The president of Peru, José Pedro Castillo Terrones, was arrested on his way to exile. He was trying to get to a Bolivarian embassy – whatever it was (the one in Mexico was the most likely) – to try to escape the trap that he himself had set for the country. A few hours before he was forced to flee the Presidential Palace with his family, he attempted a self-coup. He closed Congress, declared a state of exception and announced a curfew. According to him, to save democracy. Always the same excuse.
Castillo was the country’s fourth president in just over two years. Since taking office in July 2021, he has appointed five prime ministers. Perhaps nothing represents the country’s instability more than musical chairs among its main leaders.
The now ex-president went into self-coup to try to block an impeachment process that was being prepared. The third. Certainly what would put an end to his government, which not even his most radical and closest supporters were willing to support.
His plan to attempt a self-coup failed, because in addition to not having the support of Congress, he had no support from the Armed Forces or even from the population. His government has staggered since the beginning – being marked by internal crises, street protests and a lot of incompetence – and reached the end with an approval rating below 24%. Alone, he found himself enmeshed in his own web.
While trying to seek asylum in an embassy, the convoy that was taking him was intercepted by citizens who blocked the streets that gave access to possible embassies that could serve as a refuge. While on the run, the Congress he tried to dissolve voted to vacate the presidency. A kind of acknowledgment that Castillo had abandoned his duties.
Peru’s institutional tragedy can be attributed, in part, to the sinister legacy of corruption revealed by Operation Car Wash. The hemispheric theft in which the PT personnel and the contractors involved in the scheme took part corroded the fragile institutional pillars of a Peru that showed signs that it had found the path to prosperity and development, having been considered the example of the Andes.
Perhaps the impacts of Lava-Jato were more profound in Peru than in Brazil itself. The Peruvian version, derived from the Brazilian investigation, reached four former presidents. One of them, Alan Garcia, shot himself in the head to avoid arrest.
Caught up in the looting, politicians went into self-protection mode and the country’s governance and stability imploded. The crises drove investors away and gaps were opened, which were later filled by newcomers like Castillo. A populist of trade union origin, who led a movement of teachers and who appeared on the national scene as the person responsible for remedying the impacts of Covid-19 and healing the wounds of the poor Peruvian people, who was never in fact among the priorities of local governments.
Superficially, it can be said that Peru follows the classic playbook Latin American of scams, scams and scams. And whoever says that is not wrong. But maybe it’s worth looking a little further. Coups and self-coups like Castillo’s attempt or Hugo Chávez’s coup in 1992 do not necessarily tend to happen so clearly and with all the elements of the traditional recipe.
Just as wars evolved and conventionality became the exceptional version. Coups with presidents closing Congress or tanks in the streets are also the rarest versions of this type of subversion of the democratic order.
In Latin America and beyond, scams have changed names. They don’t wear a uniform and are often executed without fuss and gradually. The construction of narratives, the usurpation of powers, the tolerance of constitutional violations, silence or scandal are all part of a game that is not very transparent, but which prepares the ground for institutional corrosion.
Is the defense of democracy that Castillo evoked in his failed self-coup the same defense of democracy that has become a idiom in Brazil? Is it the same defense of democracy that led technology companies like Twitter to interfere in electoral processes? Would that be the same pretext that made the press in various parts of the free world assume to play as an auxiliary line of saving candidacies? Castillo had been striking a blow every day. He had been suffering a blow every day. The thing walked in such a way that it got where it got.
Castillo, from his campaign, through his victory, inauguration, government and fall, is the most perfect caricature of Peruvian and Latin American politics. His successor, Dina Boluarte, is even more obtuse than he is. The new president of Peru is a puppet of a former ally of Castillo, who broke with him for not being faithful to the promises of a socialist Peru. Under the orders of Vladimir Cerrón (who is a disciple of Nicolás Maduro and close to Evo Morales), the new president tends to be just another chapter in the tragedy of our neighbor Peru.
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