Report from Peru - Sharpening Class Conflict and Protests
Tuesday January 31, 7 p.m.
The Boston May Day Coalition invites César Zelada, member of the Agrupación Vilcapaza, to report directly from Peru. Zelada is involved in the unfolding protests in that country because he has been a labor activist, housing organizer, and student leader.

Leftist strike leader and former schoolteacher Pedro Castillo was elected president of Peru in July 2021. The country was reeling from the highest COVID-19 death rate in the world! For every 150 residents, one has died of COVID. Many held the previous reactionary president responsible and voted him out.

From the time Castillo took office, the right-wing Congress had tried to fraudulently disrupt his presidency through multiple attempts at impeachment -- each and every one failed.

On December 7, 2022, President Pedro Castillo made a surprise address to the nation, announcing dissolution of Congress and replacing it with an "exceptional emergency government," while calling for new elections. just a few hours later a U.S.-supported parliamentary/military coup arrested him and deposed him.

The citizens have the right to handle their own political affairs without U.S. imperialist intervention.

The class struggle has sharpened greatly in recent weeks, with regular mobilizations by working people, the poor, and farmers. A large part of Peru is now militarized and in a state of emergency to crush the protests. Tanks, together with groups of soldiers and assault police, patrol the streets daily, seeking to intimidate the protesters and the people who come out to join them. The regime has even started falsely labeling protesters “terrorists” in order to victimize them.
Working people of Peru have mobilized in the streets, not unlike Venezuela in 2002 when the masses turned back the coup attempt against Hugo Chávez.