Never again a poor man in a rich country, lessons from Pedro Castillo's downfall

Professor Pruitt recently wrote about the coup and prosecution of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo and the violent suppression of protests that have occurred in its aftermath, acts that have garnered the condemnation of governments throughout Latin America, including from Mexico and Honduras (Professor Pruitt's blog posts on the topic can be found here, here, and here). Given the failure of President Castillo to implement the political program he campaigned on as a member of the socialist Peru Libre Party, an agenda captured by his campaign slogan "never again a poor man in a rich country," I think it is worth evaluating his tenure in office in comparison to how Bolivia's Movement for Socialism (MAS) Government leveraged popular power in order to win gains for their country's rural poor.

President Castillo faced an onslaught of structural and political obstacles in enacting and implementing the policies he campaigned on, notably the ratification of a new constitution written by a constituent assembly and the development of Peru's rural Andean countryside fueled by revenue generated from the nationalization of natural resources like gold, lithium, and copper (which Peru is the second largest producer of in the world). 

The obstacles Castillo faced included a legislature in which the Right controls a majority of seats as well as the threat of capitalist disinvestment from the economy encapsulated by the political science concept known the structural dependence of the state on capital. This concept posits that capital can leverage their power to create economic crisis to rein in economic programs that run counter to their class interest, such as large-scale wealth redistribution and nationalization. This topic was discussed in detail in this past blog post regarding capital strikes and constraints imposed upon the Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's socialist program during his first stint in power. 

The impediments to President Castillo advancing his bold agenda were compounded by Peru's lack of a organized, mass base to rally around his agenda and leverage their relationship to power into policy victories. While President Castillo himself was a leader of a teachers' union strike, Peru's trade union movement has historically been weak. The Peruvian Left has struggled for decades to make inroads in rural communities due to a “cold war mentality” associating socialist politics with the Shining Path terror group. Peru Libre, Castillo's party, was an obscure, minor socialist party prior to Castillo's victory. 

Given the isolation of the political Left within the legislature, the lack of an organized base for economic justice, and the risk of a capital strike, Castillo did not have a ready-made organized constituency to offer an effective defense of his agenda of rural economic justice. Instead, he would have had to build one from essentially the ground-up while undergoing the day-to-day tasks of governing a large country without institutional political experience, a difficult task given the array of forces invested in his failure. As Castillo's poor polling numbers and failure to create a stable government, encapsulated by the five Prime Ministers he appointed during his tenure, indicate, Castillo was overwhelmed by the political and structural forces opposed to the socialist transformation of the countryside that he campaigned on. 

Perhaps Castillo may have been more successful had he taken a more confrontationist posture early in his presidency. This would entail attempting to mobilize the large groups of rural people currently protesting the coup-government that ousted him in defense of his agenda. One model he could have used is adopting something like the tone from FDR's "I welcome their hatred" address, identifying the country's wealthy elite as the forces undermining his administration. However, it is likely that such an aggressive posture would have intensified the risk of capital strikes and other destabilizing acts. Thus, without a ready-made mass base to rely on, Castillo's hands were likely tied. 

Castillo's supporters from the overwhelmingly underdeveloped, impoverished Andean countryside do not have to look far for inspiration regarding building and exercising political power. Unlike the attempt to build a socialist movement to empower the rural countryside from the top-down, the rural peasantry in Bolivia began their political project by building social movements from below. 

In Ann Chaplin's journal article "Social Movements in Bolivia: From Strength to Power", Chaplin detailed the decades-long process by which exploited, predominantly rural and poor indigenous Bolivians organized to advance their interests locally and in their workplaces with organizations encapsulated by federations of coca growers and the miners' union. Chaplin discussed how these organizations flexed their power in a number of ways, notably during the “water war” in which protestors successfully defeated the government's proposed water-privatization policy. 

Thus, when the Movement for Socialism (MAS), the political arm of the social movements, won the presidency under the leadership of rural indigenous, coca producer leader Evo Morales in 2005, MAS had a mass-base which could leverage power at the local and workplace-level to support their political and economic program. This program involved the enactment of a new constitution which recognized the rights of indigenous people and substantial wealth and power redistribution. For example, during Morales's tenure as President, extreme poverty was reduced by 60% as Bolivia's economy became the fastest growing in South America. 

Bolivia's social movements' strength was highlighted during the 2019 coup which removed Evo Morales from office. The anti-MAS coup government lasted for about a year and was forced to accede to the social movements demands for elections after constant protest and mobilization. Those elections saw MAS’s return to power under the Evo Morales's Finance Minister, Luis Arce. 

The cases of Castillo in Peru and MAS in Bolivia provide an interesting lens to consider sources of power and organizing strategies that the exploited and immiserated in rural, underdeveloped areas can explore as we consider the urban-rural development divide. Obviously, historical and material conditions differ from place to place, but it's interesting to consider how models can be adapted based on those specific conditions. I'm also interested in seeing whether the protest movement in Peru coalesces into a broader, more-organized movement that can serve as a base for social change in Peru, like Bolivia's social movements.