Montage showing Peruvian congressmembers celebrating after ousting President Pedro Castillo (left) and people in the streets protesting against the removal of the democratically elected president (right). Photo: Wayka.
By Francesca Emanuele – Dec 20, 2022
Neither the unfulfilled promises, the indications of corruption, nor the coup attempt could make Castillo’s supporters turn their backs on him. Despite the former president no longer representing hope for change, he still symbolizes—perhaps today more than ever—the structural discrimination in Peru.
In Lima, the political, economic, and intellectual elites are intrigued, still searching for an explanation for the large number of Peruvian men and women protesting in demand of freedom for Pedro Castillo. They are even more puzzled by the smaller group demanding the reinstatement of the ousted president.
It is understandable that the ruling classes are disoriented. They have been disconnected from the rest of the country for decades. They are comfortably living in a very visible apartheid Lima, reproducing dynamics that accentuate their inclination to dehumanize the working class and indigenous people of Peru. It is quite evident that they are spectators incapable of interpreting the national reality.
Misrepresentation and insults
Theories such as subversive affiliation, mercenarism, and lack of intellectual capacity have been used by the elites to describe the support for Castillo. “There are people who do not have the correct information,” said the host of Cuarto Poder, one of the Sunday programs that had broadcast the false allegations of electoral fraud last year. The supporters are “terrorists” and “vandals,” claimed various congress-members who promoted unconstitutional laws with the sole aim of reducing the number of votes required to remove the president from office. “They are financed by Congressman Guillermo Bermejo,” suggested the minister of defense, who has deployed the army and redoubled state violence against the protesters. All of the wounded protesters including the 25 compatriots killed by the police belong to the poor, indigenous, or peasant population.
Many of those who support Castillo today lack the pedigree or university degrees of the Sunday program host, the minister, and the anti-democratic congressmembers. However, unlike them, the protesters do understand with scholar-like sophistication that their support for the former president is linked to their personal experience of discrimination and, above all, to their future. To forget that Castillo’s tragic fate is linked to the various forms of racism of which they have been victims would be to deny their own history of oppression. To allow the symbol of “rural teacher elected president” to be crushed would prevent other Peruvians of humble and provincial origin from attempting such a journey. Fear of receiving the same treatment would fuel the absence of politicians of humble and provincial origin. And without them, the goal of breaking Lima’s centralism and the conditions of exclusion that are characteristics of modern Peru would be out of reach.
The prospects of a gray future add to an intense feeling of empathy for the former president. During his short presidency, Castillo was subjected to various forms of racial stigma, triggering a “mirror effect” in his supporters. He was called donkey, “shitty Cholo [indigenous person],” and his wife was shamed for her dress and her way of speaking.
Powerful instruments of persecution
The millions of Peruvians who voted for Castillo naturally saw themselves in him, especially when the opposition repeated the hackneyed tactic of linking him to the ghost of the armed ultra-left movement Shining Path. The popular classes have been cruelly demonized for decades with this fallacious argument. For this very reason, conservative parliamentarians repeated ad nauseam that Castillo was a “communist,” alleging that he was a member of a terrorist organization. It mattered little that the president had distanced himself from a progressive government plan quite early in his presidency, making it clear that he was not even a social democrat. The opposition, in its endless efforts to depose him, organized dozens of protests with titles such as “The Final Battle” or “Terrorism Never Again;” titles that evoked a civil war, an “us against them” rhetoric that reverberated among the marginalized classes. In this chronicle, they were the “them,” the enemy.
The Peruvian justice system played a key role in the campaign against former President Castillo through lawfare, that is, the judicialization of politics. It acted with unusual speed in an uncharacteristic departure from its usual slowness. The behavior of the Attorney General’s Office was particularly reckless. Although it based its actions on legal arguments, its decisions showed evident political overtones. National Prosecutor Patricia Benavides submitted an accusation against Castillo to Congress, setting the first precedent in Peruvian history in which the national prosecutor filed a constitutional complaint against a sitting president. According to Benavides, Castillo was the leader of a “criminal organization” dedicated to manipulating public works contracts and receiving bribes in exchange for appointments in different ministries and in the high command of the National Police. This is what she told all of Peru, in an unusual televised press conference, during which she openly tried to push for the vacancy of the president.
Perhaps the hardest thing to digest for Castillo’s voters was the ridicule that characterized the judicial proceedings. The police, at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, raided the home of Castillo’s sister, without taking into consideration the presence of her elderly mother, who was recuperating from an appendicitis operation. After the traumatic event, she had to be hospitalized. The Government Palace was also raided in an unprecedented occurrence, surpassing the gravity of actions even during administrations that stole tens of millions of dollars from the Peruvian people, such as that of former President Alan García. But perhaps the most shocking act of cruelty was the case that presented Castillo’s daughter as a criminal, demanding two and a half years of preventive detention for her. The images of the young woman imprisoned—without a sentence—appeared all over the media, sending an unequivocal message of humiliation.
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Every week, news that degraded more and more the legitimacy of the president would appear. The news ranged from the symbolic, such as an officer disrespecting him by snatching a sword during a military ceremony, to offenses that directly affected his presidential functions. The Congress pioneered an initiative to hinder the president from exercising the fundamental task of representing the State abroad, voting to prevent him from attending the inauguration of Gustavo Petro in Colombia. However, this became a habit: permission for two other trips were soon after rejected. The last congressional veto caused the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to cancel the Pacific Alliance summit in protest. Everything pointed to the fact that the congressional opposition was willing to alter the balance of powers or pass illegal laws to subordinate the presidency, until the opposition finally succeeded in overthrowing him. And when it triumphed, its members, full of jubilation, immortalized with group selfies the moment for which they had worked so deviously for 17 months.
Resistance and conviction
In the eyes of Castillo’s supporters, this victorious celebration, the constant insults, the obstruction of presidential functions, and the abusive ways of applying legal procedures show that Peru is stuck in an oligarchic past. There is a ruling class that objects to the possibility of representation of the impoverished classes in the highest spheres of power. Even if they reach those places of power, they will still be treated as inferior beings.
Today the Peruvian justice system and Congress continue to enable this feeling of contempt by using their legal tools arbitrarily. For them, Castillo sought to “disrupt democracy” by announcing a coup against Congress, but the supposedly democratic institutions violated legal norms in order to sanction him. The Congress stripped him of his immunity in a hurried process, without the right to defense. The judiciary keeps him imprisoned under charges that are inapplicable to his attempted “coup.” One of those charges is rebellion, for which not even the former dictator Alberto Fujimori, who consummated his dictatorship with tanks in the streets, was tried.
Reviewing recent history is enough to understand why tens of thousands of Peruvians, despite the illusions they once placed in Castillo having been extinguished, are still by his side. The feelings of racist injustice that oblige them to identify with Castillo’s passage through the presidency—and his current illegal imprisonment—add to a feeling of orphanhood brought about by structures of political representation from which they are excluded. They look around and only find institutions controlled by authorities who despise them and who today are willing to kill them to maintain the status quo. The inability of the elites to understand this reality only corroborates the legitimacy of the protesters’ demands. Perhaps it is too much to ask that the architects of this tragedy stop misunderstanding the people.
Francesca Emanuele holds a degree in Sociology from the Complutense University of Madrid, and a master’s degree in Public and Social Policy from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. She is currently a research and teaching assistant at the American University in Washington, DC, where she is a doctoral student in Anthropology. Her articles on political analysis have appeared in national and international media. In recent years she was Telesur’s correspondent in the United States, and previously worked as a researcher at Cooperativa Indaga based in Madrid. Since her childhood and adolescence, spent in the city of Ica, Peru, her interest continues to focus on major issues of social justice.
(Wayka)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/KZ
