Peru’s embattled President Pedro Castillo has banned residents of the capital Lima from leaving their homes to quell nationwide protests over soaring fuel and fertilizer prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a televised address just before midnight Monday, Castillo announced a curfew from 2 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, claiming the measure would “protect the fundamental rights of all people.”
Castillo said the curfew was in response to “acts of violence caused by certain groups by blocking free transit” on roads in and out of the capital, where about a third of Peru’s 33 million people live.
But the move was widely criticized as excessive and improvised and a sign of Castillo’s increasingly shaky grip on power. In just eight months in office, he has survived two attempts at impeachment and fought his way through four cabinets and an unprecedented number of ministers.
The school teacher from a smallholder family narrowly won the election last year with the backing of the poor rural population. Now many of his former supporters, including farmers and transport workers, are pushing the protests into a second week as the government tries to cut prices.
Peru is not the only South American country where the Ukraine war is having political and social repercussions.
Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies have sought to use the conflict to speed up the passage of highly controversial legislation that would allow commercial mining on tribal lands.
“This crisis between Ukraine and Russia … has presented us with a good opportunity,” Bolsonaro said last month, arguing that potash reserves on protected indigenous lands must be exploited after Russia decided to stop exporting fertilizers badly needed by Brazil’s agricultural sector become to suspend.
Experts reject such logic, noting that only a small part of Brazil’s potash reserves are found under indigenous lands.
“It’s a subterfuge — an apology,” said Márcio Astrini, the executive secretary of Brazil’s climate observatory, a network of environmental groups opposed to the legislation.
“Bolsonaro is taking advantage of a situation to create a fallacious argument and speed up voting on a bill motivated by other interests and involving a desire to take this land from indigenous communities and privatize it,” Astrini added.
Thousands of indigenous activists are gathering in the Brazilian capital this week for a 10-day protest camp aimed in part at persuading congressmen to block mining legislation. “We will not retreat,” said one of its leaders, Sônia Guajajara, on Monday as representatives of 200 of Brazil’s 305 indigenous peoples arrived in Brasília.
Castillo’s curfew in Peru has drawn unfavorable comparisons, as it falls on the 30th anniversary of the infamous “self-coup,” or “auto-golpe,” when now-imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori dissolved Congress, assumed extraordinary powers, and dispatched tanks and soldiers in 1992 on the streets.
Peru’s President Pedro Castillo addresses the nation as he imposes a curfew in the capital Lima. Photo: Jhonel Rodriguez Robles/Peru’s Presidency/ReutersPeru’s human rights ombudsman called on the government to lift the unconstitutional and “completely disproportionate” curfew.
At least four people were killed in the protests, which spread from the rural Andes to the capital. On Monday, protesters burned down toll booths and fought police near Ica, about 300 km south of Lima.
The riots erupted last week when farmers and truck drivers blocked roads into Lima, triggering a surge in food prices. Inflation in Peru hit a 26-year high on Friday, with consumer prices rising 1.48% over the past month. At the weekend, the government responded by attempting to lower fuel prices through tax waivers.
Peru – which imports 1.2 million tonnes of fertilizer annually – has issued a declaration of emergency for its agricultural sector as fertilizer prices have risen from Western sanctions on Russia, a major exporter of soil nutrients.