Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 10:59:49 -0600 (CST)
From: Dennis Grammenos <dgrammen-AT-prairienet.org>
Subject: M-I: Peru rebels echo resentment against economic reform 


  	  				 
========================================	 WASHINGTON (Reuter) - A Peruvian guerrilla group's stunning  
hostage-taking operation in Lima echoed resentment in Latin 
America towards economic and political reforms that fail to 
trickle down to the region's poor, analysts said Wednesday. 
	 A group of armed rebels of the leftist Tupac Amaru  
Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) late Tuesday stormed the Japanese 
ambassador's residence during a party, taking about 500 people 
hostage, including Peruvian cabinet ministers, diplomats and 
businessmen. 
	 The guerrillas threatened to kill all hostages unless  
hundreds of their comrades were freed from jail and railed 
against Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's free market 
policies. 
	 ``The Fujimori administration is letting 13 million starving  
Peruvians die without any attempt to save them,'' one rebel told 
Japan's NHK television in a telephone interview. 
	 Washington-based Latin America experts said economic despair  
has fostered a climate in which groups like the MRTA and its 
Maoist counterpart, Shining Path, have survived, despite 
heavy-handed action against them by Fujimori. 
	 Similar conditions can be found around the region, where  
years of ``neoliberal'' reforms have yet to close the world's 
widest income gap between the haves and have nots. 
	 Human rights groups also warn that Latin America's return to  
democracy and free elections over the past decade have rarely 
translated into improvements in institutions like the courts and 
legislatures. 
	 However, analysts said such conditions were more likely to  
spark sporadic bursts of rioting like recent street protests in 
Argentina or Venezuela than an explosion of organized guerrilla 
groups. 
	 ``In Peru there is increasing frustration with neoliberal  
reforms that have not benefited most of the population,'' said 
Coletta Youngers, an Andean countries analyst at the Washington 
Office on Latin America (WOLA) think tank. 
	 ``Deep, deep poverty in Peru has fed movements like MRTA,''  
she added in an interview. 
	 The richest 10 percent of Peruvians have access to 80 times  
more resources than the poorest 10 percent, one of the starkest 
gaps in the region. 
	 Carlos Ivan De Gregori, a Peruvian guerrilla group expert  
with the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, was reluctant to 
establish a direct link between the MRTA or Shining Path and 
Fujimori's economic policies. 
	 ``Even though the people are starting to get tired of the  
economic model because it doesn't trickle down ... there is next 
to no popular support for the MRTA,'' he said. 
	 Youngers noted an upswing of activity from Colombia's  
decades-old FARC and ELN guerrilla groups, although she added 
that the dynamics in that country were distinct from Peru's. 
	 According to the governments of Peru and Colombia,  
guerrillas in their areas have turned to the flourishing drug 
trade to finance their operations. 
	 Eric Olson, WOLA's Mexico expert, said that guerrilla groups  
had sprouted over the past two years in Mexico under a 
combination of factors including extreme wealth concentration 
and a lack of real democratic institutions. 
	 But he drew a sharp distinction between the Indian-based  
Zapatista rebels in the southernmost Chiapas state and the more 
hard-line Popular Revolutionary Army, which carried out several 
bloody attacks in central Mexico earlier this year. 
	 Olson added that Latin American governments could no longer  
blame the guerrilla movements on the Cold War. 
	 ``The Soviet Union is no longer around. Now they are having  
to deal with the fact that they are a product of despair and 
inequality,'' Olson said. 
=============================================  	   	




     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---