Tue Feb 11, 2025
February 11, 2025

Peru | National strike to replace all in the putrid government!

By PST-Peru

The “popular” government led by Pedro Castillo ended in just seventeenth months. With the presidential vacancy resolved by a lofty majority in Congress, and with Castillo dismissed and imprisoned for attempting a clumsy self-coup d’état, the bourgeoisie was left in the best possible position.

Now, the bourgeoisie intends to return to “normalcy” with a government that guarantees the functioning of the institutions and the operation of the policies that make business work and grow. But this plan, although it is on the offensive in the current political context, is far from being achieved. First, because only a transitional and precarious government has been established. And second, because the workers’ and popular movement — which placed Castillo in power and supported his presidency with the expectation of seeing his campaign promises met –, has not said its last word.

The impeachment attempts cooked up by the opposition from day one could not materialize. Besides the lack of sufficient votes in Congress, the right-wing rightly feared the reaction of the working and popular masses which, even in the eclipse of Castillo, could respond in the streets, clearly identifying their enemies.

At the critical moment –and revealing all the shortcomings of his government, such as improvisation and authoritarian political forms–, Castillo attempted a coup by decreeing the closing of Congress and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. This rupture of the “constitutional order” was enough for the majority of the “left” bench to add their votes to those of the right, thinking more in defense of their seats than in the defense of democracy. Their leaderships, at first calling for mobilizations in defense of Castillo, renounced this call in defense of protecting bourgeois institutions. A clear demonstration that they were only engaging in demagogy.

Thus, the policy of the left (Peru Libre and Juntos por el Perú, followed by the Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú, the national trade union center, or CGTP), consummated the resounding failure of the short experience of the government of Pedro Castillo. His was a government not only continuing in essence the same policies as usual, but also stained with corruption and authoritarianism. This has left the corrupt bourgeoisie and those wishing to overturn his government with the banners of the struggle against corruption and the defense of democracy. Thus, with the coordinated “left” voting together with the reactionary bourgeoisie, the broad sectors of the workers and the people are left without answers.

Achieving a political opening, the bourgeoisie hoped to form a new government of its own, although now it must content itself with the succession of Dina Boluarte. She is not the continuity of Castillo but a new government imposed and supported by the reactionary majority in Congress. These will be the people who will orient and direct government policies contrary to the working and popular majorities. Nevertheless, the supposed “left” does not learn from its recent mistakes and is now rearranging itself behind the scenes, pretending to maintain a quota of power.

The important thing is that the workers and popular sectors do not look favorably at this reformulation of government. And although they do not intend to demand the return of Castillo, turned into a total fraud, now they want to go after their own by demanding the departure of those really responsible for the crisis, including the Congress.

Thus, while the bourgeoisie and its institutions pretend to have solved the crisis, we are entering a new moment in which the masses, liberated from the false expectations in the Castillo government, can deploy all their forces to defeat those who today are singing victory and who in reality are the real holders of political and economic power in the country. Shedding the illusions of a Castillo government, we can now place in the foreground what was displaced all this time: the workers’ and popular demands.

In this new situation, we can propose to do what has always been necessary: to organize a united plan of struggle and to prepare a militant national strike. We must turn all forces to direct action, so that they all go and a Constituent Assembly is called to carry out the fundamental changes demanded and to attend to the urgent necessities of the poor and working people.

The main lesson of this whole period is the renunciation of the left leaderships. They failed to carry out this plan of struggle, and instead supported the conciliation between the Castillo government and the bourgeoisie and its corrupt Congress. This policy has produced the present situation and has strengthened the coup right wing now claiming to be supporters of democracy, and at the cost of postponing the struggle for the workers’ and popular demands.

The recovery of the independence of the mass movement and its return to the streets cannot simply be for new elections, that is to say, to repeat history. We are going to achieve our demands in the streets. And the fundamental changes will only come with the conquest of a government of the workers and popular organizations. This fight will have to defeat all the current bourgeois institutionality which has shown that it prevents any possibility of change, even lukewarm reforms, and which has shown in the current crisis the way it unites to defend its privileges.

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