Rafael López Aliaga during a political event in Peru, February 2, 2023.RR SS
The people of Lima wonder if their city has already become a world power, with this motto Rafael López Aliaga, a ultra-conservative businessman, won the mayoralty of the Peruvian capital. It has been 100 days since the leader of the People’s Renewal Party sat on the municipal council, and his slogan has quickly gone from a firm hope to a warning against him.
His campaign proposals were ambitious. Eliminate tolls, bring potable water to the hills of Lima by installing tanks and pumps on the slopes, allocate 10% of the community budget to common pots, implement a comprehensive garbage and solid waste treatment system, and develop the plan Bukele, in a clear allusion to the President of El Salvador, who consists in fighting crime with drastic means and which López Aliaga sums up in one sentence: “caught woolly (criminal), woolly grid”.
Transportation was one of the mayor’s most important workhorses. At least a third of their approaches to improving Lima are aimed at expanding the Metropolitan’s service. Since 2019, however, the responsible body is not the municipality but the Urban Transport Authority (ATU). The mayor can only propose changes, but not implement them.
There is a big downer about his intention to abolish the toll in Lima, the administration is owned by the company Rutas de Lima SAC, a consortium of the Brazilian Odebrecht. If the contract is terminated unilaterally, the municipality will have to pay the concessionaire an exorbitant payment of 1,500 million soles and also face possible arbitration proceedings. However, the measure has already been approved in a Council Agreement.
“My plan is to have 30,000 Soles tanks on the slopes of the hills and 10,000 Soles bombs. We need to pump clean water for millions of Lima residents,” Rafael López Aliaga reiterated in the first days of his tenure. The measure is necessary at first glance: it is estimated that more than 635,000 citizens (6% of the population) have no access to drinking water. However, it is not feasible, the mayor did not take into account that these are immaterial areas where building is prohibited. Faced with the flooding from Cyclone Yaku and the rainy season, López Aliaga, who had proclaimed himself mayor of the hills, forgot his nickname and promise and said emphatically, “Let’s evict these families immediately.”
For the political scientist José Alejandro Godoy, along with these failed initiatives, one of the characteristics that distinguish the leader of the Renovación Popular is support. “He has asked for vital donations to continue the support program for soup kitchens and other survival mechanisms that have sprung up during the pandemic. He’s looking for that kind of welfare connection where he can make some national income,” he explains. López Aliaga proposed donating 10% of the municipality’s annual budget to the network of common pots, which will benefit 225,000 low-income families. In practice, however, only 6% (80 million soles) could be allocated.
Subscribe to EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe to
After his election, in his speech López Aliaga recalled Luis Castañeda Lossio, the three times elected mayor of Lima and founder of the National Solidarity, a party he inherited and renamed Popular Renovation. “I will justify it to my management,” he said. Castañeda Lossio died last year amid allegations of his corruption ties to Brazilian construction companies Odebrecht and OAS. “López Aliaga tries to be a kind of fourth management of Castañedismo. It has brought former Castañeda officials back into the metropolitan community. There is a very clear line of continuity,” says José Alejandro Godoy.
On January 6th, during the swearing-in ceremony of the mayor of the Miraflores district, Carlos Canales, Rafael López Aliaga made a public application. “Please, Carlos, enough of these museums of memory and reconciliation that have nothing to do with memory and reconciliation. There a narrative is written in which the leaders shamelessly lie and portray the armed forces as aggressors. It must be administered by the armed forces. Tell us the story as it is. Who better to tell us what they suffered,” he said. On March 28, two months later, the Municipality of Miraflores closed down the Place of Remembrance, Tolerance and Social Inclusion (LUM) amid accusations of failing to comply with security measures.
In mid-February, as protests against Dina Boluarte’s government swept to the capital, the businessman, who called himself Porky – a nickname he used to empathize with the electorate – sponsored a local council agreement that the historic center from Lima to a immaterial zone for holding marches, demonstrations and public and political rallies. While for one sector it’s a gimmick against freedom of expression, for its supporters it was an urgent measure to “reclaim” an emblematic area of the city.
In terms of security, one of López Aliaga’s actions is to create a system of reserves of the armed forces that will contribute to crime prevention in places with the highest levels of violence prevention. But no progress has been made yet. What has come to fruition is the signing of an agreement to purchase 10,000 motorcycles and trucks to patrol the city. According to official sources, the agreement should come into force in six months.
Last March, when a large number of families were affected by the arrival of the phenomenon of coastal children, Rafael López Aliaga, when asked about preventive measures against the risk of disasters in the community, made an insulting statement: “On March 1, January entered and there was nothing to prevent. If you find a church that’s bankrupt and has no money, you don’t do anything,” he said. Later, through an investigation by the television portal Epicentro, it became known that he had hired 25 journalists for a new digital channel whose main purpose was to improve his image.
“We must consolidate democracy in our country so that Peru is a world power as it should have always been and not go the way of countries that failed in totally bloody dictatorships like Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua,” he said during its participation in the Madrid Forum, held in Lima at the end of March. Not content with that, he honored MPs Herman Tertsch and Rocío Monasterio from the ultra-conservative Spanish party Vox in the community. He is a mayor with ambitions for national and international exposure. It was not for nothing that he ran for the presidency before taking over the congregational presidency. For now, his constituents continue to wait for his package of proposals.
Subscribe to the EL PAÍS America newsletter here and receive all the latest news from the region