Sunday's presidential election in Peru comes as many citizens are losing hope for their economy and their democracy.
“So much of what we are seeing in this election comes down to the devastation of” said Gustavo Gorriti, a well-known Peruvian journalist. “There was so much loss, so much suffering, both on a personal level and to the economy.”
Castillo, 51, who has never held public office and was a political unknown before this year, draws much of his support from the poor, Indigenous population in the Andes. Fujimori, 46, who would become the country’s first female president, runs stronger in the capital, Lima, and other coastal areas that have benefited from the longstanding export-oriented, free-market economic policies she has championed.
The assailants left leaflets warning people not to vote June 6 and denouncing Fujimori supporters as “traitors.” Authorities attributed the strike to remnants of the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group, which waged a bloody insurgency against the government in the 1980s. The unabashed champion of her 82-year-old father’s checkered legacy, Keiko Fujimori has vowed to pardon him if elected.
Fujimori denies the charges and calls them a political hit job. She spent 13 months in detention on related charges in 2018 and 2019.For his part, Castillo has vowed to eliminate corruption, a rallying cry for his base.“Pedro is for the people, Keiko is a criminal!” chanted Julián Rojas, 40, a taxi driver who attended a Castillo rally recently in Lima’s central Plaza San Martín, where he helped hoist up an effigy of Keiko Fujimori in a mock jail cell and parade it around the square.
Castillo has vowed that he would protect private property and individual savings, and rejects any ideological affinity with Hugo Chavez, the late socialist leader whom critics hold responsible for economic ruin in Venezuela., we aren’t terrorists,” he told a crowd in April in the northern Peruvian city of Máncora. “We are workers, just like any of you.”
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