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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://resumen-english.org/2023/12/peru-one-year-after-the-coup-against-pedro-castillo-and-the-shadow-of-fujimoris-liberation/">resumen-english.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Peru: One Year after the Coup against Pedro Castillo and the Shadow of Fujimori’s Liberation</h1>
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<p>By Carmen Parejo Rendón, Resumen Latinoamericano, December 7, 2023</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_25337" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25337" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/12-8.jpg?resize=300%2C212&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="212" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-25337" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Pedro Castillo before the coup</p></div>
<p>On December 7, 2022, the Peruvian Congress debated a new motion of
vacancy against President Pedro Castillo. Subsequently, Castillo, in a
televised message, decreed the dissolution of Parliament, the
establishment of a government of national concentration and called for
new parliamentary elections within nine months.<span id="gmail-more-25336"></span></p>
<p>Following this announcement, several government ministers resigned,
in particular the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Labor and
the Minister of Justice. In turn, Vice-Minister Dina Boluarte also
expressed her opposition to the President’s announcement. The
Constitutional Court and the Armed Forces pronounced themselves aligned
against the popularly elect president.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_25342" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25342" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/12-8-assesina.jpg?resize=293%2C260&ssl=1" alt="" width="293" height="260" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-25342" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Dina Boularte, assassin</p></div>
<p>The Peruvian Congress, with 101 votes in favor, approved the
dismissal of Pedro Castillo under the argument of “moral incapacity”,
and he was subsequently detained by the Police, a situation in which he
remains.</p>
<p>Dina Boluarte, Vice President of the Republic, assumed the interim
presidency of the country, and throughout the following months massive
demonstrations in support of Castillo took place, which were strongly
repressed by the new government, leaving half a hundred dead and many
wounded.</p>
<p>Pedro Castillo’s electoral victory in the general elections of 2021
took place in a context in which, on the one hand, the deep political
crisis of the country was manifesting itself, and on the other hand, the
aggravation of a polarization that combines deeper conjunctures and
structural elements.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_25340" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25340" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/12-8-mafalda-2.jpg?resize=144%2C132&ssl=1" alt="" width="144" height="132" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-25340" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Mafalda</p></div>
<p>Mafalda, the iconic character of the Argentine cartoonist Quino, used
to say that sometimes what is urgent does not leave time for what is
important. In this sense, although the dimensions of Peru’s political
crisis extend to structural dynamics and problems that span several
decades of the country’s history, there are some recent data that
summarize this critical scenario and are fundamental to understand
Peru’s urgencies.</p>
<p>From November 8 to 19, 2020, Peru changed president three times.
Since July 2016 and prior to Castillo’s inauguration, the country had
four presidents, three of them removed from office using the tool of
“vacancy motion”, i.e., by impeachment through a majority of Congress
without going through a citizen vote.</p>
<p>The use and abuse of this tool, which is also the one used against
Pedro Castillo, generated controversy outside and inside the country.
The demonstrations against the role of the Congress and in favor of the
elaboration of a new Constitution were growing during the years prior to
Castillo’s victory. Thus, after winning in the second round, the new
president had a clear mandate: to solve the urgency that the country was
going through and that directly questioned the role that the Parliament
was playing and that made it impossible to govern and, in turn, the
drafting of a new magna carta.</p>
<p>The Castillo scenario</p>
<p>The political reality experienced by the brief government of Pedro
Castillo did not differ greatly from this previous scenario, but rather
increased. The president faced up to three vacancy processes that did
not obtain a sufficient majority in the chamber; and he had serious
problems to legislate due to the continuous boycott of the Congress,
where he did not have a majority; and at the same time, he faced
internal confrontations within the political party Perú Libre, to which
he belonged. Although the president tried, on several occasions, to
ingratiate himself with the other political groups, in the end he did
not obtain the support of either the others or his own.</p>
<p>In the first round of April 11, 2021, no candidate managed to obtain
more than 20% of the votes. Castillo came the closest with 18.9 % of
support. In second place was Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former Peruvian
president Alberto Fujimori, with 13.4 % of the votes. For many
analysts, this scenario showed the evidence of an ever deeper rupture
between the capital oligarchic power represented in Lima, which overcame
the fujimorismo vs. anti-fujimorismo antagonism; and the rest of Peru,
understood as the rural, peasant, indigenous and neglected majority
-using the term of the Nicaraguan revolutionary Augusto C. Sandino- in
their social, economic and political rights, who saw in the rural
teacher the representative of their interests. Since these rural
communities, especially the indigenous ones, were in turn the main
victims of Fujimorism, it is not surprising that they represented and
continue to represent the most solid popular forces of support for Peru
Libre and Pedro Castillo.</p>
<p>Antagonistic visions</p>
<p>This surprise victory revealed two antagonistic positions: the hope
of those who demanded change versus the fear of the others, of those who
felt that a change could take away the privileged position they held.</p>
<p>Beyond the urgent, this victory also opened the way to initiate a
debate on the important: inequality in the country, the divorce between
the rural world and the urban capital world, between the peasant and
indigenous societies and the big families of the country, on the control
of natural resources or on the fair redistribution of the profits from
the export of the multiple raw materials they possess. Among many other
issues that the urgent had been eclipsing or leaving in the background.</p>
<p>Beyond whether or not Pedro Castillo knew how to carry out the
mandate entrusted to him, what is certain is that his brief stint as
President and the way in which he was deposed has served to broaden the
field of vision on the Peruvian reality and conflict.</p>
<p>The present in Peru</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_25341" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-25341" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/12-8-fuji.jpg?resize=213%2C216&ssl=1" alt="" width="213" height="216" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-25341" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Alberto Fujimori</p></div>
<p>On this anniversary of the events that led to the imprisonment of
Pedro Castillo, the country’s current political situation is marked by
the release of former President Fujimori on “humanitarian” grounds,
which has an even greater impact on the symbolic aspect of the social
rupture in the country. On the other hand, the two sectors allied to
Castillo’s dismissal appear to be at loggerheads due to the crossed
accusations between the interim president Dina Boluarte, investigated
for her responsibility in the repression during the protests, and
Patricia Benavides, prosecutor of the Nation, investigated for a
corruption network.</p>
<p>The government of Dina Boluarte, who refuses any kind of electoral
advance, is also questioned for its lack of legitimacy for the position
inside and outside the country, but also for its responsibility for
crimes that may be subject to consideration as crimes against humanity,
as pointed out by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)
in its report entitled ‘Situation of Human Rights in Peru in the context
of social protests’, published last May.</p>
<p>For his part, Castillo defended his release from prison before Peru’s
Constitutional Court on Monday, December 4, assuring that he never
intended to stage a coup d’état, but rather to express a message “of an
unenforceable political nature”, assuring that it was others who had “a
coup prepared for some time” and pointing to Congress, the Attorney
General’s Office and other power groups that, according to the former
president, were responsible for making the country’s governability
unfeasible. Even with several pending cases, Castillo is immersed in a
complex judicial process that may take time, and even if he is finally
acquitted, the political consequences are already irreversible.</p>
<p>The same people who suffered the forced sterilizations of Fujimori,
the theft of babies, the continued plundering of their wealth, the
constant humiliation of institutions they do not trust, repression and
violence, hope and despair, remembered this anniversary by demanding in
the streets of Lima “that they all go away”; or in Tacna and Moquegua,
their rights to water. Finally, the urgent and the important go hand in
hand in the midst of the current Peruvian crossroads.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2023/12/07/peru-a-un-ano-del-golpe-contra-pedro-castillo-y-la-sombra-de-la-liberacion-de-fujimori/">Resumen Latinoamericano – Buenos Aires</a></p>
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