Antauro Humala tours Peru campaigning: "Power must be exercised by those with coppery skin"

Antauro Humala, surrounded by his followers on the outskirts of Lima, on August 25. Martin Mejia (AP)

Taking advantage of the discredit of the political class and the unfulfilled promises of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, the ultra-nationalist Antauro Humala, a retired Army major, has reunited with the veterans of the revolts he led in 2000 and 2005 against the corruption of the presidents. since then, and says he is ready to register two parties, compete with the electoral rules of democracy.

All this to promote a government of mestizos, in which power is exercised by those with "copper-colored skin, like the majority of Peruvians."

The brother of former president Ollanta Humala was released from prison on August 20, after serving an 18-year prison sentence for rebellion and the murder of four police officers in January 2005, when he stormed a police station in the south of the country to force his resignation. of the then president, Alejandro Toledo.

The retired military man achieved his freedom a little over a year before studying and working in prison.

In a press conference with foreign media this Tuesday, Antauro, 58, maintained that although an atomic absorption test determined that he did not fire shots in the Andahuaylas police station (Abancay region), he was accused of homicide and has He was the last to get out of prison.

Some 170 former soldiers and followers who accompanied him in that uprising were also imprisoned.

He also assures that the policemen who fell in the

as that failed coup is known

were killed by snipers sent to put down the revolt;

For this, he shared the autopsy reports that indicate that the shots entered the body of the agents from the back to the front, and from the top to the bottom.

Humala heads the ethnocacerist movement that groups mainly military veterans -called reservists or antaurists-, rejects the white elite and promotes that descendants of indigenous people come to power, because according to the ideology formulated by his father, Isaac Humala, the "copper race ” must govern the Andean country.

“I am going to make a reconstruction of the events,” the politician announced about his trip to Andahuaylas this Saturday.

On Monday, in the main square of Puno —on the border with Bolivia— a group of reservists announced the arrival of their leader and the tour of several provinces of that highland region starting on September 17.

Humala responded to EL PAÍS that he is ready to register two political formations.

“We have the apparatus and the organization: it is as if we had an excellent truck, but that we lack the plate (registration), unlike the Peruvian policy of pure license plates without a truck,” he commented.

“We are accepting the rules of the rule of law and we are registering two movements in parallel: the United Revolutionary Ethnocacerist Party (PERU) and the National Alliance of Workers, Farmers, University Students, Reservists and Workers (Antauro),” he added.

Since his release from prison, the ultra-nationalist politician has been a topic of conversation in public squares, taxis, after-dinner conversations with the middle class, and also on social media.

“At the Sunday fairs, the antauristas sell newspapers, they talk about it and people listen and applaud,” says a teacher who lives in Andahuaylas.

"The reservists met last week in a plaza in Tacna -border with Chile- and said that they are waiting for their leader's orders," reported one of the attendees at the meeting in the city that was under Chilean occupation between 1883 and 1929 when Peru lost the War of the Pacific.

Three days after the release of the ethnocacerist leader, a taxi driver in Lima had witnessed the theft of a mobile phone on an avenue.

"The thief was on a motorcycle and the young woman was unawares talking: I hope Antauro wins and throws away the Venezuelans," launched the driver, one of the Lima residents who attributes the increase in crime to migrants.

At the press conference, the politician stated that he would not ally himself with any of the existing parties, not even with the far-left Peru Libre, which brought Castillo to power in the 2021 elections. The antaurists were part of the security cordons in the second-round electoral campaign of the rural teacher, who today faces six tax investigations for corruption in less than a year of management.

The ultra-nationalist Antauro Humala, this Tuesday at a press conference he gave in Lima for the foreign press. SEBASTIAN CASTANEDA (Reuters)

“I am also disappointed in President Castillo, he did not honor his word as a teacher despite the fact that he twice promised to pardon me, and now I find out that he is involved in corruption, but there is a lot of difference with high-flying corruption, he is like a chicken thief compared to the criminal presidents”, he assured referring to Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo, Alan García, his brother Ollanta and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

“If they are not prisoners, they are fugitives and one committed suicide out of shame.

They are the culprits of the catastrophe of the Peruvian State 30 years ago”, he expressed.

extreme proposals

The leader of the ethnocacerista movement questions "the neoliberalism of the Fujimori Constitution" and considers that the Peruvian republic that emerged 200 years ago "is dying."

Among the ten points that he proposes if he comes to power, he wants to accuse and prosecute six presidents and 1,200 congressmen since Fujimori's self-coup on April 5, 1992. "It is a necessary measure to moralize the republic, there must be a historical punishment of the Peruvian political class”, he justifies.

For Humala, the death penalty should be applied to presidents for treason in cases of high corruption.

He is not interested in the fact that his brother could fit into that category, as a former president prosecuted for having allegedly received bribes from the transnational Odebrecht for awarding the work of a gas pipeline during his term.

"Antauro is crazy, he doesn't even care about his brother," says an administrative worker at a small business in Miraflores, a wealthy neighborhood in the capital.

Historian and university professor Michael Mendieta Pérez explains that the ethnocacerist movement has remained "very active" while Antauro Humala was imprisoned and "will continue to have repercussions in the southern Andean region."

Although the academic researcher believes that the politician will have to manage some internal divisions in the movement and fight in that organization to be the presidential candidate in 2026, he "can win followers in the jungle (Amazon) and in the north of the country."

Humala does not define himself as left or right, but Mendieta notes that his speech against the market and in favor of expropriations and the State places him on the populist left.

“You can get the support of 15% (of the electorate), made up of young people from the provinces, people with many economic difficulties or who live in informality.

His conservative rhetoric can pack a punch,” he adds.

The ultra-nationalist says he has abandoned "the rebellious path," but among his proposals he includes returning to the State the companies that were bought by foreign companies, "starting with everything Chileanized," and subordinating the market "to the sovereign nation."

The retired military man does not take up arms again, but his radical discourse scrapes the Peruvian political and business establishment like sandpaper.

In the unpredictable Peruvian politics, with four presidents in the last five years, there is no certainty that the next elections will be in 2026 or will be brought forward to get out of the permanent political crisis in which the Andean country has lived since 2018. The radical leader is waiting for her

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