Word: coups
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This is a letter concerning the editorial written about Peru in the April 10 issue of The Crimson ("Post-Coup Peru"). My comments are not in reference to the author himself, but to all those people who hold the views and stereotypes towards Latin America expressed in the article...
Trivializing the plight of 20 million Peruvians by writing such a parody is completely unacceptable. What else could the author have had in mind when he glosses over history ("then it got really weird"), asks "where the hell is Peru?", misspells the name of the president throughout, compares a coup to "smoking a joint," and issues calls for the military to "stop doing stupid and brutal things to the Peruvians." I agree that the use of military repression is unjustified and unlikely to solve Peru's daunting problems...
...stirrings of counterrevolution. Again the early warning signs are in Latin America. In February an obscure Venezuelan army officer, Lieut. Colonel Hugo Chavez Frias, came within a hairbreadth of toppling President Carlos Andres Perez. Three weeks ago, President Alberto Fujimori of Peru pulled off an auto-golpe, or self-coup, and in effect imposed martial...
...therein, ironically, lies part of the reason for the February coup. In the '70s, when Perez first served as President, the world price of oil tripled. Suddenly awash in petrodollars, Perez's government splurged on public $ works and inefficient state-owned enterprises. Kickbacks, bribes and currency scams became fairly common business practices. The middle class could patronize private clinics and schools. Since almost everyone had a piece of the action, few complained...
...three operational sets of such devices: Yeltsin has one, which can be used only in conjunction with another set controlled by Defense Minister Yevgeni Shaposhnikov. A third system is usually held by the Defense Ministry and can replace either of the other two. But after last year's aborted coup, Western intelligence lost sight of the third football, and officials were forced to ponder the implications of a nuclear fumble. Now the intelligence boys have cleared up the mystery: the third football is safe in the hands of the Defense Ministry chief of staff. Civilian power may be in flux...