Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, 53, who announced on Wednesday (7) the dissolution of Congress and the establishment of a state of emergency in the country, has been in power for less than two years.
Elected in July 2021, he was best known in the country until the election for two episodes: the leadership of a national teachers’ strike, in 2017, at the head of Conare (National Reorientation Committee), the main union of rural teachers in Peru; and the rapid climb to the top spot in the first round of the election.
At the time, Castillo emerged with a leftist agenda, sympathetic to Chavismo, and proposals aimed at refounding the country —among which the creation of a new Constitution and the dismantling of institutions, such as the Ombudsman, considered by him to be a body corrupt. For the same reason, he has always defended a reform of the Judiciary, a position reinforced in this Wednesday’s pronouncement.
He made his debut in politics in 2002, running as a candidate for mayor of AnguÃa, a small town in the Cajamarca region. He lost and never ran again, until the presidential election two years ago.
Although aligned on the left, Castillo shares a conservative view with Keiko Fujimori, the defeated rival in 2021. He is against gay marriage, abortion rights and what he calls “gender ideology”. He also said in the campaign to reject the entry into the country of more Venezuelan refugees, who, for him, “steal jobs from Peruvians”.
Castillo was born in Tacabamba, in the province of Chota, in the north of the country. At school, which he reached after walking 2 km at an altitude of over 2,000 meters, he was not known for excelling in subjects, unlike when he helped his father with the potato and wheat harvest. When he launched the Presidency, he was still living in Chota, with his wife and two children, teaching Spanish and history to middle and high school classes.
He worked at the same college for 25 years, and some of his former students became part of his official circle of security and political coordination.
With his father, he learned to celebrate General Juan Velasco Alvarado, the left-wing dictator who ruled the country between 1968 and 1975. A populist, he distributed land, and one of them ended up in the Castillo family. Alvarado, a hero to many leftists in the 1970s, also had another admirer: former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (1954-2013).
If, on the one hand, he is conservative in relation to civil rights, Castillo has always defended the refoundation of the State and the country’s economic model. Since the campaign, he has been talking about a new Constitution and saying that, as he did this Wednesday, he would close Congress if there was opposition to the proposal. He also said that the economy must be built from the “bottom up”, mentioning, among the areas that can be nationalized, mining —a great source of export products for Peru.
In a speech with great appeal to rural regions, Castillo took over saying that politicians in the capital, Lima, do not know how life develops in the interior and frequently resorting to the period in which, according to him, he collected firewood, cooked and never stopped working , except when going to school or sleeping.
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