Peru region disavows homegrown president

Apurimac, a poor, Indigenous-majority region in Peru’s rural south, is the birthplace of the country’s brand new president, Dina Boluarte. It has also been the epicenter of violent protests against her political takeover.

Twenty-one people have died in countrywide unrest sparked by the ouster early this month of leftist Pedro Castillo, under whose tumultuous 16-month leadership Boluarte was vice president.

Six of the deaths were recorded in Apurimac, as Boluarte’s own took a firm stand against her, marching in large numbers to demand fresh elections for a new president and Castillo’s release despite a rash of corruption allegations.

“We will not stop here. If the elites and parliament do not back down, we would go even as far as insurrection,” one of Boluarte’s opponents, 53-year-old Juan Ochicua, told AFP.

He and about 100 others from the Indigenous village of Quishuara travelled some 80 kilometers (about 50 miles) on the back of a truck Monday to blockade a road between the key cities of Abancay and Andahuaylas in Apurimac, a region of some half-a-million people.

“The constitution authorizes civil disobedience and insurrection against an illegal government,” Ochicua said as his companions chanted slogans in favor of dissolving parliament.

“Dina, murderer,” shouted the protesters, blaming the new president for protester deaths. 

“The shame of Apurimac,” chanted others in reference to Boluarte.

Castillo, who has Indigenous roots, is popular in poor, marginalized regions where the former rural school teacher and union leader embodies an antithesis to the political and economic elites in Lima.

“They don’t respect Indigenous people in Peru. We are economically abused and politically marginalized,” said Ochicua.

“He was set up,” said another Castillo supporter Maximo Chirinos, a teacher in the mountainside city of Abancay with some 100,000 people which serves as the administrative capital of Apurimac.

In a bid to quell the revolt sparked by Castillo’s impeachment and arrest on December 7 after he tried to dissolve Congress to rule by decree, Peru’s congress officially voted to move up the elections to April 2024 on Tuesday.

The leader of the legislature, Jose Williams, said for the measure to take effect, it would need to be ratified in another vote in the coming months.

Boluarte had agreed first to advance elections scheduled for 2026 to 2024, then to next year.

She has also declared a state of emergency that prohibits gatherings and demonstrations and allows the deployment of the military.

Despite the risk of arrest, hundreds marched Monday in Abancay chanting: “Peru, I love you, that’s why I defend you!”

Heavily armed riot police, who the protesters accuse of heavy-handedness, kept a close watch on proceedings, which were allowed to go ahead as long as there was no trouble.

Apurimac is a poor region at an altitude of some 2,700 meters that relies heavily on potato cultivation.

Many in the protesting crowd sported torn pants, holey shoes and faded jackets with missing zippers.

The demonstrators chewed coca leaf — used as a stimulant and to stave off altitude sickness — which they carried in plastic shopping bags.

“We get by,” is how protester Freddy Quispe, a 45-year-old subsistence farmer, described life in the region.

He complained that Apurimac sees very little of the benefits of hosting one of the country’s largest copper mines.

“The money should be invested here in irrigation infrastructure,” he said.

“It is the big companies in collusion with the government that take all the wealth of the country.”

Fellow demonstrator Rosario Medrano Aguirre, a 72-year-old merchant, wore a badge honoring Tupac Amaru, an Inca leader who led a rebellion against Spanish conquistadores.

Now is the “time for struggle,” she proclaimed.

“The people of Apurimac are demonstrating because the state, parliamentarians and usurper Dina Boluarte trample on our rights, they want our wealth,” said Aguirre.

“These right-wing people eat well, drink well and dress well with our money. And the Indigenous people have no medicines, no quality education,” she added.

“Let her (Boluarte) dissolve Parliament, let her resign! Otherwise we will go to Lima shut Parliament down,” Aguirre vowed.