By Alberto Giovanelli
Regarding every mobilization and in all the articles that we have brought to our readers, we highlight the power of the popular insurrection that for two months has been developing in Peru, which features unprecedented characteristics we have tried to describe on the basis of our direct participation in this process with our comrades of the International Socialist League.
More than 60 days of roadblocks, regional strikes, airport takeovers, the general strike of February 9, the movements of thousands of peasants towards Lima, the multitudinous demonstrations throughout the country, all towards one objective: the resignation of Boluarte and the closing of the Congress. If we also add the more than 60 deaths and the thousands of wounded and detained, we must conclude that the will to end institutionalism, which oppresses us, is persistent and nothing indicates that it will stop soon.
However, in spite of the heroism demonstrated by the Peruvian people, we revolutionaries must also ask ourselves, why does Boluarte remain in government? Why do the congressmen insist time and again on remaining glued to their seats? How is it that such an expression of rejection has not swept away this illegitimate government supported by the corrupt Congress and the brutal repression?
As we have already stated on several occasions, Peru is experiencing an irreversible institutional and bourgeois regime crisis; the government of Boluarte and the congressmen feature a rejection that exceeds 80% according to the surveys of the monopoly groups of the press themselves, addicted to the factors of power. The government is surviving on the basis of an agreement with the Armed Forces and the police, and with the business community, especially those linked to the financial sector. It is also easy to see that the government is supported by the most reactionary and racist sectors, which refuse to recognize Peru as a multicultural and plurinational nation.
It is not only the bourgeoisie that supports the government and the regime of ’93
Dina Boluarte, the Congress, the Judiciary and the whole political regime inherited from Fujimorism also survive because of a series of additional but very important factors that we cannot ignore.
Although we must value the process of self-organization of all the sectors that struggle, there has not yet been a leap towards coordination and the formation of a democratic leadership of the whole process that is also independent of the old bureaucracy of the CGTP and the false left. Unfortunately the working class has not integrated itself homogeneously into the struggle. Except for the miners of the south and sectors of the fishing and teachers, who have mobilized from the first day, the rest of the workers have not yet been able to fight the battle to overcome the CGTP bureaucracy and join the fight beyond unanimously sharing the rejection of the government.
Not only the right wing wants to stop the mobilization
What is at stake in this situation is the questioning of an entire regime; it is not only the just demands against misery and subordination to the interests of the powerful. We fight to defeat the regime of ’93, we fight to break with the capitalist structure of Peru that condemns us to misery, we fight to break with dependence on imperialism. But in the meantime, the center left does not participate or does so only to demand the advancement of elections. The same goes for the CGTP which, pressured by the rank and file, had to call for a general strike when it had not done so since 1977; but it made an effort not to give it continuity, trying to isolate the whole process.
As we have stated, Boluarte not only has the explicit support of the bourgeoisie, but also the inconsistent policy of the trade union centrals and the parliamentary left, which are terrified by the demands of the mobilization and are transformed into an objective ally of the government and the regime.
That is why it is not surprising that, an alliance that may seem curious to some, both fujimoristas and pseudo-leftists propose the advance of the elections, agreeing on one interest: That the situation does not get out of hand, and to this end, one and the other agree that the hypothetical elections be held within the institutional framework of the Constitution of ’93 and could be promoted by the Boluarte government itself, that is to say, that we could only elect among the same ones that today we repudiate due to the very limits imposed by the current Fujimorist institutionality.
We must also highlight the explicit, or by omission, support that the majority of Latin American governments and imperialism give to this illegitimate government, who due to fear of the power of the mobilization only summon useless calls for dialogue between executioners and victims.
In opposition to the silence and hypocrisy of those governments, hundreds of acts in front of embassies, consulates, squares and shopping centers are being held throughout the world expressing solidarity and support for the struggle of the Peruvian people, many of them promoted by our own International Socialist League. As part of this same internationalist policy, the national leaders of the MST of Argentina, Nadia Burgos and Cele Fierro were in Peru accompanying the protests and collaborating with the organization of our comrades.
There is a way out hand in hand with the workers, the people in struggle and the real left.
This debate takes place on the one hand, between those who believe that capitalism can be humanized by wresting concessions from it, and on the other hand, between those of us who are convinced that we must change everything.
From the International Socialist League and together with our Peruvian comrades, we have been promoting the coordination and formation of a government of the popular organizations, which responds democratically to the needs of those at the bottom and which calls for a truly free and sovereign Constituent Assembly so that the people can decide what type of institutionality we should implement in Peru. We maintain that the capitalist system shows us in Peru, in Latin America and in the world as a whole, that it is incapable of giving the slightest response to our immediate needs. Capitalism can only offer us greater marginalization, environmental destruction and subjection to semi-slavery.
That is why it is indispensable that we revolutionary socialists unite behind a program of rupture with everything old, that we advance accompanying our people to defeat Boluarte, that we close the Congress, that we call to form a government of those from below, of workers, peasants, students and precarious peoples and the revolutionary left that calls for the Constituent Assembly as a continuity of the process of mobilization.
The popular insurrection is beginning to go through decisive hours, if we continue with the mobilization and manage to overcome the limitations that we describe, the blood of our martyrs will not have been shed in vain, there are conditions to win, but it is indispensable to coordinate, and to be part of a leadership that really intends to do so.