Latinnews Archive
Latin American Weekly Report - 26 March 1976
Peru: naval secrets
Embarrassing revelations about internal disputes in the navy have led to a witch- hunt against the remaining left-wing media.
Hard on the heels of the sudden changes in the Lima newspapers (see last week's issue) came the predictable move against one of the few remaining organs of left-wing opinion, the weekly magazine Marka. Agents of the security police, PIP, and naval intelligence, SIM, called at the house of the acting editor of Marka, Carlos Urrutia, on the night of 18 March, but he had already disappeared. He was accused of insulting the armed forces, stealing official documents and treason (infidencia ).
Urrutia's crime was to reproduce a document attributed to the Consejo Superior de Marina, and signed by 30 admirals, accusing the former naval minister, retired Admiral Jose Arce Larco, of disloyalty, abuse of power and causing serious moral harm to the navy. The document declared him unworthy to wear naval uniform or decorations, or to associate with his former colleagues. Its authenticity has not been denied.
Admiral Arce was the victim of a machine-gun attack on his house at the beginning of the month, and a similar incident took place last October. On that occasion he denounced the involvement of the SIM to the then interior minister, General Cesar Campos Quezada, as he claimed to have discovered that one of the gunmen was a driver for naval intelligence. The naval establishment has been gunning for Arce for some time, whether literally or figuratively, tracing his 'betrayal' back to June 1974. That was when he returned to Lima from his post as naval attache in Washington to take charge of the navy following the dismissal of the right-wing navy minister, Admiral Luis E. Vargas Caballero, and the resignation of other senior admirals (see Vol. VIII, No. 22). Arce was navy minister until the end of 1974, during which time he carried out a drive against corrupt elements in the service, and also allegedly discovered and expelled the CIA liaison with the navy, a United States citizen named John Poulter. He then went back to Washington as Peruvian ambassador, and continued his investigations into CIA links with the Peruvian navy.
The navy, a highly conservative institution even by Latin American standards, has been in turmoil ever since the departure of Vargas Caballero, which marked the end of the tenuous unity of the armed forces around the progressive figure of President Juan Velasco Alvarado. Another 16 more senior admirals had to be retired when the velasquista Admiral Guillermo Faura Gaig took over from Arce as navy minister in January 1975 (see Vol. IX, No. 2). Faura was himself the victim of a bomb attack even before he took office, and he only lasted six months before being forced to resign by his more conservative colleagues for making a 'political' speech in favour of the agrarian reform (see Vol. IX, No. 26).
President Francisco Morales Bermudez has courted the navy assiduously since he took over last August, and could do nothing to prevent the most reactionary elements in the service from carrying out their own purge (see Vol. X, No. 6). The current navy minister, Admiral Jorge Parodi Galliani, while no radical, is a relatively inoffensive if rather dim figure, who is reportedly manipulated by his asesor, Captain Francisco Vainstein Borrani, an altogether more sinister character. Both the vice-admirals promoted at the beginning of the year, Rafael Duran Rey and Guillermo Villa Pazos, signed the anathema against Arce; Villa Pazos, a right-wing hardliner, holds the key post of chief-of-staff of the navy. Other newly promoted admirals are Julio Zapata Martinez, who as head of the naval dockyard, SIMA-Callao used marines to intimidate strikers; and Victor Nicolini del Castillo, who is widely believed to be the navy's liaison man with APRA. Relations with the CIA are apparently conducted at a slightly lower hierarchical level, with Captains Juan Berculand Remy and Carlos de Izcue Cavero regarded as the agency's main contacts in the navy.
In present circumstances neither Admiral Arce nor the editor of Marka can expect any comfort from President Morales Bermudez or the prime minister, General Jorge Fernandez Maldonado, who are themselves increasingly prisoners of their own right wing in the army. The onslaught against any remaining freedom of expression in the press has been reinforced by a new decree making it necessary to obtain a licence from the Oficina Central de Informacion (OCI) before launching a new publication. The application must include full details of the proposed paper, including estimates of raw material requirements; the supply of these is controlled by the state import company ENCI.
In these difficult times the government must derive some satisfaction from the continuing faithful support of the communist Confederacion General de Trabajadores del Peru (CGTP), which this week rejected a call for a general strike by the far more intransigently left-wing Comite de Coordinacion y Unificacion Sindical Clasista (CCUSC), which itself includes some of the most militant bases of the CGTP, among them the Federacion Nacional de Trabajadores Mineros y Metalurgicos del Peru (FNTMMP). The two detained miners' leaders, Hernan Cuentas and Victor Cuadros, who went on hunger strike earlier in the month, have now reportedly been sent to the El Sepa penal colony in the jungle, despite their poor health.
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