Peru fears Bolivian camps harbor rebels

By | Monday, April 28, 2008

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SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia — Bolivia's leftist government has established dozens of outposts in the high Andes region of Peru, which Peruvian officials fear have become centers of revolutionary training that threaten to revive Marxist-inspired insurgencies that terrorized the nation for decades.

Some are located in public buildings; others operate out of private homes. Hernan Fuentes, the governor of Peru's Puno province, openly supports the centers, claiming they are part of an anti-poverty effort to channel aid for local humanitarian projects.

Most centers feature large iconic images of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is using his nation's windfall from surging oil prices to fund what he calls a "Bolivarian" revolution throughout Latin America.

The centers are known as "ALBA houses," named after Mr. Chavez's Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas, a socialist trading bloc founded by Mr. Chavez as an alternative to U.S.-backed free-trade efforts.

"They are beachheads for ideological indoctrination of people of low incomes, driving the message that their situation has not improved despite recent economic growth," says Peruvian Defense Minister Antero Florez.

The Peruvian Congress recently ordered an investigation into charges that the offices are being used to foment political unrest and finance a resurgence of extreme leftist groups that recently blockaded the town of Cuzco during violent anti-government protests.

"What are the photos of Chavez doing in the ALBA centers?" asks Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo.

"Some authorities in Puno want to mortgage out Peru to a foreign power," the prime minister said recently, an apparent reference to Bolivia and Venezuela, both of which are headed by vocal anti-American presidents.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, visiting the United Nations Monday for a forum on the rights of indigenous peoples, brushed aside charges by the Peruvian government.

"If the president of Peru is saying that those forces are destabilizing, maybe they do destabilize empires, not people," Mr. Morales told reporters. "What we are looking for in Latin America, what is being born now, are liberating democracies."

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