Peru is on fire. In December 2022 democratically-elected President Pedro Castillo was arrested and faces 18 months in prison awaiting trial. Sustained protests have been met with brutal state repression. As we go to press, at least 63 people have been killed, almost all of them protesters, some as young as 15. Police and army have swarmed the streets, raiding the offices of social and trade unions and arresting their leaders. The military has marched through impoverished Andean towns, firing live rounds, going door to door and ransacking homes. 16 protesters were massacred in just one day in Juliaca, prompting a day of mourning in the southeastern region of Puno. One policeman was also killed. 500 troops have been sent into Puno to enforce a strict curfew. Tens of thousands of indigenous and poor people have since descended from the Andes to march on the Peruvian capital Lima, bringing the resistance to the seat of power and forcing the deeply unpopular stand-in president, Dina Boluarte, to appeal in vain for ‘a national truce’. SAM McGILL reports.
Castillo, a rural teacher and strike leader, was elected in 2021 promising to convoke a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution and declare health and education as fundamental rights. To contest the July 2021 presidential election, he teamed up with the socialist Peru Libre party which won 15 seats in Congress. Castillo faced a relentless campaign of obstructionism and ‘law-fare’. Right-wing forces dominate the 130-seat Congress. They are led by Popular Force, the party of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, his son Kenji, a powerful congressman, and his daughter Keiko, who was narrowly defeated by Castillo in 2021. Under Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), at least 30,000 indigenous people were forcibly sterilised and tens of thousands of people were ‘disappeared’ by US-trained security forces. Fujimori fled to Japan in 2000 amidst corruption charges, before being arrested and imprisoned for crimes against humanity; nevertheless, Fujimorism remains strong, counting on support from the press, business confederations, military, police, judiciary and of course the US. Aghast at the prospect of a rural teacher from an indigenous area assuming the presidency, these right-wing sectors pledged to make Castillo’s term untenable.
The challenges of the electoral path
This crisis illustrates the challenges of attempting to effect social change through the electoral path in Latin America. In an unrelenting game of parliamentary chess, even non-contentious measures from a president whose platform was far from socialist were vehemently opposed, ridiculed or portrayed as a ‘communist plot’. In his 495 days in office, Castillo appointed 78 ministers as Congress launched fictitious corruption allegations, smear campaigns and impeachment attempts against ministers who dared to suggest anything remotely radical. This left Castillo shuffling his cabinet almost constantly, sacrificing his pawns and castles alike. Attempts to appease the right-wing Congress and appoint pro-business ministers only resulted in emboldening the right wing in its impeachment attempts. Congress repeatedly used an article in the constitution that enables the removal of a president if 100 Congress members judge them ‘morally incapacitated’, a deliberately vague term providing an excuse for riding roughshod over the popular vote. On 6 October, Castillo requested the resignation of Prime Minister Guido Bellido, a leading Peru Libre politician, following a backlash against proposals to nationalise Peru’s gas. In response Peru Libre broke with Castillo and forced him out of the party. Increasingly isolated, Castillo was a sitting duck, resorting to futile appeals to the Organisation for American States (OAS) to settle the conflict, apparently believing the US-dominated and profoundly reactionary grouping could act in a progressive way.
Having survived two impeachment attempts and facing a third, in a final gambit on 7 December, Castillo invoked constitutional article 134 to temporarily suspend parliament and organise new congressional elections. In his televised message, Castillo accused Congress of representing ‘racist and elitist interests’, creating ‘chaos in order to control the government, bypassing the popular will and constitutional order’. Congress, backed by the military, police and judiciary, ignored its dissolution and immediately moved to arrest Castillo. The OAS, taking its cue from the US State Department, dutifully supported his impeachment. Checkmate.
US backing
Dina Boluarte, Castillo’s former vice-president, stabbed him in the back, accusing him of ‘perpetrating the breakdown of the constitutional order’ and executing a ‘coup d’état’. She was rewarded by being handed the presidency, becoming the first woman in Peru’s history to hold the office. Her government has deployed the military to enforce a state of emergency, shooting protesters in the head at close range, firing teargas and bullets from helicopters. Though she is entirely disposable for the right-wing Congress, Boluarte has attempted to cement her position through overtures to the US, whose ambassador, Lisa Kenna, met with defence minister General Bobbio Rosas the day before the coup. Accordingly, the US State Department declared it looked forward to ‘working closely with President Boluarte on shared goals and values related to democracy, human rights, security, anti-corruption, and economic prosperity’. No concern then with the shooting of protesters demanding democracy in the streets, despite the UN releasing a report condemning ‘excessive’ violence against children and adolescents. Eyes on the prize, Kenna, a former CIA agent, has now met with Peru’s mining and energy ministers. With Machiavellian precision, the coup was planned, orchestrated and executed by the US state department hand-in-glove with the Peruvian elite.
Peruvian masses revolt
However, the ruling class of Peru had reckoned without the scale of the rebellion of the working class and poor. Demanding Boluarte’s resignation, immediate elections, a Constituent Assembly and freedom for Castillo, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets, both in the capital Lima and in the rural and mountainous strongholds of Peru’s majority indigenous communities. Activists have blockaded highways and rail networks, setting fire to police stations. Stranded tourists had to be air-lifted from the iconic Machu Picchu Inca citadel, now closed for the foreseeable future. Three airports were occupied and closed for at least a week; more than two thousand people occupied the terminal in Arequipa, the country’s second-largest city. After a short pause for new year, protests are growing in the face of harsh repression. The CGTP general confederation of workers has begun a national strike. Social movements have repeatedly marched en masse on Lima, mobilising thousands of indigenous and poor from the mountainous regions. University students have welcomed the marchers, resisting raids on campus as police storm their gates with armoured vehicles.
The socio-economic situation is driving radical action. Peru is the world’s second-largest copper producer, with large gold, silver, and zinc reserves. Britain’s Anglo-American is the biggest corporate investor whilst mining giants Glencore, BHP, MMG and Rio Tinto follow closely behind. Peru has major reserves of liquefied natural gas (LNG); Europe, with Britain and Spain dominating, became top importer of Peru’s LNG in 2022 as countries scrambled to reduce dependence on Russia. A consortium of private companies including Britain’s Shell PLC oversee these exports, raking in the profits. In stark contrast, 30% of the population was living below the poverty line in 2020, and informal employment rose to 78% in 2021. Castillo himself was Peru’s sixth president in just six years – his narrow election victory over Keiko Fujimori came on the back of a social uprising that saw tens of thousands take to the streets to mobilise against poverty and inequality. It is these sectors that could have been mobilised through the convoking of a Constituent Assembly, a foundational step towards participatory democracy which proved central to revolutionary movements in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador in the 2000s. It is these sectors that could have exerted mass pressure in support of much needed reforms to health and education, or to nationalise gas and minerals. Instead, Castillo demobilised his working class, poor and indigenous supporters after his election – even unleashing police against protesters in conflict with MMG at Las Bambas mine. Now these forces are on the streets once again. It has become crystal clear their needs will not be met through any combination of fractured parties in the viciously right-wing Congress. Proving the point, Boularte has dismissed 312 councillors across 23 regions, for their alleged participation in popular protests. This crisis demands revolutionary change.
A grim reminder
Peru serves as a grave warning for the new wave of left-wing governments challenging imperialism across Latin America. The coup against Castillo was not the first case of ‘law-fare’, a relentless and systematic strategy, throwing continuous allegations at a president to prepare the ground for impeachment. The same tactic was employed against Honduras’s Manuel Zelaya in 2009, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo and Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales in 2019. The script may be different but the plot remains the same – utilising all the traps and trimmings of bourgeois democracy to hamstring any attempts to pursue radical change through parliamentary means. No matter that the charges are later proved baseless, the damage has already been done. In the case of Brazil’s Lula in 2018 and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez Kirchner in 2022, law-fare has even been used to block a progressive candidate from standing for election.
In a candid interview with the right-wing news outlet Semana, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first left-wing president, recognised the dangers, admitting that a similar constitutional coup could be enacted against all left-wing governments across the region, including his own. ‘The message is clear: What they can’t win at the ballot box, they are trying to overthrow…When they overthrew Allende [Chile 1973], a president elected by the people, what followed in Latin America? Dictatorships followed. Millions of people exiled, the democratic pact was broken. There was nothing but violence. Now years have passed, now once again the people are electing their leaders, for better or for worse, but it is the people electing their leaders. Why are they overthrowing them? Because the Latin American oligarchy doesn’t want progressivism…This leads to levels of serious violence if we are not able to respond, we are already seeing it’.
Latin American left-wing leaders have condemned the coup. Mexican President Lopez Obrador offered Castillo political asylum, an offer taken up by his immediate family. Fourteen nations in Latin America and the Caribbean expressed their support for Castillo. Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Bolivia released a joint statement rejecting the coup and making clear their continued recognition of Castillo as democratically-elected President of Peru. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), founded by Cuba and Venezuela, released a similar statement. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, himself the target of numerous coup attempts, declared: ‘All the circumstances that we have seen result from the oligarchic elites who don’t allow a humble teacher to rise to the presidency of Peru and try to govern for the people…this is a message that the extreme right is sending to the popular and progressive movements: “We are not going to let them govern”.’
This is the quandary confronting the left in Latin America. Having won a degree of political power through elections, winning presidencies and forming radical coalitions – these victories quickly come up against the constraints of bourgeois capitalist democracy, geared to restrain and frustrate significant social change. Facing parliaments and courts dominated by right-wing stalwarts, these governments can quickly be neutralised and their leaders removed from political power. As imperialists finesse their methods, funding destabilisation and coup attempts, the only protection is the mobilisation of the working class and poor – organised and armed when necessary. It was the poor and indigenous who forced early elections in Bolivia and returned the Movement towards Socialism to power in Bolivia in 2020, defeating the coup government. It was the poor and working class in Venezuela that rolled back the coup against President Hugo Chavez in 2002, coming down from the barrios on the hillsides to surround the presidential palace, prompting rank-and-file soldiers to defy orders. Whether the class forces are currently strong enough in Peru to defeat Fujimorism and the right-wing Congress remains to be seen. Everything is to play for – the inequality and poverty driving Peru’s resistance is not going away.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 292, February/March 2023
