The Daily - A Crisis in Peru Signals Trouble for South America

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

A few weeks ago, when President Pedro Castillo of Peru attempted an illegal power grab and ended up in jail, the response was unexpected: Thousands of protesters took to the streets to support him, and some died.Why does such a divisive leader have such fierce backing? And what does the upheaval in Peru tell us about the way the political winds are blowing in South America?Guest: Julie Turkewitz, the Andes bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: What is going on in Peru and why are people protesting? Here’s what to know.Days after Mr. Castillo’s removal from office and arrest, thousands of his supporters have joined protests demanding his reinstatement. To them, he is the voice of the marginalized.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. A few weeks ago, when the president of Peru attempted an illegal power grab, the response was unexpected. Thousands of citizens took to the streets in support of him. Some protesters even died. support of him. Some protesters even died. Today, I spoke with my colleague Julie Turkowitz about why such a divisive leader has had such fierce support and what it tells us about a new era of instability in South America. It's Thursday, December 22nd. Julie, hi. Hi.

You are in Peru right now. Tell me what's going on there. So, Peru is mired in this political crisis that poses the biggest threat to its democracy in years. And, you know, that says a lot because Peru is a country that has experienced a lot of political crisis. For more than a week now, we have seen people protesting all across the country. And these protests are a response to this pretty big event, the president being arrested and jailed.

And so I went to the detention center where this president is being held. And the scene is pretty remarkable. There are at least a thousand people there. Many of them have come from rural areas hundreds of miles away. I met a 67-year-old woman who had traveled 20 hours by car to get to this detention center. People are sleeping on these donated mattresses right next to the wall of the detention center. mattresses right next to the wall of the detention center. There's these giant bulging bags of donated vegetables all over the place. Supporters, many of them rural farmers, have come with produce for people to eat. And it's really become this support village for the man these

people call their president. And these protests have really swelled and spread across the country. And some people are even dying in these protests. And now there are thousands of people all over the country calling for the release and the restitution of Pedro Castillo, their former president. Okay, so walk us through how we got here, Julie. Like, who is this president and how did this all begin? So Pedro Castillo is from a rural part of Peru. He was a teacher, a farmer, a union organizer. He's a campesino, which means he's a man from Peru's rural farming class.

He has no background in politics. He had never held office before running for president. And he became a symbol of this idea that people from this class can move up, can enter into the circles of power. You know, he broke through by running on this campaign that was about lifting up the lower class. He was going to overhaul the political and economic system and also invest a lot in healthcare and education, which are key issues for a lot of poor

and lower middle class Peruvians. He had this slogan that was, no more poor people in a rich country. One thing that I think really propelled him toward victory was that his opponent was the best known symbol of the Peruvian elite. Keiko Fujimori, she's a pro-free market candidate. She won't change a lot. And she's the continuation of the same political system.

She's a woman named Keiko Fujimori, and she is the daughter of a former authoritarian president in Peru who is, you know, associated with corruption. Those who are voting for a change with Castillo remember the corruption and human rights violations during Alberto Fujimori's rule. And Castillo wins, barely. He beat his right-wing rival by only 44,000 votes.

The margin was so small, and I think it really says something about how divided the country is. But it was, at the time time really the clearest repudiation of the country's political establishment. So he was this real political outsider, it sounds like, from this peasant class you're describing. And that's very unusual in Peru. And he narrowly wins this divisive election by a tiny margin after months of challenge from his opponent. And it's on this promise to work for all Peruvians. Definitely. So what's his presidency been like? Like, has he been able to

fulfill his promises to help the poor? Not at all, really. He struggles really from the beginning to deliver or even begin to deliver on any of his promises. Like many past Peruvian presidents, he is mired in corruption scandals. I think his case is particularly acute. Oh, wow. And he's not only consumed by scandal, but many people say that he governs incompetently. And others say that Congress, which is really, you know, in large part made up of the elite and of the political establishment and is really his adversary from the beginning. And, you know, he says is set on removing him from power from day one. Got it. So like his political enemies are out to get him. That's what he says. Yes. So Congress tries to impeach him on three different occasions. The day that Congress is set to impeach him for the third time on December 7th. Castillo goes on television and makes this dramatic announcement.

goes on television and makes this dramatic announcement. He says that he is disbanding Congress and creating a new government that will rule by decree. And the video of him doing this is pretty astounding. His hands are trembling. He is essentially trying to remove his democratic mandate and put into effect a authoritarian mandate, one that rules by decree. And rule by decree, like what's happening? Like what is he doing there? That effort is widely, widely marked as a coup or as it is called in Latin American,

marked as a coup or as it is called in Latin America, an autogolpe, like a self-coup. But this effort, which is widely considered illegal and is outside the scope of the Peruvian constitution, didn't work because it was poorly orchestrated. Casillo had no support. His ministers resign en masse. His vice president criticizes him. She calls this a golpe de estado, a coup. And the military and the police decline to support him. Wow. So he's left out there on his own. He's left out there on his own. So from there, the top court declares the move unconstitutional.

And within hours, he is ousted by Congress, as they had planned, arrested, and sent to this detention center on charges of rebellion. And his vice president is immediately installed as the new president. From his dissolution of Congress to his arrest to the instatement of the new president. All of this happens in less than four hours. And so the country is just like reeling and trying to figure out what the heck is going on. Crazy. That is just like lightning fast. Like suddenly the president of the country is in jail. And is that when the protests begin? Yes. Just a few days later, you start to see protests in the street. And not just Lima, the capital, but really all over the country, particularly in the rural areas that are Castillo's base.

And in some cases, these protests are peaceful. But in other cases, protesters stage attacks against police stations, airports, factories, and they are blocking highways with, you know, burning tires, sharp rocks, in a way that really hampers mobility all over the country. And, you know, it starts to become a real problem. So the protesters are really paralyzing life in lots of places in Peru. So the protesters are really paralyzing life in lots of places in Peru. Exactly. So in response, the former vice president, a former ally of Casillo's, begins imposing these harsh rules to maintain order. She deploys the military and soldiers crack down on the protesters, often, again, in these rural areas.

These protests grow in size and they result in these, you know, pretty significant encounters with the police and the military. There are hundreds of people injured, about 300 civilians, 300 police officers. And up to today, 26 people have died. So, Julie, let me make sure I understand this here. So you've just described what sounds like a complete authoritarian power grab, right? Effectively a coup. And this guy hadn't even delivered on any of his promises to the poor constituents that supported him. But yet here are all these protesters, in effect kind of risking their lives, to demand his release. So help me understand what's happening here. Like, why are they doing this?

Well, for starters, more than half of the population would describe what happened just the way that you did. An undemocratic authoritarian power grab that justified the response. And almost all legal experts would also agree with that. But a recent poll here in Peru shows that 33% of the country supports what the poll called Mr. Castillo's coup. And that number rises to 40% in rural areas. Wow, 40%, which is a lot. So what is that, Julie? I also wanted to answer that question. And so when I was outside of the detention center where Pedro Castillo is being held,

this is what I was asking people. Why do you support him? Why do you want him back as president after he has attempted what is widely considered a coup? back as president after he has attempted what is widely considered a coup. And I spoke with this one woman, Delia, outside of the detention center. She was handing out breakfast for her fellow protesters. She said, look, I'm not very political, I'm a businesswoman, but I came to support my brothers and sisters who are fighting day in and day out against the system.

And she actually said, the damn system. Delia said that in her view, it's Congress who are the dirty actors here, not Castillo. They're the corrupt ones, and Congress has had it out for him since day one. They didn't want a leftist campesino in power. They didn't want someone humble in power thatino in power. They didn't want someone humble in power that bothered them. And they wanted him gone. And that is her view. And she says this is an injustice. She said that there is no way this guy would have pulled this political

stunt. And she is convinced that it must have been some wheeling and dealing elite that convinced him or swayed him or tricked him into trying to dissolve Congress and create this new government that would rule by decree. Got it. That he was just duped. Yeah, she thinks he was tricked into doing something so stupid that he would have to be removed from power. Interesting. So it was all a plot against him. That is exactly what she believes,

and that is exactly what many people who are standing outside of that detention center believe. Another common argument is, look, corruption is not new in Peru. Presidents change with the seasons because there have been six presidents since 2016 in Peru. And Delia described the politicians in Congress as a pyre of rats. Wow. Working only for themselves year after year. That is an indictment, pyre of rats.

And, you know, there's this idea of there's always politicking and backstabbing in politics, people trying to get their own. There's this common saying in Peru, roba pero hace obra. He robs, but he gets stuff done, right? And so there's a very high tolerance, not that people want to have, but because of history, there's a sort of high tolerance for political malfeasance, let's say. So it's kind of like, look, all politicians are corrupt. But this guy, though corrupt, also stands for the people. Like, he could actually get something done for us.

Exactly. And Delia and many others say that they're not even his biggest fan. But that hasn't stopped them from coming out to fight against this system that they believe has kept them down. Dilia made it clear. She said, I'm not a Castellista. I'm not in love with this guy. But he had some good ideas. Investing in education, she wants her children to have the same opportunities as children in the upper classes. So for her and for many others in Peru, Castillo's jailing has come to represent something much bigger than his own tenure in office. We'll be right back. So, Julie, before the break, you talked about how these protests had really spread to many parts of the country and that they'd gone beyond Castillo in support of him as an individual, as a president.

So what's really driving this? What are they about? So these protests are really an economic story. These protests are really an economic story. Peru's economy for centuries has been centered around commodity exports, especially metals. And the desire for those metals really grew in the 2000s. Even when the world was in serious economic downturn, it still wanted to buy what Peru had to sell, the output of an enormous fishing fleet, mines and farms. The developing world, mostly China,

needed these metals to power their growing infrastructure. So you saw both rising prices of metals and rising demand for metals. Peru is the world's second largest exporter of copper behind Chile. Peru's government predicts a growth rate of 6%, coupled with low inflation for 2010. And many governments, particularly in South America, were really flush with cash as a result of this boom. In Brazil, Peru and Uruguay, GDP growth this year is expected to exceed 7%. Uruguay, GDP growth this year is expected to exceed 7%. Some governments used this extra revenue to support programs for the poor. The healthy economy has benefited Peruvians like Wilmer Gonzalo.

He used to be a street vendor. Now he's a shopkeeper, optimistic, with a strong stake in his country's economic future. To be sure, this wealth did not flow to every part of the country, and this wealth did not flow to every part of the region. And so many of the rural poor were left wondering, where is our piece of this? Where is our piece of the wealth? So this was something that was happening broadly throughout the region? So this was something that was happening broadly throughout the region. For sure, 100%. But what you saw was that, you know, amid this boom in the price of metals and oil, Latin America was suddenly in the middle of this history-making transformation. And inequality was shrinking like never before. And you saw over time, many people finally having a toehold on the middle class. And over the last 20 years, we've really seen that millions of families have marched

out of poverty in what is definitely one of the most unequal regions in the world. Wow. So this commodity boom over the better part of two decades, which was helped in part by this rise of a booming China, actually grew these economies in this really profound way. And as a consequence, people all over the region are lifted out of poverty. So how long does that go on, this economic boon? By 2014, prices of these commodities began to fall pretty sharply and the region began tumbling. All of these economies started to feel it. Peru, Colombia, Brazil. The momentum toward this greater mobility that we're talking about had begun to slow and in some cases even move backward. But Julie, I don't completely understand because there had been so many years of economic rise, right? Like why do just a couple of years of commodity declines mean that suddenly, you know, people's fortunes change so dramatically?

So it's really important to point out that the economic toehold people had on the middle class was really fragile. Many people in Peru, but also in other countries in South and Latin America, had informal jobs, which means that they didn't have a contract or guarantees of continued work and they might work selling food on the street or they might work in a shop but with no formal contract and they're paid every single day. And so the small amount of wealth that people had built up to maybe send their kid to a university could be wiped out in a single day, honestly, if a family member has an unexpected sickness, for example. And so what you really saw is that people begin to lose jobs, they begin to lose whatever wealth they had accumulated has an unexpected sickness, for example. And so what you really saw is that people began to lose jobs. They began to lose whatever wealth they had accumulated. And it became quite clear

that these gains had been built on quicksand. Okay, so people's fortunes changed pretty quickly because they didn't have a stronghold on the middle class. So what happened next? Then comes the pandemic. This is a swift kick to the region when it's already down. The virus ravages Peru. Peru is the country with the highest documented per capita COVID death toll in the world.

Wow, really? Yeah, it's hard to overstate the toll that the virus took both on individual families as people died, as well as on the economy in general. You had this already high poverty rate rise by nearly 10%. And the mining industry is hobbled. The demand for tourism and local services, of course, evaporates. And we saw something really similar in other countries. You know, at the time I was reporting in Colombia and I interviewed teenagers who had started working as sex workers to make money for their families, boys who started selling drugs to feed their brothers and sisters, families who couldn't pay their rent. And I really heard these kinds of

stories over and over again in the region. So Julie, how does all of this translate politically, this economic collapse? So what we were already seeing in the region is anger over these sort of unfulfilled promises, right? This idea that this economic boom didn't really pan out for a lot of people. And then you see this momentum growing to vote out incumbents. What this created was something of a rise in the left. By January, the six most populous countries in Latin America will be run by people who claim to be part of the left. At the same time, I think it's really important to point out that this isn't really like a leftward move. It's not that everybody suddenly loves the left or believes in the left. What we see is that people are angry at

incumbents and they want the incumbents out. They want the establishment out. Okay, so there's this effectively revolution of rising expectations going on all over the region, right? People are used to hoping for that middle class. They had a toehold. They have a taste of it. And suddenly that's yanked away and they're really angry. And that is translating into increased political demands on their part and as a consequence, increased political chaos and upheaval on the part of the governments, on the part of the voting and the elections. And Castillo comes in on that wave. Exactly. So where are we right now, Julie,

in terms of Peru's political crisis? Like, what is happening now? So protests continue. They've been going on for almost two weeks. Castillo himself is still in jail. He faces charges of rebellion and he will be in detention for at least 18 months while his case is sorted out. Oh, wow. And at least 26 people have died and the country is really in mourning. And Julie, how are people dying? I mean, is this the government going out and mowing down a bunch of peaceful protesters in a march? Or is this just general mayhem stampede type thing? In a lot of cases, human rights groups are accusing the police and the military of disproportionate use of force. In one of the most dramatic cases in a city called Ayacucho, Nine people died in a matter of hours at the airport

where they had gone to protest. Video that was confirmed for us by local officials shows soldiers pointing guns at body level and also shows lots of horribly injured people in the streets. My photographer colleague and my other colleagues in Lima, we woke up that morning and we knew immediately that we had to go to Ayacucho. So we got in the car, we drove 10 hours across the country. And the next day, I find the most intense funeral that I have ever witnessed. This was a funeral for two different protesters who had died. They were among the nine killed. One was Clemmer, who was 22, and the other was Christopher, who was just 15. One was Clemmer, who was 22, and the other was Christopher, who was just 15.

Both came from poor families. Both had been at this protest at the airport. It was a long, long sort of series of different kinds of processions and rituals. And you had this mass delivered partly in Quechua, which is the indigenous language that many people in this region speak. You had Kalemar's mother just wailing. I mean, just wailing. I was so worried that she was going to pass out at every moment. And you had so much music. There was an orchestra of saxophones. There were boys, little boys on these traditional drums.

The drums were like as big as these little boys. And these were the kinds of drums that Clemmer used to play. He was in a traditional dance group. There were these women who were singing songs in Quechua, these high-pitched songs that really like hit you right to your core. And I asked like, what does it mean? What are you saying? And this young woman just screamed to me, justice, justice, justice. So at the funeral, I met this man named Victor. He was the uncle of Christopher, the 15-year-old. And I really wanted to know what Christopher was like, but I could barely get him to talk about Christopher

because all he wanted to talk about were the larger political reasons that he was at this funeral. What he told me was that his nephew's reason for protesting and his own reason for protesting was the same, and it was to reject the political elites in Lima. And by political elites, he means Congress. He means the owners of big companies who make lots of money

by exporting the country's riches. And he really links the grief of his family to this larger political grief and frustration that has gone on not just for decades, but for centuries in Peru. Like what had happened had just tapped into this collective fury about their political plight. tapped into this collective fury about their political plight. Definitely. The depth of the pain that we saw over the weekend was people not just crying because they lost their son, but because they have been suffering from years of what they consider injustices.

And there was this outpouring, not just for these two young men, but for the social situation of this entire community. So Julie, what's going to happen? I mean, has the chance for political change in Peru vanished? We're in a new moment. People have seen opportunity. This has accelerated their dissatisfaction. And so, you know, in Peru, these protests might die down.

But if something doesn't address these fundamental issues of poverty and inequality, this will be the political climate for a long time. Julie, thank you. Thanks.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. On Wednesday, Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, visited Washington, D.C. It was his first trip abroad since Russia invaded his country 10 months ago. It's a great honor for me to be here. Dear journalists, I thank you so much. country 10 months ago. Zelensky made the trip to ask for more aid for his war-torn country. He met in the Oval Office with President Biden, who told him that the Ukrainian people, quote, inspire the world, and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin, who's been launching attacks on Ukraine's power grid, of trying to, quote, use winter as a weapon. The main issue during my today's talks is to strengthen Ukraine next year.

Later, Zelensky gave a speech before a joint session of Congress in a bid to rally support for Ukraine among the American political class. And the Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it would include a cutting-edge American air defense system in its aid to Ukraine to help guard against Russian attacks. And Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, announced on Wednesday that he had succeeded in forming a coalition government. Once finalized and ratified by parliament in the coming days, the coalition will return Netanyahu to office

just 18 months after he left it. He will be at the helm of the most right-wing government in Israeli history. His reliance on far-right factions to return to power has already raised concerns that Israel will drift away from liberal democracy. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman, that Israel will drift away from liberal democracy. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

See you tomorrow.