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by Jasmin Immonen, 17th of November 2020
On the 9th of November, something unexpected happened in Peru. Congress announced it had voted down the interim president Martin Vizcarra based on allegations of corruption and his poor handling of the pandemic. He was replaced with Manuel Merino de Lama, an unknown politician.
The congress members' dubious act was enough to raise the citizens' suspicion. 68 out of 130 congress members have criminal charges placed against them. With general elections in 2021, fears mounted that the nation now had a dictator in charge.
Peru found itself in movement: mass mobilisations unseen in decades occurred in every corner of the country against what was seen as a coup d'etat. According to the Institute of Peruvian Studies, the mobilisations saw three million people on the streets, which counts for roughly ten per cent of the whole population. For protests to be successful, 3,5 per cent of the population needs to be mobilised.
The protests were led mainly by young people using digital technology to gather together and look after each other. The youth accompanied the protests by hashtags such as #FueraMerino #NoAlGolpeDeEstado #PeruDesperto #NiVizcarraNiMerino #AsambleaConstituyente #RefundarElPeru.
These hashtags have had an important role in making the mobilisations political as they demand a total renewal of the political sphere.
While the protests were pacific and people did not violate hygienic measures such as mask obligations, police violence soon ensued with a tragic result: on the 14th of November, two young men, Inti Sotelo Camargo 24 & Bryan Pintado Sanchez 22, were shot to death by the police.
Bryan received ten lead bullets, including hitting his head -, Inti received four lead bullets around his chest. The police force continued to use guns despite injuring two other youths into hospital conditions on the previous night's protests.
Videos of the gunshots and tear-gas went viral on Tik Tok, Twitter and Facebook. Instead, mainstream media remained silent until the two boys were already dead.
According to Wayka. pe, the gunshots and tear-gas wounded up to two hundred people, and many youths went missing.
The social tension experienced today in Peru is an accumulation of social and economic frustrations that have been extenuated by covid-19. Peru has been one of the countries most hard hit by the covid-19 crisis in Latin America, the death toll – depending on the sources – being around 70 000. The same amount of people lost their lives during the internal war between 1980 and 1990.
STRUCTURAL TENSIONS
Despite Vizcarra's early efforts to place the country in lockdown, the government found itself soon unable to deal with the pandemic's expansion.
Neoliberal policies in place through structural adjustments during the Right-wing government of Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s have allowed the country to supposedly grow its economy without sufficient investment in health services or social protections.
Although Fujimori was ousted from his position, his legacy remains in the legislation favouring large companies and minimising the state's ability to interfere.
Before the pandemic, 70 per cent of the people worked in the informal sector. A large part of the people living in cities lives in conditions of inadequate infrastructure. With the pandemic, the amount of people working in the informal sector has grown. Many youths have been forced to quit their studies, and they face a grim future with a non-existent labour market.
While known for his attempts to weed out corruption in congress, Vizcarra followed the traditional neoliberal alignments that emphasised self-start efforts to get rid of poverty. The government handed cash transfers and food baskets for a month or two, thus being merely symbolic gestures instead of a real effort to deal with the economic obstacles people were facing.
TERRUQUEO
The dominance of the Right-wing parties in congress also reflects the stigma and sabotage. The term "terruqueo" refers to the way by which any person speaking about social justice is quickly silenced by accusations of terrorism.
However, the youth born in the new millennium can hardly remember terrorism, so to accuse the Tik Tok generation of terrorism has no ground.
USE OF VIOLENCE
The police force got indoctrinated to use violence to suppress people's movement during the lockdown. Police repression started in the early days of lockdown when Vizcarra introduced a law allowing police to use violence on civilians in the event of a confrontation.
A local newspaper claims that there were already 40 000 arrests made for breaching lockdown rules by April.
In August 2020, the police intervened in an underground disco party held during the lockdown. The interruption that, according to witnesses, involved the use of tear gas caused a panic among the youths. They got trapped in the attempt to escape through the stairs leading to the venue. Thirteen youths got suffocated to death.
NEW DIRECTIONS?
The demands of the youth protesting were heard. The congress nominated yesterday an interim president Francisco Sagasti from a Center-right party Morado (all of the parliamentarians in his party voted against Vizcarra's change), and a vice-president Mirtha Vasquez from the Left, Frente Amplio.
While people were not unhappy by this move, the people's trust in the political class is gone. Sagasti does not seem to have any interest in advancing a new constitution. Many circulating social media posts say that Inti and Bryan's deaths have been vain if the constitution remains the same.
The marches continue.
Most pictures are from Wayka.pe, some anonymous images circulating on social media.
Page updated
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