Dina Boluarte, after receiving the mandate from Congress to lead Peru. /
Dina Boluarte faces the triple challenge of making Peru overcome Castillo’s self-coup farce, redressing the economy and being the first female head of government of a country with a serious problem of machismo
“How many wars have we lost because our presidents have betrayed us? How many development situations have not been undertaken because the issue of corruption was more powerful?» With these words, Dina Boluarte Zegarra has inaugurated her position as the new head of government in Peru, replacing Pedro Castillo, who has spent his first night in prison after a bizarre self-coup that this Wednesday led him from the Government Palace to a cell in the Barbadillo prison.
Boluarte undertakes a titanic task. He must restore credibility to an Executive that was already in low hours before the farce of the riot, and to a Congress with a citizen unpopularity index of 80% due to its inefficiency and the fact of swimming in a sea of bribes. The new head of the Executive must also reduce the crisis that Peru is suffering and, more specifically, shorten the growing gap between social classes and stifle hunger among the poorest families. Inflation is skyrocketing and prices have skyrocketed. The ghost of not making ends meet has become material.
It is true that Castillo has slightly boosted employment and carried out specific interventions such as the suppression of the tax on basic foods or an increase in the minimum income of families. But he has not been able to implement long-term economic plans or build the agricultural industry, basic in most districts. The cost of living rises, salaries do not. Thousands and thousands of Peruvians declare themselves suffocated in their domestic economy. Castillo has been unable to throw them a lifeline, busy effecting forty changes of government in sixteen months and dealing with constant accusations of corruption, bribery and favoritism. Another record like going from the presidential office to a cell in three hours. The humble teacher arrived on July 28, 2021 at the Government Palace in Lima almost on the back of a horse cheered by the people and last night that same population insulted him as the speedy procession passed by in which he left the official headquarters with his family.
Boluarte has to quickly make her country, and the rest of America, forget the antics of the self-coup, and simultaneously face the challenge of being the first female president of a country plagued by machismo. The x-ray of the Amnesty International report on the matter is clear. Every day four children under the age of 15 give birth in Peru, 146 women were victims of feminicide in 2021 (ten more than the previous year) and, attention to the tragic data, another 12,948 disappeared from the face of the earth. Up to now, no Peruvian government has recognized forced disappearances as episodes of gender-based violence, despite the fact that many of them end in rape and murder. At the economic level, the report reflects that employment also grew more in the male group (15%) than among women (8%).
Boluarte was born on May 31, 1962 in Chalhuanca, a humble capital of the Aymaraes province located at 3,000 meters above sea level in the Andes mountain range. It has 28,000 inhabitants who live on the scarce resources of agriculture, livestock and mining. Little by little, they are scratching some income from nature tourism. The new president is a lawyer. She studied at the private San Martín de Porres University, founded by the Dominicans in Lima. She worked eighteen years between laws, she specialized in Notarial and Registry Law and as of 2015 she was appointed head of one of the many Registry offices in the capital’s surroundings.
assault on politics
Three years later he attempted his first assault on politics. A leftist with no affiliation, he ran for mayor of Suquillo. He got just over 2% of the vote. In 2020, already within the ranks of Peru Libre, Castillo’s party, he tried again in the parliamentary elections. He also did not make great achievements. But the third time, in 2021, he won on board the presidential candidacy of the professor and now an imprisoned ex-president.
As is the tradition in the politics of the Andean country, Boluarte has been the object of different types of accusations. One of them was money laundering during the electoral campaign of Peru Libre. The scope of a complaint for possible incompatibility of charges is also being resolved these days and last August he brushed the crossbar of unpopularity when he made a fiery defense of Yenifer Paredes, Pedro Castillo’s sister-in-law, sentenced to preventive detention while she is being investigated for alleged crimes money laundering, influence peddling and criminal organization. In her first public act as president, she has promised to “fight against corruption” and finish her term in 2026. However, doubts remain. Political scientists are divided between those who are convinced that she will endure and those who predict an imminent call for general elections.
Peruvians hardly know her. She was appointed Vice President and Minister of Development and Social Inclusion in July 2021. A few weeks ago, on November 25, she resigned from the ministerial post. She previously clashed with the party and its general secretary, Vladimir Cerrón Rojas, following some of her statements in January in which she assured that “I have never embraced the ideology” of Peru Libre. She explained that she had presented herself in her candidacy because she believed in the program of the formation of the left in matters of Health, Education and infrastructure development. The party expelled her from it as its affiliate.
The notable popular ignorance about Boluarte is largely due to the fact that his political and institutional figure has been overshadowed by these internal conflicts, but above all by the hoarding shadow of Pedro Castillo and his no less absorbing state conflicts. The scandals, resignations, dismissals and new appointments with which Peruvians have woken up practically one in every fortnight have been much juicier than the usual institutional rhetoric. The new president is remembered today because when her boss faced the previous motion of no confidence, she said that if he left, she would also leave her position. Reality shows that politics is Grouchian and what was said yesterday is useless tomorrow. Although it is true that, on the previous occasion, Castillo did not slap himself in the face with a coup without a net.