Cusco.- The resistance seems to be at a relative pause in the southern Andes, the main front of the protests that have shaken Peru for weeks.
After two months of shortages of essential goods, a paralysis of the local economy and brutal police tactics, few turned out for the latest demonstrations and scheduled roadblocks in Cusco, the ancient capital of the Incas, located in a valley in the Andes. , at 3,400 meters above sea level.
At the site of the protests, a procession went up from the central market, up steep streets, bordered by still impregnable pre-Columbian walls. The image of the Purified Virgin wavered to the sound of a slow march, played by a wind band. "I don't think there are any more protests here because without tourism you can't live," said a costalero who was taking a breath.
It is the dilemma of Cusco, a focus of discontent since the arrest of Andean President Pedro Castillo in December, but totally dependent on tourism that no longer arrives.
The closure of Machu Picchu last month, following the destruction of the tracks of the privatized train, run by a subsidiary of the international luxury group LVMH, which connects the Inca ruin with Cusco, has left the city with almost no income.
Only Peruvians, including a peasant woman in traditional dress, gazed at the Baroque paintings of the Cusco school—many painted by Quechua artists—and the astonishing Inca stonework in the Santo Domingo convent, built over the Coricancha temple of the sun.
Some trust that the truce will help Congress in Lima to approve early elections as is claimed on the street.
But, after a series of tactical maneuvers by parties both on the right and on the left, a breakthrough seems almost impossible unless Dina Boluarte, the vice president who assumed the presidency after the arrest in early December of Castillo, accused of promoting a self coup.
Although Boluarte has urged Congress to bring forward the elections scheduled for 2026, he already has many reasons for wanting to remain in power, including his own freedom.
After the death of 48 demonstrators - at least twelve of these hit by bullets from firearms - the new president may be exposed to lawsuits for her responsibility in what Amnesty International describes as crimes with a "racist bias". 80% of the dead are Quechua or Aymara. Almost half of the cases studied in detail by Amnesty are victims of firearms.
"I have seen police shoot with my own eyes," said Roel Pacco, one of the students at the University of Cusco, son of peasants, who have led the protests.
Everyone calls Dina Boluarte a hypocrite and a traitor. At the door of the Cusco art school, a grotesque effigy of the new president holds in bloody hands a sign announcing "Peace" and the barrel of a rifle. "Waraka dun dun," reads another sign, referring to the Andean sling "It is our weapon; without the waraka people have nothing to defend themselves with," summed up a Quechua woman, in her 50s, who wore a white top hat and long braids up to her belt.
Most of the dead have fallen in Puno and Ayacucho. Here in Cusco, Remo Candia, a 50-year-old peasant leader from the Anta community, half an hour from the city, died in January after being hit in the chest by a bullet.
Five other protesters were killed in pitched battles against the police in Apurímac, Baluarte's land of origin, adjacent to Cusco. There, Las Bambas, the Chinese-owned mega-mine, had already sparked conflict years before the surprising victory in the 2021 elections of the left-wing candidate, the humble schoolteacher from Cajamarca, in the northern Andes.
Supporting the protests is beginning to be considered synonymous with sympathy for terrorism from the official point of view as the former leftist Baluarte consolidates its new alliance with the parliamentary right. Few in Cusco want to talk. "The family is afraid," said Candia's nephew, when asked about a possible interview. "Many of us are being persecuted," said an investigator who did not want to give his name.
Every day the media in Lima announce more accusations against Castillo, not only for an attempted coup but also for alleged corruption and belonging to a criminal organization.
But in a country that until 1979 denied the right to vote to the majority of Andeans -due to a requirement of literacy in Spanish-, the Peruvian rule of law does not have many admirers among the Quecha and Aymara of the sierra. They prefer their own structures of assembly direct democracy.
It is easy to verify in the southern Andes that extreme inequality in Peru is both territorial and social. 76% of the economic elite live in Lima, according to the new book "The Silent Distinction" by Patricia Zárate and Mauricio Rentería. In the southern Andes, 6.7% are from the elite and, in the northern sierra, where Castillo comes from, only 2.7%.
It is not surprising, then, that Castillo won more than 80% of the votes in the southern Andes. In Lima, he only won 34%.
Although the president did not fulfill his electoral promises to withdraw the leonine contracts to the mining and gas multinationals, and to convene a constituent assembly, he still has the support of the Andean south. "He is a person like us, from the countryside," said a farmer from Apurímac, in the San Pedro market. "They have not let him do what he wanted."
For this reason, despite the fatigue and fear, the protests may soon return to the southern Andes. Although the city of Cusco already seems resigned to Boluarte's tenure as president, peasants in the mountains surrounding the city and south towards Apurimac are less dependent on the market and tourism. "People in Cusco want to oxygenate the economy; that's why there are no mobilizations today," said Roel Pacca. "But the brothers in the countryside can mobilize despite the blockades; they live off the farm (plot); they don't need much from the city." The same happens in Ayacucho and Junin in the central Andes to Puno in the south. In this sense, not only is a gap opened between Lima and the Andean highlands, but also another more local one: "This is already an ethnic struggle between people from the city and the countryside," said the aforementioned researcher.
For this reason, the highway from Cusco to Puno remains impassable, one of the 50 roadblocks in the southern Andes, last weekend. "Do not go to Juliaca (adjacent to Puno) because the highway is blocked and the airport can be taken," said a police officer last week, who was watching the first tourist trains that left Ollantaytambo for Machu Picchu, after the daring decision to reopen the Inca ruins.
Bold because the peasant communities of the region have not thrown in the towel either. "It's risky because if they see that the business returns without the political crisis being resolved, the communities may decide to take the ruins," said David Bueno, who represents a protest organization in the municipality of Machu Picchu, a group of small hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops next to the mythical lost city of the Incas.
