2021-04-19

The Next Great Short: Peru?

There's a good chance Peru will vote for a change in June. Pedro Castillo leads 42-31 in the first batch of run-off polls ahead of the June 6 election. The guy is all over the map in his public comments, but he consistently sounds like an amalgam of traditional leftist economics and traditional rightist social policy.

Jacobin: With Pedro Castillo, Peru Has a Chance to Vanquish Fujimorismo

The Western press laels him as far-left. He definitely has some traditionally left-wing economic views, but he seems more like a nationalist than a socialist.

The fact that Castillo has issued incendiary statements about the need to dissolve Congress and eliminate the Peruvian Constitutional Court — two unpopular public institutions — further inflames concerns that the current front-runner is a frenzied authoritarian.

But it is important to situate Pedro Castillo’s rhetoric and positions in the context of his background. He first came to prominence in 2017 as the leader of a nationwide rank-and-file teacher strike demanding funds for education and improved wages. The dramatic action, against the neoliberal education reform measures of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, proved to be one of the most significant in recent times — particularly noteworthy considering the lingering effects of Fujimori’s efforts to bring all trade union activity to heel. In retrospect, the 2017 strike can be read as part of a wave of building social momentum that eventually erupted in anti-neoliberal protests last December.

From 2005 to 2017 Castillo was affiliated with Perú Posible, a centrist catchall party led by the former president Alejandro Toledo. In 2017 he joined his current party, Perú Libre. Perú Libre proudly claims to be a Marxist-Leninist formation and essentially proposes a conventional left-wing program centered around increased spending on education and health services, the nationalization of key extractive sectors, and a host of anti-corruption measures like salary limits for congressional members. The party belongs to the São Paulo Forum along with organizations like Brazil’s Workers’ Party and Argentina’s Peronist coalition Frente de Todos.

The real sticking point for large parts of the Peruvian left has to do with Castillo’s pronounced social conservatism. Their distrust, however, needs to be placed in its right context.

Fondly referred to by supporters as the candidate for “deep Peru,” the country’s provincial interior has been the source of some strange political ventures in recent history. These include Antauro Humala’s Ethnocacerist movement, a purportedly Marxist-Leninist organization that advocates for military conflict with neighboring Chile and promotes an ethnically based vision of Peruvian nationalism based on Quechua supremacy.

The fact that Castillo has openly claimed that, if elected, he will release Humala from prison — currently serving a sentence for leading the 2000 military revolt against Fujimori — has raised eyebrows. As has Castillo’s embrace of anti-immigrant — specifically anti-Venezuelan — rhetoric.

Castillo opposes the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and policies promoting gender equality — a stance unremarkable on its face given those same positions, in one form or another, are common to many of the region’s progressive leaders.

But Peru is also, along with Brazil, one of the Latin American countries where religious fundamentalism has made the biggest inroads into national politics. Rafael López Aliaga of the Popular Renewal party almost made it into the second round by branding himself the “Peruvian Bolsonaro,” and Peru is home base for the “Con mi hijo no te metas” campaign, a continent-wide propaganda movement that incites hatred against women and the LGBT community.

The Agricultural People’s Front of Peru (FREPAP) failed to cross the 5 percent threshold required to win congressional seats, but the bizarre millenarian cult promoting Christian theocracy and indigenous supremacy remains an important political player.

Unlike other segments of the Left in the country, Castillo hasn’t shown a willingness to critique these formations.

Maybe he's a nationalist socialist? Whatever he is, the Western press is setting him up as a far-leftists. That will be bearish for Peruvian assets and the Peruvian sol should he win. My pick for a play is Credicorp (BAP).

No comments:

Post a Comment