🇵🇪 Peru: Police invade San Marcos University with armored vehicles and are making a large number of arbitrarily arrests of indigenous campesinos and students who've been participating in mobilizations against the Dina Boluarte regime. pic.twitter.com/zxZ2rKi4PR

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) January 21, 2023

 

It is with sadness that I note how the killing of 47 mostly indigenous protestors by the US-supported coup government in Peru and the storming of its university reminds me of the beginnings of the military dictatorship of Brazil in 1964.  From my blog post on the art of Regina Silveira:

"Recently declassified documents attempt to suggest that LBJ was spurred to provide military support to a locally autonomous military uprising, but the US had begun to infiltrate and indoctrinate the Brazilian military as early as 1948 through the ESG institute,  whose graduates included most of the coup leaders, and when the CIA was formed it created the IBAD institute in 1960, whose financing and organization led to legislative victories for the right in 1962.  General Medici, President during the most repressive period of the early 70s, served previously as military attaché in Washington and was trained at the ESG as were his two predecessors.

"The University of Brasilia was invaded the day after the coup, after which rural peasants organized by Goulart were subject to violence and killings as the judiciary, military, legislature (including Kubitschek), and civil service were purged of anti-fascist elements."

I had the pleasure of meeting Silveira 3 1/2 years ago and predictably I proffered a concise version of my interpretation of Middle Class & Co. and she agreed with it.

 

Regina Silveira, Middle Class & Co, 1971

  

I have no problem with vigilant concern over the events on January 6th, 2021 by either Americans at the grassroots or as inevitable partisan finger-pointing.  But imagine if that gang that stormed the US Capitol on the 6th ran the US by decree for 21 years, killing and imprisoning their critics and purging others of their government posts.  That happened in Brazil with the support of US Presidents of both parties, just as the Biden administration has supported the coup government's extrajudicial killings in Peru this month.