LIMA, Peru (AP) — People flocked to Peru’s coastal capital, many from remote Andean regions, to protest Thursday against President Dina Boluarte and in support of her predecessor, whose ouster last month sparked deadly unrest and plunged the nation into political chaos.
A tense calm reigned in the streets of Lima Thursday morning ahead of the protest that supporters of former President Pedro Castillo hope will open a new chapter in the week-long movement to demand Boluarte’s resignation, the dissolution of Congress, immediate elections and to demand structural changes in the country. Castillo, Peru’s first rural Andean leader, was impeached after a failed attempt to dissolve Congress.
“We have delinquent ministers, presidents who murder, and we live like animals in the midst of so much wealth that they steal from us every day,” said Samuel Acero, a farmer who heads the regional protest committee for the southeastern city of Cusco, as he arrived Went to downtown Lima Thursday morning. “We want Dina Boluarte to go, she lied to us.”
The protests so far have mainly taken place in Peru’s southern Andes, with 53 people dead in the riots, the vast majority killed in clashes with security forces.
“We are at a breaking point between dictatorship and democracy,” said Pedro Mamani, a student at the National University of San Marcos. Students there are housing protesters who traveled to the Peruvian capital for the protest, popularly dubbed the “Takeover of Lima.”
The university was surrounded by police officers, who also gathered at several key points in Lima’s historic downtown area.
A total of 11,800 police officers will be deployed across Lima, Victor Zanabria, the head of the local police force there, told local media. He downplayed the size of the protests, saying he expected about 2,000 people to attend.
The demonstrations that erupted last month and subsequent clashes with security forces represent the worst political violence Peru has seen in more than two decades and have highlighted the deep divisions that exist in the country between the urban elite, mainly based in Lima and the poor rural areas where citizens often feel degraded.
“In my own country, the voices of the Andes, the voices of the majority, have been silenced,” Florencia Fernández, a lawyer living in Cusco, said Wednesday ahead of the protest. “We had to travel to this aggressive city, this centralist city, and we say the Andes descended.”
By taking the protest to Lima, protesters hope to add weight to the movement that began when Boluarte, who was vice president, was sworn into office on December 7 to replace Castillo.
“When there is tragedy or bloodbath outside the capital, it does not have the same political relevance on the public agenda as if it had taken place in the capital,” said Alonso Cárdenas, professor of public policy at Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University in Lima . “The leaders understood that and say they can massacre us in Cusco, in Puno and nothing happens, we have to take the protest to Lima,” added Cárdenas, citing two cities that have experienced protest violence.
The concentration of protesters in Lima also reflects that the capital has seen increasing anti-government demonstrations in recent days.
“Lima, which had not joined the protests at all in the first phase in December, decided to join after the Juliaca massacre,” said Omar Coronel, a professor of political science at the Catholic University of Peru, referring to the 18th people killed in this southern city on January 9th.
The protesters on Thursday plan to march from downtown Lima to the Miraflores district, one of the emblematic neighborhoods of the country’s business elite.
The government called on the demonstrators to remain peaceful.
“We know they want to take over Lima,” Boluarte said this week. “I urge them to take over Lima, yes, but in peace,” adding that she will “wait at Government House for them to talk about their social agendas.”
Boluarte has said she supports a plan to postpone the presidential and congressional elections, originally scheduled for 2026, to 2024.
Many protesters say no dialogue is possible with a government they say has unleashed so much violence against its citizens.
As protesters gathered in Lima, more violence erupted in southern Peru.
In the city of Macusani, protesters torched the police station and judicial office on Wednesday after anti-government protests left two people gunshot dead and another seriously wounded.
Officers were forced to flee the police station, which burned the crowd in a helicopter, police said. Macusani, about 160 kilometers from the city of Juliaca near Lake Titicaca, is the capital of the province of Carabaya,
Activists have dubbed Thursday’s demonstration in Lima the Cuatro Suyos March, in reference to the four cardinal points of the Inca Empire. It’s also the same name given to another massive mobilization that took place in 2000, when thousands of Peruvians took to the streets against the autocratic government of Alberto Fujimori, who resigned months later.
There are several key differences between these demonstrations and this week’s protests.
“In 2000, people were protesting against a regime already entrenched in power,” Cardenas said. “In this case, they are opposing a government that has only been in power for a month and is incredibly fragile.”
Another difference is that the 2000 protests had a centralized leadership and were led by political parties. “What we have now is something much more fragmented,” Coronel said.
The protests that have gripped much of Peru over the past month have been largely a grassroots effort without clear leadership.
“We have never seen a mobilization of this magnitude, there is already a thought on the peripheries that it is necessary and urgent to change everything,” said Gustavo Montoya, historian at the National University of San Marcos. “I have the feeling that we are witnessing a historic change.”
The protests have reached such proportions that the demonstrators are unlikely to be satisfied with Boluarte’s resignation and are now demanding more fundamental structural reforms.
The protests “emerged in regions that were systematically treated as second-class citizens,” Montoya said. “I think that’s only going to keep growing.”
Analysts warn that failure to heed protesters’ demands could have tragic consequences.
“We have to start thinking about what we want to do with Peru, otherwise this could all explode,” Cardenas said.
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Associated Press journalist Mauricio Muñoz contributed.