VM

You’ve hit on one of the defining elements of contemporary Peruvian society. I would take a step back, though, and point to several other elements that one should also bear in mind if they’re to understand Peru today.

We need to consider the country’s recent history of political violence. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Peru was affected by the violence of subversive groups (the Shining Path and others), a violence that was equaled, if not surpassed, by repressive, authoritarian state violence. The toll for that conflict was more than seventy thousand dead.

The Fujimori dictatorship of the 1990s saw a continuation of state repression, criminalizing, when not outright assassinating, left-wing political leaders and social movement figures. The Left emerged from that period extremely debilitated, fragmented, and stigmatized, both in political and social terms.

The other factor to take into account is the economy: nearly 70 percent of Peruvian workers make their living in the informal economy, where there are virtually no labor rights, benefits, or any type of minimally humane working conditions. Precarity and informality exacerbate the existing fragmentation, where the leading motto seems to be “save yourself if you can.” In that scenario, individual concerns understandably trump relationships with neighbors, coworkers, and so on, and this makes for an extremely complex landscape for the Left.

That same scenario is also fertile ground for neoliberals who are increasingly finding success by embracing a more hardline conservatism, exploiting the legitimate fears that people experience in the midst of generalized uncertainty. There are sectors of the Right that are actively stoking fear, distrust, and panic toward those groups and communities perceived as different: against Venezuelan immigrants, the LGBT community, or the figure of the emancipated woman, who some want to violently drive back into the domestic sphere.

Today’s Peruvian society is extremely complex, as you can see. But at the same time, we feel that there is enormous potential to build points of connection, solidarity, and awareness among existing groups, and that only by doing so can we do the work that needs to be done. The party that I currently belong to, Nuevo Perú, proposes to do exactly that type of work: strengthening bonds between various organizations and groups while also building up the capacity of our own party.