Peru Wants Special Powers to Label Criminal Gangs ‘Hostile Groups’ and Send In the Army

PERU · POLITICS

Peru’s cabinet has approved a request for special legislative powers on security. The plan would let the government classify criminal gangs as “hostile groups”. That legal label allows the armed forces to fight them directly, not just support the police.

What the cabinet approved

Peru’s Council of Ministers approved a formal request for legislative powers this week. The document was due to be filed with Congress on Friday 28 August 2026.

The mechanism is written into Article 104 of Peru’s constitution. Congress can delegate law-making to the executive on specific topics, for a limited time.

The request is large. It contains 66 points spread across eight themes, according to the ministers who presented it.

Citizen security comes first on the list. State modernisation, meaning an attempt to make Peru’s slow bureaucracy work, fills much of the rest.

Marco Vinelli, the minister of agrarian development and irrigation, explained the package on the news channel Canal N. He said the security chapter is the government’s priority.

The package also touches the cybercrime law, migration policy and the police force itself. The interior, justice and defence ministers are due to present those details.

What “hostile groups” means under Peruvian law

The phrase “hostile groups” is not new rhetoric. It is a defined legal category in Legislative Decree 1095. That law governs how Peru’s armed forces may use force on national territory.

Once an organisation is formally classed as a hostile group, the military can fight it directly. Today that applies above all to remnants of the Shining Path guerrilla movement.

The clearest example is the VRAEM, the valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers. It is Peru’s main coca-growing zone, and soldiers have operated there for years.

The same scheme runs in the Putumayo region, on the Colombian border. A state of emergency there was renewed in July 2026 for another 60 days.

The government’s plan is to extend the label to urban crime. Extortion gangs, contract-killing networks and transnational outfits like Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua would then qualify as hostile groups.

“The legal term is hostile group, and there the armed forces can participate directly,” Vinelli said. He named Tren de Aragua explicitly as a candidate.

A state of emergency with no end in sight

The capital is already living under emergency rule. Lima Metropolitana and the neighbouring port province of Callao have been under a state of emergency since 27 February 2026.

The last published extension, Supreme Decree 096-2026-PCM, ran for 60 days from 28 June. The government has now confirmed the regime continues for another 60 days.

Under the emergency, the police keep control of internal order with army support. Some constitutional rights, including free movement and the inviolability of the home, can be restricted.

The measure was declared to fight a wave of extortion and contract killings. Bus drivers, market traders and even schools have been among the targets.

Six months of emergency rule have not settled the problem. That, in essence, is the government’s argument for reaching for the “hostile groups” law.

Police reform, cybercrime and migration

The powers request is not only about soldiers. Vinelli said a police reform forms part of it, because a force with many good officers still has some bad ones.

Changes to the computer-crimes law are also included. So is migration policy, a loaded topic after the arrival of well over a million Venezuelans in Peru over the past decade.

The government also wants the armed forces inside the country’s prisons. It sees the jails as command centres for organised crime, and it wants that broken.

Why the government wants soldiers, not just police

Vinelli was blunt about the thinking. The armed forces, he said, “will go out into the streets” and “into the prisons” under the plan.

The argument is that the police alone cannot contain groups that extort entire transport routes. Criminal bands now tax bus companies, music venues and small shops, and enforce those taxes with targeted killings.

Sending soldiers after fellow citizens is politically delicate in Peru. The memory of the internal conflict of the 1980s and 1990s still shapes that debate.

The government’s answer is the legal form. By using the existing category of hostile groups, it argues the military role stays inside a framework Congress itself created.

What happens in Congress now

The request lands in a Congress that has a difficult relationship with the executive. Peru has cycled through presidents at speed, and delegated powers are a sensitive instrument.

President José María Balcázar’s government has made the security push its signature project. Ministers present the powers request as the delivery of a core promise.

Granting them means letting the president legislate by decree. Critics in Congress typically demand tight time limits and narrow topics before agreeing.

Security, though, is the issue that dominates Peruvian politics ahead of everything else. Extortion now touches small businesses across the capital, from bus companies to corner shops.

If Congress grants the request, the first legislative decrees could follow within weeks. The designation of the first urban hostile groups would be the moment to watch.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources: ANDINA — Agencia Peruana de Noticias (28 August 2026), Gestión, El Peruano (Supreme Decree 096-2026-PCM), Canal N.

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