New Orleans       All of a sudden ACORN’s Latin American WhatsApp group was blowing up.  Honduras was reaching out to Peru with concern.  Even with my rough reading of Spanish, I could tell there was big trouble.  At first, I thought the unpopular president had been assassinated, but a closer reading and some Google searching gave me a clearer picture that this exchange was about an attempt to kill off nonprofits and their work in Peru.  Seeing the way some of the world’s major countries, think the United States today for example, are ratcheting up their efforts to escape scrutiny and operate with impunity, Peru’s legislators and president seemed to want to make sure they made the list.

A story in the Guardian brought the picture into focus.

Human rights groups in Peru have voiced alarm over a controversial anti-NGO law that prevents civil society organizations from taking legal action against the state for human rights abuses – a move that activists say will prevent the vulnerable from accessing justice.  Peru’s deeply unpopular congress added a harsher amendment to an existing bill which was fast-tracked through the chamber with 81 votes in favor, 16 against and four abstentions. The vote expands the powers of the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation (APCI), giving it more oversight of international aid, but in a way that threatens the independence of non-profit organizations. The move is the latest in a series of government-backed rollbacks on civil and human rights and attacks on press freedom in Peru that has prompted international concern. Polls show that Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, and the country’s congress have approval ratings of less than 5%.

This is no ideal threat, because it is power-packed with up to a $500,000 penalty for violations on very broad grounds.  If a nonprofit litigates or “even legally support any administrative or judicial cases against the government, both nationally and internationally,” they could be subject to what is essentially a death sentence for their organization.

Once again, as we have recently seen elsewhere, Peru used the Trump-Musk careless and irresponsible language that essentially accused USAID of being a “criminal” enterprise without any justification as cover for their crackdown.  In the way that autocratic and anti-human and basic rights movements in many countries have chafed at some of the anti-corruption and accountability nonprofits funded by the United States, the Musk dismantling of the agency and its programs opened the gates.

In further reporting, the Guardian provided even more context,

President Boluarte has joined the attack against NGOs. Speaking at an event last month, she said: “We cannot allow the discourse of human rights to be used as an ideological weapon to undermine the authority of the state and delegitimize the principle of order.” Boluarte is under investigation for the deaths of nearly 50 people in anti-government protests in December 2022 and January 2023. Prosecutors also accuse her of accepting bribes in the form of Rolex watches and jewelry.

            What’s happening in Peru now, Hungary recently, and so many other countries seems to be that Trump-Musk have essentially given them license to consolidate power and resist accountability to their people or anyone else.  These are not indirect or inadvertent examples of collateral damage of US actions around the world.  These are direct and predictable outcomes of the new concept of leadership in the US not to make the world “safe for democracy,” but to make autocracy and dictatorship easier in every way.