Peru is the war of states against peoples: the repression of peaceful demonstrations has caused 17 deaths

ROME – January 4th – reads an article published by Municipality-Info, an online journal interested in transformations and movements that question profit and the commodification of relationships – a regional strike has begun in southern Peru, which had been interrupted in December for the Christmas holidays. More than 60 roadblocks (especially in Cusco, Apurímac, Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Puno) demanding elections in 2023 and the resignation of Congress, which has only 8% support in the population.

The Juliaca massacre: 17 dead. On January 9, tens of thousands of Aymara comuneros entered the city of Juliaca, the largest in the department of Puno, in a peaceful demonstration that was repressed by helicopters with tear gas, and from the ground by police firing projectiles which then explode in the bodies, as has been reported and as the doctors of the local hospital have denounced. In addition, the police fired gas at nurses and medical personnel who were trying to help the injured, beat up doctors and firefighters. According to some reports, medicines were also stolen. The result has been 17 dead, for a total of 48 assassinated since the former vice president of Pedro Castillo, (deposed while trying to dissolve Parliament) Dina Boluarte, was sworn in in an extraordinary session of Parliament, assuming the leadership of the Republic . Almost all of the killings took place in three hours, between 3 and 6 pm, according to detailed accounts in the newspaper La República. The dead add to the approximately 300 wounded, including children and journalists, especially in the regions of the Quechua and Aymara peoples of Apurímac, Ayacucho, Puno and Arequipa.

The Peruvian department of Puno. They are crimes of Peruvian democracy, of a political caste that has always governed the country of a racist state “whose decomposition began with Fujimorism, continued with the other governments, parties and entrepreneurs corrupted by Odebrecht, and which today murders to continue sharing power”, as stated in a statement from some social organizations. These are crimes endorsed by a Parliament that is corrupt to the core. Proof of this is that the plenary session of the Congress protected, on the same day, the parliamentarian Freddy Díaz under investigation by the Public Prosecutor for the rape of a congressional employee in his own office. A few hours later, the same Congress gave its confidence to a government that must take on more than 40 deaths while the prosecutor’s office is starting to investigate the president, the prime minister and the interior and defense ministers for “crimes of genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries committed during demonstrations in December 2022 and January 2023 in the regions of Apurímac, La Libertad, Puno, Junín, Arequipa and Ayacucho.

New elections would revive violence and corruption. What is called democracy, in the Andes are totalitarian states where only the heirs of landowners can govern, today mafia entrepreneurs who dominate the media and illegal economies. That is why a military coup is not needed in Peru, because the media (especially television) is completely controlled, does not report the massacres and refers to the protesters as “terrorists”. Under these conditions, new elections will only guarantee the continuity of authoritarian and corrupt governments, as has been the case since the 1980s, a situation today however aggravated by the current dominance of mafia economies.

Who really rules in the mining industry places. The Amazonian peoples grouped in the Inter-Ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Forest are mobilizing against the government, as are the other peoples of Peru. However, they speak out for the creation of autonomous territorial governments (as the Wampis and Awajún have already done), because they believe that this is the only way to stop this model of death that we call extractivism. A model supported by criminal states with a democratic veneer and armed gangs, legal and illegal, which govern the territories of the mining industry, gold extraction, logging and cocaine laboratories.

* Raùl Zibechi writes for Comune-info