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Peru’s Turmoil Doesn’t Have to Be Latin America’s Future (full article) Analysis by Eduardo Porter (full article) You might forgive people puzzling over the political turmoil that has overtaken Peru. By standard economic metrics, the country was an undisputed regional success. Its economy grew by 4.5% a year, on average, in the decade before being walloped by the coronavirus. That is almost four times the average across South America.  Until the advent of the pandemic, poverty declined consistently and even inequality abated somewhat. Though the economy suffered a disastrous 2020, it rebounded sharply last year, growing by a whopping 13.6%.  And yet former president José Pedro Castillo is now sitting in prison, having been impeached and removed from office by a Congress that he had tried to dissolve just hours before. Police have been deployed to suppress street protests by Castillo’s supporters while his successor and former vice president, Dina Boluarte, has put the country ...

 Opinion: What is Behind the Support for Pedro Castillo and that Lima Doesn't Want to Understand by Francesca Emanuele 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 incli...