Andean Leaders Under Siege --Popular Discontent Threatens Fragile Democracies
By Scott Wilson Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, June 21, 2003; Page A12
VENTANILLA, Peru -- From impoverished Bolivia to politically fractured Venezuela, the countries of the Andean region are confronting a wave of popular discontent that is weakening their elected governments and challenging the U.S. strategy for fighting drugs and developing free trade in the region.
There have been violent protests here in Peru against President Alejandro Toledo and in Bolivia against President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, each less than halfway through his term. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, a populist leader, is facing the possibility of a midterm referendum that could remove him from office. And in Colombia, President Alvaro Uribe enjoys popular support, but faces a resilient armed conflict that threatens to spill across borders.
"In many cases, the only way for people in the region to contest the decisions made by the government is to take to the streets or pick up a gun," said Hernando de Soto, a development theorist who is president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Lima. "They are excluded from the right to participate in the political and economic life of the country."
The common current running through the Andes is deepening poverty that has pitted an angry and disillusioned public against governments that have failed to deliver on promises of improvements in standards of living. Complicating matters, several deeply unpopular presidents have barely begun their terms, leaving frustrated voters with years to wait before the next elections.
A national poll released this week showed that only 11 percent of Peruvians support Toledo, who has hewed closely to Washington's favored economic policy of open trade, restrained public spending and public utility privatizations. He imposed the second state of emergency of his 23-month presidency last month in order to mobilize the military against teachers, farmers, doctors and judges demonstrating for better wages.
Peru is one of the few Latin American countries that has posted overall economic growth over the last year. But Toledo has been attacked fiercely by political opponents over a long string of gaffes. Last week, in the midst of the nationwide wage dispute, he lowered his presidential salary to $8,400 monthly. He started his term at $18,000 a month, the highest presidential salary in Latin America. He angered even his own supporters when he left the country in the middle of the crisis for a speaking engagement at Stanford University.
"There are no good reasons why we should be in this situation," said Alberto Adrianzen, a left-leaning political analyst in Lima. "We don't have the polarization of Venezuela, Colombia's guerrillas, Ecuador's fragile economy or Bolivia's ethnic radicalism. This is largely a matter of political management and Toledo's lack of capacity in that regard."
The Bush administration envisions the Andes as an important part of a free trade zone that it hopes to create by 2006 across the Western Hemisphere. But a thriving illegal drug industry, official corruption, high foreign debt and poverty are conspiring against the balanced economic growth and regional security necessary for such a system to succeed.
Bolivia was shaken by deadly riots earlier this year over the new president's proposed tax increases while Ecuador has been plagued by public worker strikes over wages. Popular at home after 10 months in office, Colombia's Uribe is being hampered in his fight against a powerful guerrilla movement by weak judicial institutions and drug money that helps fund a four-decade civil war.
Venezuela's Chavez, who has survived a coup attempt and four national strikes called to force him from office, is overseeing an economy that is predicted to shrink by as much as 25 percent this year. He and his largely middle- and upper-class opponents agreed in principle last month to hold a constitutionally permitted midterm referendum on his administration sometime after Aug. 19.
In Peru, where Toledo's term ends in 2006, some of the president's supporters say privately that they worry about a potential impeachment effort in Congress. Unlike Chavez, who counts on nearly fanatical support from 30 percent of the population, Toledo has no similar core constituency to defend him, and calls for his resignation have come from some members of Congress.
The military, once the arbiter of political standoffs in this part of the world, has remained on the sidelines in Peru despite enduring budget cuts, an ongoing review of its role in the country's civil conflict in the 1980s and '90s, and internal reforms. But the country's leaders have bristled over the army's unpopular role in quelling the recent protests during which a student in the southern city of Puno was killed by troops.
"Sadly, everything points in one direction: This is about the president," said Carlos Basombrio, a political analyst who resigned as Toledo's vice interior minister in January. "His credibility is at absolute zero, and three years is a long time for people to wait."
The current troubles began last month when public school teachers, who make an average monthly salary of $200, staged a strike for better pay. They were joined by farmers across Peru, who blocked major highways to demand water rights and protective tariffs to make corn, sugar and rice more competitive in the national market. Military intervention cleared highways, but the farmers are threatening to take up demonstrations again next week.
The roots of the protests reach into Toledo's presidential campaign, which followed his leadership of a civil resistance movement that toppled former president Alberto Fujimori after he won an illegal third term in 2000. Fujimori fled Peru for Japan ahead of charges of corruption and human rights violations.
To beat his principal opponent, former president Alan Garcia, a populist who nearly bankrupted the country in the 1980s, Toledo promised to create 1 million jobs over his five-year term, double teacher salaries, and build vast irrigation systems and housing. He has failed to keep many of those promises, partly because of Peru's dire financial straits, including foreign debt payments that consume nearly a quarter of its national budget.
Much of Peru's economic growth is the result of an expanded mining industry, which bring benefits largely to the foreign companies that own the copper and gold concessions and a relatively small number of Peruvian employees.
Ventanilla is a shantytown of 1 million people, 25 miles north of Lima, built on sand dunes overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Toledo's support here has withered to nearly nothing along with the hope that his campaign promises of a new fishing port and a local university would ever materialize.
Two model homes, part of the government's "Own Roof" housing program, sit at the foot of a fog-shrouded hill covered with shacks of bamboo, wood planking and overlapping scraps of corrugated tin. Job seekers line up outside the houses, the first of 1,500 to be built on the sandy slope. Their $400 price tag, however, is out of reach for the slum residents who are among the majority of Peruvians who live on less than $2 a day. The obstetrics clinic is made of thatched walls and has no running water or sewer service.
"He doesn't see the children or the number of us living like this," said Margarita Seron, a 35-year-old Toledo voter and mother of six, the oldest of whom would go to college in December if she could afford it. "Will the president comply? Won't he? I don't know. I know he has never helped so far."
Although Toledo blames his poor image on an overly critical press, he continues to confound even his supporters by his choices, including his decision to deliver the commencement address this week at Stanford University, where the former shoeshine boy earned a PhD in education. He traveled to California by presidential plane over fierce objections from Congress that the trip was frivolous at a time when the country is still under a declared state of emergency. The 30-day decree expires June 27.
Meanwhile, drug production is increasing in the eastern jungles, worrying U.S. officials who believe it is partly the result of Toledo's failure to confront the small farmers who make up the bottom rung of the industry. The Shining Path, a radical Maoist insurgency dormant for a decade, is regrouping with the help of drug money and the alleged coordination of Colombian middlemen.
Last week, guerrillas kidnapped 71 employees of an Argentine company building a section of a natural gas pipeline in Peru's eastern jungle. The guerrillas released the hostages a day later. Toledo's claim that the hostages were freed by "my military" was disputed by his own defense minister, prompting a new debate over his honesty.
Marciano Rengifo Ruiz, a congressman from Toledo's party, Peru Possible, said the protests should be seen as a sign of Peru's democratic health after the oppressive last years of Fujimori's administration.
"The social strife will continue, but not with the same force," Rengifo said. "It is bombardment right now. But I believe this will pass, and his support will begin rising again."