Peru's Revolt Is About More Than Corruption

[Judi Lynn]

AN INTERVIEW WITH
VERÓNIKA MENDOZA

INTERVIEW BY
Nicolas Allen
Victor Miguel Castillo

01.26.2020

Peruvians vote today in crucial parliamentary elections. But the future of the country relies not just on fighting corruption, but taking on the powerful corporate interests that dominate the country.

Twenty-nineteen was the year South America erupted. Amid revolts in Chile, a coup in Bolivia, and an indigenous insurrection in Ecuador, Peru has grabbed fewer international headlines, but has not altogether avoided the unrest of its neighbors.

Last September, enraged by ongoing and widespread corruption scandals, and fed up with a broken neoliberal system, inscribed in the Constitution since the Fujimori dictatorship of the 1990s, Peruvians took to the streets en masse to express a “popular veto” of the entire political class, eventually leading to the disbandment of the National Congress.

Now, President Martín Vizcarra has called for extraordinary congressional elections to be held on January 26. Though many consider the move a palliative measure to pacify the growing social discontent, the elections also offer a certain opportunity for the Left.

To learn more about the country’s congressional elections and the current state of the Peruvian left, Victor Miguel Castillo and Nicolas Allen spoke to Verónika Mendoza. A feminist, environmentalist, and presidential candidate in 2016, Mendoza is a part of the emergent Nuevo Perú movement, a renewed left-wing coalition combatting years of stigmatization.