Who is the ex-military who proposes to shoot corrupt ex-presidents in Peru?

Former soldier Antauro Humala, leader of a nationalist current in Peru and who was imprisoned for leading a riot against the constitutional government in 2005, announced Tuesday that he will run for president to restablish the republic.

“Peru needs a change in its conception as a Republic, which is dying” after 200 years of independence from Spain, said this former Army major and brother of former President Ollanta Humala (2011-2016).

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“We have abandoned the rebel path to come to power, we are going the conventional way and competing” in the elections for the presidency, he assured in a conference with the Foreign Press Association, the first since he was released from prison on August 20.

He also led the Locumba Uprising of October 29, 2000 together with his brother Ollanta, who was then Army Commander, to demand the resignation of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) after his second re-election.

Although now Antauro and Ollanta -who founded the Peruvian Nationalist Party together with his wife Nadine Heredia- are political rivals.

HIS NATIONALIST ‘RECIPES’

“We are not governed by ideological concepts of right and left, but by globalism versus nationalism,” said Antauro Humala, who advocated “injecting ethnic and cultural pride for our coppery race,” the predominant population in the country.

The ex-military professes “ethnocacerismo”, a nationalist variant that exalts the Andean peoples of Peru and the Inca empire. “Blood ties determine nationality, the hegemony of the copper-colored race must prevail,” he indicated when explaining his “ethno-nationalist” political project.

“Ethnonationalism” or “ethnocacerismo” was founded by Ollanta, Antauro and his father Issac Humala, a lawyer and former communist militant in the 1980s.

Antauro Humala rejected any comparison with the national socialism of the dictator Adolf Hitler, whose racist and supremacist ideas led to the persecution and extermination of the Jews in Germany and Europe during World War II (1939-1945).

“The difference with Hitler’s national socialism is that he said that the Aryan race, which was at the top (of society), should dominate the world, we say that the coppery race is at the basement,” said Antauro Humala.

“It’s not the same because they felt superior, (we) want to do humanism with the copper race,” said the former major. He considered the Holocaust “unfair” although he criticized that “we beat our chests so much for six million deaths, and (what do we say about) the 20 million dead Indians in the United States?”

Regarding the rights of minorities, he said that “the LGTBIQ agenda is not among his priorities.” “I have nothing against gays, in Spanish they are called fagots, (but) modesty is important. I feel attacked when a man wants me.”

SHOOT FORMER PRESIDENTS

Meanwhile, Antauro Humala proposes to shoot former presidents who have incurred in corruption.

“High presidential corruption must be considered as treason against the country, for it to be punished with capital punishment by firing squad,” he declared. Potentially in that category are President Pedro Castillo and former presidents Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) and his own brother Ollanta.

Indeed, the former president was placed in preventive detention in July 2017 after voluntarily surrendering after being accused of money laundering and illicit association in the Lava Jato case.

The Constitutional Court decided to release him in April 2018 and his process continues with him at liberty. Former President Alan García (2006-2011), also under investigation, committed suicide in 2019 before being arrested by the police. All of them, except Castillo, are being investigated for the Odebrecht corruption scandal.

With information from AFP