Antauro Humala's vision blurs when he looks at the horizon.
“I have the syndrome of those who have been locked up in jail for many years.
I can't see well, I see everything in the distance, ”he says as he narrows his eyes in an effort to focus better.
We are in a multi-story house located inside an urbanization in eastern Lima, full of palm trees and kidney-shaped pools.
Humala has curly white hair, a prominent chest, and marked arms that are visible through a short-sleeved military green T-shirt, a product of the two hours that he exercises every day at dawn.
Despite his vision problems, he is able to glimpse a near future in which he will be president of this country in chaos.
"Then drastic measures will be taken," Antauro blurts out.
-As which?
—Shoot all the corrupt presidents that Peru has had.
The sun hits full, a few drops of sweat bathe Antauro's face.
—Does that include your brother Ollanta (president of Peru between 2011 and 2016)?
-To all.
Antauro and Ollanta had a childhood marked by a father with a strong personality, Isaac Humala.
He promoted the ethnocacerista movement, a group of ethnic nationalists who fervently believe that the country has been in the hands of foreign agents for decades and that power should be wielded by the descendants of the Inca Empire, the brown-skinned ones.
Under this ideological umbrella, the brothers took up arms against President Fujimori in the year 2000. Antauro repeated it five years later, as a retired Army major.
With 700 loyal to the cause, he took over a police station in Andahuaylas to force the fall of the then president, Alejandro Toledo.
From those days there is a photograph in which he appears on the shoulders of one of his followers, like a bullfighter, among a crowd;
he wears camouflage clothing,
a wool cap and makes the gesture of victory.
Although it was not exactly a success: the assault ended in a bloodbath and he was arrested.
Antauro was later sentenced for rebellion, homicide, kidnapping and many other crimes that are long to list.
Antauro Humala is supported by his followers in the Plaza de Armas in Andahuaylas, in 2005.REUTERS
He spent 18 years locked up in maximum security prisons with walls three meters thick.
It would have taken ages to dig a tunnel with the dessert spoon.
At the Callao Naval Base, where he met Abimael Guzmán, the leader of Sendero Luminoso, and Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori's right-hand man —they were the only three prisoners in the entire complex—, he slept on a cement bed and the ceiling it was twenty feet high, where the front door used to be hidden.
At that time they lowered the prisoners with a rope.
"You can yell all you want and no one listens to you," explains Antauro, in this interview that took place at the end of December.
He was accompanied by his lawyer and a press officer.
While he was in prison, his brother became president.
Since then they have two positions that seem irreconcilable.
Antauro considers that his brother sold himself to money and betrayed the ethnocacerist principles.
He vehemently stresses that they were not only brothers, but also comrades in arms.
"Filial disloyalty," he says, clenching his hands.
“It was somewhat traumatic.
But hey, I've gone from fury and anger to taking it philosophically.
He is outmatched”.
Antauro is always escorted at public events by a handful of followers he calls reservists.
They wear camouflage clothing and communicate by walkie talkie.
They convey the feeling of being a militia, a kind of army.
They could have forgotten about him, locked up as he was, but from prison Antauro kept the movement alive.
He secretly wrote articles that his loyalists later printed in a newspaper that they distributed on the street.
He at the same time he also preserved his personal life.
In prison he had a secretary who answered the phone for him —“Let's see, a minute;
I'm going to see if Antauro is found.
He tells me that better after 5 ″, the secretary was heard saying in a report— and he married in 2017 the sister of a well-known rocker, Julio Andrade.
“I have never been sorry for what I did.
I am very proud ”, he maintains smiling, on this clear and clear morning in which the military man seems in a good mood.
The institutional decomposition of Peru has put his name on the table.
He plans to create two political parties that can contest the elections and allow him to run for president, an opportunity scheduled for April 2024. Many Peruvians might be tempted to fall for his ultranationalist, xenophobic, and populist discourse as a table of salvation in a desperate situation.
Antauro, without subtlety, accuses Venezuelan immigrants of stealing jobs from Peruvians and spreading crime.
He declares Chile as the country's greatest enemy, which must return at any cost the desert region of Tarapacá and Arica that Peru lost;
if he doesn't, he says, the two nations could go to war again.
For this reason, the name and ideology of ethnocacerism is inspired by Andrés Avelino Cáceres, a soldier like him and twice president of the country who led the resistance during the Chilean invasion in the Pacific War.
Humala during the interview. Musuk Nolte
—90% of the population wants to refound the Republic, seek a new social pact.
Here the thesis would be the semi-nationalist Constitution of 1979. The antithesis is the neoliberal Constitution of Fujimori and Montesinos, that of 1993. Now a synthesis between nationalism and a national market economy closed to foreign investment has to emerge.
With Fujimori there was foreign looting that threatened national security;
then that continued.
They bribed six Peruvian presidents, who were acting as foreign agents.
That is treason, he explains.
He says that for this reason he has revolted twice and that now that he has been released from prison —he was released in August 2022— things are worse than ever.
He intended to continue preparing his movement for the 2026 presidential elections, but Pedro Castillo's coup attempt has accelerated everything.
Castillo was arrested for that attempt and ended up in prison.
His place has been taken by the vice president, Dina Boluarte, who has been harassed by street protests throughout the country.
More than 50 people have died due to the repression of the authorities, without any of this having changed the pace of the new government, which remains firm in its desire not to call elections immediately.
The situation forces Antauro to act more quickly.
His intention was to reach May of this year with half a million reservists.
“Pedro Castillo, with all his deficiencies, fulfilled his function.
He gave us time and space to develop.
You have to rethink everything, ”he thinks aloud.
It does not put Castillo in the sack of corrupt presidents worthy of facing a firing squad, even though he made that bizarre move that has landed him in prison at a time when he was facing 54 simultaneous investigations for corruption.
In reality, Antauro believes that, along with the rest of the Peruvian leaders who donned the red and white sash, Castillo was a chicken thief.
He compares him to the protagonist of Paco Yunque, a children's story by the poet César Vallejo.
The story narrates the first day of school of a humble boy, from the countryside, who suffers mistreatment and humiliation by the rest of the students.
“Whoever wants to understand Peruvian society only from the point of view of the class struggle will not understand it.
He's not going to have a good diagnosis.
There is a factor that is ethnocultural, the racial factor.
Paco Yunque and Pedro Castillo are brothers in that respect”, continues Antauro.
Castillo was a rural teacher who became popular as a union leader.
A provincial party, Peru Libre, put him up as a candidate with the intention that the formation would make a name for itself in Lima, the capital.
They never thought they could actually win.
But Castillo, by surprise, attracted many humble people in the first round with his speech, his hat and his ways of a simple man.
In the second,
brought together all the anti-Fujimorismo in the country when facing Keiko, the daughter of Alberto Fuijimori, and won.
In power, however, he never had a guide, nor a road map, and he ruled from chaos and improvisation until he single-handedly, in a televised political suicide like few before in history, destroyed himself with a blow to impromptu and meaningless democracy.
Humala, at his home in Lima.Musuk Nolte
On those ashes, Antauro wants to refound the country.
“There is a system problem.
The entire installation is burned, you have to root it.
That is the republican change, ”he insists.
That change, with the law in hand, is not easy at all.
First, it would be necessary to call a Constituent Assembly and then call new elections with the support of Congress.
The Peruvian Legislature, with all its power, has become an insurmountable obstacle for the last presidents, who have a weak bench in the chamber due to the fragmentation of Peruvian politics.
The big parties no longer exist.
Antaurus would face those same contradictions.
Castillo, like all the previous ones, collided with Congress, which is full of politicians who want to maintain the status quo and benefit the transportation, education or mining lobbies.
"Let me propose something to you."
I tell you the name of a Peruvian president and you give me your opinion, Antauro is offered.
“Sure, go ahead.
—Alberto Fujimori.
“A foreign criminal.
—Alexander Toledo.
—A traitorous Felipillo.
Felipillo was the interpreter for Atahualpa and Pizarro who played in favor of Pizarro.
—A concept like that of Malinche in Mexico.
-Exact.
—Alan Garcia.
Antauro thinks for a few seconds.
-Another criminal.
—What does the gesture of committing suicide tell you?
He rubs his hands together and opens his eyes wide.
"How fortunate that you asked me that."
When I was in prison I found out that my brother was involved in the Lavajato case.
So I wrote him a letter.
We hadn't spoken for years and I hope we never do again.
He made public that letter in which he exhorted her to honor suicide.
I was imprisoned for being a rebel and I was proud of that.
But for a thief?
I'd rather be a rebel than a thief.
Alan was honest and he didn't take pressure for dignity.
He was a smart guy, you have to give him that.
—Let's go back to the presidents: Ollanta.
—His case is the most serious because he passed through one of ours.
He is very alive.
I have not seen him again, I have not crossed a word again.
—Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
—A stateless person.
This is American.
He has nothing Peruvian.
He had one line: get rich.
The morning is losing its brilliance.
A crew of workers makes adjustments to the house, whose structure is perched on a hill.
Behind, some high walls that turn the urbanization into a fortress.
-One last question.
When do you think your time will come or do you still see it blurry?
- Patience, we will be patient.
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