The political situation in Peru remains uncertain as the new government scrambles to stabilize the country following the arrest of President Pedro Castillo.
Castillo was removed from power after his announcement earlier last year, on December 7th, that he would be dissolving the Peruvian Congress and declaring a state of exception. Considering this a breach of law, Congress invalidated his mandate and Castillo was arrested by security forces. Since then, supporters have been engaging in violent protests.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president of Mexico, together with numerous leftist heads of state on the continent, has come out in support of Castillo, criticizing the U.S. ambassador to Peru for supporting his replacement, Dina Boluarte. Obrador has also offered Castillo’s family political asylum in Mexico.
Prosecutors in Peru are seeking 18 months of preventative detention for Castillo, considering him a flight risk, in anticipation of the ex-president’s trial for rebellion, conspiracy, “abuse of authority” and “perturbation of public calm.” These charges could entail a sentence of more than four years.
The ongoing pro-Castillo protests have led to the death of at least three dozen people, prompting 11 inquiries by the country’s attorney general. In light of this, the new government, led by President Dina Boluarte, has declared a state of emergency, limiting the right to assembly. Several ministers and members of the cabinet, however, have now resigned. Boluarte, who describes her government as transitional, is asking the country’s Congress to hasten to organize new elections. She has also deposed her prime minister, Pedro Angulo, presumably to appease the protestors.
The ideological coordinates of Pedro Castillo can be described as socially conservative state socialism. He has expressed opposition to gay marriage, abortion, and modern gender ideology. Before being elected, when asked whether he would legalize abortion, he answered “absolutely not, we will bring the issue to the assembly, but I am personally not in favor of it.” His answer concerning euthanasia was the same, and, following this, when gay marriage was suggested, he answered that this was “even worse.” In the same interview, he also spoke in favor of defending the family:
The family must be defended in school. To think otherwise is to break the family. As educators, we respect family values and we have to deepen them. We have to go back to school and resume those courses that were taken away from us in favor of other ideals. Civic education, research, political economy, and philosophy must return. Young people will be our priority and they will have all the strength and support of a democratic government.
After winning the elections, Castillo prepared an initiative to suppress all references to gender in governmental-administrative documents. This initiative was still to come into force at the time of his arrest.
Castillo is also connected to native American “indigenismo.” During his inaugural speech, he referred to the Incan Empire and rejected the Spanish Viceregency, in particular defending the historical rebellion of Tupac Amaru II. (As an aside, despite Castillo’s lack of nuance and historical knowledge, any consistent defender of Spain’s Habsburg-era policies would have to agree on the righteousness of Tupac’s struggle and the legitimacy of maintaining or restoring the Incan state, as was the Spanish king Philip II’s intention.) In addition, as a candidate, Castillo proposed pardoning Antauro Humala, a leader of Peru’s so-called ‘Etno-Catarista’—an indigenous ethno-nationalist—movement, imprisoned for his role in an attempted coup d’etat in 2005. Humala was finally released in 2022.
In this respect―and leaving aside his approach to the economy and to the relationship between Congress and the office of the presidency―Castillo represents a different trajectory from Chilean President Gabriel Boric and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, as the latter two can be comfortably situated in what we may call the ‘woke’ Left. Likewise, if we compare Castillo to the new president, Dina Boluarte, we find that the latter is also nominally on the political Left, but is generally socially liberal.
Castillo does not seem to have been properly prepared to manage the country, or to understand the political (and geopolitical) context in which he was acting, with economics as one of the principal areas in which he may have fallen short. It is also true, however, that his managing of the economy was not that of a Hugo Chavez, as has sometimes been suggested―Castillo claimed to guarantee that no expropriations would befall foreign companies investing in Peru.
As for his approach to the powers of the presidency, it appears he had considered resigning before taking the opposite route of dissolving Congress―a lethal error that provided his political enemies with a clear opportunity to replace him. In this regard, some commentators, like the Spanish right-wing political author Cesar Vidal, theorize that Castillo showed himself to be manipulable and that he was encouraged to make this move by advisors who wanted to see him replaced.
Geopolitically, the backing Castillo is receiving from leftist networks associated with Russia (the Foro Sao Paolo and Grupo Puebla) and the U.S. support for Boluarte suggests a proxy struggle between these two powers, but local ideological conflicts do not always display a simple correspondence with international rivalries.
It now remains to be seen whether President Boluarte will be able to stabilize the country in the face of ongoing protests, and what geopolitical consequences the situation in Peru will ultimately have.
