How The Current Unrest in Peru is Putting Its Dramatic Inequalities To The Forefront

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In late November 2022, on the brink of being impeached, the then Peruvian president Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve the legislature. This led to him being arrested and held in pre-trial detention. These events, and the government takeover by his vice president Dina Boluarte, have sparked increasingly large and violently repressed unrest.

Although Castillo's approval ratings had steadily declined over the 17 months and repeated corruption scandals of his presidency, he had been brought to power by impoverished rural indigenous voters who saw in him the opportunity to finally have a say in government, and his downfall unleashed long-standing grievances against the elites, particularly in the poor rural Andean regions of southern Peru - the epicenter of the revolt.

As political analyst Mirko Lauer analyzed, the revolt indeed stems from the deep-rooted structural inequalities, racism, and grinding poverty, faced by the indigenous populations in Peru.

‘The people have woken up’

‘The people have woken up’ says Delia Zevallos, a 52-year-old protester, as she evokes the  ‘overdue’ popular rebellion of Peru’s long neglected rural south.

In the months coming up to the unrest, there was a dramatic worsening in poverty linked to a food crisis and  soaring prices. Data from the UN indicates that some 16.6 million people found themselves in November 2022 ‘without regular access to enough safe and nutritious food’. Covid and the Ukraine crisis respectively drove up the rate of unemployment and the price hikes of food and energy.

This added up to the longstanding grievances about high poverty levels and discrimination felt by many in Peru's indigenous populations, accusing the government of treating them like ‘second class’ citizens, humiliated and forgotten. Most protesters come from resource-rich mining regions, which have been exploited for profits that often passed by the local communities.

The region had, moreover, already been set ablaze, from the 1980s to the late 1990s, as the center of the brutal war waged by Maoist Shining Path guerrillas against the state. The indigenous populations were often targeted victims of massacres caught in the crossfires of two belligerents committing systematic human rights violations. The indigenous communities have often failed to obtain economic reparations from the government since then.

Three ways forward to reduce poverty once the crisis has blown over

 This past decade, a web of social welfare programs have been created by international organizations in collaboration with the Peruvian government and local organizations to eradicate poverty in Peru. These programs need to be strengthened to fight poverty effectively and sustainably, and three ways which this can be done is by:

• Pursuing the effort initiated by the World Bank Group to promote equity by improving the quality of and access to social infrastructures (most importantly health and education), and services in the often geographically isolated areas, typically inhabited by indigenous communities.

• Carrying on with World food programs seeking to eradicate malnutrition, through advocacy, communication campaigns, nutrition, and disaster preparedness.

• Finally, the OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) recently deployed a mission to Peru to work with State institutions, civil society organizations, and the UN. This mission will hopefully enhance their ability to promote and protect all human rights.

However, as word of the crisis is starting to fade in the media, the unrest has not yet blown over. If the protests have tended to die down it is purely for economic reasons. The continuous turmoil has led the country’s economy to a halt, the tourism to an all time low, and foreign investment to pull out capitals. High inflation and stunted growth have heralded a worrying year for the same Peruvian communities that took to the streets to challenge the government and their living conditions. Fundamental problems remain, with a large part of the population feeling disconnected from the Lima elite and neglected by government institutions, as well as a strong rejection of Congress, an institution widely unpopular across the whole Peruvian society.