August 18, 2021
The Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity expresses its solidarity with the former Peruvian Foreign Minister, Dr. Héctor Béjar Rivera, who has recently been the victim of a ferocious attack by the most retrograde forces in Peru that have not yet assimilated the electoral defeat and the first actions of the government presided over by Professor Pedro Castillo.
If a review of Peruvian diplomacy in recent decades is made, two illustrious historical personalities emerge: Raúl Porras Barrenechea, who, at the San José Conference (1960), opposed the exclusion of Cuba from the OAS, and, closing the 20th century, Carlos García Bedoya, always remembered for his third world and anti-colonialist position that drove Peruvian foreign policy in the 1970s.
To the names of Porras and García Bedoya we must now add that of Béjar, since some of his statements, expressed in interviews and academic classes many months before he became the director of the Foreign Ministry, expressions that have the backing of official documents that accounts for not only Peruvian politics, but of all our America, were extracted from their respective context and manipulated in a perverse way by the media at the service of sectors that refuse to lose their social privileges. These critical readings of political facts have caused unjustified uneasiness in some social spheres of the country.
Héctor Béjar Rivera, one of the emblematic figures of our Latin American popular history, was forced to resign at the request of the government when he was preparing to be questioned before the Congress of the Republic. Moreover, some of the protagonists of these events asked him to apologize to the Armed Forces and other institutions which he had allegedly verbally abused. Of course, the prestigious intellectual and social fighter, taking into account that he was accompanied by the historical truth and the support of the Peruvian people, did not accept this alternative.
While renewing our personal and institutional appreciation for comrade Héctor Béjar Rivera, member of the Peruvian chapter of our Network, we hope that Peru will continue, under the presidency of Professor Pedro Castillo, to forge a government that meets the just demands of the people.
Executive Secretariat
Network of Artists and Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity
In Our America, on the 18th day of August 2021.