Peru, convulsed after almost a month of the Boluarte government

By Rodrigo Saldarriaga

After a few weeks of truce for Christmas -for more commercial reasons than respect for the Christian holiday- and New Year, the radicals behind the main demonstrations against President Dina Boluarte restarted on Wednesday the stoppages and strikes that aim to destabilize her government.

There are a total of 10 regions that rise up against the current president, including Cusco, Arequipa, Puno, Ayacucho, Madre de Dios, Moquegua and the cradle of Boluarte, Apurímac, all located in the so-called “South Macro Region” area where the main mining deposits and energy plants are located, and where, in addition to poverty and disenchantment, illegal organizations dedicated to logging and mining swarm; in addition to organized crime around drug trafficking and smuggling.

Branded as a “traitor” by the Castro-Chavista and pro-subversive left, the Peruvian president carries on her shoulders the death of almost thirty protesters during the violent protests that took place in December 2022, which broke out with the constitutional succession of Boluarte to the coup leader Pedro Castillo, dismissed by unconstitutionally dissolve Congress and was arrested while fleeing to the Mexican Embassy in Lima, where he intended to seek asylum.

Boluarte, supported by the main institutions of the Peruvian State -highlighting the muscle of the Armed Forces and Police, who rejected Castillo’s coup- and supported by the big press -unlike what happened with Manuel Merino in 2020-, quickly composed a Cabinet of technicians, although she later turned to more political cadres when timid technocrats began to resign or fail him.

However, a month after taking office, her ambivalent attitude began to detract from the necessary support for her to remain in the Government Palace.

This Tuesday, in an interview with “La República”, Boluarte expressed her discrepancies with Juan Carlos Liendo O’Connor, director of National Intelligence (DINI), who one day before assuming the leadership of DINI had stated in a media outlet that “in each place where the Police and the forces of order [Armed Forces] are attacked there is a political objective and that is called a terrorist insurgency.”

Boluarte said that she did not share Colonel Liendo’s position and announced that the government would make adjustments to DINI.

In response to this rudeness, Liendo presented his irrevocable resignation from the position, just over two weeks after being appointed. In his resignation letter, addressed to the head of state, Liendo indicated that his resignation occurred “due to serious complications to fulfill the functions assigned according to law.”

The president of the Congressional Intelligence Commission, José Cueto, told El Comercio that Liendo’s departure gives him “a very bad feeling” just when the protests against the government and Congress are going to be reactivated in the south of the country.

“We are in a crisis situation. I hope this does not affect the course of actions to be taken against those who incite [acts of violence] in the protests,” said a member of the right-wing Renovación Popular bench.

BOLUARTE: ANOTHER KERENSKI?

Although the radical left labels her as right-wing, even fascist -a typical nickname for those who lack gray matter-, Boluarte is a woman of the left and, although the most naive try to sweeten her participation in the (mis)government of Castillo, the main character -as vice president- of the drama that meant the coming to power in 2021 of Peru Libre, a Marxist-Leninist party whose founder is convicted of corruption and is currently being investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office as the leader of a criminal organization.

“We all have to embrace each other to build a homeland united in one heart. I’m not doing anything, on the contrary, I don’t understand why the comrades on the left, some, but not all, have risen up against Dina Boluarte. I keep saying and maintaining because that is what I am, I am a woman of the left, but I am not from that radical left that wants to destroy the country, I am from that progressive left that loves the country, I am a provincial democratic woman, I am like you from the Deep Peru, why are left-wing comrades angry with me?” Boluarte said on December 30 at a meeting in Cusco.

For César Félix Sánchez, a political analyst and philosopher from the Pontifical Urbaniana University (Rome), the Government must maintain the state of emergency in southern Peru to guarantee order and peace in the face of the threat of road blockades.

“What is to be done, then? Well, maintain the military presence in strategic resources and ensure freedom of transit. Because we are not facing simple bourgeois demonstrations to the ‘Chilean’. The Castillo violence in Arequipa claimed deaths that nobody counts and that nobody cries in Lima, like the prosecutor Marizel Chamana and her 4-year-old son. The attack on the Arequipa airport on December 12, for its part, was a fully planned military act. Beyond the fact that there are myriads of useful, spontaneous idiots, bona fide Castillistas and others who protested and will protest peacefully, the truth is that both the leaders of the indefinite strike and its most impactful acts are very clearly part of a process of subversion,” he warns.

According to Sánchez, who is from Arequipa and closely follows both the demonstrations and the political and ideological background of those who seek to take advantage of popular discontent, it is very likely that, due to the economic crisis that covid-19 brought and still persists, soon in the southern Peruvian cities the strikes will “deflate” because the population will be more interested in resuming their daily activities than “in asking for the impossible,” such as the unconstitutional closure of Congress and the release of the coup leader Castillo.

“That will mean in some places the deflation of the subversive commotion, but in others perhaps an attempt to carry out spectacular and radical actions that have media effects on public opinion. Therefore, it is urgent not only to continue with the state of emergency and the military presence, but also to implement a set of legal and penal measures that are expeditiously applied against those who commit these crimes and against those who incite them to commit them. Considering the moral quality of the leaders, I do not believe that extraordinary efforts are required on the part of the Public Ministry,” says Sánchez.

With information from La Gaceta de la Iberosfera