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Dina Boluarte, one hundred days in the middle of the storm

2023-03-17T19:01:50.014Z


The first female president of Peru, who came after Castillo's failed self-coup, remains in power despite protests and strong criticism


The President of Peru, Dina Boluarte. PRESIDENCY OF PERU (PRESIDENCY OF PERU)

On December 7, barely three hours after Pedro Castillo jumped into the void by attempting a self-coup without the support of the Armed Forces, his first vice president, Dina Boluarte, became the first woman to cross the presidential sash of Peru. .

Instead of calling immediate elections, the lawyer requested "time to rescue the country from corruption and misrule, and a truce to install a unity government."

More than a transitional leader, from the outset she spoke as a head of state determined to complete her mandate in 2026. But the serious protests unleashed from her first day forced her to present a bill to advance the general elections to 2023.

For the political scientist Eduardo Dargent, that initial attitude of Boluarte has outlined the tensions of these hundred days charged with violence due to clashes in the streets.

“He did not understand the historical moment.

He was able to speak to the sector that voted for them.

But he thought of staying and will carry that responsibility for the rest of his life.

The cost has been enormous.

We have a national wound”, he points out in reference to the balance left by the protests: 66 deaths (48 civilians due to clashes, eleven civilians due to the blockade of roads and seven members of the security forces) and 1,335 injured (972 civilians, 337 police officers). and 26 military).

“We have discovered once again that the dead in Lima weigh more than the rural dead.

More confidence has been lost than the little that already existed.

We are a country where ministers cannot visit certain areas of the country”, explains Dargent.

In December 2021, the month in which Dina Boluarte promised in the Plaza de Armas in Juliaca that if Pedro Castillo was vacated she would go with him, the sociologist Carlos Reyna published an analysis on what an eventual government of the apurimeña would be like.

He was ahead of everyone.

In it, he highlights the vocation for dialogue that he exhibited in those days, unlike Castillo, the empathy that he could generate due to his provincial origin and his status as a woman, his experience in the State for having been a senior official of the National Identification Registry and Civil Status (RENIEC), but also his speech favorable to social changes.

In light of the facts, Reyna now considers that Boluarte has undergone a metamorphosis.

“It was enough for the lady to climb to power for another being to appear.

An ultra-authoritarian woman whose government is sustained by the support of the Armed Forces.

A manifestation of the weakness of a regime that calls itself democratic, ”she indicates.

Part of this metamorphosis of the president includes the distance she took with Peru Libre, the political group that brought her to power, as well as the unusual support she has aroused on the right.

“She had her left-populist outbursts.

But she realized that the coalition that would allow her to survive was with the right wing in Congress that promoted Castillo's vacancy.

Deep down, she has been very pragmatic ”, defines Eduardo Dargent.

Boluarte, who during the Castillo period served as Minister of Development and Social Inclusion, has been the subject of not a few controversies in these three months, such as when she said that "Puno is not Peru" or when she described the conduct as "immaculate". of the Police, implacable to repress the demonstrators.

Tania Pariona, a former congresswoman and member of the International Forum of Indigenous Women, from Ayacucho, gives an account of the cracks that exist between the Government and the indigenous peoples.

“The protest has an indigenous voice and face, and they have treated us as manipulable subjects who are incapable of transforming the country or as violent.

Dina Boluarte does not honor her Andean origin.

She may speak Quechua, but she has violated our dignity, ”she claims.

The regions hardest hit by the conflict are those of the southern sierra: Apurímac, Cusco, Ayacucho and Puno.

And it is not a coincidence.

The violation of human rights —which has deserved the visit and pronouncement of international institutions such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights— is evidence of the centralism that has caused so many historical fractures in the nation.

If being from Apurimeña has not been a guarantee towards the regions, neither has being the first female president of Peru.

On March 8, on International Women's Day, there was a sit-in by feminist groups in front of the Ministry against Boluarte.

The anthropologist Angélica Motta explains it like this: “She has come to say that she suffers from a macho political revenge.

Nothing is further from reality.

The one who is completely allied with machismo and patriarchy is her.

This is a violent regime with women.”

Motta lists some cases: the Aymara mothers who were fired with tear gas while carrying their children, the 30-month pretrial detention of the teacher Yaneth Navarro for financing the protests, and the allegations of sexual violence by women who were detained in the police mega-operation to the National University of San Marcos.

In foreign policy there has been a tendency towards isolation.

Relations between Mexico and Peru have been reduced to business managers after the final retirement of the Peruvian ambassador in Aztec lands and the expulsion of his peer, Pablo Monroy.

All of this from the staunch defense of the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, towards Pedro Castillo and his high-sounding statements against Boluarte, whom he has branded as a "spurious president."

The Government has also prohibited the entry of former Bolivian President Evo Morales for allegedly carrying out "activities of a political proselytizing nature."

And Congress, for its part, has declared Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, persona non grata.

One of the personalities who, on the other hand, has had words of praise for Dina Boluarte has been the Nobel Prize for Literature Mario Vargas Llosa.

After receiving the Grand Collar of the Order of the Sun from the president at the Palace, he said firmly: "It is unfair to maintain that in Peru there has been a rupture of the constitutional order [...] some governments in the region moved by ideologies or Political interests have improperly intervened in Peruvian internal affairs dragging down the neighbors.

We strongly reject their interference that violates international standards."

The most solid support occurred when Vargas Llosa recognized Boluarte as "the constitutional president of Peru" and pointed out that she "respects the policy that she embodies and that is rigorously the defense of democracy."

Regarding the country's economy, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) suffered a decrease of 1.12% in January.

A significant setback after uninterrupted growth for 22 months.

The Executive is also facing its great litmus test: the floods due to the rainy season and Cyclone Yaku, which have claimed the lives of 61 people and have left around 13,000 homeless.

“This stabilization that apparently exists is a mirage.

This regime can collapse as a result of an unforeseen incident.

Any blunder can trigger the protest again,” says Carlos Reyna.

After the umpteenth failed attempt by Congress to approve a general election advance, and with a disapproval rate of 77%, Dina Boluarte's horizon is unpredictable.

Having stayed in the Palace is perhaps her most visible achievement in these first hundred days.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-03-17

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