Monthly Archives: July 2021

The symbolism could hardly have been clearer when Pedro Castillo was sworn in yesterday as Peru’s new President on the country's 200th anniversary of independence. For arguably the first time in its history, Peru has a head-of-state who personifies the national majority — a campesino hailing from a particularly impoverished region of the northern Andes — rather than a member, real or honorary, of the largely white Lima elite. Given Peru’s persistent, stark inequality, drastically exacerbated by the pandemic, perhaps the biggest surprise is that the electorate has waited until now to vote in such a radical left-populist. Although the…Read more …

LIMA, Peru — Pedro Castillo, the provincial schoolteacher who promised to restructure Peru’s economy to favor the poor, was confirmed Monday evening as the Andean country’s president-elect more than six weeks after the election. Peru’s electoral agency certified the results of the June 6 runoff, giving the left-wing Castillo 50.13 percent of the vote over 49.87 percent for his hard-right opponent Keiko Fujimori. The two candidates were separated by just 44,000 votes out of nearly 19 million cast. The result followed a deeply divisive election and a series of last-ditch legal challenges by Fujimori. Her lawyers…Read more …

LIMA, Peru — If ever a presidential administration needed a smooth transition, it’s that of Pedro Castillo, the leftist schoolteacher who will apparently be Peru’s next leader. With no experience in public office, he eschewed policy advisers during both rounds of the Andean nation’s presidential elections — even as he made improbable, apparently spontaneous campaign promises ranging from banning imports to expelling thousands of Venezuelan refugees. Peru is grasping for political stability after going through three presidents in a single month last year. And with the world’s worst reported covid-19 mortality rate per capita, the country is…Read more …