Page 17 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, MAY 2021, (English)

Castillo’s Political Thought
Castillo’s “government plan” does not hide his admiration for the ideals of Chavez, the Castro brothers, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Cristina Kirchner of Argentina. According to his ideology, state ownership of key parts of the economy is necessary to guarantee a just society. He warned multinationals that his days in Peru are numbered. He hopes to deactivate the Constitutional Court and replace it with “the true tribunes of the people” or close Congress if the people ask for it. He promises to impose price controls, con scatory taxes on mining pro ts, and strong regulation.
He wants to eliminate private pension accounts and the free press, which he accuses of complicity with the sin of capitalism. “Lenin was very right when he declared that true freedom of the press in a society is only possible when it is freed from the yoke of capital,” says Castillo’s government plan. His project goes on to cite Fidel Castro, who once complained that with a free press “the mass media are in the hands of those who threaten human survival with immense economic, technological and military resources.” The plan warns that the “mother of all battles” will take place in the eld of communications.
In all these years of free market economy, Peru attracted foreign capital, reduced poverty signi cantly, a stable scal policy was applied, achieved low in ation, security in contracts and open markets. Thus, the candidate Castillo’s threat to freedom is so serious that Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, whose intense dislike for Fujimori’s political machine is well known, backed her, despite strong corruption accusations falling on her, as about most of the politicians of that country.
At the moment, Peruvians are very vulnerable to populism, due to the devastation of the pandemic, to the point that the Gross Domestic Product in 2020 contracted by more than -11 percent and its fatality rate is among the highest in the world. A battered population looks for answers and Castillo seem to have them. The far-left candidate, who lives in the department of Cajamarca, was the leader of a violent national teachers’ union strike in 2017. His political opponents allege that his associates in that strike included the branch of the terrorist group Shining Path.
Castillo refuses to answer questions from the media about whether this is true. But he is the candidate of the Marxist party Peru Libre, which was founded and is led by Vladimir Cerrón, a staunch socialist, trained in Cuba.
In recent years, Peruvians elected seemingly disastrous presidential candidates, such as the populist Alan García, when he ran for a second term in 2006, and Ollanta Humala, who campaigned as a socialist-nationalist in 2011. Once elected, none reversed the rules and policies of previous administrations.
Terrorist Attack
A few days before the presidential elections, a terrorist attack overshadowed the nal stretch to the ballot in Peru. The Andean country’s authorities con rmed the murder of 16 people, including four children, in an action attributed to remnants of the group or Shining Path terrorist, produced in the province of Satipo.
The victims were in two canteens, where they were apparently shot dead, and six of them were burned. It has been more than a decade since there have been attacks of such magnitude by the subversive group that it now calls itself the Militarized Communist Party of Peru. Between 1980 and 1992, the Maoist group Sendero Luminoso unleashed an armed struggle against the Peruvian state, which left around 70,000 dead. With the fall of its leader, Abimael Guzmán, in 1992, during the government of Alberto Fujimori, the terrorist group seemed to have been weakened.
What is the background to this attack?
“They want to convey the message that they are still in force; they want to draw attention to divide the population. This is an unconventional war, and when it comes to an unconventional war it does not matter how many there are. Many say that it is no longer the Shining Path, but they are still the same trunk. Now they are under the command of Víctor Quispe Palomino and apply the same methodology of 1980, but rede ned. They yearn to come to power through arms or through elections,” explains Pedro Yaranga, a Peruvian analyst who is an expert in comprehensive security and terrorism.
However, these events are not surprising: they have occurred since 1980, almost always on the eve of elections. Previously, they ambushed the police or the army, who moved electoral materials. Although in all political sectors there was a call not to use the massacre, some leaders pointed to Fujimori as the main bene ciary with an unexpected appearance of the Shining Path, since the weakening of this terrorist group is attributed to his family, in particular. to his father, former president Alberto Fujimori. Vladimir Cerrón, one of the leaders of Peru Libre, Castillo’s party, even hinted at a montage: “Who bene ts from crime, that is the author,” he raised and considered the right as the only one in need of Shining Path to take advantage.
The political situation in Peru is complex, at times it has presented serious governance problems. Last November, it had three Presidents in 10 days. One of them lasted six days. He lived through eight military coups in the 20th century. But in the last two decades, the country had become a relatively stable democracy, with declining poverty rates and sustained economic growth. And yet the corruption remained deeply rooted. Four recent Presidents were or are being investigated for accusations of accepting illicit payments from Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction mega-company that bribed almost every country in the Region.
Montt Latin American Magazine p17
Elections in the Final Stretch