Peru is burning. We demand respect for the right to protest and the lives of those protesting.
The grave situation in Peru is magnified by the deafening silence of the so-called “international community.” When crises erupt in the world that affect the United States and Europe, they, who proclaim themselves the international community, initiate a broad and continuous process in which grandiloquent declarations follow one another, political, economic, and diplomatic measures are taken, and the mass and traditional media bombard us with information about the crisis.
However, we see that when these crises are of no interest to the West, the silence becomes deafening: the media blackout is activated and the silence of the dominant media and actors, complicit or part of those who provoke the crisis, does not provide coverage for the continuous violations of human rights and the erosion of democracy that they always claim to defend.
This is what we have been witnessing in Peru since December 7, 2022, when the constitutional president, Pedro Castillo, was removed from office and imprisoned. For 18 months, the political and economic elites—the same elites who had always considered the country their exclusive property—tried every possible means to obstruct Castillo's government. For them, it was insulting that a schoolteacher from the highlands had been elected by the people and was proposing to introduce changes that the people demanded after decades of neoliberalism, corruption, and the impoverishment of the vast majority.
The elites showed, once again, that what they themselves proclaimed as the "democratic system," the basis of coexistence and the rule of law that guaranteed freedoms, was only so if it kept them in power.
Thus, after countless measures of all kinds to prevent the new government, they decided to take the final step and seize, once again, the reins of political power; they never lost economic power.
On December 8, 2022, the elected president was imprisoned and Dina Boluarte was proclaimed in his place, ignoring from that moment on the social demands for the dissolution of the coup-installed Congress and the holding of new elections. A third demand was already beginning to emerge: the convening of a Constituent Assembly to refound a new Peru.
The response of the Peruvian state and government, since then, has been the suspension of constitutional guarantees and freedoms, and of the right that protects people to social protest against an unjust government that ignores and marginalizes them.
The violent crackdown has resulted in approximately sixty people killed and an unknown number of men and women injured and detained. Recent reports indicate that the protests have spread from the southern departments, which have been at the forefront of the movement in recent weeks, to the central and northern regions.
Almost the entire country is participating in road blockades and social demonstrations in cities large and small. This past week, the protests have been concentrated in Lima, where demonstrations are ongoing and the police, for example, just took over the university facilities on January 21, 2023, marking another step in the government's escalating repression and violation of university autonomy.
For all these reasons, we join the thousands of women, others and men who demand the end of a government, that of Dina Boluarte, which has given the country nothing but death, repression and violence.
We want to add to this statement one more denunciation and one more appeal. This denunciation is directed at the so-called “international community” that stands idly by while the Peruvian people suffer, looking the other way and thus providing cover for the Peruvian government's plans to maintain its grip on power and increase repression.
Governments, primarily American and European, cannot talk to us about democracy, freedoms and human rights while remaining silent about the systematic violation of all those principles by the government of Dina Boluarte.
The call is directed to those same governments to exert pressure (they know very well how to do so) to end this bloodshed of death and suffering. Likewise, we call upon our sister governments in Latin America to act to isolate the current Peruvian government. We cannot provide cover within the various continental structures to a government that can already be openly described as murderous. If just two weeks ago the governments and peoples of Latin America united their words and actions against the attempted coup in Brazil, that must be the path forward for Peru.
From the undersigned individuals, collectives, organizations, movements and networks, we join our voice, our solidarity, our righteous anger, to the pain felt today by the people, women, others and men of Peru standing in struggle, whether they are on the coast, in the mountains or in the jungle, in the big cities or in the smallest communities.
We demand that the Peruvian State and national and international civil organizations guarantee respect for the human rights and lives of those mobilized. We want them to fly free like the condor in the Andes, to be able to decide for themselves the path to follow, to be true protagonists in weaving their lives with dignity, freedom, and true democracy.
There are thousands of us who support and are in tune with this struggle from different points on planet Earth.
To add your signature to the 952 that already exist today, you can go to http://chng.it/CpW8GRyxkC
February 1th 2023
CLACSO Working Group
Bodies, territories, resistances
This text expresses the position of the CLACSO Working Groups Bodies, territories, resistances and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.
