By Sofía Martínez – ISL Peru
The popular mobilization in the country does not stop. While last weekend protests throughout the country caused more than 100 injured and 400 arrested; on Monday, January 9, the center of the protests and repression took place in the city of Juliaca – Puno, in the midst of the indefinite strike that is still going strong in the south of the country against the coup government of Dina Boluarte. At the end of the day, official data confirms 14 dead (including a doctor who was providing aid and a minor); more than 40 wounded as a result of the repression by the military forces.
The Hospital and Health Centers of Juliaca collapsed due to the lack of equipment and medical personnel to attend to the wounded, and the morgue no longer had the capacity to receive more corpses. The Director of the Hospital informed the press that all the wounded and deceased had been killed by bullets fired directly into the body.
Paradoxically, in Lima, this same afternoon there was a meeting for the “National Agreement” called by the executive, the church, the business sector, the regional governors, the CGTP, among others.
The news from the south, and the first reports of repression, meant that the attempt at such an agreement did not last half an hour, and the voices demanding Boluarte’s resignation and the closing of Congress multiplied.
The coup government of Dina Boluarte ratifies that its only response to the demands is repression with the support of the armed forces and the police, but sectors of the businesses themselves are beginning to lose confidence in the government’s capacity to “stabilize the situation”. That is why they are beginning to debate about which replacement could be more effective.
The National Human Rights Coordinator issued a public statement denouncing the flagrant and continuous violation of human rights, denouncing Boluarte and her council of ministers as directly responsible for the massacre in Juliaca.
In the face of this, at this very moment pots and pans are being banged in Lima against the murders in Puno, several regional governors are demanding Boluarte’s resignation, thus expressing discontent and delegitimization of the government. These are the reasons that make it almost impossible to reach lasting “peace agreements” since everything indicates that the protests will continue and spread. Hence, it is more and more decisive to coordinate until forming a Great National Coordinator of the organizations in struggle to defeat the right-wing government, close the Congress and impose a Free and Sovereign Constituent Assembly that will allow us to get rid of the disastrous ’93 regime inherited by the dictatorial government of Alberto Fujimori and thus advance towards a government of the workers and the people that will begin to walk the road of the real solutions for our people, an anti-capitalist and socialist government.
