I wrote last week about the ouster and arrest of Peru's president Castillo, who is associated with the country's rural reaches. Now, protests have erupted in those areas, with many traveling to where the former president is imprisoned to protest. Here are some excerpts from the New York Times coverage.
Now, Dina Boluarte is the sixth president in five years in a country reeling from a long history of high-level scandals and deep divisions between its rural poor and urban elite.
* * *
Ms. Boluarte, a former ally of Mr. Castillo, has found herself increasingly at odds with the rural Peruvians who voted the two of them into office last year. On Thursday, her government expanded the state of emergency, imposing a curfew in 15 provinces.
* * *
Mr. Castillo is a leftist from an indigent farming family in the Andean highlands who had never held office before becoming president last year.
While Peru enjoyed a long stretch of commodities-driven economic success that pulled millions of people from poverty earlier this century, that wealth failed to reach much of the country’s poor, especially in rural areas that bear the brunt of Peru’s chronic inequality.
The protests over Mr. Castillo’s removal grew so quickly, many demonstrators said, because, whatever his misdeeds, he represented the voice of a swath of the population that has long felt marginalized by the elite.
“I am against the fact that my children don’t have the same opportunities as the upper class,” said Delia Minaya, 49, who had traveled an hour by car to the camp growing outside the prison complex, bringing with her breakfast for dozens of strangers.
She said she had spent years working at a clothing factory — pulling regular 20-hour shifts — to send her two children to private school.
It wasn’t that she was a die-hard Castillo supporter, she said. But he should have had the chance to govern for people like her. “It pains me to see my brothers fighting every day for this damn system we have in Peru,” she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment