on the absolutely crucial policy of sovereignty, independence from the U.S. and solidarity? Will his "win-win" mean--like Garcia's has meant--"win-win" for the super-rich and a bit of "trickle-down" for the urban elite?

The Press (non-) Democrat reporter probably didn't ask any serious questions, and probably doesn't know diddle about Peru or the grave matters at issue in the Peruvian election. So, again, the vacuity of this article may not be Hilario-Manenima's fault. But still. Worry, worry, worry. Et tu, Brute?