PERU'S president Fujimori has carried out a military coup, closing down both houses of the Congress.
On Sunday evenins the army arrested hundreds of opCares Fujimori National | Emergency and Reconstruction' Alan Garca president ( until last year and eaaer or the matt oppositor APRA alliance, has gone into Last Monday Congress deputes atempuns so ave were tear-gassed by troops.
Fujimori has denounced 'corruption in the Congress and among judges.
His real complaint against the judges is that they have freed suspected leaders of Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), the semiMaoist guerrilla organisation. Sendero controls large parts of the country: government has been able to inflict major defeats on it. Although Fujimori WOn last year's presidential election, he does not contro. the Congress. Savage austerity pollcies have reduced inflation but worsened the alreads miserable situation of poverished city Above all, Sendero intractable problem for Peru's rulers. For more than decade the organisation has met the terror of the army with its own terror, creating an impossible situation for hundreds of thousands of peasants caught between the warring sides.
Repression
Now Sendero is extending 1 network in the towns, espe of the reason for Sendero's growing success is both army repression, and the failure of the Peruvian left to create a viable national alternative.
Many peasants, faced with army massacres, are forced to choose one of the warring sides for their own protection. Even left wing intellectuals, formerIv critical of Sendero, have gone over to it as the only hope against poverty and repression.
Sendero Luminoso is far from the exemplary revolutionary communist party its apologists pretend it is. It is utterty autoritarian, ana nas tre quently resorted to assassinaion of peasant leaders and eftists who oppose it. It has become deeply enmeshed in the drugs trade as a source of finance.
But Sendero continues to get massive support because, simply, it seems to work. Its military organisation and its discipline have enabled it to survive against all attempts to crush it The danger now is that Funmori intends to try a 'Guatemalan' solution - a fearrui massacre or ne persuy# areas controlled by Sendero. Any such move would be met by fearful counter-violence srom the suethias Fujimori's coup, together with the artempica coup t Venezuela, shows the fragility 'democratic' regimes in Latin America. Austerity ( and the debt crisis, and the effects of mass poverty like the cholera outbreak, could casily force the ruling classes in the region to go for a new wave of military coups.