By Alejandra Garcia on October 13, 2023
Peruvian in the streets call for Boularte, usurper resign
Peru is in the news again. Hundreds of people have returned to the streets against the regime of Dina Boluarte, who is entrenched in the government, does not give in to the demands for early elections, and does not do justice for the deaths left by police brutality during the protests unleashed at the beginning of this year. The panorama is bleak.
But what is happening in Peru, and why? The events of recent months in the Andean nation are a consequence of the acute political crisis that the country has experienced in the last five years, whose origins go back 30 years, with the imposition of the neoliberal model, according to local specialists.
“The opposing sectors -the right wing that has regained power after the fall of Pedro Castillo, and a vast popular movement, without clear political direction and that feels the power usurped by the right-wing- have opposing agendas. While the conservative sector defends the established order, the society wants a change,” explained Nicolás Lynch, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the National University of San Marcos, Lima, Peru.
In an article published by the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, Lynch attributes the consequences of the ongoing crisis to two apparently atypical events in its political evolution. The first one is the triumph of rural teacher and leftist labor activist Pedro Castillo in the 2021 presidential elections. Castillo won by a narrow margin only to fall almost a year and a half later, cornered by the right wing, with Boluarte, his vice president, as the main coup leader.
The second is the emergence of a massive protest movement after the fall of the leftist president, mainly in the southern Andean regions of the country, which condemned the right-wing usurpation of power after losing the last elections on April 11, 2021, more than two years ago.
The protests unleashed after Boluarte’s usurpation kept Peru in turmoil for ten weeks, from December 2022 to February 2023. The people demanded political reforms, the resignation of Boluarte, early elections, and the calling of a referendum for a constituent assembly. The protest faced a brutal crackdown by the State, leaving approximately 60 people dead.
Recently, the movement has regained strength. This Thursday, social organizations called for a new mobilization against the regime, which further deployed more law enforcement agents on the streets despite the bloody precedent.
Jorge Pizarro of the National Assembly of the People informed local media that these restrictive measures “are new acts of government repression” and insisted on the resignation of Boluarte and the closing of the Congress as the main demands of the peaceful demonstration.
The protest included sit-ins in front of the Judicial Power and the Attorney General’s Office to demand justice for January’s victims and reject the judicial persecution against the leaders and citizens who participated in the marches.
For Lynch, the situation in Peru appears trapped. “A president who refuses to resign, despite the dozens of deaths, a Congress that considers, but does not approve the early elections, and a rhetoric in the right-wing political elite and the media, which pretends a war against an “internal enemy” that unleashed the upheaval.”
Boluarte, who is already planning official visits abroad in the midst of popular discontent both in Peru and overseas, seems to have opted to wear down the mobilizations and is reviving her intention to stay until the end of the current government term in July 2026. She insists on the democratic and constitutional nature of her mandate and no longer refers to any transition that would lead to an early election.
What have these months of popular discontent, protests, and death left? An enormous experience of organization of a people that claims for itself the country in which it lives, in rejection of plundering, over exploitation, and racism intensified in the last decades.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English