Peru Police Arrest Man with 36 Grenades (for APEC?)
Just two days ago, El Fotografo and I were talking with El Hijo about the beefed-up security for the APEC Summit, which concludes this week in Lima.
“Are terrorists going to kill the presidents?” EH asked, as we drove by the LarcoMar shopping mall in Miraflores, which was swarming with police.
“Probably not,” I told him. “But you never know, so that’s why they have roadblocks and police checking things. Sometimes it can be just one crazy person who throws a bomb to get attention.”
“Oh,” said EH somberly. He looked out at a row of police in green uniforms guarding the entrance to the Marriot Hotel. One guy in combat boots held a rifle.
“I don’t want to go out of the house this week,” he announced. “I’ll just stay inside and watch TV. Why don’t we all stay in?”
We tried to make light of EH’s worries, but it turns out, he may have been right.
This came in late yesterday on the news wires:
Peru arrests man with 36 grenades days before APEC
Nov 17, 2008 11:53 EST
LIMA (Reuters) – Peruvian police arrested a man with 36 grenades in his backpack Monday, just days before 21 heads of state meet in Lima for the APEC summit and one day after insurgents killed three officers in southern Peru.
Edwin Valladolid, 31, was detained in the San Martin district of the capital, police said.
“We think he belongs to a larger group, which we are still trying to identify,” said Police Colonel Julio Vergara, who is in charge of security for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
The arrest comes as suspected holdouts of the Maoist Shining Path rebel group, which led a bloody rebellion until its leaders were captured in the 1990s, have launched a series of attacks in recent weeks.
On Sunday, the group, which has largely abandoned its ideological struggle in favor of running drugs in the world’s No. 2 cocaine producer, shot and killed three police officers and wounded another in the region of Ayacucho, about 360 miles southeast of Lima.
The Shining Path was also blamed for blowing up an army convoy last month in the Andean region of Huancavelica, killing 15 people.
The group, which police said stole dynamite from a mining camp of U.S.-based metals company Doe Run in October, also detonated a car bomb in front of the U.S. Embassy in Lima in 2002 before a visit by U.S. President George W. Bush.
Source: Reuters North American News Service (Reporting by Reporting by Diego Ore, Writing by Terry Wade; Editing by Dana Ford)
San Martin, where the suspect was arrested, is an area in downtown Lima, which is a distance from where the summit meetings are being held. It’s about a 15-minute cabride away during normal traffic conditions, a longer ride during APEC week.
The suspect’s capture appears to confirm what many observers had been suspecting for weeks: holding the APEC in Lima is like waving a red flag to Peru’s homegrown terrorist groups.
El Hijo’s fears are justified.
This isn’t my first brush with terrorism in Peru.
I remember visiting Lima in May 1995. We stayed with El Fotografo’s elderly aunt, who lived in downtown Miraflores. She lived in a small two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a building in a busy business district, surrounded by hotels, antique stores and casinos.
The day after we flew home from Lima, a bomb exploded in a casino one block from the aunt’s apartment and killed several people. Thankfully, EF’s tia wasn’t hurt, but the explosion was so powerful, it shattered the windows of her apartment.
As I write this, I’m revisiting El Hijo’s plan.
Maybe we should stay inside and watch TV.
Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
8 Comments
Ward Welvaert
Barb,
I don’t envy you guys (girls) in Lima for the big shindig this week, too much excitement for me 🙂
I haven’t had any bad experiences (yet) with crime or terrorism, but Peru needs to get very serious very fast about the re-emerging Shining Path / Sendero Luminoso. I seriously think they should pardon Fujimori and look forward, not to the past – Peru cannot afford to go down the path of Colombia or Mexico.
On a different note, I like your idea about writing a book… I have plenty more stories we could use.
Barb
Yes, this APEC is turning into a big mess. Everyone’s on pins and needles; even the restaurant owners that I talked to this week are obsessed with security and asking me not to write about who is going to dine at their restaurants, so as to not draw attention.
I hope that the police are effectively able to stop this Shining Path stuff in its tracks. It was hell on Cusco in the ’80s and ’90s. I just told El Fotografo that I do not want to visit Ayacucho, no matter how much PromPeru keeps telling people that it’s a lovely place. The poor people there are on the front lines.
I think it’s gone too far to pardon Fujimori. There’s going to be a verdict next month, I think, so by Christmas I believe the trial will be over. I believe that Fujimori should pay from his role in the crimes, with a judgement that also weighes in the good he did for Peru (economic, capturing the Shining Path leader). I leave it to the lawyers/judges to decide what that might be.
You mention Peru not going down the path of Colombia — I’m thinking of Guatemala, which provides another example of what happens when leaders are allowed to get away with murder. I love Guatemala deeply (I wrote a guidebook to the country in ’96) but that country is a dangerous place to visit to this day because not one leader or military official was ever held accountable for the thousands of random killings that took place during the civil war.
What that means is that if you visit Guatemala and you happen to get caught up in a violent scene, there’s no justice system to rescue you or to hold anyone accountable if you are killed. Ditto for innocent citizens. It’s still that way today, sadly.
I once almost got caught in the middle of a shootout between guerilla forces and the military (our van broke down in northern Guatemala), and our driver was quietly freaking out because 20 yards behind us, soldiers were felling 40-foot-high trees to create a roadblock where they would begin fighting once the sun set. If we didn’t get out of there fast, we would have been in the middle of it. (Guys were starting to fell trees in front of us as well.) It was so apparent to me then that my life was worth jacksh*t to the soldiers. It was a tense 20 minutes before our driver managed to fix the engine and we set off, before the shooting began.
How to deal with terrorism like the Shining Path movement is very tricky territory for political leaders. Because the terrorists try to blend with the local population, the risk of targeting innocents is high. And yet, we cannot allow the killing of innocent people to go unchallenged or unpunished.
Peruanista
Barbara, have you thought about what would move a man to walk around with 36 grenades in his backpack?
I don’t believe this is true.
It happened before, the first time Bush visited Lima. Rumors say the car bomb that exploded was a conspiracy of Peruvian Intelligence and its US counterpart.
That “attack” gave Peruvian authorities an excuse to prevent any kind of civil protests then – and now they are ready to do it again.
Fear is a powerful thing.
Barb
Peruanista,
It may or it may not be true. There needs to be more reporting on the incident for anyone to understand fully what went on. Maybe I jumped the gun by adding this story to the blog, but I want to give a balanced picture of what life in Lima is like during APEC, and I do think it’s reasonable to be concerned about violence. Partof the problem about sharing news from Peru is that Peru’s legal system operates on the principle “guilty until proven innocent,” and many Peruvian daily news sources repeat what the police say, rather than investigate. Unless I am investigating a topic myself — my focus is climate change — I’m prone to speculating along with the rest of readers.
That said, I’m glad that you’re providing an alternate view of what may have happened (or may not have happened).
People do so many crazy things in Peru (and the U.S.), however, that I wouldn’t put it past anyone to stuff a bunch of grenades in his backpack.
I’m a skeptic like you, but the notion of a potential bomber being cooked up by Intelligence wasn’t what struck me as odd. The thing that stuck out at me was the precision of the number “36.”
I don’t have any analysis to add to that observation, btw. Maybe someone else has ideas.
Yes, fear is powerful. You know what’s like living in the US where the authorities are always screaming “Code Orange!”
Rachel in Peru
I think that the APEC security was rather porous. The beefed up police force was busy doing the usual, standing around gossiping with their counterparts and playing on their cell phones.
I had a doctor’s appointment in Monterrico and we went the San Borja Norte route that we normally take. We came up to a check point and the only credential we showed was my husband’s DNI and my appt. card. TWO police officers let us through, but little did they know that the ramp to Av. El Derby was blocked.
We commented how easy it was to get into the area and how easy it would have been for any terrorist to infiltrate the security zones.
I personally don’t believe the man arrested for the grenades had any plans to attack APEC leaders or locations. It looks like a story that the police invented to “demonstrate” how effective their security measures were.
It would be nice however to see the same number of police and serenazgo on Lima’s street corners every day and not just for special events like APEC.
Barb
How near the little Pentagon did you get on Av Norte?
We walked on foot to Puerto No. 2, where we were stopped by guards, who wouldn’t let us any closer until we obtained passes. There were hundreds of police and sharpshooters everywhere.
I would be pleased if they could employ all these officers as traffic cops in the city. Lima could use regulation in that area.
Rachel in Peru
We drove right in front of the ministry building all the way to where there is the ramp to El Derby. Security may have be tight on the inside, but on the outside it appeared to be lax.
Even though the police don’t do much, at least their increased presence would make denizens feel more secure.
Ward Welvaert
To Rachel’s point, here in Cusco I always see a bunch of police on the Plaza Tupac Amaru during the day, just hanging out or so it seems. But when I walk back from teaching at ICPNA at 11:00 in the evening I never see any police out. Hence all the graffiti and other petty crimes.
The day to day police presence could be better… but I guess for now I’ll just count on my mutts to chase of any “delinquentes” Ruff!