Ever heard of Alan Garcia?

I bet not.  And, know what? It's probably not your fault.

Alan Garcia is the present president of Peru.  He's been president for one year.  We've all heard of Peru.  The question is whether what we know goes any deeper than that.

Please follow me across the border

I just got back from two Internetless, wonderful weeks in Peru.  When I got home, I found an email from my daughter, who is traveling in Europe, to her siblings.  It's dated 7/14/07. It says,

i am kind of concerned about the peru contingent [i.e. her mother and me] since i saw riots and riot police and fire and marching people in peru on the news last night... is it safe to be there?

Well, actually, it was safe to be there.  There was a two-day nationwide general strike when we arrived in Cuzco.  We arrived on the first day of the strike.  We didn't know about it until we left the airport in Cuzco.  But BBC News reported:

Thousands of people in every major town and city took to the streets, and three people are reported to have been killed in clashes around the country.

The protests are widely seen as a show of disapproval with the government of President Alan Garcia.

They come just a fortnight before President Garcia completes his first year in office. ...snip...

In the biggest demonstration since Mr Garcia became Peru's president, there was a national show of discontent with his government.

It began as a national strike by the left-wing Peruvian education workers' union. But as construction workers, farmers and miners joined, it grew in size and became more widespread.

There have been running battles with the police in the centre of Lima, and the authorities have detained more than 100 union leaders.

A question: did you know about this?  Did you see it anywhere in the MSM?  Did you hear about it here?  I sure didn't.  And I bet you didn't either.

What did this two-day nationwide general strike look like on the ground?  I didn't see Lima: I didn't leave the airport, though my impression was that it was less busy than usual.  When I got to Cuzco, things were definitely different. Cuzco streets were filled with people and no cars.  There were lots of police at the airport when we arrived.  It was close to impossible to get transportation from the airport into town.  And there were marchers carrying signs and chanting and blowing whistles.  The main complaints seemed to be the rate of inflation and the cost of gasoline and war in Iraq.  I didn't see any physical violence.  By the afternoon of the second day of the strike Cuzco was returning to normal: there were taxis.  Buses appeared after dark.

Why do I mention this?  After all, the story is about 2 weeks old as I write this.

First, it's about Alan Garcia.  This isn't the first time that Alan Garcia has been president of Peru.  Did you know that?  Last time was an utter disaster:

When Alan Garcia left office in 1990, most Peruvians must have assumed the tiller of power had slipped from his grasp for good.

Under his rule, inflation multiplied, reaching four figures; the Shining Path guerrilla insurgency had surged unchecked; corruption was rampant.

Mr Garcia fled the country in 1992, facing corruption charges and with troops despatched to arrest him.

Nine years later he returned to Peru to stand in presidential elections.

He lost to Alejandro Toledo - but only by a slender margin. Mr Garcia had signalled that he was back.

And in 2006, to the astonishment of many onlookers, Mr Garcia triumphantly regained the presidency.

Alan Garcia is a distinct minority in Latin America because he has good relations with George W. Bush.  So his present problem says something about the approval rate of Latin American leaders who are close to the present US Administration. For example, this morning's Santiago Chile paper (sorry no link) featured smiling photos of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales (president of Bolivia), and Michele Bachelet (president of Chile) and a discussion of pollution and the necessity to restrain of carbon emissions. (This might be a diary all by itself, but that's not why I'm writing this now).

I'm writing now because I'm appalled (I am sure I have said this before in other diaries about Latin America) about how little most Americans know about events occurring in this very hemisphere.  We just don't get news about South America unless it's about disasters, natural (earthquakes) or man made (bus plunges).  We certainly don't get understandable political news.  We absolutely don't get news about the impact of US policies on other countries in Latin America.

Yes, you can ferret out Latin America news on the Internet if you want to read it, but that's not the point.  The real problem and the real danger here is that most of us in the US don't know what our government is doing in these countries, and we cannot know what affect US policies are having.