a Peru fractured by protests

Denunciations of human rights violations against the government of Dina Boluarte accumulate, including that of Beckham Romario, who died on December 11 in Andahuaylas.

Dany Quispe, his father, received a video of the demonstrations in which he identified an injured person very similar to his son. “They took him out of the ambulance at the hospital and he was my son, with a gunshot wound,” he told the ‘AFP’ agency.

“They took him to the emergency room. His mother was crying and I was silent, but thinking that he was not going to live. He was very injured, his eyes, his brain, all blown up, with his head smashed,” he recalls.

Rolando Luque, deputy ombudsman, considers the crisis that erupted with the dismissal of President Pedro Castillo in December after he tried to dissolve Congress and rule by decree as “a tragedy.”

“The humanitarian consequences of this conflict are the greatest that Peru has experienced since 2003,” he told ‘AFP’.

He adds that in the face of the violence of the mobilizations “several institutions have failed” in their ability to prevent and control the conflict.

To date, 48 citizens have been killed in clashes, one police officer has been killed, 11 have died in events related to the protests and more than 1,300 have been injured, almost half of them members of the security forces, according to the Ombudsman’s Office, an autonomous body that watch over citizen rights.

criminal charges

The Ombudsman emphasizes that the Peruvian security forces must collaborate with the Prosecutor’s Office to clarify whether there were irregularities in the use of force and whether the perpetrators were negligent or obeyed orders.

Organizations such as Amnesty International have denounced “serious violations of human rights” and a “marked racist bias” of the security forces in the demonstrations.

Quispe, 47, heads the Association of Relatives of Victims of Repression in Andahuaylas and Chincheros, in the Apurímac region, which brings together relatives of seven deceased. But he laments that in Andahuaylas “there is no justice, there is no one to help us.”

Local NGOs have criminally denounced Boluarte, his ministers and police chiefs for the death of six protesters in Apurímac, while the prosecutor’s office investigates alleged murders during mobilizations in Puno and Ayacucho, all regions of the Andean southeast.

For now, Luque recognizes the government’s “financial support” for the relatives of the deceased and injured, both civilians and police, as a success, but urges an “in-depth” investigation of these deaths.

inequalities

For Luque, the “self-criticism” of the State and its institutions is lacking, because beyond the situation, the outbreak reveals “much larger structural problems.”

He points out that the prolonged political crisis, with six presidents since 2016, is a consequence not only of the weakening of the parties but also “of the corruption, inefficiency, inequalities and exclusions” that affect the country.

Quispe’s family suffers from these inequalities. Dany is a farmer from Anallaco, a town in Apurímac, which is the second department in Peru with the highest percentage of extreme poverty, according to official data.

Some seasons they live rented in Andahuaylas and the rest in their farm (orchard), with which they subsist. Beckham worked as a soccer coach and helped with his family’s expenses.

“This year he was going to enter the university, he wanted to prepare to be a doctor,” says Quispe, who cries when he remembers him as “the kindest, most affectionate of all” his children.

political survival

The actions of Boluarte and Congress, recipients of the street clamor demanding the resignation of the president and new elections before the regular term in 2026, do not appease the conflict.

“The government did not fully understand the complexity of the protest, and now it is very difficult for there to be a dialogue” with a “highly dissatisfied” citizenry, points out political scientist Kathy Zegarra.

He points out that the Executive and Legislative branches seek to “excuse” the police and military of the deaths of civilians, and exhibit “disconnection” from the demand for resignation and electoral advancement, endorsed by more than 70% of Peruvians according to surveys.

For the analyst, these gestures are acts of “survival” by a government that seeks to “negotiate with congressmen” to stay in power, while trying to avoid possible judicial consequences in a country of “fleeting and weak” administrations.

Although the protests have decreased since January, Luque warns that if any political actor “believes that they have won this battle” they are “in a complete mistake.”

“What there is, rather, is a new opportunity to solve this problem. They should be focused there and not on thinking that they can govern the country until 2026,” he says.