If Venezuela wasn't preparing for war and sending 15,000 troops to the Colombian border, the Chile-Peru spy scandal would definitely be the most contentious issue in South America right now.Since he returned from Asia, Peruvian President Garcia has made the spy scandal and relations with Chile his number one issue. Garcia is so sure this is a politically winning issue that is inviting Lourdes Flores, Luis Castañeda, Ollanta Humala y Keiko Fujimori, the four top candidates for the presidency in 2011, to meet with him to discuss the issue.
The Peruvian government says that the Air Force officer who sold the military and diplomatic secrets to the Chileans has confessed. They will be providing the proof to the Chileans today and asking the Chileans to prosecute those responsible. The Peruvian Congress has approved a declaration to send to the OAS and UNASUR.
Chilean President Bachelet has rejected the charges and taken offense to the tone and rhetoric of Garcia. The Chilean government position is that they do not engage in any sort of espionage against their neighbors, so the charges are ridiculous.
Peru has pulled its ambassador from Santiago and Chile has removed its ambassador from Lima "for a few days." While neither country seems ready to fully break off diplomatic relations, or more significantly cut trade, this is the most tense they have been in several years.
A few questions:
1) How much do South American countries spy on each other? Nearly every country in Latin America has a civilian and/or military intelligence service, but they all deny spying on each other. That's a cute diplomatic nicety, but this incident raises questions about the reality of those denials.
2) Do the OAS, UNASUR or regional mediators want to touch this issue? Latin American diplomacy is absolutely overwhelmed right now with Honduras, the Venezuela-Colombia dispute and other smaller issues. Even if they wanted to deal with them, there's no formal method for handling espionage allegations and spying isn't an act of war. Working on this case could set a new precedent and would expose other countries to questions about their own intelligence activities.
3) Does this really provide a political boost to Garcia? He probably gets a small boost and a distraction from other problems, but I don't see this being a long term political winner for him. Peruvians don't want to be spied on by Chile, but hyping this scandal doesn't create jobs or solve domestic security issues.
4) Do the Chilean candidates step into this dispute? I don't see it benefiting or harming any candidate, but with only a few weeks to go, maybe one of them will take the risk and make a controversial statement.
5) How deep does this scandal go? Peru has indicated a half dozen more Peruvians are involved in this spy scandal. If this goes beyond a single incident of buying documents, it could become much more serious.
