Peru’s election: a battle between “rich and poor, master and slave”

The government palace in Lima. Inset: Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori

On June 6, Peruvians will choose between Pedro Castillo, a rural teacher described in mainstream media as “far left,” and Keiko Fujimori, described in mainstream media as “market friendly.” Those tags obscure deeper truths about the political moment.

A day after first-round results of the presidential election gave Peruvians a choice between these political opposites for the second round, I asked my Facebook friends what they thought. Several responded, and I have been learning.

First lesson came in a message from a friend: an Indigenous woman who is a medical doctor serving communities high in the Andes and far from Lima. 

“What happened in Peru is that, in the midst of this pandemic that further deepened the injustice and the inequities in health, education, access to work and extreme poverty: as always, Lima, the capital, only saw its own context. It had no interest in the regions and their right to decide by whom they should be government. For this reason, they were surprised when the teacher, Pedro Castillo, led the voting and passed to the second round. He is someone they treat as a nobody, who in social media they insult because he is part of Perú profundo (deep Peru), where every day survival is a challenge, not just because of Covid, but also because of hunger and unemployment. 

“There were other options, but as a people, we know those who give flowery and beautiful speeches but then in real life reject us, when they use our culture that they have learned about through books without feeling respect for us and connection with our land and spirituality, our Pachamama and Apus. I think this is a good time for someone who is like the majority of Peruvians to assume the leadership of our country, just as our brother Evo Morales did in Bolivia. Perhaps we will make a mistake, but I think that after so many years of being pushed aside and made invisible in our own land, we have the right. I hope that I have been able to express the feeling of a great many of my sisters and brothers.

“My people are suffering a lot. They don’t have masks. They don’t have water to wash their hands. They get sick and die alone. But in the midst of all of this, they are in solidarity, they care for their elders. These are my people and ojalá (I hope) they have the chance to be heard and taken into account.”

Second lesson came from several friends, either writing directly to me or posting in social media. Be cautious about media coverage. Fujimori, appearing on the final ballot for the third time, is well-known. She is the daughter of a former president who is in prison for corruption; she faces her own criminal charges related to money-laundering and irregular campaign contributions arising from her time in Congress.

Castillo, as someone whom the media have ignored, is harder to get to know. The Bolivian news service Kawsachun translated one of his speeches into English so that you can read his own words as you watch the video. Here, Castillo himself excoriates the media: 

“I want to denounce publicly those media outlets with national coverage that twist reality. Those outlets that do what they want and defend the oligarchy, but they forget about the people who have no bread, no education, no healthcare. They forget about those who demand their rights and ask for justice. That’s why we’re here, if we have to give our lives for a better country then we’ll do it with dignity. We won’t back down.”

Fujimori and mainstream media decry Castillo, tagging him as a Communist and worse, a supporter of the old Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrilla movement. It’s a false claim, given that he was part of the ronderos campesinos, rural patrols that were key to defeating Sendero.

In many communities today, the ronderos protect collectively-held land and the rights of the Indigenous and peasant farmers who live there. Their role is constitutionally-protected and built into municipal structures. Moreover, the state is required to attend to people in their language and people are recognized as having rights to their ethnic and cultural identities. The ronderos are also responsible for administration of communal justice. Some of the women’s groups I know train the ronderos so that they will bring a gender justice perspective to their work, so as to protect the rights of women.

Castillo is a rural teacher in the city of Chota in the Cajamarca region, 600 km north of Lima. An organizer in the teachers’ union, he was one of the leaders of a 2017 strike by teachers that sought to defend their employment rights and increase salaries. The academic Roger Merino writes that Castillo’s “left” might be more the classic trade union left—and certainly an emphasis on issues confronting urban and rural workers would be a step forward—and not the multi-sectoral left that has won power (and lost it) in many Latin American countries in the past two decades.

Farms in Peru’s Sacred Valley, high in the Andes

Castillo campaigned on the slogan, “no more poverty in a rich country.”  He has won the support of Veronika Mendoza, who represented a more broadly inclusive left, and he will need to build bridges with social movements of environmentalists, women, LGBTI people and Indigenous peoples. He has promised to re-write Alberto Fujimori’s 1993 constitution (which favours private enterprise and restricts the role of the state), improve the quality of Peru’s media through regulation, and increase public spending on health and education. Like many Peruvian families, his is religiously diverse: he is Catholic and his wife and children are part of the Nazarene Church. 

Keiko Fujimori, on the other hand, would not hesitate to break with democratic commitments or institutions. She is favoured by the business elites who warn of capital flight. Writing for the ALAI news service, Jesús Ospina Salinas says Peru’s current polarization comes from those who have no interest in “reducing inequalities, and who would continue a model that only brings short-term economic gains, but not structural ones that are sought and needed by the poor. The campaign of fear will not cease.”

“This is a battle between the rich and the poor, the struggle between the… master and the slave,” Castillo has said. With three weeks and one more debate before the election, the rich, who control most media, are doing all they can to catch up in opinion polls.

¿Qué hubo? What’s going on in Colombia?

“This space is for civilian women and men. No armed actors.”

Against all odds, the Colombian people have succeeded these recent weeks in mounting the biggest challenge to the country’s ruling class in living memory. 

Since April 28, Colombia has been rocked by mass protests—and excessive police and military repression. The government’s human rights office acknowledges the deaths of at least 42 protesters and one policeman, but independent groups put the toll much higher. 

Protests began because of an ill-conceived plan to raises taxes on working and middle-class people while the COVID pandemic continues to take a huge toll on human lives and the economy. The government backed down and the finance minister quit, but the protests continue because taxes are not the only problem.

“Together we build peace; with the accords, we all win.”

The government of Iván Duque, the president who depends on former president Álvaro Uribe for political support, has done little to implement the peace agreement reached in 2016 by his predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos, and the FARC guerrillas. Nor has it pursued talks with the other guerrilla army, the ELN. Some of the once-demobilized FARC fighters have taken up arms again. Killings of social movement leaders, human rights defenders and ex-combatants continue, reaching “shocking levels” in 2020 according to Amnesty International.

Little is done to assist Colombia’s nearly 8 million internally-displaced people to recover land taken from them by paramilitary death squads acting on behalf of large land-owners—the class that Uribe defends most ardently. Ancestors of that group seized control of Colombia in the wake of the independence struggle two centuries ago, and it continues to take land from Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and other small land-holder farmers. 

With the pandemic, poverty has worsened—and the government does not address the problem. The UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimated that 37.5 per cent of Colombia’s population lived below the poverty line by the end of 2020, making it the country with the highest poverty rate in Latin America. The World Bank’s numbers give cause to even greater pessimism: it estimates a poverty rate of 45 per cent.

Trade unions, women’s groups, students, Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and LGBTI groups have all been part of the protests. Churches were slow to speak—and some merely echoed the government’s call for order. But Colombia’s Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church have affirmed the rights of the multitudes to protest. The Evangelical Lutheran Church called on the government to “peacefully listen.”

The Women’s Popular Organization (OFP), a partner of KAIROS Canada, called for political will to implement the peace accords, demilitarization of areas where protests are taking place, and for a “universal basic income for women and families living in poverty.” 

Through Common Frontiers, several Canadian allies of Colombian groups issued a joint statement of solidarity with the protests, and called on Canada to press Colombia to dismantle its riot squad (called the ESMAD and held responsible for most of the violence), halt human rights violations, to negotiate with the National Strike Committee, and “engage in a serious dialogue with social and institutional actors to address the deep inequalities which are at the root of this conflict.”

For a few days, the protests garnered worldwide attention. Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Marc Garneau, condemned “the violence, including the disproportionate use of force by security forces.” He went on to express concern about “the acts of vandalism and attacks directed against public officials responsible for the protection of all Colombian citizens. Canada calls upon those responsible for road blockades to allow the free passage of goods and services essential to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Left: “The land is for those who work it.” Right: Displacement.

When thinking about Colombia today, however, it’s important to bear in mind the falsos positivos, the false positives—6,402 murders carried out during the Uribe presidency. Colombia’s armed forces kidnapped young men from urban barrios, murdered them, dressed them as guerrillas, and then tried to pass them off “successes” in its war on “terrorism.” They’re quite capable of dressing themselves up, acting as vandals, and then blaming the protesters.

While proclaiming support for peace, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper signed a free trade agreement with Uribe in 2008; opponents (among whom I was one) stalled its implementation until 2011 because it rewards the same thieving class that has ruled Colombia since 1810. 

Canada also allows weapons sales to Colombia. The Colombian human rights group CREDHOS, a partner of Peace Brigades International, is calling on Canada to stop technical assistance, logistical or financial support to the Colombian armed forces and police. 

“The world is seeing the repression that is happening in Colombia. We call on Canada and other countries to please talk about the violence in Colombia. If there is any sort of military support or technical assistance, please abstain from providing that military aid because they are attacking the civilian population.”

“With due respect to the Canadian government we are asking that through your different actions and mechanisms, diplomatic channels that you have with the Colombian state, that you can speak to the national government and express your concern about systematic human rights violations in the context of the social protests.”

“Hopefully from the actions of the Canadian government and other countries we will be able to de-escalate the violence we are facing today in our country.”

Canada also has a “bilateral police initiative” with Colombia, announced in 2017 by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

Antidotes to neocolonial “development” in Central America

Santa Marta’s school, church and a greenhouse

Following on my post yesterday about the Biden Plan: what would it take for a development plan to work for Central Americans? We need to unwrap that word “development.”

Over many years, it has been my joy to work with organizations created by people in the region who talk about their aspirations in ways that are different from the White House or the World Bank.

In May 2018, I found myself in conversation with one of the founders of the Association for Economic and Social Development (ADES) in the northern part of Cabañas department in El Salvador. ADES sometimes describes itself as a “social movement that is organized as a non-governmental organization” (NGO).

I asked one of the founders, Alonso, about the word “development” in the organization’s name. In response, he gave me what he called the “A-B-C-D of all of this.” The roots of community organization in the area were in the growth of base Christian communities (CEBs) in the 1960s and 70s, he said. Because of persecution during the civil war in the 1980s, the people of Santa Marta fled to Honduras. As the war came to an end in the late 80s and early 90s, and as the people of Santa Marta returned in October 1987, ways had to be found for the people “to defend themselves” against local and national governments. Alonso said: 

“We had to create conditions for life. We wanted development in rural areas. We sought water, land, health. Later, this was organized in a more intentional way [with the creation of ADES in 1992]. The first thing we did was to build a community centre for events, parties, weddings, and meetings.” 

Over time, people—especially women—began to see different possibilities for changing their conditions. Women began a small store that they owned cooperatively. Other projects began and spun off: micro-credit, community radio, the regional AIDS committee CoCoSI, among others. The United Church of Canada and the Anglican Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund were supporters from the outset. Alonso added: 

“For us development means to improve a the conditions of the people a little bit: having water in the communities, sharing land, getting access to health care and education, and transportation.”

Today, formal education is one of Santa Marta’s great successes. More than 100 people graduate from high school each year. ADES continues to lead in agricultural development and training in northern Cabañas. Even so, about half of the young grads choose to leave each year to continue their educations or to work in other cities, but they leave with a huge educational advantage.

Leaders of ADES in 2016

Throughout Central America, churches and NGOs support a wide variety of initiatives that benefit small farmers, emphasizing good ecological practice including reforestation. They also work to strengthen the voices of women in community and in their churches.

The challenges are growing. Climate change has meant both prolonged drought and more severe storms, including two hurricanes this past November. Part of the problem, especially in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, is high levels of violence that is partly related to the illegal drug trade and to the growth of street gangs. Those are factors leading to migration away from the region. 

In the face of violence in El Salvador, churches work to build a “culture of peace.” For example, Emmanuel Baptist Church (IBE) in San Salvador backs a program for youth led by youth. In a meeting in June 2019, 17-year old Laura said: “The way to achieve peace at the national level is to start from what is small. Begin with childhood. If someone beats a child, tell them not to, that’s not good. You have to treat them the way you want to be treated.” Peace, then, is the way of non-violence, providing people with the skills they need so they need so as not to be subject to the logic of the gangs. 

“Perhaps we are just a few people,” said Laura’s friend Michelle, also 17. “But if we come together, not just as church, not just as school, not just activists, but everyone, and if the government would support us, peace can be achieved.”

Yes. And:

In a conversation around the same time with another friend, Jorge, a leader in Guatemala’s LGBTI community, I said that it seemed to me that the violence in some Central American countries had to do with the failure of the peace accords that ended the civil wars, and the failure to provide some sort of authentic development across the region. 

But Jorge replied: “No, in fact, it has all worked out exactly the way that the elites and the big business-owners wanted: people are fighting with each other, too afraid to raise their voices, and they are afraid of their neighbours.” 

In that sense, the work of ADES and IBE represents signs of a future still to be attained. Part of the logic of ADES was for the people to live as if they had won the war: land was re-distributed, people were empowered for change.

But on the larger scale, our efforts for peace and a more inclusive vision of human development were largely defeated by a U.S.-backed military strategy and then by the imposition of a toxic development model, the one that has resulted in incredibly high rates of violence and unconstrained migration toward Mexico and the United States.