Several protesters take a colleague injured by the Police in the Juliaca riots. /
The Peruvian government plunges into a spiral of confrontations between protesters and security forces that contrasts with the unity with which Lula’s Executive channels the Bolsonaro coup attempt
The revolts do not rest in Latin America. While Brazil begins to address the high-voltage crisis caused by the assault of thousands of Bolsonaristas on the headquarters of Congress, the presidential palace and the seat of the Supreme Court, Peru continues to plunge bloodily into chaos one month after the frustrated self-coup of the Former President Pedro Castillo. Eighteen people have died in a single day in clashes between the security forces and the demonstrators who are demanding the holding of new elections in the Andean country and the dissolution of the current Executive headed by Dina Boluarte.
With these last victims, the violence unleashed in street clashes has claimed almost fifty deaths since Castillo’s arrest. Ministers of the new cabinet maintain that the continuous demonstrations represent a “new way” of seeking a coup. For their part, the population denounces the harsh repression by police officers and gives as an example that at least nine of the last deaths were due to gunshot wounds, according to the Monge Medrano Hospital. Among the most recent victims is a 35-year-old man who died in Juliaca after being hit in the head with a pellet when he was going to his house. The young man earned his living by selling paving stones. “Dina, don’t kill us,” the relatives clamored from the hospital.
Juliaca is the ninth most populous city in the country, with almost 308,000 inhabitants. Located in the department of Puno, it represents one of the most powerful economic and commercial enclaves in Peru. Its airport is a key factor in the development of the region and it is the place where thousands of protesters went this Monday to make their demands heard. The seizure of the airports has become the characteristic sign of the protests against the Government and the security forces had the one in Juliaca well guarded.
The clashes lasted in some cases until this past dawn. The Ministry of the Interior has reported that 11,000 people participated in them and that some 2,000 attacked a police station. Among the fatalities there is a minor under 17 years of age. The emergency services have also reported the existence of 38 injured while the Police account for twenty injured agents. Especially tragic is the case of a three-year-old boy who died of respiratory failure inside an ambulance that was found barricaded on the road to the hospital.
Cartridges and pellets
This latest episode reminds Latin America how easy it is to burn. The authorities hoped that the spirits would calm down during Christmas, but in the last six days the mobilizations have returned, with even greater virulence in some regions, as is the case in the department of Puno itself and those of Apurámac, Arequipa and Cuzco. To all this has been added the call for indefinite strikes, especially at transport terminals, which have raised popular discontent due to shortages. This cycle of chaos is what has led the Prime Minister, Alberto Otárola, to denounce the existence of a “coup d’état” through an “organized attack on the rule of law and institutions.” The demonstrators, meanwhile, show the journalists pellet cartridges fired by the police.
Claims to the Executive to find a solution have multiplied, both from professional organizations and from different institutions. Among them, the Ombudsman, Eliana Revollar, has urged Dina Boluarte and Congress to find “a real way out” after verifying that the last citizen mobilization “has become very violent” and that “homemade weapons” circulate among the protesters. . These, for their part, criticize the brutality of the security forces when firing tear gas and riot control ammunition from helicopters in low-flying flights.
The maze is on. The protests intensify. Police repression hardens. And, meanwhile, the Government remains immobile. In the middle of the hurricane Boluarte has justified herself after the riots in Juliaca and points out that she is waiting for Parliament to definitively approve her request to call an electoral advance in the spring of 2024. Beyond that summons, the president assures that the immediate dissolution of the Executive , the closure of Congress and the formation of a constituent assembly “is not in my hands.” In her opinion, this whole series of demands constitutes a ruse of the “radical left” as a “pretext to continue generating chaos in the cities.”
The president’s statements are made in the context of the national agreement that she agrees with the representatives of the powers of the State, the political forces and the regional governors in order to find the key to this political and institutional labyrinth created as a result of the self-coup of Pedro Castillo. There is expectation about what results from these conversations. The prime minister has indicated that the Executive will announce in the next few hours “important measures on public security” and has called for a judicial investigation of the riots, which he describes as a “war scenario.”
The Brazilian crisis
The same words, scene of war, are used by some of the officials who, 2,400 kilometers from Lima, are still inspecting the destruction caused by the Bolsonaristas at the headquarters of the institutions in Brasilia. They constitute the embers of a social and political crisis that the Brazilian president, Lula da Silva, hopes to channel after obtaining the support of the Legislature, the judges, the Army and the state governors against the extremists related to his predecessor. In Brazil, calm seems to have gained notoriety in the streets, especially once the Bolsonaro camp that demanded military intervention to put an end to the new left-wing Executive, the germ of the assault in which thousands of radicals took part, has been eliminated. The Police have already 1,500 detainees.
Image distributed this Monday on a social network, where Bolsonaro is seen bedridden in a hospital that is not identified. /
Lula da Silva seems to have emerged strengthened from this unprecedented episode of violence against Brazilian democracy. Late on Monday, she explained to her governors that the assailants “did not have a claim agenda” and simply intended to “blow” the institutions. To the Bolsonaristas, he countered the message that “it has been very difficult for us to conquer democracy in this country and, therefore, we need to learn to coexist democratically in diversity.”
The president has reaped the solidarity of those responsible for the 27 States of the country, who have guaranteed their loyalty to the federal Executive. All a sign of maturity that induces calm only nine days after assuming the leadership of the Government and opening an unprecedented legislature after the previous mandate of the ultra-right. He even has the support of the governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, and the deputy governor of the Federal District, Celina Leao, both aligned with Jair Bolsonaro. “This meeting today means that Brazilian democracy, after yesterday’s episodes, will be strengthened even more,” Freitas stressed at the end of the meeting, without mentioning his former sponsor, who does not spend his best hours in your Florida vacation haven.
“I have not had quiet days”
Bolsonaro has left the Orlando hospital where he was admitted on Monday due to an episode of intestinal discomfort (a frequent ailment in him, derived from the stabbing he suffered in 2018 in the middle of the electoral campaign), but before leaving the medical center he has complained of not having enjoyed a few “quiet days” since arriving in the United States on December 30, an express reference to the assault on institutions? No. In reality, the former president has euphemistically passed over the revolt of his supporters and has focused on his illness. «This is already my third admission for severe intestinal obstruction. I came to spend some time away with the family, but I haven’t had quiet days. First, there was that unfortunate episode in Brazil (due to the revolt) and then my admission to the hospital, “he said on CNN.
The former president has reported that he planned to continue in Florida until the end of January, but has added that he will probably return to Brazil much sooner due to his health problems. If so, he will return in the midst of a hectic political situation for his person. Apart from the criticism of his lukewarm response to the assault, suspicions of a possible collusion with the coup plotters are growing, for he has triggered all possible rumors. The Government of Rome even denied yesterday that the far-right leader had requested Italian citizenship and the White House assured that he has not received any “official request” from the Brazilian Executive to end his stay in Florida.
Several Democratic congressmen have asked the United States government to expel the former Latin American president, understanding that “he should not receive refuge in Florida”, where, in their opinion, he would have “been hiding from accountability for his crimes”, “In Brazil the doctors already know about my problem of intestinal obstruction due to the stab wound. Here the doctors will not follow up », Bolsonaro responded to clarify his intention to return to his land and not become a fugitive from Justice. Not, at least, like the former Peruvian president Pedro Castillo, whose own bodyguards frustrated his plans to take refuge in the Mexican Embassy after his unusual self-coup. One way or another, Latin America burns.