Buyer’s Remorse: Peruvians Demand Marxist President Resign Less than a Year into Term

A woman holds signs during a protest against the governement of Peru's President Pedro Cas
ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AFP via Getty Images
Christian K. Caruzo

Thousands of Peruvians continued to take the streets on Wednesday demanding the resignation of Marxist President Pedro Castillo over skyrocketing costs of living, fuel, and fertilizer.

A failed attempt to impose a curfew that explicitly suspended constitutional rights did nothing to quell the protests and instead exacerbated them, leading to a reported death toll of six. Protesters and members of Congress called for Castillo’s resignation on Thursday, less than a year after Castillo won a narrow victory against conservative presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori and less than a month after a second attempt to impeach him failed.

The Peruvian Institute of Studies published a poll report in March that indicated Castillo’s approval rating sat at a low 24.2 percent, a 3.9-percent drop when weighted against his February approval rate of 28.1 percent. Another poll found nearly 60 percent of Peru’s citizens want Castillo to resign from the presidency.

In a video interview, Jorge Muñoz, mayor of Peru’s capital city of Lima, described the future of Castillo’s presidency as a “chronicle of a death foretold,” in reference to Gabriel García Márquez’s 1981 novel.

“Sooner or later,” he predicted, “Pedro Castillo will end up leaving.”

The Panamericana Sur highway, located in the southern department (a state-level division) of Ica, remained blocked by protesters on Thursday, who agreed to grant a two-hour truce in order to let stranded civilians go through with their vehicles. The arrival of Alfonso Chávarry, Peru’s interior minister, to the zone has not deterred the participants of the blockade — who remain firm even after a 5.4 magnitude quake took place in the late evening hours of the 6th of April.

In the early hours of April 7, the Peruvian state-owned TVPeru reported the protesters had agreed to a five-day truce on the highway.

If the government does not meet their demands by the end of the five days, the protests, organizers vow, will continue. The ongoing nationwide transportation strike, which started on March 28, remains ongoing, also hindering commerce and transport.

In addition to the ongoing intense protests, Castillo faces an upcoming rally by members of the Peruvian education union, who accuse Castillo of not having kept his promises, such as improving the teachers’ wages and allocating ten percent of the country’s GDP in education.

Alejandro Salas, Peru’s current culture minister, stated that Castillo has no intention of resigning this week.

“There is no way. President Castillo is solid, President Castillo has the strength of democracy,” Salas asserted.

Daniel Salaverry, former president of the Peruvian Congress currently serving as presidential adviser, also stated that Pedro Castillo has no intentions to resign. “Any possibility that the president takes a decision such as that [resigning] is discarded,” he said.

Salaverry also said he recommended Castillo renew his cabinet — meaning retire every member and refill the positions. If Castillo takes this route, this would be the fifth renewal of his cabinet officials since he took office.

In contrast, Aníbal Torres, Peru’s current prime minister, did not discard the possibility of Castillo’s resignation.

“Well, in Peru everything is possible. I say again that this is nothing new in the country. We have had five presidents and three Congresses in five years,” Torres observed.

Torres himself stated that he does not intend to resign to his position as Peru’s premier.

Since 2017, Peruvians have lived through five years of an ongoing political crisis and unstable government that has made them go through five different presidents over the past six years — three of them alone during the span of a single week in November 2020.

Castillo, who ran with the Marxist Free Peru party, narrowly won the 2021 elections amidst a shroud of controversy and fraud allegations. His arrival to the presidency has left an already shaky Peru even more unstable, with many of his ministers constantly resigning. In less than a year as president, Castillo has had to replace his entire cabinet of ministers four times and has gone through two impeachment processes.

Castillo attempted to create distance between himself and the authoritarian regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua this year by stating that he hoped Peru would not follow their “models” – a concession to the high unpopularity of leftist politics in the country generally – for which socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro accused him of being part of a “failed and cowardly” left. Fujimori, the candidate Castillo narrowly defeated, is the daughter of former conservative president Alberto Fujimori and a three-time presidential election loser.

In the event of Castillo’s resignation, Dina Boularte, Peru’s current vice-president, would assume the country’s presidency, and early elections would have to take place.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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