Peru: demonstrations down, ministerial reshuffle and diplomatic quarrel

Protests eased in intensity on Wednesday in Peru, the day after new elections were advanced to 2024, with President Dina Boluarte announcing new ministers amid a diplomatic spat with Mexico over support for the ousted president.

” I do not agree [avec 2024]. They don’t want to leave power. I want it to be in 2023,” said theFrance Media Agency Senayda Rivas, 40-year-old tourist manager in Cuzco where visits to Machu Picchu, the tourist jewel of Peru, were suspended on December 14 due to violent demonstrations which left 22 dead, according to a last report Wednesday from the Defender of the people.

The situation was calm in Cuzco. Again on Tuesday, hundreds of people, mostly women dressed in traditional outfits, marched before burning a cardboard coffin with the effigy of the president.

Ms. Boluarte, who will give way in July 2024 to the winner of the presidential election, according to decisions voted by the unicameral Parliament which on Tuesday advanced the general elections from 2026 to April 2024, has reshaped her government.

A new prime minister, the second in two weeks, the lawyer Alberto Otarola, succeeds Pedro Angulo.

Alberto Otarola was until now the Minister of Defense who has managed the violence generated since the dismissal of President Pedro Castillo on December 7. He declared a state of emergency, allowing the armed forces to take over the maintenance of order.

“Confrontation and polarization have done a lot of harm to the country, we have to turn this page and get back to work,” the president said Wednesday.

“Fortunately, transport has been restored at airports and on main roads,” said the new prime minister during his first press conference. “Some are still occupied and the appeal to the population is to put an end to this attitude of extreme violence, which fortunately has calmed down”.

“We will not deport anyone”

Radical left-wing president elected in 2021, Pedro Castillo was arrested for rebellion on his way to the Mexican embassy, ​​where he wanted to seek asylum.

The Peruvian government on Tuesday granted a safe conduct to the family of the ousted president so that they can leave the country, in application of international conventions.

Mr. Castillo’s wife and two minor children have been at the Mexican Embassy in Lima since Tuesday morning and have obtained “diplomatic asylum” there.

The Peruvian government, which perceived Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador’s support for Pedro Castillo as “interference”, on Tuesday declared persona non grata the Mexican ambassador to Lima, Pablo Monroy, and gave him “72 hours to leave ” the country.

Mexico reacted immediately with a press release recalling its ambassador “in order to preserve his safety and physical integrity”, while ensuring that his diplomatic representation would continue to operate.

On Wednesday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador added that the Mexican Foreign Ministry “has decided not to break relations” with Peru in order to “give protection to Mexicans who live in Peru”, the president told the press. “We will not expel anyone” in retaliation, he stressed.

The Peruvian decision is “unfounded and reprehensible”, reacted Mr. Ebrad on Twitter. “The conduct of our ambassador has been in accordance with the law and the principle of non-intervention. Mexico will not change its position,” he added.

At the end of 2021, the Mexican president had already supported his Peruvian counterpart by criticizing Parliament’s attempts to remove him from office.

Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, together with other left-wing leaders in Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia), reiterated his support for Pedro Castillo after December 7 and his failed coup.

The Peruvian Foreign Minister, Ana Cecilia Gervasi, also recalled that Mr. Castillo’s wife, Lilia Paredes, was the subject of an investigation by the Peruvian public prosecutor, who suspected her of being a possible coordinator in a criminal organization her husband allegedly ran.

She specified that the Peruvian government would reserve the right to request his extradition if local justice required it.

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