Newsbriefs
U.S. Drug Czar Backs "Peruvian Rasputin" WASHINGTON, D.C., DECEMBER 1, 1996 n an October 1996 visit to Peru, U.S. Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey visited the presidential palace for a...
...While further evidence of the C.I.A.'s role in Peru has not been obtained, the SIN's participation in human rights violations is not in doubt...
...True to form, the Peruvian Congress echoed the government line...
...Latin American Weekly Report is published weekly by Latin American Newsletters...
...Maxwell A. Cameron Rightist Proclaimed Winner of Nicaragua's Elections MANAGUA, DECEMBER 12, 1996 Despite charges of fraud and other irregularities in Nicaragua's October 20 presidential elections, the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) proclaimed Arnoldo Alemin president-elect on November 22...
...government...
...The remaining 40% goes into other aspects of health care...
...Defeated Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega, who claims that the election results were fraudulent, said that his party would recognize their legality but not their legitimacy...
...For subscription information, contact the Nicaragua Solidarity Network, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, (212) 674-9499...
...dollars, due to lack of stocks over the counter...
...Ortega said he will take his seat in Congress as head of the FSLN parliamentary group...
...But what this means in the overall scheme of things is less certain...
...He refused to answer a summons in connection with the almost 30,000 ballots police agents found on his property shortly after the October 20 election...
...Since 1990, when he assumed the unofficial position of Fujimori's closest advisor and de facto head of the Peruvian National Intelligence Service (SIN), Montesinos had only once been photographed publicly, caught by surprise at a private party...
...In a November poll, only 41% of those interviewed approved his administration-a fall of 30 points from last January...
...Rodolfo Robles was beaten, shoved into an unmarked car, and taken to Fort Real Felipe, where he was charged with insubordination, insulting a superior officer and defamation of the armed forces...
...It is true that the freeing of Robles is an important triumph of the country's democratic forces and the independent press...
...More than a hundred polling stations reported more votes than the number of people eligible to vote...
...One visit revealed that fewer than one fourth of the beds were occupied by Cubans...
...Since military promotions and appointments are decided in December, Hermoza's acts may also have been aimed at ensuring his continued tenure as commander-in-chief of the armed forces...
...Other services offered include neurological rehabilitation, clinical care for HIV-positive patients and the fastest-growing area of all, plastic surgery...
...A record 7,000 foreigners from 60 different countries have visited Cuba for medical treatment in 1996...
...It may also, however, have created links difficult to sever...
...This was widely interpreted in Peru as blanket support for Montesinos, providing him with the protection he needed to avoid an official investigation...
...Fujimori, who credits Montesinos with being the architect of his government's antinarcotics policy, has argued that this experience provides Montesinos with first-hand knowledge of the drug trade, thereby increasing his effectiveness at combating it...
...Whether this support is unwitting or deliberate, it has undermined the U.S...
...Whereas in the past, Fujimori has steadfastly backed the military hierarchy, this time he has come down on the side of civilian authority...
...Before traveling to Lima, Gen...
...Perhaps fearing further erosion of public support, Fujimori promised an amnesty to free Robles...
...Barry McCaffrey visited the presidential palace for a meeting with top government officials, including President Alberto Fujimori...
...The message was clear: despite wellfounded allegations of involvement in both human rights violations and drug trafficking, Montesinos has the complete backing of the U.S...
...Impressive progress has been made in research on how to prevent aging of the brain, which often leads to Alzheimer's disease...
...The data in hundreds of ballot tabulations had been altered, and dozens had false signatures and codes...
...support for Montesinos...
...government may in fact be aiding the very forces it purports to be combating through its antinarcotics program...
...Tests began in September on what scientists and doctors hope will be the first cure for AIDS...
...Along with 14 other parties, Ortega sought to have the elections in the departments of Matagalpa and Managua annulled and reheld...
...Second, efforts to combat international drug trafficking may likewise be undermined by U.S...
...Toby Mailman, Weekly News Update on the Americas "Health Tourism" Booms in Cuba HAVANA, NOVEMBER 28, 1996 uba's dire need of hard currency has led it to turn its national health service-arguably the best in Latin NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS America-into a budding tourist attraction, and its corps of doctors into a profitable export commodity...
...The staterun company, Servimed, has a monopoly in this field with 42 such centers...
...The controversy came at a difficult time for the Fujimori government...
...officials did not know that Montesinos was to attend the meeting at the presidential palace...
...After Robles' release, however, he now appears to be seriously discredited...
...After both of these departmental electoral councils rejected the requests to annul the election results, the CSE followed suit...
...Charges of high-level involvement in drug trafficking, coupled with economic stagnation, have led to sharp declines in the President's popularity...
...The relationship between Montesinos and the CIA goes back several decades...
...Concerns about Montesinos' ties with the CIA date back to the early 1990s, when Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti provided evidence that the CIA was giving financial assistance to an antidrug unit of the SIN that was involved in death-squad activity...
...But it does not imply that, at the level of government, civilian authority has been reestablished over the military-only that one faction triumphed over another...
...While the head of the CSE, FSLN member Rosa Marina Zelaya, acknowledged that there had been some serious irregularities, she said she did not believe that the outcome of the elections was substantially altered as a result...
...Robles' most recent allegation, concerning the involvement of members of the Grupo Colina in the October 17 bombing of a television station in the provincial town of Puno, appears to have been the immediate cause of his detention...
...The FSLN presented a 646-page report documenting irregularities and anomalies in the two departments, which make up approximately 40% of the electorate...
...Fujimori criticized the arrest, but he avoiding challenging the autonomy of the military courts by saying he would amnesty Robles if he were found guilty...
...This bolstered views in Peru of overt U.S...
...A Peruvian DEA agent made similar allegations before an investigative congressional committee in 1993...
...In 1995, after Congress passed a general amnesty, he returned to Peru, and continued to expose the involvement of the Grupo Colina in human rights violations...
...This rupture of what has been a solid civil-military alliance was papered over on December 5, when Congress approved Fujimori's amnesty proposal...
...government did not even call for an investigation...
...In 1993, Robles-the military's third highest-ranking officerwas forcibly retired after he publicly exposed the existence of a paramiltary death squad, known as the "Grupo Colina," operating under the orders of the de facto head of the SIN, Vladimiro Montesinos, and with the knowledge of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Gen...
...The call to void the election results was not unanimous among the FSLN's ranks...
...Opposition was mounting, moreover, to recent legislation allowing Fujimori to run for a third term in the year 2000...
...It has the potential to build many more as joint business ventures with foreign companies or investors...
...We work with the ministry of health," says Perera Horta...
...Fujimori's amnesty, notes Peruvian analyst Fernando Rospigliosi, "does not mean the reassertion of civilian control over the military...
...Allegations linking Montesinos to the drug trade continue to surface...
...Most patients were Latin Americans, though patients come from around the world, including, on occasion, the United States...
...Resorts such as Servimed's newly built $7 million La Pradera complex, which opened last month on the outskirts of Havana, expect to make plastic surgery a priority...
...McCaffrey's office stated that he would make no public comments on the Montesinos case...
...The Peruvian government has closed ranks and refused to allow any investigations into these allegations...
...Institutes such as Ciren, the international center for neurological restoration in Havana, are forced to cater mainly to foreigners, charging competitive prices but in hard currency...
...Yet, in a press conference held the day after the meeting with Montesinos, Gen...
...government's unwavering confidence in the Fujimori government and in the absence of corruption among high-level officials...
...overseas intelligence activity gone awry, the U.S...
...After a military tribunal charged him with insubordination and he began receiving anonymous death threats, Robles fled to Argentina...
...88 were not in authorized locations and 280 were not legally constituted...
...In what appears to be yet another case of U.S...
...Health tourism"-essentially an industry of health resorts linked closely to surrounding hospitals which provide a wide range of surgical and rehabilitative treatments-became a popular business venture in the late 1980s...
...On November 9, Matagalpa judge Mirna Vargas issued an arrest warrant for Alberto Blad6n Baldiz6n, electoral council president for the department and a Liberal Alliance member...
...He said that he would introduce reforms to the electoral law to make it possible to appeal the CSE's rulings, and to change the composition of the council, which he said was biased against the FSLN...
...Latin American Weekly Report Sources: Coletta Youngers is Senior Associate at the Washington Office on Latin America in Washington, D.C...
...In public testimony this past August, Peruvian drug kingpin Demetrio Limonier Chivez, known as El Vaticano, said that he paid Montesinos $50,000 a month from July, 1991 to August, 1992 in exchange for information on antidrug raids...
...As soon as El Vaticano's testimony was reported, Attorney General Blanca Nl61ida Col6n said that the Public Ministry would not investigate the charges...
...Montesinos appears to be the mastermind behind a death squad composed of SIN and military agents that has carried out some of the worst atrocities attributed to state agents since Fujimori assumed office, including the 1991 Barrios Altos massacre and the killing of nine students and a professor from the La Cantuta University in 1992...
...Cuba's medical expertise is well known...
...McCaffrey reiterated the U.S...
...The Sandinista Renewal Movement (MRS), which split from the FSLN last year, made an official statement saying that the irregularities did not appear to be sufficient to invalidate the election results...
...Coletta Youngers Arrest of Retired General Detonates Civil-Military Rift in Peru LIMA, DECEMBER 9, 1996 O n the morning of November 26, retired Gen...
...Although Peruvian law considers retired army officials to be civilians, Robles was brought before a military tribunal, which, had it found him guilty, could have sentenced him to up to 20 years in prison...
...government may be providing protection to Montesinos at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA...
...Alemin, whose Liberal Alliance will be the biggest group in Congress, with 42 of the 93 seats, is scheduled to take office on January 10...
...And increasing numbers of Cuban medics are being hired out to foreign countries at highly profitable rates...
...He then launched a lucrative law practice defending accused drug traffickers, such as drug lord Evaristo Porras, now imprisoned in Colombia...
...Financial support is being sought for Cuban medical aid to developing countries such as neighboring Haiti...
...But medical supplies are not always easily available...
...government's credibility in Peru on two fronts...
...It also rekindled interest in Montesinos' relationship with the CIA...
...In mid-September, State Department spokesman Nicholas Bums stated that the U.S...
...In the 1970s, Montesinos was expelled from the Peruvian army after an unauthorized visit to Washington, where he was suspected of selling information to the CIA...
...support for an individual who appears to be deeply linked to the drug trade...
...There are some 60,000 trained doctors in a country of fewer than 12 million inhabitants...
...The arrest of Robles, a leader of this opposition movement, was initially interpreted as a sign of the Fujimori government's growing intolerance of dissent...
...Last year health tourism netted a reported $23 million in profits, offering specialist treatment for vitiligo (a drastic change in skin pigmentation), psoriasis and retinosis...
...Given Montesinos' alleged ties to drug trafficking and death-squad activity, that would not augur well for Peru's future...
...In stark contrast to its actions in Colombia, the U.S...
...The arrest of Gen...
...If Hermoza were forced to step down, says Rospigliosi, Montesinos would gain greater control over the military...
...First, support for Montesinos and the SIN-both deeply involved in egregious human rights violations-weakens the U.S...
...Two days later, Robles was freed...
...The root of the problem, claim many FSLN leaders, is a 1995 election law which introduced elements of partisanship into the electoral process that had been avoided in the last two national elections held in 1984 and 1990...
...Now he was looking straight into the cameras...
...While some have criticized the new international drift of Cuba's health service, Servimed director Jorge Perera Horta stresses that growing health tourism is not taking away treatment and health facilities normally available to Cuban nationals free of charge...
...Maxwell A. Cameron is associate professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa...
...During McCaffrey's visit, Vladimiro Montesinos-known as the "Peruvian Rasputin"-also arrived at the palace, shocking the journalists covering the event...
...Then came the most startling defense-that of the U.S...
...The U.S...
...Fujimori is highly dependent on the military and the SIN, especially since the April 1992 autogolpe...
...He did, however, criticize the new election law, which he said made the 1996 elections the most complicated and difficult to organize in Nicaraguan history...
...Most of our profits-60%are reinvested in developing our hospitals...
...government...
...Nicolis de Bari Hermoza Rios...
...Mariano Fiallos, former president of the CSE, and a highly respected Sandinista, said in a letter to the pro-FSLN daily, El Nuevo Diario, that the election irregularities and anomalies were not sufficient justification for voiding the elections...
...The anomalies, according to party leaders, affected 72% of the 917 polling stations in Matagalpa...
...According to Rospigliosi, Montesinos may have urged Hermoza to get rid of the troublesome Robles once and for all...
...For subscription information: Latin American Newsletters, 61 Old Street, London EC1V 9HX, England, (171) 251-0012, E-mail: WR@latin.ftech.co.uk...
...Opposition to the arrest was massive and immediate, and included progressive and conservative sectors alike...
...The departmental electoral councils in both Managua and Matagalpa were members of Alemdin's Liberal Alliance...
...He is author of Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru (St...
...Toby Mailman is a journalist based in Managua who writes frequently for the Weekly News Update on the Americas, a weekly bulletin summarizing news in Latin America...
...Martin's Press, 1994) and co-editor of The Peruvian Labyrinth (The Penn State Press, 1997...
...Of the other 51 seats in Congress, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) won 36, and nine other political parties will divide the remaining 15...
...government's credibility as a defender of human rights and democracy in Vo XXX No 4- JA/E 19 Vol XXX, No 4 JAN/FEB 1997 1NEWSBRIEFS Peru...
...Profits from projects such as these are being reinvested into Cuba's medical research, which is highly regarded worldwide...
...After the visit, his office claimed that U.S...
...government believes that "no senior official" in Peru is involved in drug trafficking...
...Robles-an outspoken critic of the government's human rights record and the growing power of the National Intelligence Service (SIN)-detonated a major confrontation between President Alberto Fujimori and the armed forces...
...And last October, the Lima weekly, Caretas, published a startling interview with Luis Izusqui, a former associate of the L6pez Paredes brothers, now in jail for drug trafficking, who claimed that lawyer Javier Corrochano sought to pay Montesinos thousands of dollars in exchange for the release of the imprisoned traffickers...
...Specifically, this law mandates that party members, rather than independent professionals, be selected as the heads of the departmental electoral councils...
...Fiallos resigned from the electoral council last January precisely over that issue...
...Penicillin must often be bought on the black market with U.S...
...In turn, they have the power to name the heads of each voting precinct in their department...
Vol. 30 • January 1997 • No. 4
