Peru will join the “Shield of the Americas”, a regional security alliance led by the United States that shares intelligence and cooperates in military operations against drug cartels.
Keiko Fujimori, Peru’s recently elected right-wing leader, announced the move on Thursday after talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“We appreciate this opportunity [to join the initiative], because for us, having previously had to tackle terrorism, [we] know how difficult it is to confront criminality today,” Fujimori said.
Her government also awarded Rubio the Order of the Sun, one of the country’s highest civilian honours.
Rubio’s visit to the Peruvian capital, Lima, caps his three-day, three-country tour of South America to shore up ties between US President Donald Trump and conservative allies in the region.
The diplomat praised Fujimori’s decision to join the Shield of the Americas, also known as the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC), which has advocated for greater military involvement in the fight against crime.
“It is a shield against these threats to the sovereignty of these independent nations,” Rubio explained.
“It is a shield against these transnational criminal groups that, in many cases, have more money and better military equipment than the state. That is unacceptable, and the only way to defeat it is to confront it forcefully.”
Fujimori, a former first lady and the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, was sworn into office in July after campaigning heavily on security-related issues.
Peru is the world’s second-largest producer of cocaine, behind Colombia, and reports of crimes like extortion have spiked in recent years.
But Washington’s involvement in the region remains a controversial prospect, given its history of past interventions and its support of right-wing leaders accused of human rights abuses.
Al Jazeera correspondent Teresa Bo explained that the closer cooperation has also raised concerns about the prospect of eroding Latin American sovereignty.
“This has generated lots of fear among many people in this part of the world of what a greater influence of the United States, of what a military influence of the United States, could bring about,” she said.
Rubio attempted to tamp down those concerns during his visit, saying the US would only intervene with the permission of local authorities.
“We’re not going to do anything that our partners don’t ask us to do,” Rubio said. “We don’t want to do less than what you ask of us, but we’re not going to do more than what you ask of us.”
Nevertheless, in Lima, protesters gathered outside the government house where Fujimori’s meeting with Rubio was taking place. Some carried signs that read, “Marco Rubio out of Peru, no to Shield of the Americas.”
“We have said that Peru is nobody’s colony, and it is not the back garden of any country in the world,” Soledad Lozano, one of the protesters, said.
The Trump administration has also indicated that it would like countries like Peru distance themselves from China, which overtook the US as Peru’s primary trading partner.
In February, for instance, the Trump administration criticised Peru for allowing China to construct a mega-port in Chancay, warning that “cheap Chinese money costs sovereignty”.
“China has major investments in Peru right now,” Bo explained. “It controls a port that is 80km away from Lima, and what the US is trying to do is increase its presence in the Western Hemisphere and to try to cut a bit of economic dependency that many countries in Latin America have with China.”
Peru is critical not only to US security strategy in Latin America, but also to its economic interests. It is an important source of mineral resources, as the world’s third-largest producer of copper.
In January, Washington designated Peru a major non-NATO ally, and the US State Department approved a possible $1.5bn foreign military sale for work at Callao Naval Base, Peru’s main naval hub near Lima.
