Before arriving in Lima, Prince spent two days in Ecuador, evaluating an agreement with Daniel Noboa's government to train security forces. Photo: EFE Archive.
Blackwater could operate with opaque contracts, without clear regulation and without being accountable to Peruvian judicial authorities.
The arrival of Erik Prince, founder of the controversial firm Blackwater (now Academi) and former Navy SEAL, to Lima to offer “training” to police forces, the military, and civilian groups reveals the continuation of an intervention strategy that US imperialism has been deploying with the use of private contractors from Iraq to Haiti.
Invited by economist Hernando de Soto, Prince has presented his arrival as a simple export of “solutions that have worked elsewhere.” But his “success stories”—Somalia, the Gulf of Aden, and Port-au-Prince—conceal systematic human rights violations and the delegitimization of civilian control over the state monopoly on violence.
In an interview with a local media outlet, Prince acknowledged that there is no “magic formula,” yet he promised to “empower” a Peru plagued by poverty, exclusion, illegal mining and drug trafficking.
Together with De Soto, he met with informal miners to hear their demands for land titling and legal certainty. However, Prince’s rhetoric merely proposed forceful strategies that—like in the past—ended up escalating social conflicts while failing to address the roots of exclusion and most notably the absence of due process.
Academi’s project in Peru is part of a regional conflict: before setting foot in Lima, Prince visited Quito to design an agreement to combat drug trafficking and illegal fishing. The establishment of a US military base in Ecuador was even considered.
This is the same logic that led Washington to tolerate the massacres of civilians in Baghdad (2007) and to sustain coups disguised as “peacekeeping missions.” Now, it seeks to install an army of private companies in the heart of the Andes, operating outside of transparency and parliamentary oversight.
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Peruvian human rights organizations and academics have warned that the hiring of Academi erodes national sovereignty and blurs the subordination of the Armed Forces to civilian power. Without a clear legal framework, these mercenaries could operate under opaque contracts, unaccountable to local judges, reproducing the pattern of impunity experienced by Blackwater in Iraq.
The militarization of rural areas, where thousands of unlicensed informal miners are concentrated, risks turning into a repressive siege, involving the use of human shields, night raids, and the use of extreme lethality. Instead of strengthening the social fabric and ensuring productive formalization, the so-called-deal offers “support” that, in practice, dismantles democratic institutions and opens spaces for the accumulation of power by private actors.
Peru, facing a governance crisis aggravated by a lack of investment in social infrastructure and rural poverty, does not need armies from foreign security companies. What is urgently needed is a comprehensive rural development policy, the simplification of land titling procedures, and the reinforcement of the National Police and the Prosecutor’s Office through transparent technical cooperation under clear human rights standards.
Erik Prince asserts that he will not replace the State, but rather “will support it with tools and intelligence.” But experience shows that wherever mercenaries arrive, political and legal responsibility is displaced: the State delegates its obligation to protect citizens, while private companies secure contracts paid with public funds and diplomatic support.
The Dina Boluarte government and its police commanders face a crossroads: deepen their reliance on war tactics or seek multilateral alliances that strengthen institutions, guarantee accountability and address the root causes of the challenges of illegal mining, drug trafficking and social exclusion.
(teleSUR)
