Understand | Impasse in Peru

Peru has been mired in a major crisis since President Pedro Castillo’s failed coup on 7 December. Dozens of demonstrators, who are demanding new elections, have died at the hands of the police, but the country’s elected officials still refuse to give in. Nora Nagels, professor in the department of political science at UQAM, offers four sources for understanding the forces involved.

Two worlds that everything opposes

Indigenous people, who live in rural areas, account for a quarter of Peru’s 33 million inhabitants. The capital Lima brings together around 10 million people, especially Euro-descendants. Everything opposes these two groups, and the contempt shown by the urban elites towards the peasants of the Andes takes on the air of colonialism. Nobel Literature winner Mario Vargas Llosa even wished that the natives would renounce their culture in the name of modernity – a cultural genocide. “Castillo was completely inept and corrupt, observes Nora Nagels, but he represented the rural populations, who had voted for him. By deposing him and then refusing a snap election, she says, Congress has somehow disenfranchised the peasants, who are also demanding the departure of President Dina Boluarte and a new constitution. For now, everyone is sticking to their guns. How to envisage a way out of the crisis? In a text on The Conversation, the lecturer Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg, of the University of Oxford, proposes town halls for the natives to express their grievances. “Consensus will be needed to create a framework defining a clear and legitimate mandate for structural and decolonizing change,” he writes. The time for this change has come. »

A history of violence

Peru is used to violence. The conflict between the government and the Maoist guerrillas of the Shining Path, in particular, caused 70,000 deaths during the 1980s and 1990s. red april, Santiago Roncagliolo stages a prosecutor who tries to elucidate serial murders in Ayacucho, the city where the Shining Path was born. It is a fiction, but the author announces: “The Shining Path attack methods described in this book, as well as the counter-terrorism strategy of investigating, torturing and making people disappear, are real. The conflict ended in the wake of the 1992 capture of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzmán during Alberto Fujimori’s presidency. “The novel is about the disintegration of the rule of law from the 1980s and corruption under Fujimori,” explains Professor Nagels, for whom the weakness of the institutions inherited from that era is linked to the current crisis. “In Peru, politicians don’t have the common good in mind, they defend their personal interests,” she says. In Congress, elected officials cannot serve a second consecutive term, so they refuse to bring forward the elections so as not to lose their advantages. »

red april

Santiago Roncagliolo

Points

320 pages

The French edition ofred april is currently out of print, but copies are still available on resale sites. The novel has also been translated into English, under the title Red Aprilpublished by Penguin Random House.

women at the front

The internal war that marked the end of the twentieth^e century left deep scars, particularly in rural areas, where the population was caught between hyper-violent guerrilla warfare, which killed those who opposed the revolution with blood, and government forces which suspected – and then tortured – those that the revolutionaries had not massacred. Peruvian women have not been spared, as the thesis shows women in arms, by sociologist Camille Boutron, proposed by Nora Nagels. Women played a leading role in the Shining Path, which allowed them to access its hierarchy, recalls the book. With all the cruelty involved during the conflict… and afterwards. “The imprisoned women were punished for a double transgression: that of having taken up arms, but also of having deviated from their gender role, without their social commitment being recognized”, summarizes Nora Nagels. The Fujimori government also forcibly sterilized 270,000 women (and 22,000 men), many of them indigenous, to “fight against poverty”. “Camille Boutron shows the continuum of violence against women before, during and after this conflict in Peru,” says Ms.^me Nagels.

women in arms

Camille Boutron

Rennes University Press

226 pages

Peruvian voices

The demonstrations, initially concentrated in the south of the country, have reached the capital Lima for a few weeks, where they continue. Just like the repression, with nearly 50 dead, some of whom were killed by the police while trying to help other demonstrators, specifies Nora Nagels. The protesters, “killed like dogs”, are dehumanized by the ruling class, she underlines. Congress has also just blocked until August any debate aimed at bringing forward the 2026 elections. In short, things could go worse before they get better. To have an eye on what is happening there, Nora Nagels suggests that French speakers subscribe to Mediapart, a French information site that gives pride of place to “universities and young researchers on site”. In a recently published interview, cites as an example Mr.^me Nagels, historian José Carlos Agüero, son of members of the Shining Path, asks: how to make peace in Peru without first apologizing to each other? Other media are covering the crisis very well, including El País – with its articles – and El Hilo – with its podcasts –, adds M^me Nagels, but you have to know Spanish to enjoy it.