Latin American political actors resisted being classified in the categories of left and right, as old as the French Revolution. What was Peronism if not a challenge for political scientists? Currently, the case of Peru offers an example that is also not very understandable from an international perspective, which put Peruvians in the situation of living in uncertainty because of a government without direction.
Pedro Castillo was elected in 2021 and installed himself in the presidential chair a year ago. He was considered a left-wing figure, who had (and still seems to have) the support of left-wing parties. Among them, that of Perú Libre, the organization that presented him as a presidential candidate and that answers to Vladimir Cerrón, the neurosurgeon who lived more than a decade in Cuba and brought to Peru not only the cult of “socialism”, but also a program of appropriate government. A court ruling for corruption barred him from running in 2021.
Last year, Castillo wrote on his Twitter account: “We will continue to fight tirelessly for the changes that the people need. We are the government that promotes social demands and that bets on the development of our regions. With unity and consensus, we will do it”.
Well, what has this government done during this year that, for the benefit of the people, translates into a left-wing orientation? Little or nothing.
Nowadays, Castillo’s main objective is to survive, a difficult task in which, with six investigations opened against him by the Public Ministry, everyday life seems to be the only thing that matters. However, the government moves like a bird without a head: it has just sworn in the fifth ministerial cabinet so far and has appointed an internationalist with known reactionary positions as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Perhaps the appointment is an attempt to placate the neoconservative sectors (which control just over a third of Parliament) that have bothered Castillo in his struggle for survival. These twice tried to remove him from office without achieving the constitutionally required votes.
Even before Castillo took office and during his presidency, certain actors and opposition groups worked to raise the specter of electoral fraud, for which they could not show any evidence.
A “leftism” empty of content
In addition to routinely invoking the “people” in his speeches, Castillo did not benefit the majority of the country with concrete measures. Instead, what has been reported in the last twelve months are the different revelations of irregularities in matters dealt with from the Government Palace, some of which gave rise to investigations carried out by the inspectors. Notes on corruption in public management have filled the written and television press.
The apparent leftism of origin was thus left in a void. And polls reveal that people of flesh and blood perceive him as such, since, according to polls, the president has the support of about one in five Peruvians. In one year, Castillo thus lost more than half of the preferences that elected him president.
The other terrain where leftism is being put to the test is Parliament. There, Peru Libre, a party that was considered official and which installed itself in Congress with 37 seats, lost 21 of them because it split in two. One part stayed with Cerrón and another formed the so-called Bloque Magisterial, closer to the president.
But what is striking is that in several important decisions, both groups coincided with the parliamentary sector identified as right-wing. This bloc includes the Fujimorismo of Fuerza Popular, a chameleonic Avanza País, and Renovación Popular, whose leader, Rafael López Aliaga, is a well-known Opus Dei militant who is proud to carry a cilice.
Of the various votes in which left and right coincided in the Peruvian Congress, two can be highlighted. One of them was the appointment of members of the Constitutional Court, which this year was negotiated using the old quota system (“you put yours and I’ll put mine”), without paying attention to the merits and qualifications of the candidates.
The other was the dismantling of the universities’ quality control system (Sunedu), which in a few years managed to put out of circulation a series of institutions that were called “universities”, but whose sole purpose was profit and operated without any other purpose. other than awarding unsupported professional diplomas.
These false universities rely on their parliamentary representation, which has been in charge of destroying the quality control system with the contest of left and right. Parliamentary decisions thus reveal that ideological preferences do not seem to count on their own or are distinct from those attributed to the left.
a reactionary left
Strictly speaking, the “leftist” parliamentarians adhere to what has come to be called the illiberal left, which, in the Peruvian case, is also reactionary. Covering themselves under the cloak of the left, they use their seats in Congress to defend particular interests to which different irregular activities are not alien to them.
It is in this definition of their task that there is no difference between them and most of their namesakes in the other parties. Both groups, most of them militants of a retrograde conservatism that opposes sex education in schools, abhor same-sex marriage and minimize the importance of gender violence, in a country with increasing numbers of it.
In addition, the left and the right agree in opposing the demand for early general elections (raised under the slogan “que se vayan todos”), which would deprive current congressmen not only of their emoluments for the next four years, but also of the business under the table. they perform from their positions.
Today’s Peru is going through a critical situation whose next steps are unimaginable. But to try to understand this situation, it is not very useful to label actors as left or right. Lack of preparation, short-sightedness, eagerness to obtain personal or group benefits and disinterest in what was once known as the general interest characterize those who, with one party shirt or another, agree to take the country in an unknown direction.
*Translation from Spanish by Giulia Gaspar
