Peruvian in the streets call for Boularte, usurper resign. Photo: Resumen Latinoamericano/File photo.
By Alejandra Garcia – Oct 13, 2023
Peru is in the news again. People have returned to the streets against the regime of Dina Boluarte, who is entrenched in the government and will not give in to the demands for early elections or carry out justice for the deaths of demonstrators at the hands of police during the protests unleashed at the beginning of this year. The outlook 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 over the last five years. The origins of this crises go back 30 years to the imposition of the neoliberal model, according to local analysts.
“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,” explained Nicolás Lynch, senior lecturer in Sociology at the National University of San Marcos, Lima, Peru. “While the conservative sector defends the established order, the society wants a change.”
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 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 about a year and a half later, cornered by the right wing, with Boluarte, his vice president, as the main coup leader.
Democracy vs. Repression — Guess What Ottawa Supports in Peru?
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 10 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 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 legislature and the attorney general’s office to demand justice for January’s victims and express condemnation of the judicial persecution of the leaders and citizens who participated in the marches.
Peruvians Take Over Lima, Continuing to Pressure Boluarte Coup Regime
For Lynch, the situation in Peru appears deadlocked. “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 speaks of 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, overexploitation, and racism intensified in the last decades.
