More rural unrest in Peru

I wrote about the rural-urban split in Peru last month when Pedro Castillo was forced from the president's office.  That story continues to be in the news, including this today from NPR:  

Peru's capital is bracing for large demonstrations against the government over coming days. Thousands of rural residents have been streaming into Lima to demand justice for the more than 50 people killed in weeks of protests.

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Protesters also want to bring attention to long-standing social and economic inequality in the country. The wealth gap between Peru's indigenous south and the urban capital has long been present, but has widened in recent years.

Dina Lopez came to Lima from her highland city of Ayacucho to participate in protests. "No one pays attention to us out there — where are our human rights?" she said. She spoke to NPR as police attempted to remove her and fellow protesters from the doorsteps of a church.

"That woman is deaf to our suffering," Lopez added, referring to President Boluarte.

Here's the New York Times coverage of recent events from a few days ago.  Here's an excerpt from that story:

Rather than fade, protests in rural Peru that began more than a month ago over the ouster of the former president have only grown in size and in the scope of demonstrators’ demands, paralyzing entire sections of the country and threatening efforts by the new president, Dina Boluarte, to gain control.

The unrest is now far broader than anger over who is running the country. Instead, it represents a profound frustration with Peru’s young democracy, which protesters say has failed to address a yawning gap between the rich and the poor and between Lima and the country’s rural areas.

Democracy, they say, has largely helped a small elite — the political class, the rich and corporate executives — accumulate power and wealth, while providing few benefits to many other Peruvians.

Postscript:  Here's more coverage from the NYT newsletter on  January 22, 2023: 

Many of Castillo’s supporters are poor or middle class Indigenous people, part of the roughly two-thirds of the country’s population living outside of the capital, Lima. As a colleague of mine put it, many feel politically excluded while also feeling tokenized by Peru’s tourism industry. When news reached his supporters in rural areas, they were angry he had been removed from office. Castillo was their hope for change.

So tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in an effort to shut down the country, what they felt was their only way to be heard.

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While some people living in urban areas dismissed these demonstrators as extremists, at least one trusted poll shows a majority of Peruvians support the protests.

Here's a vignette from Juliaca (population 276,000), in southern Peru, where police killed 19 protestors  earlier this month.  The person answering the questions/speaking is Julie Turkewitz, the Times Andes bureau chief.  

What did you learn from speaking with protesters?

Being there helped me understand why people feel the Peruvian democracy is not working for them. People feel the system is rigged against them. And on the ground, I could really see why they believed that.

What did you see?

We found one example when we went to a public hospital and spoke to many people who had suffered gunshot wounds in the city’s deadly protest. Human rights groups have accused police of shooting directly at demonstrators. The wounded had not been given their medical reports, even though that was their right. Several people said they believed that they were being punished for their association with the demonstrations.

At the hospital, patients lacked access to basic services. They pay for their own water and there is no toilet paper or soap in many hospital bathrooms. The hospital director, appointed by the government, said, basically, everything is fine here. He didn’t tell me that the victims needed more help. This idea that people feel forgotten by Peruvian democracy was visible in the hospital.

Postscript:  On February 1, the Los Angeles Times published a feature on the Peruvian unrest under the headline, "'They don't see us as humans': In Peru, protests over racism and neglect spill from the Andes." Kate Linthicum reports.