New day of protest in Peru: one dead and several injured in clashes with the police

An agricultural worker who participated in the blockade of a route died and at least 15 people were injured this Wednesday in clashes with the police, in a new day of protests in Peru due to price increases, reported hospital sources.

“15 wounded have been admitted, we have one seriously injured. There is a civilian who has been admitted deceased as a result of the conflict,” said the director of the Ica hospital (300 km south of Lima), Carlos Navea, in a video posted on the Facebook page of the health center.

Navea specified that the wounded who arrived at the hospital are 12 policemen and three protesters.

The crashes occurred during the morning when a police checkpoint tried to evict dozens of agricultural workers who were blocking the Pan-American highway some 290 km south of Lima in the fertile Ica region, where many agribusiness companies operate.

In Ica, a coastal region south of Lima, hundreds of protesters blocked this Wednesday for the third day the key route attached to the Pacific that allows reaching the capital from the south of the country. Hundreds of travelers were stranded while the police, in small numbers, were unable to clear the area.

Rising tension

Tension has been growing in Peru since Monday, when there were protests in Lima, Ica and various regions of the country against rising fuel and food prices, which led leftist President Pedro Castillo to surprise impose a curfew. daytime on Tuesday, which was repudiated by broad sectors of the population.

The president finally lifted the curfew in the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday, after a meeting with the opposition leaders who dominate Congress, while in the center of Lima there were clashes between protesters and police and attacks on public buildings and businesses.

The leader of the agricultural workers Julio Carbajal told RPP radio that the deceased on the Pan-American highway is a 25 year old worker a native of Huancavelica who worked in an agricultural company in Ica.

These are the first protests in the government of Castillo, who has eight months in power.

​Tuesday was a day of fury in Peru, where a total of 25 agents were injured, after being beaten with stones and sticks thrown by protesters.

The police repelled them using tear gas.

The protesters tried burn down the basement of the Superior Court, where judicial files are kept, they stole office equipment, stoned the prosecutor’s office, the Electoral Court, broke ATMs and looted a retail store from which they stole liquor, soft drinks and cigarettes.

The protesters disobeyed on Tuesday the unprecedented curfew order decreed at midnight on Monday by the government to try to calm a week of protests in other parts of the country driven by the rise in the price of fuel, food and fertilizers that have left four dead.

The first since Fujimori

The curfew was criticized by experts and it was the first since the end of Alberto Fujimori’s iron-fisted government (1990-2000), imprisoned for being the intellectual author of 25 murders during his administration.

The government justified the order of social immobilization. Defense Minister José Gavidia told reporters that the curfew was motivated by intelligence information indicating that “acts of violence were going to become generalized, especially in the center of Limaso extreme measures had to be taken.

Media calls for Castillo’s resignation

Two important newspapers in Peru -El Comercio and La República- agreed in their editorials on Wednesday that Castillo must leave power.

“At this stage his incompetence already looks incorrigiblehis untenable presidency and his resignationthe best exit to the situation of misgovernment in which we find ourselves,” said El Comercio. The Republic wrote “it is the exact time for Castillo to resign, Vice President Dina Boluarte takes office and general elections are called. It is time for everyone to leave.”

The president admitted last week in Parliament that Peru is experiencing an economic crisis and explained that the rise in prices was driven by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and fueled by the recent conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has led the country to a “war economy”.

On Friday, the National Institute of Statistics reported that monthly inflation for March was 1.48%, the highest in 26 years. In February 1996 it had been 1.53%.

After eight months in office, Castillo has a negative image of 68%, according to a survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies. The president has modified his ministerial cabinet four timesis criticized for his carelessness in appointing key officials and has three investigations for alleged corruption that are frozen until the end of his government.

Congress – which has tried to unseat him twice– He surpasses it in disrepute and his disapproval reaches 79%.

Since Thursday the country is without a minister of health after Congress censured Hernán Condori, a controversial doctor who promoted products without scientific endorsement and whose management decreased vaccination against COVID-19.

AFP and AP

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