Peru: Pedro Castillo's trial reveals the limits of bourgeois ‘democracy’

On 27 November, President Pedro Castillo was sentenced to 11 years, 5 months, and 15 days in prison for the crime of conspiracy to rebel, following his announcement (on 7 December 2022) to dissolve parliament, reorganise the justice system, and convene a Constituent Assembly.

[Originally published in Spanish at americasocialista.org]

The prosecution directly accused him of rebellion and sought a 34-year sentence, but the Supreme Court ruled that the crime did not occur. So, well-known lawyers accustomed to parading through the corridors of the government media needed to accuse him of something, just to get him out of the electoral race.

It was then they decided to accuse him of ‘conspiracy’, which carries a much lighter sentence. Let us remember that, according to a poll commissioned by a right-wing media outlet in 2023, in a virtual election with Castillo participating, he would win again.

According to the court, with the announcement in his message to the nation in December 2022, Castillo “assumed the exercise of power, constituting the offense of rebellion prohibited in Article 45 of the Constitution”. It was also concluded that the message was read “without meeting the constitutional requirements”. This means that Castillo attempted to dissolve Congress without taking into consideration the requirements contained in the constitution and under which parliament can be dissolved.

Castillo wasn’t the only one in the firing line. Betssy Chávez, former president of the Council of Ministers (currently in asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Lima), former Interior Minister Willy Huerta, and Aníbal Torres, former chief of staff to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, were also sentenced to the same prison term as Castillo, the latter two with suspended sentences.

Castillo embodied, albeit in a weak and contradictory way, the historical demands of Peru's workers, peasants, and forgotten peoples. His presence in power, however moderate, opened a crack in the control that the national bourgeoisie and imperialist interests have exercised for centuries.

The mere fact that a humble working class man, a teachers' union leader from Cajamarca, occupied the presidential chair represented a threat to their power, because it gave workers and peasants the idea that they themselves could govern their destinies, rather than delegating to professional politicians.

Establishment hypocrisy

The economic and political elite did not act against Castillo solely out of racism or rejection of his rural origins – although these elements were present – but because they perceived his government, despite its limitations, as a threat to their class privileges. That is why his fate was the same as that of other popular leaders in Latin America: judicial harassment, prison, or exile.

The background to the arbitrary impeachment of Castillo and his immediate entourage is clear: it was a direct reprisal against figures who could represent cracks in the corrupt and elitist machinery that has controlled power since the dawn of the republic.

Castillo won the popular vote, and yet they have tried to sabotage his regime at every possible opportunity / Image: Presidencia de la República del Perú

Whilst they preach about the virtues of ‘democracy’ in every other sentence, the rich and powerful, and their right-wing representatives, have violated it every step of the way. Castillo won the popular vote, and yet they have tried to sabotage his regime at every possible opportunity, through attempts at impeachment, media smear campaigns, legal attacks, and all the other tricks in the book.

The right wing never recognised the popular votes of its own electoral circus, never accepted the voice of the interior regions (where Castillo drew much of his support, and which they always consider second-class citizens), and one of their well-known spokesmen, Congressman Montoya, spent approximately $150,000 of public funds searching for evidence of electoral fraud that led to Castillo's presidential victory. His final report indicated that no evidence was found.

We can see, then, that the powers of the state are aligned under the same script that persecutes, imprisons, or executes its opponents, as they need to set precedents against anyone who poses a threat to their candidates' victory.

Weakness invites aggression

However, it is crucial to openly critique the limitations of Castillo's government. Though his electoral programme, built around the slogan of “no more poor people in a rich country,” promised structural transformations, in practice it faltered and was limited to symbolic gestures. It failed to advance key reforms such as the nationalisation of strategic sectors (banks, mining, ports) or the convening of a truly sovereign Constituent Assembly.

Faced with the onslaught of the capitalist oligarchy, he wavered, made concessions, and moderated his language. This ambiguity not only disappointed his voters but also left him politically isolated, without real tools to confront the offensive of the right. Instead of mobilising the people to defend his mandate, he sought to please sectors of the establishment (by offering them political positions), which ultimately facilitated his overthrow and persecution.

But this is not just an attack against Castillo (who is now clearly a political prisoner); it is a direct attack on the working class and social movements in general, who must once again face the onslaught of a police state controlled by the extreme right. This was the case just a couple of years ago, when the peasant, indigenous, and working-class masses took to the streets to reject the coup against Castillo in December 2022 and in the months that followed. The brutal state crackdown against this killed over 50 people.

The lesson for social movements and the left is clear: it is not possible to neutralise the right through offering them concessions. Every gesture of conciliation is interpreted as weakness and fuels their audacity to strike harder. Castillo's experience shows that without a programme to break with capitalism, and without the independent organisation of the working class, any government that even comes close to threatening the rule of the ruling elites will quickly be surrounded and overthrown.

The only guarantee against the reactionary onslaught is to build an organisation of the working class and poor peasants, built on a programme of expropriating the economic power of the bourgeoisie (nationalising banks, multinationals, strategic resources, and monopolies), and that openly confronts imperialist domination. Only in this way can the historical cycle of exclusion and repression of the majority be broken.