On the Events in Peru

Declaration of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee of the ILPS

Repudiate the “institutional” coup of the right wing and imperialism in Peru, exercise in the streets the legitimate right to patriotic and popular rebellion against all reaction!

The institutional coup produced in Peru last December 8, which concluded with the impeachment and imprisonment of Castillo, is inscribed as one more chapter in the long generalized crisis that crosses that country, after a period of profound struggle and popular insurgency that have advanced and maintained a balance of power with the ruling classes and that after its hard but transitory defeat, gave way to a rigged, restricted and repressive democracy, guarantor of the power of the big bourgeoisie and imperialism.

The social and political instability, the permanent interruption of presidential mandates in the last six years, are the manifestations of the aggravation of the contradictions between the different factions of the big bourgeoisie that struggle to establish a “Peru for the few”, generating an active repudiation of the “Peru for the few”, of the popular majorities of the imposed dependent capitalism, in view of the loss of sovereignty and the worsening of their living conditions. 

In this framework, the parliament and the institutions in general are functional to the concentrated power and can only be expected to be consistently reactionary and to act against the people. The popular repudiation and rebellion against this institutionality is still very strong, expressed in the streets and highways and also reach an important fraction of the electorate. In the last presidential elections, certain popular demands and aspirations were expressed in the last government and were frustrated by Castillo’s abandonment of those key measures, which could put into question the Peruvian dependent matrix, moving forward with putting as a priority the urgencies of the workers and the people. Not only did he not move forward with these priorities by appealing to popular mobilization -in the face of permanent pressures from the right- but he also gave in to them, with a final attempt to overcome the crisis “from within” by closing the Congress, playing a game of repartee that ended up distancing him from the government.

In view of this situation, popular anger has exploded in the face of the systematic corruption and repression of the entire regime and the first murder of a young demonstrator has been registered, in one of the multiple actions that are in numerous regions of the country, demanding the release of Castillo and all the political prisoners and a Constituent Assembly. The Peruvian popular organizations, making use of the Rebellion, are demanding through the street occupation and blockades together with the general strike for an indefinite period of time launched for next Tuesday the 13th, the fall of the reactionary plot in course and are generating the conditions for a new power born of the protagonism of the working masses.

We call for the active solidarity of all the anti-imperialist democratic forces of Latin America and the Caribbean to rise up together with the workers and the people of Peru, following the path of our rebellious people, who, since the beginning of the new century, from the “let them all go” of Argentina to the recent Chilean, Ecuadorian and Colombian revolts, have tried to overcome the limits demonstrated by the so-called popular and left governments to successfully confront the plans of the ruling classes, giving way to national and social liberation in our countries.

ILPS Latin American and Caribbean Committee.

December 11, 2022