On the sixth day of the protests, Lima became a massive exchange of pellets, tear gas, rocks, sticks and paint. The police suspected it and therefore deployed 6,800 agents this Tuesday to guard the center of the capital, the main focus of the mobilizations. There are the presidential palace, the congress, the headquarters of the judiciary and other institutions that the Peruvian protesters no longer believe in. Also early in the morning, a group of tanks reinforced Abancay Avenue, one of the city’s main thoroughfares.
Under the motto “University students from all over Peru, united,” various groups of public university students from the interior of the country, along with the bases of the country’s General Confederation of Workers, gathered at 4 p.m. in Plaza Dos de Mayo Peru (CGTP). After cheering each other on with panpipes and drums, the protest headed toward Congress. All afternoon and until nightfall, clashes erupted in the shreds of Puno, Lampa and Miroquesada, as well as on Emancipation Avenue and San Martín Square.
Unlike in the past few days, the police took tougher action against the demonstrators this time. Proof of this are those wounded with bullets, who have injuries on their legs and even on their faces. The number of people affected cannot yet be specified. “Here, there the fear is over,” they said to themselves to encourage themselves. The block of university students settled in front of the Palace of Justice to give their speeches.
Hours earlier, President Dina Boluarte had called for a “national ceasefire” and apologized to the families of more than 50 people who had died since protests erupted after Pedro Castillo’s failed coup on December 7. The President tried to send a conciliatory signal by assuring that she was “a provincial woman, a victim of hatred and revenge who only wants to work with clean hands without stealing a sun from Peru”. At the same time, however, Boluarte noted that the protests “are instigated by radical groups whose political and economic agenda is based on drug trafficking, illegal mining and smuggling”. He also boasted about the police action in Lima, slipping that the Puno victims died at the hands of a radical sector of the protests, not gunfire from uniformed men.
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