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LIMA, Peru — The political crisis in Peru deepened on Saturday as President Dina Boluarte’s new government teetered on the brink of collapse and protesters across the country refused to back down even as the military declared a state of emergency.
A total of 20 protesters are said to have been killed in clashes with security forces, including eight who were reportedly shot dead by soldiers with live ammunition in the southern mountainous region of Ayacucho on Thursday.
Especially in the impoverished mountain regions of the Andean state, demonstrators have stormed several regional airports, looted shops and blocked roads. Last year, those areas voted heavily for Pedro Castillo, a rural schoolteacher and former Wildcat strike leader who was impeached as president last week after trying to dissolve Congress and restructure the judiciary.
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The violence prompted two ministers to resign from the Boluarte government on Friday. She stepped down from the vice presidency to replace Castillo and was also forced to announce on Saturday that she would replace her current center-right technocratic cabinet.
Two cabinet members resigned after deadly protests over the impeachment and arrest of former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo last week. (Video: Portal)
Meanwhile prosecutors announced investigations into the deaths of protesters, and Peru’s official human rights watchdog called on security forces to ensure officers have “sufficient experience, training and capacity to participate in the control of protests without committing ill-treatment.”
The protesters, who have no clear leader, have a variety of demands ranging from the reinstatement of Castillo as president to the establishment of a Constituent Assembly to restructure the economy in favor of the poor.
The only common denominator is that nearly the entire country — 83 percent of Peruvians — wants snap elections and to get rid of the current, scandal-ridden Congress.
“Castillo is our President, elected by humble, working country people. He represented us. He understood our struggles, our needs,” said Alfonso Nahuinche, 47, a tailor who has taken part in daily protests in the Lake Titicaca city of Puno.
“That’s why they didn’t like him in Lima. I think it was installed by the right, by Congress,” Nahuinche said. “The impeachment wasn’t just a rejection of Castillo. It was also a rejection of us.”
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Conspiracy theories about Castillo have circulated, with Guido Bellido, a congressman and Castillo’s first prime minister, even claiming the former president was drugged when he appeared on TV last week, his hands visibly shaking, to announce that he was leaving Congress would dissolve and would rule by decree.
Nahuinche said: “I think the President was under pressure when he read this statement. You could see he was scared. He wasn’t himself.”
Another protester, Brígida Curo, accused members of Congress of being “coup makers, neoliberals and racists” who cannot tolerate Castillo as president because he is a campesino, which in Peru means someone of indigenous or mixed race who also works Country.
“That’s why we need a constituent assembly,” added Curo, 40, the undersecretary of the Campesino Federation of Puno.
“Evo Morales had a plan in Bolivia,” she said of the socialist former president of Peru’s neighbors. “He brought development. Castillo tried to do the same here. That’s why he had to be stopped.”
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Some of the protests were violent. But many protesters have simply sought to vent their anger at the ouster of a president whose populist promises to eradicate poverty had gained traction, especially in rural areas.
But senior officials, including Boluarte, who hails from the same Free Peru Marxist-Leninist party as Castillo, have dismissed at least some of the demonstrations as “terrorism” — a particularly loaded word in Peru, where conflicts between Maoist insurgents and the state have kept killings scarce 70,000 people.
Eduardo González, a sociologist who advised Peru’s official Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the violence in the 1980s and 1990s, warned that the authorities urgently need to recognize the legitimacy of the protesters’ discontent.
“It’s an armed language. Given our history, labeling protesters ‘terrorists’ takes away their humanity,” González said. “It justifies the use of force against them. We are reaching a polarization from which there is no turning back.”
The chances of a de-escalation appeared to be diminishing on Friday as lawmakers rejected Boluarte’s proposal to hold snap general elections. Congress’ move was widely interpreted in Peru as a desperate attempt by lawmakers to hold on to their well-paying jobs.
Peru’s President Boluarte urged the country’s Congress to hold general elections on December 17. Deadly protests have rocked Peru since their predecessor was overthrown. (Video: Portal)
The push for snap elections was blocked by both the far-right lawmakers who led the push to oust Castillo and their far-right colleagues who still support the former president. This alliance has become a feature of Peruvian politics over the past 17 months as both sides have found common ground in blocking anti-corruption efforts.
The vast majority of Peruvians currently disapprove of Congress, and calls are mounting for Boluarte, whom Castillo supporters see as a “usurper,” to force new elections by resigning. But even that probably wouldn’t calm the unrest.
Under the constitution, she would be replaced by the speaker of Congress, currently Jose Williams, a conservative former general who would be anathema to most protesters. Boluarte’s resignation would also forestall any attempt at political reform to ensure the next election produces more sustainable results.
Congressmen are “more corrupt and mediocre than Pedro Castillo,” newspaper columnist Augusto Álvarez Rodrich wrote on Saturday, warning that their recalcitrance in a society that has become a “powder keg” is tantamount to playing with fire.
“Peru will improve, no one doubts that,” Rodrich wrote. “But first it will get worse.”