Opinion: What is behind the support for Pedro Castillo and that Lima does not want to understand, by Francesca Emanuele (Wayka [Spanish] 12/20/2022)
Neither the broken promises nor the signs of corruption and not even the attempted coup have been reasons for many of Castillo's supporters to turn their backs on him. The former president has ceased to represent expectations of change, but he still symbolizes —today more than ever— structural discrimination in Peru.
In Lima, the political, economic, and intellectual elites are intrigued. They continue to seek an explanation for the large number of Peruvians who protest to demand the freedom of Pedro Castillo. And a greater bewilderment is caused by the smaller group that demands the restitution of the president's vacancy.
It is understandable that the ruling classes are disoriented. They have been disconnected from the rest of the country for decades. They move comfortably through a notorious Lima apartheid, reproducing dynamics that accentuate their inclination to dehumanize the working and indigenous class of Peru. It is evident, then, that they are spectators incapable of interpreting the national reality.
Mistake and Injuries
To describe the support for Castillo, theories such as subversive affiliation, being a mercenary, and lack of intellectual capacity have been considered. "There are residents who do not have the correct information," said the host of Cuarto Poder, one of the Sunday programs that spread false allegations of electoral fraud. They are "terrorists" and "vandals", sentenced several of the congressmen who promoted unconstitutional laws in order to reduce the number of votes required to remove the former president. "They are financed by parliamentarian Guillermo Bermejo," suggested the Defense Minister, who has deployed the Army, redoubling the state violence against protests. The wounded and each one of the twenty-five compatriots killed by the police are low-income, indigenous or peasant populations.
Many of Castillo's supporters still lack the lineage or university degrees held by the host of the Sunday newscast, the minister, and the anti-democratic congressmen. However, unlike them, they do decipher with academic sophistication that the former president's defense is linked to his personal experience of discrimination and above all, to his future. To forget that Castillo's tragic fate is linked to the various forms of racism to which they have been victims would be to deny his own history of oppression. Allowing the spraying of the “rural teacher elected president” symbol would prevent other Peruvians of humble and provincial origin from attempting such a journey. The fear of receiving the same treatment would feed the absence of politicians of humble and provincial origin.
The prospects of a gray future are added to an intense feeling of empathy. And it is that during his short presidency, Castillo was subject to various forms of racial stigma, triggering a “mirror effect” in his supporters. They called him a donkey, a 'shitty cholo'; and his wife was put to shame by his dress and by the way she spoke of him.
Powerful Instruments of Persecution
For the millions of Peruvians who voted for him, it was natural to find themselves in his reflection, even more so when the opposition repeated the hackneyed tactic of linking him to the ghost of Sendero Luminoso. The popular classes have been cruelly demonized for decades with this fallacious argument. For this very reason, the conservative parliamentarians repeated over and over again that Castillo was a 'communist', accompanying these affirmations with the correlate of alleged terrorist membership. It did not matter that the president had moved away early from a progressive government plan, making it clear that he was not even a social democrat. The opposition, in its perennial efforts to oust him, organized dozens of protests with titles such as 'The Final Battle' or 'Terrorism Never Again'. Names that evoked a civil war; an 'us against them' that reverberated among the marginalized classes. Based on that narrative, 'they' become the enemy.
Peruvian justice played a key role in the campaign of vexation against former President Castillo through lawfare, or the judicialization of politics. They acted with unusual speed, different from his usual slowness. In particular, the behavior of the National Prosecutor's Office was the least discreet. Although protected by evidence covered in legality, they showed obvious political overtones. Prosecutor Patricia Benavides delivered an accusation against Castillo to Congress, setting the first precedent in Peruvian history in which the nation's top prosecutor filed a constitutional complaint against a sitting President. According to Benavides, Castillo was the leader of a "criminal organization” dedicated to conducting public works tenders and receiving bribes in exchange for appointments in different ministries and in high command of the National Police. This was communicated to the entire Peru, in the middle of an unusual televised press conference, with which the prosecutor openly sought to push for his impeachment.
Perhaps the hardest thing to digest for Castillo voters was the ridicule that characterized the judicial proceedings. The National Police, at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, raided the home of the former president's sister, without considering that her elderly mother was there, convalescing from an appendicitis operation. After the traumatic event, the mother had to be hospitalized. The Government Palace was also raided, which became another unprecedented event. It had not happened before, even during efforts that stole tens of millions of dollars, such as that of former President Alan García. But perhaps the most shocking cruelty was the one that had Castillo's daughter as its protagonist. For her, a judge ordered two and a half years of preventive detention. The images of the young woman imprisoned —without a sentence— appeared in all the media, sending an unequivocal message of humiliation.
Every week more and more news appeared that that degraded the investiture of the president. They ranged from the symbolic, such as an officer disrespecting him by snatching a sword from him during a military ceremony, to grievances that directly affected his presidential duties. In this sense, Congress was avant-garde: it voted to prevent Castillo from attending Gustavo Petro's inauguration in Colombia. It was the first time that Parliament vetoed a president from carrying out the fundamental task of representing Peru abroad. However, it became a habit. Two other trips were refused. The last veto of Congress caused the President of Mexico to cancel the summit of the Pacific Alliance in protest. Everything pointed to the fact that the congressional opposition was content with altering the balance of powers or passing illegal laws to subdue the executive until he was overthrown. And when it triumphed, its members, full of joy, immortalized with group selfies the dirty moment for which they had worked for 17 months.
Resistance and Conviction
In the eyes of Castillo's supporters, this triumphalist celebration, the constant insults, the obstruction of presidential functions, and the abusive ways of applying legal figures show that Peru is stuck in an oligarchic past. There is a ruling class that resists the impoverished classes being represented in the highest spheres of power. Not even reaching them would they stop being treated as inferior beings.
Today the Peruvian Justice and Congress continue to nurture this feeling of contempt by using their legal tools arbitrarily. Castillo sought to break democracy by announcing a coup, but the supposedly democratic institutions that remained standing violated the rules to sanction him. Congress stripped him of his immunity in an express process, without his right to defense. The judiciary keeps him imprisoned under charges that are inapplicable to his attempted coup. One of them is that of rebellion, for which even ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori could not be prosecuted, and who consummated his dictatorship with tanks in the streets.
It is enough to recapitulate recent history to unravel why tens of thousands of Peruvians, having extinguished the illusions they deposited in Castillo, are still by his side. To the feelings of racist injustice that identifies them with the passing of the former President by the executive —and his current irregular imprisonment— has added a feeling of being orphaned by foreign structures of political representation. They look around and only find institutions controlled by authorities that despise them, and that today are willing to kill them, to maintain the status quo. The inability of the elites to understand this reality only confirms that the protesters' claims are correct. It is too much to ask that the architects of this tragedy stop misinterpreting it.
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