One year after protests in Peru were violently suppressed in the wake of president Pedro Castillo’s dismissal from office, demonstrations are taking place again. And, once again, the authorities are threatening to repeat the crackdown that led to 49 deaths, still unpunished, in January and February.
The search for truth and justice is among the main demands for the protests, which began yesterday and will continue into the weekend in Lima and across the country. But demonstrators also want to see the resignation of Castillo’s replacement Dina Boluarte and a fresh election.
The protests last December spread mainly in the Southern Andean regions, and erupted initially against the ousting of Castillo – who had briefly attempted to illegally dissolve Congress and was in turn dismissed by it, and then detained and replaced by Boluarte, his deputy.
Demonstrators’ demands quickly moved to the closure of the Congress, new elections and a constituent assembly.
Families of the 49 victims hit out at the justice system when they appeared before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on 10 November. The hearing was called by the IACHR to review progress in implementing recommendations from its May 2023 report, which detailed evidence of serious human rights violations – including disproportionate use of force by the military and the police and extrajudicial executions. President Boluarte refused the report’s findings and called them “lies”.
One of the incidents happened in Juliaca, a city in the southern department of Puno, on 9 January. Police officers shot a mostly peaceful demonstration, killing 18 people, including Marco Antonio Samillán, a 30-year-old medical student who was treating a wounded person. A police officer was also killed.
Lawyer Wilmer Quiroz, who represents the victims, told openDemocracy campaigners managed to get a human rights prosecutor's office set up in the city earlier this year. The investigation then expanded thanks to evidence and testimonies collected “not only from the victims but also from the police officers”.
But Quiroz believes the state is delaying the case to avoid taking action against police.
He said the case was referred by the National Prosecutor’s Office back to Lima, making it more difficult to attend hearings or submit files. Then the prosecutor’s in charge of the case were changed.
“What we have seen so far are delays and delays, with the aim of postponing charges against the police,” he said.
A democracy in disarray
The protests that erupted a year ago led to a state of emergency being declared in Lima.
“The capital experienced the way the police have been acting for the past 20 years in conflict situations, such as those related to the mining in the south”, Jaime Borda, president of the human rights organization Red Muqui, told openDemocracy.
State of emergency and military deployments for extended periods – Puno was under state of emergency from December 2022 to early August – have long been part of the lived experiences of people in mining areas.
Extreme police violence, planting of evidence, home raids, arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture have also been reported by human rights and environmental groups Red Muqui,Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros (Mining Conflicts Watch, in Spanish), CooperAcción and DHUMA (acronymous for Human Rights and Environment).
The state of play now is that Peru has been plunged into a serious political crisis, with Congress progressively gaining control over parts of the judiciary, the constitutional court, the prosecutor office, the ombdusman office and other bodies with oversight responsibilities, thus curbing the balance and independence of powers. For example, the attorney general Patricia Benavides is currently under investigation, and former president and dictator Alberto Fujimori has been released from prison by the constitutional court, going against a ruling by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights in a case of extrajudicial killings in the 1990s).
A November poll by Ipsos shows 82% of people now disapprove of Congress, and 83% disapprove of the president. And the marches taking place at the moment are accompanied by the slogan: “All politicians go home.”
Deep-rooted anger to mining
But the social unrest also has reasons that predate the Boluarte government, particularly in the south, where peasants and Indigenous lands are affected by mining industries. Peru is the world’s second largest copper producer, and 41% of the mining investment portfolio is in the south.
Mining concessions cover almost 26% of the Puno department, 49% of Apurímac and 26% of Ayacucho. These areas, along with Arequipa, Cusco and Puno, have been at the epicenter of the protests that erupted in December 2022 and, at the same time, account for a large part of the so-called ‘socio-environmental conflicts’ in the country.
It is a never-ending sequence of protests, strikes, street blockades and legal actions, linked to the strong presence of corporate mining exploration in the southern Andean corridor, a 400-kilometer road that crosses three regions, where dozens of Indigenous communities are affected by relocations, changes in the use of land and pollution from both the extraction and transport of minerals.
These socio-environmental conflicts account for 61.6% of all social and political conflicts in the country, according to the most recent ombudsman’s report, published in October, and the vast majority of them (67.4%) are related to mining activities.
One example is the Swiss mining corporation Glencore’s planned expansion of its Antapaccay copper mining unit in Espinar province that would lead to the displacement of Pacopata community, a 200 quechua farmers territory in the Andean southern department of Cusco. The project would also displace two other Indigenous communities and affect 10 other communities in the area.
“We feel the state only comes to take advantage of us. The state is allied with the mining sector, and our rights are not respected; that’s the problem”, Luis Rolando Japa Huarecallo, president of the Pacopata community, told openDemocracy.
The inhabitants had to file a constitutional complaint demanding the government conduct a proper consultation with affected Indigenous peoples, as required by the ILO Convention 169 and established by Peruvian legislation.
But they believe the consultation that followed was compromised. “We are negotiating with the company because we have no alternative”, Japa Huarecallo told openDemocracy in July. “If we say no to the mine, we face pressure from the state, primarily from the Ministry of Energy and Mining. If we resist relocation, we receive threats; social leaders are reported and charged arbitrarily. We are labeled as ‘anti-progress’, and the community begins to fall apart; there is no space for our rights.”
Elsa Merma from the Asociación de Mujeres Defensoras del Territorio y la Cultura K´ana de Espinar (Association of Women Defenders of the K’ana Territory and Culture) and other women from the Indigenous K’ana people continue to engage in protests in the province.
“We, the original peoples, may not have a degree, but we know our land and we will not hand it over to the powerful mining companies that bring us environmental damage”, Merma said. “It is this land that feeds us.”
Another member of Merma’s group, Esmeralda Larota, added, as she grazed her cattle: “We demand our rights; here the laws protect the extractive mining companies that pollute us; our families get sick, our children, our parents, our livestock die”.
In a major mining conference held in September, corporations complained about the political crisis and protests that have led to a drop in investments, and authorities and business executives discussed the possibility of reducing environmental standards and regulations labeled as “excessive bureaucracy”.
Authorities had in March announced plans to streamline procedures for mineral exploration, after the minister of economy and finance, Alex Contreras, attended the PDAC Convention in Canada, the world’s most significant mining event. In June there were demonstrations against several bills introduced in Congress to deregulate environmental protections, including for mining activities.
Then, in October, a subsidiary of Canada's American Lithium, Macusani Yellowcake submitted the Environmental Impact Study for the exploration of lithium reserves in Puno, where social movements are advocating for better environmental protections and the development of a local lithium industry.
“We will continue demonstrating despite being persecuted and denounced. And women will be at the forefront,” Elsa Merma, the Indigenous activist in Espinar province said. “We will not give legitimacy to [Boluarte], who has no heart and has had our children, the humble people, murdered.”
