Every year, in June, hundreds of trucks full of Quechua peasants arrive at the foot of the mountain that leads to Qoyllurit’i, the largest indigenous pilgrimage on the continent. In the previous days, through the cities and towns that they pass through, their comparsas walk through the central streets raising songs. Many people are moved and take pictures. Today, in these dramatic weeks of December, hundreds of trucks have arrived in Cusco and other cities in the country, also packed with peasants, with Peruvian flags and posters demanding the early elections or the closure of Congress; some unions are also asking for a new constitution or the return of Pedro Castillo to the Government. Faced with these images, many people in the cities claim that there is a black (or rather red, communist) hand that “manipulates” these “ignorant” people and puts them in trucks “like sheep”. They forget Qoyllurit’i and overlook the fact that throughout the year a large part of the indigenous population travels in crowded trucks or buses, as these are the cheapest means of transportation. How much we Peruvians do not know and how annoying it is that peasants go beyond the stillness of the iconic image in a market, or in a snow-capped mountain, to demand attention to their demands.
That is the racism that does not stop. In each new presidential election, above the political debates, the networks burst with insults and racist jokes: it happened with Toledo in 2000 and 2001, with Humala in 2006 and 2011, with Castillo in 2021. All of them, identified as “cholos” and with a left-wing agenda, they have ended up in prison or on the run; Just like the prisoners and prosecuted, all the former presidents identified as “white” or “Chinese” with a right-wing agenda have finished: behold, Fujimori, García, Kuczynski (Vizcarra and Merino, successors of the latter after the presidential vacancy, are also being prosecuted and investigated of 2018 and 2020). All corrupt, all equal when it comes to vandalizing the State in favor of their relatives and the interest groups that financed their campaigns, all have contributed to the discredit of democracy and political activity. With this type of candidate, and looked at from the cities as stone ignoramuses who won’t even be able to listen to the racist taunts that they carry on their backs daily, the most disadvantaged populations in the countryside, who also don’t believe in political speeches, as evil minors choose, like any other citizen, whoever offers them a better agenda, but also a social representation. Much of the vote that allowed Castillo to participate in the second round of elections in 2021, along with Keiko Fujimori, was based on this. And he has still maintained it, despite the series of incompetent or corrupt people that he was placing in key ministries such as Agriculture, Health or Education; despite the fact that it recently issued regulations against Bilingual Intercultural Education and its premier, Aníbal Torres, argued before indigenous organizations of the Andes and the Amazon that if they wanted to aspire to progress, they better worry about learning Spanish. Indeed, racism and contempt for indigenous populations cut across all parties and skin pigmentations.
Now, before the coup with which Castillo tried to screw himself into power and avoid the vacancy that Congress had been preparing for him, he had 31% approval and Congress 8%. That same national survey of the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) revealed that if Castillo’s vacancy prospered, 87% of the population would want an advance of general elections (for the Presidency and Congress). Therefore, it should not have surprised us that after the jocular and arrogant self-celebration that Congress gave itself after the fall of Castillo, many people all over the country took to the streets demanding that they all leave. In the protests in Apurímac, one of the regions where Castillo had strong supporters, these mobilizations were massive and many also called for his release. In the first days, six protesters were killed in roadblocks and clashes with the police, including two fifteen-year-old schoolchildren. On December 13, the National Assembly of Regional Governments sent to Congress a bill to advance elections and set up dialogue tables to which the Executive turned its back. That same day, from Congress, Admiral Daniel Montoya, one of the opposition leaders, in response to the crisis in the streets, stated: “The agenda is not set by them, who are enemies of democracy; we put it from the Congress (…). When there is a situation like this, there is no proportionality, there is the supremacy of force to be able to defeat them, otherwise they would lose and no one goes to a war to lose.
A war. The language of war is exquisite for all those who have always used polarization, the destruction of the minimum bridges of dialogue. A large part of the national media have continued to focus on broadcasting the terrifying acts of vandalism: burning of police stations, stoning of some television channels, assault on commercial stores. The frightened population has complied with the logic of the heavy hand and the stigmatization of the protest: appealing to the trauma that the years of political violence left us, it is common to call those who protest in the streets terruco, terrorist.
On December 14, a 30-day state of emergency was issued which, as was to be expected, has only escalated the death toll and outrage. As of today, there are already 18 deaths from bullets and more than two hundred wounded. All in regions far from Lima. In the short term, the only way out of this confrontation would be an urgent early election. The survey published by the IEP this Saturday indicates that, despite all the criminalization of the protest that exists these days, 83% of the population asks for an early election. This revelation is useless. On Friday, after grandiose speeches and arguments where the word people and democracy were reiterated as litanies, Congress rejected any advance before April 2024. This Saturday, despite the resignation of two of its best ministers, President Dina Boluarte, for On his side, he has ruled out resigning and continues to place the protesters in the bag of bullies and violent people. In addition to maintaining the state of emergency, in 15 provinces of the country, including large cities such as Arequipa, Cusco or Ica, we are under curfew, starting at eight in the afternoon. As in times of pandemic, the immobilization order returns: A “Stay at home” equivalent to a “Better shut up”.
We are in the abyss. We are over the edge. The political class does not seem to realize it and Congress continues to be engrossed in its high-sounding speeches, in its business under the table, in how to get the most out of its time in power; without a doubt, some already have secured the parachute, or secret passages to access their private paradises: from there to continue holding the upper hand. The rest of us, in the streets or frightened in our homes, continue to fall, stunned, overwhelmed by the daily increase in the death toll, by the cynicism with which many view those dead, by the outbreaks of violence and the curfews, without having recovered from the great post-pandemic mourning, without understanding what is the Peru that we have woven, or unwoven, for the new time, without even being able to shake hands or look at each other as fellow citizens in this vertigo.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
Follow all the international information on Facebook Y Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
#Weaving #abyss #Peru