Castillo victory unleashes political earthquake

By Jorge Martin

Posted in rebelion.org, June 10. Translated by Michael Otto

Pedro Castillo’s victory in the Peruvian presidential election triggered a political earthquake that reflects the massive social and political polarization in the Andean country. The masses inflicted a resounding defeat on the ruling class, thanks to the leader of the militant teachers’ union at the head of the Peruvian Libre, a self-described Marxist, Leninist, and Mariatji party.

[José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930) was the founder of the Peruvian labor and communist movements and among the most renowned Latin American Marxists of the first half of the last century.]

The recount was slow and painful, and the decisive outcome was not clear until the end, three days after the polls closed on June 6. By June 9, with 99.8% of the votes counted, Pedro Castillo had received 8,735,448 votes (50.2%), giving him a slim but irreversible lead over his right-wing populist rival Keiko Fujimori, who had received 8,663,684 votes (49.8%). [almost 75% voter turnout].

Official results have not yet been announced. Fujimori’s team alleges fraud and prepares dozens of appeals. The masses are ready to defend the vote in the streets. There are reports that 20,000 Ronderos (members, like Castillo, of the peasant self-defense militia created during the civil war of the 1990s) travel to the capital to defend the will of the people. Today, June 9, a massive demonstration has been called in Lima, where people have gathered for three consecutive nights in front of the electoral headquarters in Castillo.

Castillo advanced to the final election with only 19% of the vote in the first round, due to severe fragmentation [parties]. However, his electoral success was no accident. It is an expression of the deep crisis of the Peruvian system. Decades of anti-working class privatization and liberalization policies in a country so rich in mineral resources have left a legacy of massive wealth inequality and rampant corruption that has rotted its bourgeois democracy.

Five former presidents are in prison or charged with corruption. All the institutions of bourgeois democracy have largely lost their credibility. The mass demonstrations in November 2020 were an expression of the deep build-up of anger in Peruvian society.

To this must be added the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis of capitalism. The country suffered one of the worst economic downturns in Latin America with an 11% drop in GDP. Peru has the worst excess death rate and the worst death rate globally, while wealthy politicians and government officials have been vaccinated before anyone else.

Vote for a radical change لتغيير

The masses of workers and peasants want a radical change, and this is exactly what Pedro Castillo represents in their eyes. His campaign had two main political pillars: renegotiating the terms of contracts with multinational mining companies (and if they refused, they would be nationalized); He convened a Constituent Assembly to do away with the 1993 constitution that had been drafted during the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori (father of candidate Keiko Fujimori).

His main electoral slogans: “No more poor in a rich country” and “Teacher’s word” resonated with the downtrodden, the workers, the poor, the peasants, the downtrodden, the Quechua and the Aymara, particularly in the working-class and poor regions far from the upper-class, light-skinned circles of Lima.

Castillo’s authority comes from challenging the union bureaucracy to lead the teachers’ strike of 2017. For workers and peasants, he is one of them – a humble rural teacher with peasant roots, who vowed to live off his teacher’s salary when he takes office. His appeal is precisely that he is leftist against the system. His popularity reveals a profound discredit of bourgeois democracy and all political parties (including the main left parties).

The entire ruling class of Peru lined up behind Keiko Fujimori in the second round, even though she was not their favorite candidate. Her campaign was fierce. Billboards in Lima declared “Communism is poverty.” The Seven Plagues were threatened if Castillo won the election.

He has been accused of being the “Violent Shining Path candidate” – a label he has failed to uphold. Mario Vargas Llosa, a Nobel laureate in literature who in the past opposed the Alberto Fujimori government from a bourgeois liberal viewpoint, wrote angry opinion pieces claiming that a Castillo victory would mean the end of democracy.

Despite all that, or perhaps precisely because of the hatred he aroused among the ruling class, Castillo started the run-off with a 20-point lead over his opponent. This progress diminished as election day approached. The hate campaign pushed wavering voters toward Keiko Fujimori, but in part because Castillo tried to soften his message and modify his promises.

While he had promised in the first round to call a Constituent Assembly at any cost, he now said he would respect the 1993 Constitution and would ask Congress (where it does not have a majority) to call a referendum to decide whether to call a Constituent Assembly. While he said in the first round that he would nationalize the mines, he later confirmed that he would first try to renegotiate the contracts. And the more he did so, the more his advance diminished, so much so that his election day victory was very narrow.

class contradictions

However, the narrow victory masks the sharp class polarization in the country. Fujimori won in Lima (65 to 34), and even here, her best results were in the richest provinces: San Isidro (88%); Miraflores (84%); and Surko (82%). Castillo won 17 of the country’s 25 provinces, with massive victories in the poorer Andean and southern regions: Ayacucho 82%; huancavelica 85%; bono 89%; Cosco 83%. He also won in his native Cajamarca (71%), an area that has seen mass protests against mining.

In the final days of the campaign, Keiko Fujimori promised, in a classic folk style, a direct transfer of money from the profits of mining companies to the residents of the cities where the mines were located. This was an attempt to distance voters from Castillo’s proposal to change contracts for the benefit of all. Voters elected Castillo heavily in all mining towns: in Chumbivilcas (Cusco), 96%; Cotapampas (Apurimac), the base of the Chinese MMG Las Pampas mine, over 91%; Espinar (Cosco), where Glencore operates, more than 92%; Huari (Ancash) where there is a joint BHP Billiton – Glencore mine, over 80%.

The masses of workers and peasants supporting Castillo were ready to take to the streets to defend his victory, while Fujimori shouted fraud and then resumed the results. In the days before and immediately after the elections, there were rumors of a military coup. Prominent Fujimori supporters called on the military to intervene to prevent Castillo from taking power.

There is no doubt that a section of the ruling class in Peru is in a panic and is using every means at its disposal to prevent Castillo from winning the elections. They see it as a threat to their power and privileges and the way they have governed the country since its independence 200 years ago.

So far, the more cautious elements of the ruling class seem to have prevailed. An editorial in the prominent bourgeois newspaper La Repubblica called Fujimori irresponsible for crying fraud. Let us appeal to the wise and thoughtful leadership of political leaders and authorities. We need to calm the streets in the interior of the country, which are seething with distrust and fatigue.” That is what worries them. Any attempt to steal the elections from Castillo will bring the masses of workers and peasants into the streets, making them more radical.

All this gives an idea of ​​what Castillo will face once he takes office. The ruling class and imperialism will resort to whatever means are necessary to prevent him from effective rule. We have seen the same scenario in the past against Chávez in Venezuela.

Prominent members of the Venezuelan opposition coup were in Lima to support Fujimori before the elections, and this is no accident. They will use Congress and other bourgeois institutions, the media, the organs of the state (including the military) and economic sabotage, to limit Castillo’s ability to carry out his policies.

Defend victory: prepare for battle

The Castillo program, despite the references to Marx, Lenin and Maritigui in the Peru Libre documents, is a national capitalist development programme. He proposes to use the country’s mineral wealth in social programs (mainly education) and work with “national productive entrepreneurs” to “develop the economy”. His models are Rafael Correa from Ecuador and Evo Morales from Bolivia.

The problem is that these so-called responsible capitalists “national producers” do not exist. The Peruvian ruling class, the bankers, the landowners and the capitalists are inextricably linked with the interests of the multinational corporations and imperialism. They are not interested in any “national development”, but are only interested in their own enrichment.

Castillo will now face a dilemma. On the one hand, he could rule in favor of the masses of workers and peasants who elected him, which would mean a radical break with the capitalists and multinational corporations. This can only be achieved through mass mobilization outside the electoral arena.

Or Castillo could capitulate, soften his platform and adapt to the interests of the ruling class, meaning he would lose credibility among those who voted for him, paving the way for his downfall. If he tries to serve two masters (the workers and the capitalists) at the same time, he will not satisfy either of them.

In an effort to reassure the “markets” that were nervous during the counting process, Castillo’s team issued a statement worth quoting in depth:

“Ultimately in the government of Professor Pedro Castillo Terón, presidential candidate of Peru Liber, we will respect the independence of the Central Reserve Bank, which has done a good job of keeping inflation low for more than two decades. We reiterate that we have not taken into account in our economic plan nationalizations, expropriations or expropriations Savings, exchange controls, price controls or import bans The popular economy with the markets we defend promotes the growth of businesses, especially agriculture and small and medium businesses, in order to create more jobs and better economic opportunities for all Peruvians. We will maintain an open and broad dialogue with Various sectors of businessmen and honorable businessmen, whose role in industrialization and productive development is fundamental.Ensuring the right to health and education for all requires improving quality and increasing social spending, which must be based on mining tax reforms to increase collection within the framework of fiscal sustainability policy, with a gradual reduction to the public deficit and to respect all obligations to pay the public debt of Peru.” (Focus Martin)

Castillo himself stated: “I have just had talks with patriotic businessmen, who are showing their support for the people. We will create a government that respects democracy, for the current constitution. We will have a government that is financially and economically stable.” All experience shows that what the ruling class describes as “financial and economic stability,” actually means making workers and the poor pay the price for the crisis of their system by ensuring the best possible conditions for capitalist profits.

Paying off the debt directly contradicts the implementation of the social spending policy. Castillo must oppose this concession and work to support the general interests of workers and peasants. There is no middle path.

For now, fans in Peru are celebrating and standing ready to defend their victory. The struggle has just begun. Every step forward that Castillo takes must be supported. Its oscillations or regression should be criticized. The workers and peasants could count only on their own strength, and they had to be mobilized to strike the oligarchy.

Mariaghi, concluding his thesis “His Anti-Imperialist Viewpoint”, which he presented to the Latin American Congress of Communist Parties in 1929, said: “In conclusion, we are anti-imperialists because we are Marxists, because we are revolutionaries, because we oppose capitalism and socialism as a hostile regime, they are called upon to succeed Because in the struggle against foreign imperialism we fulfill our duties of solidarity with the revolutionary masses of Europe. His view is more relevant today than ever.

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