The protests in Peru surrounding the arrest of former President Pedro Castillo have turned increasingly violent, have resulted in many deaths and show no real signs of abating. Despite unprecedented political violence and calls for his resignation, Castillo’s successor and former vice president, President Dina Boluarte, refused to step down on Sunday, saying, “My commitment is to Peru.”
In just over a month since the protests began, 49 people, including children and police officers, have been killed, the Associated Press reported Friday. The demonstrations are concentrated in Peru’s southern Andean area, particularly in the Puno region, Peru’s poorest region with the highest indigenous concentration, and in the cities of Ayacucho and Arequipa, among others, although they have also taken place in the capital, Lima, as recently as this week . These are the areas where calls for Boluarte’s resignation are most resonant, among the rural population, who saw Castillo as one of their own – a “son of the soil” – penetrate into the elite world of politics in Lima.
However, Castillo entered office inexperienced, unprepared, and unwilling to compromise or form alliances. For this reason, his campaign promises more prosperity, better education and health care for the rural poor have remained largely unrealized. Shortly before a third attempt by the Peruvian Congress to impeach him, Castillo announced an autogolpe, a self-coup that dissolved the government and installed governance by decree. However, his ignominious tenure ended with his arrest; He is now in prison on multiple charges including corruption.
Boluarte and the Peruvian security forces, meanwhile, have been accused of using excessive force that resulted in the deaths and injuries of dozens of protesters.
Castillo missed an opportunity for change in Lima
Castillo’s victory over Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president and dictator Alberto Fujimori, in July 2021 marked a dramatic break with decades of right-wing rule by Lima’s elites. But Castillo’s utter lack of experience and political infrastructure, among other shortcomings, meant that despite by his momentous election he could not govern.
“Castillo’s party has never been in government, they don’t have the experience. So if you think Castillo represents the left in Peru, the left was never in power,” Moisés Arce, a professor of Latin American social sciences at Tulane University, told Vox. “So you have no professionals, no manpower capable of creating or producing good government.”
Running on a Marxist platform, Castillo promised to nationalize the country’s massive mining industry, rewrite the Fujimori-era constitution and impose higher taxes on the wealthy. Those promises, along with Castillo’s own identity as a former schoolteacher, union leader, and campesino, earned him support in rural areas and among the indigenous population, who make up about a quarter of Peru’s total population.
“If there was a moment to redistribute, create bigger welfare programs for the poor, expand health care, whatever — it was Castillo,” Arce said, pointing out that the conditions for change were there, but Castillo could do it moment due to not fulfilling “a complete lack of preparation.”
The stratification of Peruvian society and politics is striking and a key aspect of the current unrest. “Castillo tapped into the complaint in Peru,” Arce said. “After the pandemic, poverty increased in Peru, many services collapsed, the health system [collapsed] – Castillo somehow emerges from this complaint.”
Though incompetent, politically unconnected, ill-equipped and potentially corrupt, Castillo was a powerful symbol for low-income, rural and indigenous people previously unrepresented at the highest levels of Peruvian politics. As Arce explained, Castillo didn’t fare very well in opinion polls; he wasn’t very popular, but Congress fared even worse.
Protesters identifying with Castillo, who already harbored serious, legitimate grievances against the Peruvian state and its elite, are now involved in some of the bloodiest protests in Peru’s recent history. They have closed airports, blocked major roads and clashed violently with police. Meanwhile, in December, Boluarte declared a state of emergency that violates Peruvians’ constitutional right to assemble and move freely in the country.
Right-wing critics of the protesters labeled them terrorists, evoking the deep national trauma of the Shining Path insurgency of the 1980s and 1990s. The Shining Path Maoist insurgents killed an estimated 31,000 Peruvians, and their actions are still conjured up in the Peruvian concept of terruqueo, Simeon Tegel wrote in the Washington Post on Thursday. Terruqueo, or slandering an opponent by falsely accusing them of terrorism, has cropped up in recent protests – allegedly with racist overtones due to the protesters’ background, which offers a veil of impunity for the use of excessive force.
On Thursday, protesters attempted to take over the airport in the tourist city of Cusco, prompting officials to close the airport near the Inca citadel of Macchu Picchu. Protesters in Puno set fire to a car with a police officer inside, set fire to the house of a congressman and stormed the airport there, while police used tear gas and live fire against the protesters, according to the Washington Post.
Some groups such as Amnesty International have spoken out against Boluarte’s handling of the protests, singled out the National Police and armed forces for using excessive force against the protesters, most recently on January 11 after at least 17 protesters were killed in the town of Juliaca in the Puno region. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also sent a delegation to Peru on Wednesday to monitor the human rights situation there.
Peru’s Attorney General also launched an investigation into Boluarte and other senior officials, charging them with “genocide, aggravated murder and serious injuries,” Agence France-Presse reported on Tuesday. Castillo on the other hand takes his case on Twitter from his prison cell in Barbadillo Jail.
Peruvian politics has long been in crisis. That will hardly change.
Peru is no stranger to political upheaval; Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s dictator and best-known leader, began his tenure as the democratically elected president. He took power in a way Castillo had attempted in December. Fujimori led Peru from 1990 to 2000, after which he fled to Japan; He is currently in prison for human rights violations committed during his tenure.
No Peruvian president has completed his term since 2016, and Boluarte is unlikely to complete Castillo’s remaining term, which is scheduled to end in 2026. Boluarte has proposed postponing the election to 2024, which Congress agreed to, although protesters have called for new elections for both the presidency and the legislature as soon as possible.
Boluarte has also managed to cobble together support from several small right-wing parties hold the majority – another point of anger for the protesters, who see her moving to the right despite being elected to the left. But lawmakers approved her government on Tuesday, a significant vote of confidence despite the unrest.
What happens next ultimately depends on what happens in Lima, Arce said. And while the protests are violent, dramatic and headline-grabbing, they are concentrated outside the capital. Although the protesters have the support of Peru’s largest trade union federation and its largest indigenous association, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, it will be difficult to keep the momentum going “unless they form coalitions in Lima,” Arce said.
In terms of Peru’s political future, the end of Castillo’s presidency will likely mean the end of the left in Peru for the time being, Arce said. Boluarte’s critics, perhaps rightly, argue that although she was elected with a left-wing candidate, she has swung to the right since taking office and immediately distanced herself from Castillo after his attempted self-coup.
“You can’t really predict things in Peru,” Arce said, “but I think Castillo has in a way delegitimized any meaning of what the left is or should be.”
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