DMCer

Peru President Castillo impeached, arrested

The situation in Peru is such a clusterfuck.

Background:

Pedro Castillo was elected President of Peru in 2021. Peru has been in a political crisis since 2020 or so, and Castillo became the fourth president since then, with many of his voters hoping that he could help solve the crisis.

Castillo was a political outsider who ran with Free Peru, a left-wing party run by the influential politician Vladimir Cerrón, who is basically a socially-conservative Marxist. Castillo was vaguely left-populist and never really shared Cerrón's beliefs, but he and many others ran with Free Peru anyway because it was the most organized leftist force at the time amidst Peru's fractured party system. He very narrowly won the election against a far-right candidate.

Castillo faced immediate opposition from the right-wing congress, whose obstructions basically prevented him from doing anything. Whenever Castillo tried to play to the center, Cerrón would criticize him from the left, and the rift between them grew large enough that Castillo left the party entirely earlier this year. He now had very few allies and tons of enemies.

Peru's political crisis is a mess, and Castillo was both inexperienced and unprepared. His government had struggled to do anything, had lacked any clear direction, and had suffered from constant turnover among cabinet members.

Opinion polls show that Peruvians disapprove of both Castillo and the legislature, but that they dislike the legislature even more than him.

What Happened Yesterday:

The Peruvian legislature was preparing yet another vote to condemn Castillo in an attempt to constitutionally remove him from office. There's been lots of accusations of corruption flung at Castillo by opposition figures, but tbvh I have no idea if these allegations are legitimate, considering how hard they've been going at him from the start it's certainly possible that they're just made up to get rid of him.

In response, Castillo made an announcement that he's dissolving congress, enacting a national curfew, and starting a process to rewrite the Peruvian constitution. Most have called this a "self-coup," when a fairly-elected leader tries to extend their rule beyond what they were elected for. Peru had something similar to this happen in 1992.

Everyone disliked this. Many of Castillo's own ministers resigned; his Vice President Dina Boluarte denounced him; and his declaration was rejected by the legislature, the courts, the police, and the military. He had no one on his side.

78% of congress voted to remove Castillo from office in response. His VP was then sworn in as President, in accordance with the Peruvian constitution. Castillo was arrested.

Reactions among the Latin American left were mixed. AMLO and Evo Morales said that Castillo had been unfairly removed, while Lula and Petro basically said "this whole thing sucks but it sounds like the end result was done constitutionally." Within Peru, Cerrón said he has no sympathy for Castillo, but that he does oppose the US government's statement criticizing Castillo (whatever the fuck that means). There's an activist in Peru I'm loosely acquainted with who helped elect Castillo, and their reaction was basically "fuck Castillo for trying that self-coup, and fuck the legislature for plotting his downfall from the start."

Dina Boluarte- now the fifth president since 2020- was also someone who ran with Free Peru despite disagreeing with Cerrón's ideology, and Cerrón kicked her out of the party earlier this year. This means that her government also lacks any real support, backed neither by her original party nor any of the establishment parties.

Takeaway?

While unquestionably better than his last electoral opponent, it was an open secret that Castillo and his team were unprepared to lead a government. That lack of planning can be dangerous even in calm times, but in a chaotic political crisis like Peru's it was enough to basically stop him from governing at all.

Castillo doesn't strike me as an especially authoritarian type of leader, but I think he realized that the walls were closing in fast on his government and that he had no real escape plan. Still, the self-coup was a moronic choice, and he should have been able to guess that it would fail- he had neither the popular support nor the institutional support to get away with something like this. His move feels more like panic than anything else.

Despite Castillo's vague political ideology and his formal separation from the Marxist party he started with, this fiasco will almost certainly be used to discredit the Peruvian left in future elections. This is particularly damaging considering that "we do actually believe in democracy" has been one of the Peruvian left's strongest arguments against the Peruvian right, which has demonstrated before that they are perfectly fine with a dictatorship.

His replacement, Boluarte, also has very few options for governing. She lacks any major organic base of support, the right-wing opposition in congress is now likely to be even more aggressive, and the chances to resolve the nation's political crisis in a just way are even narrower than they were when Castillo took office.

ok so let me preface this by saying that i'm far from an expert in peruvian politics, but i've been in cusco for the past two months as this all unfolded. i'm avoiding giving my own opinion in favor of relaying the opinions of actual peruvians who i have talked to about this.

so, last presidential election there were two candidates who were in the running: Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori. you may have heard some about this, as Castillo was the left candidate backed largely by rural communities and poor people while Fujimori was the daughter of a previous president/dictator (depending on who you ask) Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori the elder is both beloved and reviled here: beloved by people who say that he helped end the reign of terror of The Shining Path, a terrorist organization that operated here in the 80s and 90s (and still does in a couple isolated pockets but is mostly done now), and reviled by people who say "yeah but he also committed a bunch of political murders himself and was corrupt and sentenced to prison for a reason." his daughter running for president as a far right candidate was complicated here, to say the least.

but she did lose to Castillo, in the end. it was a tremendously close election, though, and Castillo was embattled from the moment he took office. he never got along with his congress, which kept trying to impeach him. he was repeatedly accused of corruption and the like, but his supporters insist that these were lies intended to silence him and force him out. truthfully, i have no idea whether or not that's true.

what is true is that Castillo, staring down the barrel of yet another attempted impeachment, made the decision to dissolve congress instead. this is widely regarded as a bad move on his part, because this is what set this whole crisis off. the military and congress and pretty much everybody else was like "hey dude you can't do that" and congress voted to impeach him, his own government officials resigned en masse, and his VP Dina Boluarte was sworn in. Castillo attempted to flee but has been arrested and is awaiting trial.

so now we get to the protests. there are a number of disparate groups within the protestors themselves, but the protests were ultimately sparked by this event. most of the protestors are Castillo's supporters, who think that he is the rightful president, and that his attempted dissolution of congress was less a coup attempt and more an attempt to stop a legislative coup. there has long been dissatisfaction with congress here, with an abiding belief that is it full of corruption and focused on the needs of the rich and people in lima as opposed to the more rural areas, like ayacucho and urubamba in the cusco region. their demands center around three things: dissolve congress, have new elections, and release Castillo from prison.

so the protests have been going on since earlier this week, though things have calmed down in cusco proper now. but still, i think 12 people have died at my last check of the news. there's also been some looting and such going on, leading Boluarte to declare a state of emergency for the entire country. she's also set a curfew for much of the cusco area, so we aren't allowed out from 8pm-4am. the military has gotten involved in quelling the protests, which some people feel is excessive. the buses are also on strike in cusco, though i think that may be slowly coming to an end.

as for the protestors demands, the dissolution of congress isn't exactly likely and Castillo was just sentenced to wait in prison for 18 months pending his trial, so those demands aren't likely to be met. however, Boluarte has submitted a bill to move elections up to 2024 instead of 2025. the protestors were asking for 2023, so we'll see how they push back on that. but the government wants to open everything up as soon as possible because so much of the peruvian economy runs on tourism, so there's definitely a push to get the protestors to shut up.