Peru: Third occupation of Lima

By Alternativa Socialista

Thousands of people demonstrated yesterday in different parts of Peru behind the slogans for:

Out with Boluarte’s dictatorship, trial and punishment for the culprits of the deaths and murders in the uprising early this year.

Freedom for Political Prisoners, among them Pedro Castillo.

Dissolution of the congress and a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly.

Several road blockades were part of the so-called third occupation of Lima, which generated confrontations between demonstrators and the police, resulting in eight wounded and six arrested. Around 3:00 pm, in the capital, the demonstrators gathered in the 2 de Mayo square, one kilometer from the presidential palace and the Congress, and at other agreed points. Several caricatures of Boluarte and replicas of black tombstones with white letters and crosses with the names of the dozens of deceased from the protests, marked the protest.

In Lima, the epicenter of the mobilization, public buildings, including the seats of the government palace and the Congress, were protected with metal fences, while the demonstrators paraded through the main streets of the center. Around 7 p.m. (local time), after breaking through a police cordon, we arrived in the vicinity of the Congress, where the police fired tear gas to disperse us.

Eight people were injured by the police repression, among them, independent journalist Gabriela Ramos Carbajal of the media outlet Plaza Boyka, who was hit with pellets on Abancay Avenue near the Attorney General’s Office, and suffered serious injuries. The other seriously injured was photojournalist Rober Llicla, who was also taken away on a stretcher by emergency brigades, confirmed the National Association of Journalists. The Interior Ministry later confirmed six arrests.

Earlier, in the Plaza Mayor of the Huancavelica region, in the Andes, police also dispersed some 6,000 demonstrators with tear gas, after the door of the local office of the Ministry of the Interior was consumed by fire.

In Huancavelica, bricklayers, university students and residents marched, chanting “this democracy is no longer democracy” and “Dina, murderer, the people repudiate you”, a cry that became popular in Peru during past demonstrations.

Also noteworthy is the seizure of facilities of the National University of Cajamarca, blockades in 58 provinces. Eight highway points in the regions of Cusco, Arequipa, Ayacucho and Loreto were cut, despite the fact that a week ago the government extended for a month the suspension of freedom of transit and assembly on several key highways in the country, in order to avoid roadblocks.

In Arequipa, Peru’s second most important region, in the south of the country, authorities suspended on-site classes. The same measure was announced for the tourist region of Cusco and Tacna, on the border with Chile.

The resistance to Boluarte seems to be entering a new stage, during the last hours several collectives are discussing how to continue the fight. Once again it is indispensable that the social organizations of workers, peasants, indigenous students and the leftist parties, advance in unity behind the central slogans and take over the Government because there is no transition possible within the rules of the repudiatory Fujimori Constitution of 1993.