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Earlier this month, Beijings state-owned China Southern Power Grid announced the acquisition of nearly $3 billion in assets of Perus electric power grid,giving Chinacontrol of at least 70% of Perus electric distribution market. The deal is remarkable, among other reasons, because it follows months of violent protests that have rocked Peru since December following the impeachment and arrest of socialist president Pedro Castillo. This is no accident. Perus destabilization is opening the door for anti-American forceslike Chinaand Iran, who are seeking a permanent foothold in the Western Hemisphere.

While the mass pro-Castillo riots of January and February have dissipated, smaller waves of protests and road blockades have entered their fifth month in the southern region of Puno, near the Peru-Bolivia border, a reminder that the countrys political crisis is far from over.

At the protests peak, 117 roads were blockaded throughout the country. So far, at least 66 people have died, including a policeman burned alive and six soldiers drowned to death, with dozens of public buildings attacked. In December, when the coup attempt occurred, through January, 859 police officers reportedly had been injured and 43 police stations were looted or burned.

To assume that Perus crisis is occurring in a vacuum or ends with street protests ignores the lessons of other recent turmoil in the region.

In March 2020, for example, the National Defense Universitys Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies releaseda reportthat showed the role of the Bolivarian Joint Criminal Enterprise in inciting protracted social disturbances in Chile, Colombia, and Ecuadorthree long-time AS. partnerssince 2019.

The Bolivarian Joint Criminal Enterprise is one of several terms used to refer to the threat network of the Latin American authoritarian left and their global state and illicit non-state allies. This can be understood plainly as an anti-Americanthreat network.

The Bolivarian threat network incited the 2019 disturbances in Chile, Colombia and Ecuador by using narco-terrorist armed groupsand socialistsolidarity conferences to train and mobilize shock troops that participated in the riots. It also used individual facilitators to fund and coordinate disturbances and deployed social media disinformation accounts.

This does not mean that these protests did not include legitimate grievances or peaceful protesters, but that the network coopted these for its own ends.

The result? U.S.-friendly governments in these countries were forced to make concessions to the rioters and spend scarce resources to address the unrest. The threat network also advanced anti-democratic and anti-American narratives and opened new local spaces for organized crime and U.S. adversaries to operate in.

In subsequent elections, Chile and Colombia voted out U.S.-friendly incumbents and turned to far-left leaders. Chiles last president was pressured to allow a vote to overhaul the countrys decades-old constitutiona tense political battle that continues today.

In Ecuador, coordinated riots have continued and pressures on the current center-right government of President Guillermo Lasso are mounting.

As the threat network understands it, such coordination is a form of warfare, elaborated by former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez as a form of fourth-generation warfare. Such 4thgeneration warfare, a form of asymmetric warfare, aims to counter U.S. influence and bring countries intothe socialistcamp without needing to use conventional force. It is seen as a continuous and deliberately protracted struggle.

Perus turmoil is the latest example of these efforts. According to the National Defense University report, Peru was publicly identified as a next target by the network in 2020.

The December arrest and impeachment of Castillo, a Marxist and threat network ally, following his failed coup attempt against Perus congress created the opening. The network-backed protesters made unconstitutional demands, calling for the ousting of Castillos vice president and successor, current President Dina Boluarte.

Like other protests, Perus have been a mixed composition of organized radical pro-Castillo groups, other protesters disaffected with government corruption, and illicit actors. But the indications that this was a coordinated effort are increasingly clear. Castillo alliesreportedly wireddaily payments to mobilize protesters. The attempt toseize five airportsalso shows a level of sophisticated coordination.

Peruvian authorities found that terrorist elements of the protests included the Shining Path, the historic Maoist terrorist group, and other armed groups, includingthe Etnocaceristas, a separatist group in southern Peru.

Edwar Quiroga, a known operative in the mining-rich Apurimac region in southern Peru, is known tolink the Etnocaceristasto Iranian intelligence. Quiroga previously ran Inkarri Islam, a Shia culture center in Apurimac that offers political and ideological training to young Peruvians. A Castillo ally, Quiroga was arrested last August in southern Peru with19,000 cartridges of dynamite. Just four months later, Perus protests began with an insurgency in Apurimac. Last week, Boluarte reestablished relations with Iranan unprecedented development in Peru.

Additionally, Cubas ambassador to Peru, Carlos El Gallo Zamora, an operative for the Cuban regimes nefarious G2 intelligence directorate, isknown fordecades of recruiting agents to infiltrate anddisrupt the regions democracies.

Moreover, former Bolivian president and key threat network member Evo Morales wasbanned from entering Perufor malign foreign interference. Peruvian authorities found Bolivians chief among the foreign nationals involved in the countrys violent riots. Morales operatives were found to have illegally crossed the Peru-Bolivia border over27 timesbetween 2021 and 2022.

Bolivia, a landlocked countrywhere Chinais active in lithium extraction, depends on Peru for global trade. Russia and Iran are actively involved inuranium mining in Bolivia. The protracted disturbances near the porous Peru-Bolivia border help benefit the trafficking of drugs as well as gold, lithium, and other illicitly mined productsall of which can be used to fund political operations of the threat network.

The confluence of illicit, ideological, and geopolitical interests behind Perus turmoil mirrors that of recent well-recorded cases in neighboring democracies. This also means that the crisis does not end with the end of the protests. In a battle of narratives, protesters now demand that Peru hold early elections while falsely casting the political right as co-governing with Boluarte.

All of this unravels as the U.S. rapidly loses allies and partner governments in the region while anti-American forces make permanent gains. Those who insist that Chinas economic activity in Peru was negatively affected by the protests have been proven wrong by last weeks sale of a large part of Perus electric power grid from private Italian firm ENEL to China. The turmoil might dissuade legitimate private investment from competing in the country, butChinas predatory statefirms stand to benefit.

The U.S. must begin countering the Bolvarian threat networks asymmetric warfare with an informational and public diplomacy response. Congress should press the White House to do so, and it should mandate that the administration update it on Perus illicit trafficking flows and those flows potential links to political activity. It should also urge Perus consumer protection agency, INDECOPI, to reject Chinas recent monopolistic acquisition of electric power.

The last time that another threat network ally governed Peru, a Chinese state-owned company was able tosecure accessto a deep-sea mega-port that is key to Beijings Pacific naval ambitions, andPeru becameanother one of Chinas comprehensive strategic partners.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

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