This Wednesday, a man at the Arequipa (Peru) airport, which remains inoperative due to political instability. STRINGER (REUTERS)
The protests that have paralyzed Peru after the self-coup attempt by former President Pedro Castillo and his subsequent arrest a week ago have already set off alarm bells beyond its borders.
"There is no way to leave the city," Luz María Díaz, a Mexican tourist trapped in Cuzco, assured this newspaper.
There is living one of the most complicated situations.
The city has been taken over by the most violent protesters, who have flooded the main highways and occupied the airport, leaving dozens of Mexicans trapped in their hotels.
The Mexican ambassador to the Andean country, Pablo Monroy Conesa, informed the dozens of tourists trapped there on Wednesday that "the airport remains closed and the road to Lima is blocked," so they cannot "suggest or coordinate transfers."
The general recommendation, addressed to all compatriots trapped in the country, "about 250 people" according to the ambassador, is that they stay in the hotels, register at the embassy and wait for further instructions.
Marcelo Ebrard, the secretary of Foreign Relations, has written that he is "in communication with various groups of Mexicans in Peru" and that they are organizing to give "support for food" and "accelerate the return."
However, some people trapped in Cuzco regret that the government has not been in contact.
It is increasingly difficult to get food and many, who arrived there with just enough money, are running out of funds to pay for their stay.
Luz María Díaz is taking refuge in the Danna Inn hotel, in the center of the city, with 18 other people of Mexican nationality.
Her flight was supposed to leave Tuesday, but the airline canceled her ticket when protesters stormed the airport.
“We tried to find a way to get to Lima by land, but nothing.
Nobody wants to take us.
The highways have also been taken over by protesters,” says Díaz.
Rocks placed to block the Panamericana Norte highway, near Trujillo, in northern Peru.Lucas Aguayo Araos (Bloomberg)
She and the rest of her colleagues have tried unsuccessfully to contact the embassy.
"They don't answer us.
They have not even sent us notification to the email we gave when entering the country, ”Díaz assured by phone.
The ambassador assures that they are attending to "each and every one of the cases of Mexicans affected by the situation," but Marcia Martínez, another Mexican trapped in Cuzco, also complains about the lack of response from the authorities: "The embassy does not tell us any.
Nothing else recommends that we remain vigilant”.
She has traveled there to accompany her mother, Rosa María Sánchez, who she had been saving for a long time to make this trip.
Now they don't know when they will return.
"At least she has seen Machu Picchu, which was her dream," says Martínez.
The streets were quiet at first, says this tourist.
“At most there were 40 or 50 demonstrators, but later at night the agitators would arrive and break the entrances to some businesses, burn tires and trash,” she recounts.
Then more and more people gathered on the streets, “hundreds or thousands of people arrived” from the communities surrounding the city and they began to close everything down.
“We had to go back to the hotel at noon and we barely got out.”
Then they decreed a state of emergency, and the effect was immediate: businesses opened, people took to the streets, the protesters left and a restaurant was opened”, says this woman, creative director of a design company.
And in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty that exists there, she adds a detail: "And there is music in the streets, and books,
This Tuesday, travelers outside the Cuzco airport, closed by protests. STRINGER (REUTERS)
The government that took over from Castillo's cabinet, headed by President Dina Boluarte, has decreed a state of emergency for 30 days due to the mobilizations and the escalation of clashes with the security forces, which for the moment have left seven dead.
The protesters' demands include the dissolution of Congress and the calling of new elections.
Mexico is one of the Latin American countries, along with Colombia, Argentina and Bolivia, that openly supports the schoolteacher who came to power a year and a half ago.
The Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador went even further by offering political asylum to the former president, whose procedural situation will be defined this Thursday while the Prosecutor's Office requests 18 months of preventive detention.
Meanwhile, the mobilizations do not stop and with them the road and transport blockades.
There are flights that have been rescheduled for this Friday, but little by little the dates are being pushed back.
Marcia Martínez and her mother were going to fly on the 17th, this Saturday, but today their flight was cancelled.
Now they are trapped in the San Agustín Dorado hotel and do not have a clear horizon until at least the 18th. "We are uncertain that they will open the airport," she laments, "because my mother only brings medicine for two more days."
She needs it for hypertension, hypothyroidism and anxiety.
In a context of shops and businesses closed for fear of the violence that devastates the city, they don't know if they will be able to get more.
"We already want to return to our country," says Martínez.
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