JOHN YANG: Good evening. I'm John Yang. In the streets of Lima,
Peru, demonstrators are vowing to keep demanding the president's resignation,
despite a strong police response and a mounting death toll. At least 55 people
are dead and 700 are injured. The worst political violence the country has seen in
more than two decades began last month in rural regions and has now engulfed the capital city.
Overnight in Lima, more violent clashes between protesters and police. Demonstrators, some waving
the Peruvian flag, others pushing and shoving with police, faced a wall of riot shields. Tear gas and
smoke from fires clouded the streets. Dozens of people were injured. The protesters, many from
Peru's farthest reaches, had arrived in Lima this week by bus and by foot, defying the government's
declaration of a state of emergency to demand the resignation of President Dina Boluarte.
JOSE DE LA ROSA (through translator): We want the usurper Dina Boluarte to step down and call
for new elections. Protests will continue. The south of the country is riotous at the moment.
JOHN YANG: The protests erupted across the country last month
after former President Pedro Castillo was removed from office and arrested.
Threatened with impeachment on corruption charges, Castillo had tried to dissolve Congress and
install an emergency government. Boluarte, who was Vice President, became President.
NO NAME GIVEN (through translator): We are headed to Lima to fight. We are here
for the wounded, for the many deaths caused by this de facto government.
JOHN YANG: Castillo was Peru's first leader from the rural Andes region.
Campaigning on the slogan no more poor people in our rich country. He promised
to address long standing issues of poverty and inequality. His ousters angered his rural
and indigenous supporters, underscoring their alienation from leaders in Lima.
YORBIN HERRERA (through translator): We have come to defend our country, considering that we are
under a dictatorship, a militarist government which has stained our country with blood.
JOHN YANG: Protesters want immediate new elections to pick a new Congress,
and they want a new constitution.
ALVELIO SANCHEZ (through translator): What we demand is the resignation of
President Dina Boluarte. Also, we want the closure of Congress and new elections for 2023.
JOHN YANG: So far, President Boluarte has been defiant.
DINA BOLUARTE, President of Peru (through translator): That was not a peaceful protest. The
violent acts that occurred in December and January will not go unpunished. I will not get tired of
inviting those who are protesting, those who have moved from the provinces toward the capital for
dialogue. I will not get tired of telling them, let's work on the vision this country needs.
JOHN YANG: Yesterday, before the latest violence in Lima,
I spoke with Julie Turkewitz, the Andes Bureau Chief for The New York Times. I
asked her what she saw on a recent reporting trip to southern Peru.
JULIE TURKEWITZ, Bogota Colombia: In the last month, I've been to two different
parts of rural Peru. The difference between the situation in Lima and the situation
outside of Lima is pretty stark. The protests were happening outside of the capital. You saw
a lot of roadblocks. You saw a lot of parts of the country that were really paralyzed
and a lot of anger that is happening outside of the city. And that anger is extremely present, for
example, in Juliaca, in Cusco, in Ayacucho, and you really didn't see it on the streets in Lima.
JOHN YANG: What does that tell us that this difference between the scene in Lima and the
scene on the countryside, what does that tell us about what's going on?
JULIE TURKEWITZ: These protests, I think, really demonstrate a rural-urban divide
in Peru that has existed really for generations and generations,
where a lot of people in rural parts of the country feel that the government,
that the country's democracy, is really only functioning for a select group of people.
And so, what you see in a lot of rural parts of the country is that people feel
that security hasn't come to them, that economic success hasn't come to them,
that opportunities for good education hasn't come to them. That divide,
in many ways, has been exacerbated by the pandemic, which hit the country very hard,
by a drought that has also hit the country very hard, by inflation, which has caused prices to
rise really fast in the country. And you know, people are frustrated by their current conditions,
poverty, inequality. But more than that, people are frustrated by a democracy that they don't
believe is working for them, that they don't believe serves them in the way that it should.
JOHN YANG: What is it that the protesters want?
JULIE TURKEWITZ: You know, these protests began as this anger over the arrest and the
removal of former President Castillo. And so, at first, people were asking for his restitution,
and they were asking for, if that didn't happen, new elections as quickly as possible. The sort
of demands have grown from there, and people are asking for a new constitution. You know,
and when were in Juliaca, we saw in rural Peru, we saw signs that said calling for
like (foreign language) like a new homeland. And the frustration has reached such a level
that people are calling for a whole new system. What that new system is not clear.
JOHN YANG: Is this in any way say anything or tell
us anything about democracies across South America, across Latin America?
JULIE TURKEWITZ: What we have seen in Latin America in the last 15 to 20 years is definitely
a decline in trust individual democracies and a decline in satisfaction with democracies.
And the sort of level of dissatisfaction and the level of distrust is particularly acute in Peru.
JOHN YANG: Peru certainly is no stranger to political turmoil, is it?
JULIE TURKEWITZ: It's a country that has seen six presidents in the last five years,
and I think what that has really led to is -- or contributed to is a real distrust in how
the country's democracy functions. There is a, you know, a study that has been really critical
for us in understanding what's happening in the country that shows that just 21% of Peruvians are
satisfied with their democracy. 88% believe that at least 50% of their politicians are corrupt.
Kind of gives you an idea of how people feel about the government.
JOHN YANG: There have been allegations of human rights abuses in these protests?
JULIE TURKEWITZ: There are many human rights groups who have accused the police of acting
disproportionately against protesters who, in some cases, have been violent. I mean,
they've vandalized, they've burned buildings, but, you know, the police and the military,
of course, have guns, and a lot of these people have died from bullet woods.
JOHN YANG: Is there any resolution in sight?
JULIE TURKEWITZ: One of the main sort of asks and
demands of the protesters is that the new president resigns. And she,
you know, she was initially an ally of Pedro Castillo, but she has really
dug in her heels and she is not giving any signs of -- any signs that she will sort of acquiesce
to protesters demands. And if that doesn't happen, I think this is going to keep going.
JOHN YANG: Julie Turkewitz of The New York Times, thank you very much.
JULIE TURKEWITZ: Thank you.