When 2020 began, so many of us had hopes for a new year and a new decade. And well, you all know what happened next. 2020 was a disaster in so many ways, but we don’t want a couple of small disasters that befell Scientology last year slip through the cracks.

As the new year started, David Miscavige performed his usual duties at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, which was memorialized at Scientology’s website. If you scroll through the slides from that event, you eventually land on this page about one of the event’s attendees.

PAVING A NEW PATH IN PERU
In Lima, Peru, a 41-year police veteran became an emissary of L. Ron Hubbard’s nonreligious moral code The Way to Happiness, partnering with over 200 civic organizations to reach over a million citizens and ultimately helping cut crime rates in metropolitan Lima by 20 percent.

Scientology doesn’t name this Peruvian emissary who attended the Los Angeles event, but we can tell you that it is Peruvian National Police General José Luis Lavalle Santa Cruz.

If you’re thinking that a 20 percent reduction in crime in Peru’s capital is a pretty big deal, we’ll point out that Scientology has a habit of making big claims about the effect it’s having in South America, and with the help of national police figures.

You might remember similar miracles that supposedly happened in Colombia, where Scientology also recruited a police general, Carlos Ramiro Mena, who in 2018 showed such loyalty to Scientology he traveled to Barbados to pin a medal on Scientology leader David Miscavige.

This was the precious way that Scientology described it:

The National Colombian Police honored Mr. David Miscavige with one of their most prestigious awards — the Brigadier General Jaime Ramírez Gómez Inspector General Transparency Medal — in recognition of his leadership in helping bring about social change within the nation through the work of the Church of Scientology.

We’ve also pointed out in the past, at our blog, that recruiting South American police generals to hand out copies of ‘The Way to Happiness’ may be less the point than the access these top law enforcement officers have to the international Interpol crime databases.

In Colombia, there’s no doubt that General Mena, while was the top cop from 2015-2018, had access to Interpol’s data since he was literally the Director of Criminal Investigations for Interpol in Colombia…

And hey, it’s good to have someone with that kind of access to international criminal info on your side. Maybe even worth sending in your number one asset to make him feel like he’s a really big deal.

Meanwhile, over in Peru, Scientology’s pal General Lavalle had his own chummy relationship with Interpol, as reflected in this 2019 tweet.

What a coup, to spend years cultivating police leaders at the highest levels until you have national generals with access to Interpol’s databases going around handing out Scientology propaganda by the ton to the troops and the public. David Miscavige must have bragged about it endlessly behind closed doors.

But then came 2020.

In April, General Lavalle in Peru was forced from office, apparently from his mismanagement and poor reaction to the coronavirus crisis. Here’s a translation from an April article:

The general commander of the National Police, PNP Lieutenant General José Luis Lavalle Santa Cruz, would be relieved by PNP Lieutenant General Gastón Rodríguez Limo, current national director of Prevention, Order and Security, according to sources from the Ministry of the Interior .

Among the reasons that produced the change, it was mentioned that during General Lavalle’s administration, coverage was not guaranteed to the troops infected by the new coronavirus and the frequent appearance of alleged cases of corruption in the purchase of masks and other protective devices for the police officers, as well as the acquisition of their ranches with a premium, among other incidents.

And then in October, news broke in Colombia that General Mena has been charged with fraud. Here’s a Google translation of an article announcing it.

Bogotá, October 22, 2020. The Office of the Attorney General of the Nation issued a statement of charges to Major General (r) Carlos Ramiro Mena Bravo, in his capacity as Inspector General of the National Police (2015-2018), for alleged omission of his duties… The alleged offense was provisionally classified as serious as fraud.

Well, it’s been a rough year for everyone. No doubt Dave already has plans for recruiting new patsies in South America. Maybe we’ll see one at the next New Year’s event.

— Jeffrey Augustine

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