Protesters march in Lima in December 2022. Photo: MayimbĂş/Wikimedia Commons.
By Clau O’Brien Moscoso – Dec 6, 2023
Tomorrow, December 7th, 2023, marks the one-year anniversary of the US backed right-wing parliamentary coup that ousted democratically elected president Pedro Castillo Terrones. The past 364 days have been some of the bloodiest, most repressive, and tumultuous in recent Peruvian history and the blood continues to be spilled. The US-backed Boluarte regime, led by the Fujimorista right-wing Congress, now has the blood of over 100 martyrs on its hands, with thousands severely injured, imprisoned, and tortured, and many more disappeared. There has yet to be justice in any of these cases as the prosecutor’s office becomes mired in corruption charges and telenovela-styled backstabbing between the executive power, the judicial powers, and members of Congress.
The coup regime seems to be on fragile footing, but will the mobilized masses on the ground be able to materialize and overthrow this dictatorship while navigating contradictions and opportunism? And will national and international legal systems hold any weight under a US/Western-backed regime? The people who have been in the struggle this past year say this process of grand transformation, of an anti-colonial national liberation character that goes beyond a president and to the very foundation of a people’s government, continues on despite political theater that amounts to a smoke screen to allow for what many fear is the escape of individuals in the coup regime from the country, especially Dina Boluarte, Alberto Otárola, Patricia Benavides or even Keiko Fujimori. Perhaps the most fundamental of the demands this past year has been the popular constituent assembly to nationalize and industrialize natural resources for the benefit of the largely indigenous, agricultural workers of the Andes and the poor, precarious class in urban areas. Throughout the country the riches of the lands are in the hands of a few in Miraflores, San Isidro, La Molina, and other wealthy areas of Lima, where the diplomats of the countries running Peru reside, and where the heads of the wealthiest companies who don’t pay their workers a living wage or even taxes live comfortably.
Sunday, December 3rd was the start of the agricultural strike in Barrio Chino, Ica, where agricultural workers and others began the week-long activities of struggle at the start of the anniversary of the coup. Roadblocks on the PanAmericana Sur began early in the morning and confrontations with armed forces escalated quickly. According to sources on the ground, at least one person has been killed and two injured. Ica also faced heavy state repression since the early days of the coup regime as one of the first regions to militantly stand against the regime, with political prisoners still behind bars.
The next day, December 4th was the public hearing for multiple habeas corpus lawsuits filed on behalf of Pedro Castillo, still in pre-trial detention, in the Constitutional Tribunal (TC). From Penal Barbadillo, accompanied by one of his lawyers Wilfredo Robles, Castillo stated,
“They have arrested me and violated my rights. This was ordered by the Prosecutor of the Nation, who today is revealed as the leader of a criminal organization, in coordination with senior officials of the Peruvian National Police (PNP) and some congressmen. All this in order to overthrow my government because I do not belong to this elite and they do not agree with my origins”
Supporters of Pedro Castillo camped outside the TC as they waited to hear from the president’s lawyers. Among the arguments given by the defense was that the impeachment process violated the Constitution, and that Castillo’s habeas corpus rights have been trampled on since December 7th, 2022. Former Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma stated on social media that there was an elaborate congressional-prosecutor-military-police plot against Castillo, as in Bolivia in 2019, with Washington and SOUTHCOM pulling the strings.
Official days of struggle have been declared for December 7th, 8th, and 9th both in Lima and throughout the 25 regions of the country, also in the backdrop of the habeas corpus case and ongoing Palestinian solidarity mobilizations. Peruvians in the international diaspora also plan on holding rallies outside embassies and consulates, as well as webinars and public forums to educate and a Palestinian solidarity vigil in Washington Square Park, New York City to honor the over 100 martyrs of Peru and the over 20,000 Palestinian martyrs in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. As peoples who have shared paths that predate the Zionist entity, as seen in the Cristo Blanco statue in Cusco that “shows Jesus Christ with open arms towards the city and was erected in 1945 as a gift to the city from the Palestinian Arab Community residing in Cusco.” Marches and mobilizations in Lima, Cusco, and other locations were led by associations and collectives of Palestinian Peruvians and those in solidarity with the Palestinian cause, including at the Cristo Blanco statue, indignant over the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign, as well as the Boluarte regime’s purchase of Israeli firearms.
Those on the ground in the struggle throughout the 25 regions and in the over 50 languages in our plurinational country understand it is a protracted struggle, but the contradictions can only fall under their own weight and soon the masses will come back to power. The task is building bases barrio by barrio, region by region to construct a true Zone of Peace in Peru, one that rejects US and Western imperialism and neocolonialism that has kept our people under the boot of the Monroe Doctrine. On the 200th anniversary of this Yankee imposed doctrine that has manifested itself through our lands in gruesome ways, the sovereign peoples demand a true and just Zone of Peace in Peru and in Nuestra América, our America.
Clau O'Brien Moscoso
Clau O’Brien Moscoso is an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace in the Haiti/Americas Team. Originally from Barrios Altos, Lima, Peru, she grew up in New Jersey, USA, and now lives between both countries.
