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November 23, 2022- <a href="https://orinocotribune.com/peru-a-thousand-crises-and-pedro-castillos-resistance/">https://orinocotribune.com/peru-a-thousand-crises-and-pedro-castillos-resistance/</a></span>
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<img src="https://orinocotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Castillo.jpeg" alt="The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo. File photo." class="entered gmail-lazyloaded" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="275">
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<font size="1">The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo. File photo. </font> </p>
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<p>By Jacqueline Fowks – Nov 18, 2022</p>
<p>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.<span id="gmail-more-21962"></span> 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 <em>ollas comunes</em>
(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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>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.</em></p>
<p>(<a href="https://resumen-english.org/2022/11/peru-the-thousand-crises-and-pedro-castillos-resistance/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Resumen Latinoamericano – English</a>)</p></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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