April 12, 2021
Who is Pedro Castillo?
The presidential candidate Pedro Castillo, of the Peru Libre party, assured at the closing of this electoral Sunday that “the change and the struggle have just begun” and reaffirmed his commitment to establish an alliance with “the same and true Peruvian people” to preserve their roots.
The candidate, a teacher and union leader, leads both the vote count published by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) and the polls, which places him with almost total certainty in the second round of elections next June.
Amidst ovations from his followers and shouts of “Pedro Presidente”, Castillo pointed out that “the great alliance to move forward” Peru “is not by obeying programmatic plans, the great alliance has to be made with the same and true Peruvian people”.
Thus, distancing himself from the other candidates well positioned in the preliminary results, the radical right-wingers Keiko Fujimori and Hernando De Soto, the candidate insisted that he will not go to “knock on the doors of those who have closed interests”.
The straw hat candidate
Castillo who has become known by always wearing a straw hat and a pencil puts forward proposals such as closing Congress. He arrived to vote on a mare.
Stealthily, Castillo, 51 years old, burst into the final stretch of the campaign. He is a primary school teacher in the Andean region of Cajamarca, where he is originally from, and gained notoriety starting in 2017, when he led a large national teachers’ strike, which halted classes for three months, to demand salary improvements and the elimination of teachers’ job performance evaluations.
In that great mobilization, Castillo led a dissident faction of the traditional Peruvian Education Workers Union (Sutep). To discredit him, at that time he was accused of having links with the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (Movadef), the political arm of the Shining Path group, something the candidate has always denied.
Castillo began his political career in 2005, when he became a member of the Cajamarca committee of the Perú Possible (PP) party of former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) who, after carrying out a neoliberal government that alienated him from popular support, was arrested in the United States in 2019 on charges of corruption. This is the first time Castillo has aspired to become president.
After canceling his registration from the PP in 2017, Castillo jumped to the Peru Libre movement, led by Vladimir Cerrón, a former regional governor who claims to be a Marxist and Mariateguista and who carries a conviction on charges of corruption. In fact, Cerron was part of Castillo’s ticket as vice-president, until the Special Electoral Jury (JEE) declared his request inadmissible due to the existence of a current sentence against him.
In defense of the founder of his party, the presidential candidate defends that Cerrón “has been condemned, not for corruption but by the corruption”, in tune with his government plan, which states that “corruption is the new State terrorism”.
For a socialist state
Initially, Castillo’s campaign flew below the radar and for months he lagged behind, but his popularity rose in recent weeks, driven by a sector of left-wing voters who did not quite accept Verónika Mendoza, the progressive left-wing candidate presented by the Togethers for Perú bloc.
His radical and popular discourse puts forward proposals such as a “socialist state”, a law that “regulates the media” and raising the education budget from 3.5% to 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP). With this, he would guarantee a better infrastructure, equipment, salary increase for teachers and the creation of the Peru Free of Illiteracy program, which would summon 50,000 young teachers to eradicate illiteracy.
During the electoral campaign, he also warned that if he came to power, the Congress would be closed if it would not accept a Constituent Assembly to replace the 1993 Constitution, which emerged after the “self-coup” of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).
In addition, Castillo promises the formation of a new Constitutional Tribunal elected by the people, in popular consultation, instead of by Congress, because the magistrates “are defending a Constitution that has ended with all rights and with the looting of the country”.
On repeated occasions, he has expressed his opposition to the gender equality approach in education, as well as social rights such as equal marriage between persons of the same sex. On the issue of abortion, he assured that although he does not agree, he would refer it to the Constituent Assembly for it to decide.
The man of the Andean interior
However unorthodox his proposals may be, they served to captivate the rural Andean hinterland of Peru, where his dominance was overwhelming according to the voting figures.
The candidate made an effort during the campaign to highlight his humble and Andean origins, embodied in the symbol of the hat he always wears, with a large brim and made of straw, typical of the peasants of his native Chota, a province in the northern Andes, belonging to the region of Cajamarca.
In his hand he usually carries a giant pencil, which is not only a symbol of his profession but also of the logo of the party he represents. Wearing the hat but without the pencil, Castillo went to vote April 11 in the city of Tacabamba, riding a mare that, in the midst of the crowd of his followers, was on the verge of bolting.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano, translation Resumen English