The arrest of Peru’s leftist President Pedro Castillo represents the latest and most serious twist in the country’s on-going systemic political crisis, says Peruvian Ph.D. student and columnist Francesca Emanuele.

Transcript

Greg Wilpert

Hi, I’m Greg Wilpert. In a whirlwind of events that shocked the South American nation of Peru, the country’s leftist president, Pedro Castillo, was impeached and arrested on Wednesday, December 7. Shortly before his arrest, Castillo was already facing a third impeachment proceeding, which he tried to preempt by dissolving Congress. However, lawmakers beat him to the punch when they quickly voted to remove him from office in a vote of 101 to six with ten abstentions. Also, members of his own cabinet and other allies denounced his plan to dissolve Congress. Shortly after the impeachment, Peru’s Vice President Dina Boluarte was sworn into office. She’s from the same political party as Castillo, the Liberal Party, and briefly served in his cabinet. Peru thus now has its 6th president in four years. Castillo himself was elected only a year and a half ago, narrowly defeating the far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of Peru’s former right-wing dictator Alberto Fujimori. What now for Peru? Joining me to discuss this is Francesca Emmanuel. She is a Peruvian Ph.D. student in anthropology at American University and is also a columnist for the Peruvian news outlet Wayka. Thanks for joining me again, Francesca.

Francesca Emanuele

Thank you. Greg for inviting me.

Greg Wilpert

So what do you think does Castillo’s removal from office mean for Peru?

Francesca Emanuele

So this situation in Peru is a tragedy. It’s a catastrophe for Peruvians and it’s heartbreaking for me. Democracy hasn’t triumphed. Democracy has not triumphed, as most of the media outlets said today in their headlines in Peru. And how many of the experts in Peru said also today Peru elected leftist president Pedro Castillo a year and a half ago, a president that was coming from the working classes. It was the first leftist president elected in our history since we became a republic 200 years ago. He offered a big transformation in our country. He offered to reduce poverty, to reduce inequality, to give voices to the populations that have been for decades marginalized in my country. And now that president now is arrested, is detained, and we have a new president, Dina Boluarte, who we barely know. She was vice president with Pedro Castillo. She ran with him on the same ticket, under the same party. But the truth is that in the past year and a half, she was appointed as the Minister for Inclusion ministry that is very coveted because he has a big budget. But she didn’t do much with that big budget. She could have implemented several progressive policies, but what she did is that she implemented the same policies that she inherited from previous administrations.

In this year and a half, she hasn’t shown her voice, and now she is our president. On the other hand, we have a Congress in Peru that has been trying to impeach Castillo since the first day he was elected, not even since the first day he became president. And this Congress that is captured by right wing forces, by fascist groups, many of them related with the Fujimori Party was celebrating yesterday when the impeach against Castillo took place. I have in my head this image of them taking sulfates chanting, saying that democracy has triumph, when they were the ones who were okay with bending democracy. When Castillo was elected, they were pushing to flip the results of the elections to get rid of him. So that’s a tragedy because they are seeing this as a victory for them. We have to see this situation within a big perspective. We in Peru are going through a huge, deep political crisis that has been going on for years. Just to give you an example, since 2018, when our former president elected, Pedro Pablo Kuchinski, resigned, we have had six different precedents just in four years, six different presidents.

Plus we have several new parties that come and go in this Congress. Eight parties were elected to this Congress, and now we have 14 different political groups because many members of these different parties resigned from the party because they are not committed with these parties, that many of them were created by businessmen who were trying to get a party in Congress to protect their interests. So as I said before, we are going through a systemic political crisis, and this is not by any means a good moment for us Peruvians.

Greg Wilpert

Now, let’s look back a little bit. As I mentioned, Castillo himself was elected a year and a half ago and has faced now three impeachment efforts, the last one being successful. Now, what was going on during his presidency? Why was there so much turmoil? And was he able to achieve anything at all?

Francesca Emanuele

So I have to say that the situation in Peru is complex and we shouldn’t see it from a perspective, reading it as it was black and white. Castillo was a popular president. As I said, his platform was a leftist platform. But as soon as he became president, he decided not to fulfill those promises that people supported and voted for. He was surrounded by his friends from his hometown, many of them with no political background, who just entered his cabinet or his group of advisors, just thinking on what they could get in terms of money for them, in terms of public contracts. He also was getting involved with dubious figures from the traditional right-wing politics, even people who were connected with the Fujimori Party. As you mentioned, the opposing candidate in the presidency, in the elections for the presidency, was Keiko Fujimori. And actually these figures were the ones who were trying to impeach him. But even though he was getting close to them in many situations and he didn’t implement any of the progressive policies he said he would do, not even the ones related to education. He was a teacher, and he said that one of his priorities was going to be education.

And in Peru, children’s were the least to come back to schools in the whole region. He also said that it was going to pass a tax reform and he didn’t even supported that. So there were I think people in Peru and I’m including those people, feel betrayed by Castillo and that’s a real shame not only for the country but also for the left in Peru that rallied behind him and ended up being feeling that he betrayed them too. And now they feel that there is little room for them to get together and organize again. And also many groups in Peru, many people who are not connected to politics are blaming the left for this failure in terms of policy. So it’s a hard situation for the left as well.

Greg Wilpert

Now what about the process by which he was removed from office? I mean many people on the left particularly have been criticizing this basically as another coup. The question is though, was Castillo allowed to dissolve Congress which was the reason that was given for his impeachment and then was the impeachment itself correct? What do you think?

Francesca Emanuele

According to the constitution of Peru that passed during the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori and I think that is the source of many of our political problems that we have right now. According to that constitution. There is an article 134 article that says that the president can dissolve Congress if there are two no confidence votes and Castillo didn’t even have one. So he dissolving Congress was an unlawful move.

And that’s why very quickly many members of his cabinet said that they were not supporting it. Very quickly many figures from the left or honest figures were condemned in it. So he didn’t have any political, actually any legal basis to do it. He probably had, he thought, many political basis to do it, but the truth is that his strategy was terrible. The army or the military were not on the streets. The army didn’t support him. And he ended up being arrested in 2 hours after announcing that he was going to dissolve Congress and he was impeached also within 2 hours. And now he’s still arrested and he was able to reach the Mexican embassy where he was going to get political asylum.

Greg Wilpert

Now what about the new president, Dina Boluarte? You said earlier that we know very little about her. What do we know?

Francesca Emanuele

Well, we know that she has no much political background. She ran for two positions as mayor in a district of Lima with the Pedro Liberty Party, the party of Pedro Castillo and she didn’t win. So this is the first position she has, political position. She is a lawyer and she was kicked out from her party this year in January from the Pedro Liberal party. So she is becoming a president with no party, no base and as I said before, we haven’t heard of what her ideas are. That’s very useful and beneficial for the right wing forces, for the ruling class because he can be even more docile to whatever they want. And the difference between her and Castillo is that she was unofficial, she was working for the Registry of IDs for 17 years. So let’s say that she has a better way of communicating with the media that Castillo didn’t have and that brings more formality to her position but and probably brings more stability. She I don’t think she brings this group of people that Castillo brought to palace that were asking for favors from Castillo. But at the same time it’s a huge disappointment because we can’t expect, it’s unlikely to expect any progressive government that come from her.

I just saw minutes ago that she was having meetings with the right wing forces, the same forces that were trying to oust Castillo from the beginning, Fujimori people. And she was super happy about it. She will likely appoint technocrats or members from these parties in order to continue in the presidency until 2026. And I’m sure that if she tries to do something progressive, the right wing forces within Congress will try to oust her. There are groups from the far right that are already organizing protests against her but I feel that many members in Congress are quite happy with her.

Greg Wilpert

Yeah, I understand that she argued that she wants to create some kind of a national unity government or something like that and unite Peru opposing forces and so on. What are the main political forces at the moment in Peru? That would be the main players.

Francesca Emanuele

The right wing forces because unfortunately only two parties left, his parties entered Congress and one is Peruvian party that was fragmented three times. They started with 30 something congressmen and congresswoman and now they only have 15. And they haven’t pushed for progressive policies, unfortunately. And the other party was puntos Burnt Peru, which was a coalition that now doesn’t exist at all outside Congress in the political realm in Peru there are no leftist parties at this point that have credentials to run in any soon elections. People in Peru, people from the left are demanding general elections and it’s a fair demand because what we have right now in Congress, it’s a fascist congress, a congress that didn’t care about trying to bend democracy, that used several racist phrases against Castillo and against the working class people in Peru. And that’s a fair demand. But the problem is that if there are general elections tomorrow, the truth right now is that there is no even one party. If you put aside Peru Library that I don’t consider is a leftist party that keeps running those elections so you could end up having more Fujimori people or group that is called Etnocaceristas that is run led by Antauro Humala far right, I would say with some populist, even though I don’t like to use those words lines.

But a person who says that every person who has committed case corruption has should be killed, that he wants to reimpose the death penalty, who wants to persecute LGBTQ people. So very likely, even though he doesn’t have a party, he will find a shelf party or sorry, a shell party to run. And that could be the future. If we have general elections tomorrow, having.

Greg Wilpert

New elections will not really be a solution or will not come with a positive result, at least for the left. Why is it that so many Peruvians apparently are supporting the right? What’s your analysis of that?

Francesca Emanuele

Supporting the right? I think that many Peruvians are not supporting the right. I think that you have a concentrated monopolized media that makes the public believe that there are many Peruvians that support the right. But I think that’s why Castillo won, because working class people were against the right. The truth is that the right has a lot of power in Peru. Since the presidency of Alberto Fujimori, he transformed the political system, the party system, the labor system in Peru in a way that they were able to capture all institutions. Working class people in Peru want to improve their conditions. And for example, this figure I told you about, Antauro Humala, many of the proposals is to increase, decreasing inequalities like give voice to working class people and indigenous people. At the same time, he’s very conservative and I would say fascist. So there’s a complex situation. And unfortunately, because Castillo didn’t fulfill his promises, now there are some process that or some people on the streets defending him, but not enough with his presidency that supposedly was a leftist presidency. They left kind of dissolved, because at the end of the day, even though many of us saw many bad movements or bad decisions by him, we decided not to criticize him so much because he was from the left.

And if we were criticizing him, that meant that we were aligning with the right wing forces that wanted to ousted. So that was not beneficial for the left because during this year and a half we’ve been just kind of defending Castillo from these racist and attempts to oust him and not focusing and debating real reforms and political issues that we could implement in our government or we could also include in a potential constitution that we need. Because the truth is that if someone needs a constitution, it’s Peru. That’s the source of our political crisis right now. But at this moment, the left hasn’t been debating what are those issues that we want to include in the constitution because we have been trapped in this situation supporting Castillo and at the same time rejecting the right wing forces.

Greg Wilpert

Now, finally, I want to turn to the international context. There was an OAS [Organization of American States] emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Peru. What has been the role of the OAS and also of the United States and all of this.

Francesca Emanuele

So the OAS, and this is another tragedy, the OAS helped Castillo. Just to give you an example, a few weeks ago, three weeks ago, there was going to be there was going to happen an impeachment vote against Castillo. And the OAS moved quickly and they organized a high level delegation that was sent to Peru to analyze the situation and that gave oxygen to the government of Castillo. [OAS Sec. Gen.] Almagro was talking about putting together a group to bolster dialogue between the different political forces and between Congress and the executive branch. And Castillo, instead of getting close to the leftist governments in the region, what he did right two months after he was elected, he came here to Washington DC. Right after he went to La Salle when many progressive governments were criticizing the OAS and his role in the coup in Bolivia in 2019. So right after Castillo met with this leftist governments in Mexico, he came here to Washington to meet with Almagro. And that relationship continued. Peru financed the General Assembly of the OAS in Lima a few months ago and asked the OAS to send a mission to investigate corruption. He was very close to the OAS, and I don’t think that Almagro did it because he really believed in Castillo.

It’s just he saw in Castillo an opportunity to whitewash, to bring better credentials to his tarnish image after bolstering a coup in Bolivia. And he saw him as a docile figure that he could manipulate. As soon as Castillo committed this stupidity of dissolving Congress, the United States said that they were condemned in this and the OAS said the same. And now they are very happy with the new president, Dina Boluarte.

Greg Wilpert

Okay, wow. Well, we’ll probably come back again and see how things developed, but we’ll leave it there. I was speaking to Francesca Emmanuel Peruvian, PhD. Student in Anthropology at American University. Thanks again, Francesca, for having joined me today.

Francesca Emanuele

Thank you so much, Greg.

Greg Wilpert

And thank you also to our audience for joining us.

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