Center holds program on Marxist threat to Peru with Former Peruvian Vice President and Foreign Minister Francisco Tudela

Last week, the Center for Security Policy hosted a series of public presentations, interviews and meetings in Washington with the Hon. Francisco Tudela, Peru’s former First Vice President and Foreign Minister, to highlight the growing Marxist threat to Peru and how this development could affect the hemisphere and the United States.  I was proud to moderate and/or participate in these events which included:

• A press conference co-sponsored with the Center for a Secure Free Society (CSFS), featuring in addition to Vice President Tudela, CSFS’ Executive Director Joseph Humire and its International Fellow for Peru, and Dordo Lopez-Dolz;
• A video concerning the implications of the Communist regime of Pedro Castillo’s Peru Libre party for U.S.-Peru relations featuring Vice President Tudela and former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra, who serves as the Chairman of CSP’s Advisory Board;
• A video addressing the Castillo government’s likely intensification of drug-trafficking to and inside the United States with Vice President Tudela and Derrik Maltz, former Director of Special Operations for the Drug Enforcement Agency;
• A video focusing on foreign intervention in and penetration of Peru and the Western Hemisphere with remarks by Vice President Tudela and Joseph Humire;
• A video discussing the repercussions of the Castillo regime’s communist political and economic agenda for mass emigration from Peru and the likelihood that it will translate into new surges of illegal immigration into the United States featuring Vice President Tudela, Center for Immigration Studies Fellow Todd Bensman.

In addition, the Center helped arrange appearances by Vice President Tudela on the “Sandy Rios Show” on the American Family Network on September 30^th; Debbie Georgatos’ “America Can We Talk” television podcast on September 30^th; and Steve Bannon’s “War Room Pandemic” on October 2^nd.

Throughout his interactions with past and present American policymakers, diplomats, legislators, media and other interlocutors, Francisco Tudela stressed the strategic significance of Peru and the repercussions should it become the next Venezuela for not only the Peruvian people, but those of the hemisphere, as well – most immediately, those of the neighboring states of Columbia, Chile and Brazil and, inevitably, the United States.

The former Peruvian Vice President raised, for example, a particular concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s success in establishing economic, political and geostrategic ties to Peru, even before Pedro Castillo came to power. Those will likely intensify dramatically with a communist regime in Peru, especially with the construction now underway of a vast port 80 kilometers north of Lima, enabling the CCP soon to support and perhaps base aircraft carrier battle groups in the Western Hemisphere – a prospect that could constitute the most serious hemispheric threat to the United States since the Cuban Missile Crisis.