Free Republic

LIMA (Reuters) - President Alejandro Toledo on Thursday declared a state of emergency in Peru's central jungle after Shining Path guerrillas killed eight policemen amid an upsurge in violence from the Maoist group. The emergency decree bans public gatherings and gives police and military the right to search houses and make arrests without warrants. The rebels killed eight policemen in an ambush on a police vehicle out on routine patrol in the remote Huanuco region on Tuesday, some 220 miles northeast of Lima. The group that led one of Latin America's bloodiest insurgencies in the 1980s and early 1990s has...

Communism is not dead in Latin America. In fact, the dominoes are falling south of the border, but no one seems to be noticing. “It’s a new day. Communism is dead. It’s even dead in Cuba.” So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. “I hate to say it,” she continued, “it’s dead.” The senator’s proclamation was a surprise, no doubt, to Fidel Castro, whose regime was (and is) alive and as Red as ever. It also must have come as welcome news to the people of Cuba, still suffering, after nearly half...

Many Peruvians Are Unhappy With President Monday February 9, 2004 1:46 PM By DREW BENSON Associated Press Writer LIMA, Peru (AP) - From her dirt-floor corner shop in the grim Pachacutec shantytown, Isabel Guzman gazes out at row upon row of shacks sprawling down toward the distant desert coastline. What the 25-year-old mother doesn't see is any salvation coming from embattled President Alejandro Toledo. ``I thought that since he grew up poor he would be different, but things are just getting worse,'' Guzman says of Peru's first elected president of Indian descent. ``Maybe someone else could do better.'' She's not...