[News] Peru: A Thousand Crises and Pedro Castillo’s ‘Resistance’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Peru: A Thousand Crises and Pedro Castillo’s ‘Resistance’
November 23, 2022-
https://orinocotribune.com/peru-a-thousand-crises-and-pedro-castillos-resistance/
[image: The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo. File photo.]

The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo. File photo.

By Jacqueline Fowks – Nov 18, 2022

The non-stop confrontation between the executive and legislative branches
of Peru, which began in 2016 and has been accentuated since the rural
teacher Pedro Castillo took office as the president, is growing more and
more heated. The powers of the State are busy in their own dispute and, as
a consequence, are neglecting the pressing situations experienced by a good
part of the population. Unrest over the socioeconomic situation is growing
and it is being felt in most regions of the country. During the last few
weeks, the victims of a serious oil spill have held new demonstrations in
front of the offices of Repsol, the president of the Council of Ministers,
and the parliament. At the same time, women from the *ollas comunes*
(community kitchens) marched to the Ministry of Development and Social
Inclusion to demand their inclusion in the budget for 2023. Added to this
situation is the conservative counter-reform in education and social rights
imposed by the parliamentary opposition to Castillo. This opposition is
advised by the most experienced ex-congresspeople of Fujimorism.

The truth is that Peru was knocked out by the pandemic and has still not
managed to get back on its feet. It is, in fact, the country with the
highest number of deaths per million inhabitants in the world due to
COVID-19. But the crisis does not end there: in 2020, 30% of the population
was living below the poverty line, and although it dropped to 25% last
year, informal employment rose to 78% in 2021.

Although at the beginning of Castillo’s government, the then Minister of
Health Hernando Zevallos proposed the integration of public healthcare
services—fragmented and precarious, something that the private health
sector takes advantage of to have more clients, he lasted only six months
in office. The following appointees at the Ministry of Health in these
times have been the product of the quotas of Peru Libre, the party for
which Castillo was a candidate and from which he ended up resigning. The
next two health ministers used the state to do business, not to solve the
problems of healthcare in the state facilities. Castillo, who came to the
presidency offering a Constituent Assembly to declare health and education
as fundamental rights, has not been able to make any progress in this
matter due to the barriers placed by Congress and the mood of rejection
towards a new Constitution by the economic and media elite: they consider
it a step backwards and a way towards “communism.”

It is evident that, in his 15 months of government, Castillo has been
besieged by political opposition, in a process well known in Peru. In the
face of persistent attacks, those who lead the country are unable to manage
the state apparatus due to the pressures imposed by their opponents in
Congress.

Since 2021, Castillo has also faced serious allegations of corruption that
have resulted in six public prosecutor investigations for awarding public
works contracts that favored family and friends in order to collect bribes,
for influence peddling in military promotions, and for concealment and
obstruction of justice. The Peruvian president has three lawyers, but some
ministers act as a lightning rod every time a new indication of illegality
appears in the Lima press. Former Transport Minister Juan Silva and a
nephew of Castillo involved in the rigged bidding scheme have been on the
run since May, and a sister-in-law of the president was in prison for
almost two months while the preliminary investigation was underway to
prevent tampering of evidence, somthing that had already happened in case
of others under investigation.

In this political tangle, the Peruvian state appears inoperative for the
tens of thousands of people affected by the aforementioned oil spills—on
the coast of Lima and in indigenous communities of the Amazon—caused by the
Spanish oil company Repsol and the state-owned PetroPerú, respectively. The
victims are mainly small-scale fishing communities and micro-traders in
seaside resorts and restaurants, most of them informal. Workers linked to
these sectors have not been able to return to their jobs.

In the Amazon, the most serious spills began in 2014 in a 50-year-old
infrastructure: the Norperuvian oil pipeline. Between September and October
this year, there were four new spills in indigenous zones in Loreto and
Amazonas regions: the crude oil contaminates the water of rivers and
lagoons that the people of these regions use for cooking and other
household purposes, and prevents fishing that is their source of their food
and work.

“It is a constant practice of governments not to keep their word,” said
indigenous chief Alfonso López Tejada, president of the Kukama Association
for the Development and Conservation of San Pablo de Tipishca. “The state
should be the guarantor of people’s rights. We do not want to remove a
president, but the state should put in place an intercultural healthcare
system for the peoples affected by the spills. We are not beggars; we are
living with heavy metals in our organs because the water is contaminated.”

The health of the Kukama-Kukamiria people is in danger since the spill of
more than 2,000 barrels of oil in the communities of San Pedro and
Cuninico. Small farmers are also affected by the political instability in
Peru. In 2021, farmers and specialists had warned about fertilizer
shortages that are now being felt acutely due to the war in Ukraine. The
government offered to import fertilizers and deliver it at a fair price to
farmers. However, three international purchase processes were canceled due
to administrative problems and now there is a fourth call.

Castillo’s government has had seven interior ministers in 15 months, as
well as dozens of changes in key ministries. Some of these changes in the
cabinet were due to pressure from the opposition, but many were also
because of his eagerness not to be removed from office due to “permanent
moral incapacity” that Congress has threatened to use it multiple times.
Castillo placed people in ministries who would assure him votes in
Congress. The opposition needs 87 votes to remove him from office, and the
first two attempts were unsuccessful.

This political instability affects the functioning of the state. The state
has to solve urgent problems, such as the increase in the number of deaths
at the hands of hired killers, the extortions by gangs such as the Tren de
Aragua, and the rise in disappearances of women. According to the
Ombudsperson’s Office, between January and August of this year there were
7,762 reports of missing women, of whom less than 50% were found. The
newspaper La República reported that from January to September there were
199 murders at the hands of hired killers in Lima, while in 2021 the total
figure was 219.

The Congress has managed to obstruct the government and, at the same time,
to carry out a counter-reform on social issues. The parliamentary
opposition has retired military officers in its ranks, such as the current
president of Congress, José Daniel Williams Zapata, an army general who
commanded anti-subversive patrols during the years of violence (1980-2000),
and Martha Moyano, a former collaborator of opposition leader Keiko
Fujimori. Both are promoters of the idea that terrorism in Peru was only
carried out by the Maoist group Shining Path, and that the security forces
were peacemakers and saviors of democracy. While 54% of the fatalities
during the internal conflict were the responsibility of the terrorist
actions of the armed guerrilla group, 37% of the dead and disappeared were
the responsibility of security agents, according to the final report of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

At the end of October, Congress approved a regulation for the Ministry of
Education to implement a new “history of terrorism” course on “the
atrocities of the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
(MRTA) due to the alarming lack of knowledge of young people about their
actions.” The bill was proposed by the fujimorista faction in parliament.

The law was approved against the contrary opinion of the National Education
Council, which stated that 75% of the victims belonged to the poorest
sectors of the population and that this showed a disregard for their lives
on the part of the guerrillas and state security agents. Some Peru Libre
congresspeople have united with the parliamentary opposition to carry out
some of the counter-reforms: laws were approved that denaturalize integral
sexual education in schools and enable ultraconservative parents’
associations to change the contents of school books on sexual education or
on the history of the armed conflict in the country. The other setback
promoted by this faction of Peru Libre is to replace the name of the
Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations with the Ministry of the
Family. In the style of the Spanish neo-nazi party Vox and Bolsonaro of
Brazil, the allusion to the family and the defenders of the homeland
weakens human rights and gender equality in the country.

The Congress is also evaluating a charge of treason against Castillo and
his disqualification for five years, due to the answer he gave in January
to CNN when asked if he would allow sea access to Bolivia. The president
answered that he would consult the people on the matter (in a referendum)
and as a consequence a group of conservative lawyers—who in 2021 promoted
the idea that there was electoral fraud—filed the complaint. The approach
is so weak that even several parliamentarians and political analysts who do
not support the president disqualify the complaint for its illegitimacy.
Congress requires a simple majority (65 votes) to approve it, but it will
also have to evaluate the political costs involved in forcing the charge of
treason.

Why in these 16 months of government has Congress not achieved the 87 votes
to remove Castillo from office? One reason is that, although weak, the
alliance of the president with Peru Libre, founded by the self-styled
“Marxist-Leninist” Vladimir Cerrón, still exists. The current Minister of
Health Kelly Portalatino is a congresswoman of Peru Libre, and her
ministry, as well as that of Housing and Transportation, appears to have
become an employment agency for the close associates of the party.

Peru Libre had 37 seats in July 2021, but now has 15 due to an internal
split into two groups: the Bloque Magisterial, made up of 10 former
teachers, colleagues of Castillo in the teachers’ strike of 2017, and Peru
Democrático, headed by six members who also vote in favor of the president.
The president also has some votes from Somos Perú, the party to which the
minister of labor, one of his most loyal supporters, belongs.

The president, in addition, usually invites independent
parliamentarians—those without a party, to travel with him to inaugurate
small infrastructure works in order to make them visible to his
constituents and to secure their votes in this way. In order to armor
himself in the Congress’ war against him, Castillo even appointed some
representatives of the extreme right as ministers, but that did not help to
reduce Congress’ eagerness to remove him from office and only aggravated
his inefficient administration.





*Jacqueline Fowks is a journalist. She has a degree in Communication
Sciences from the University of Lima and a master’s degree in Communication
from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She is currently a
professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.*

(Resumen Latinoamericano – English
<https://resumen-english.org/2022/11/peru-the-thousand-crises-and-pedro-castillos-resistance/>
)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20221123/16dc4238/attachment.htm>