Pedro Castillo: son of the people

One of the characteristics of democracy is that from time to time there are candidates for the presidency that rise  from below. Leaders who emerge from the popular classes, without university degrees in the United States or in their own country. People who knew poverty in first person; who speak and gesticulate like the people. Pedro Castillo is one of them. Primary school teacher, leader of the Peruvian teacher movement, from Cajamarca, in the north of the country, proud of being a “rondero”, that is, belonging to a type of rural communal organization that emerged in the 1970s in Peru.

The antecedents of this type of leadership in our region can be found in Lula, a metal worker union leader and, perhaps, closer to Pedro Castillo, Evo Morales, a Bolivian coca grower leader. However, the candidacy of Pedro Castillo, although on the left, has put the left in trouble. Although there is a progressive discourse, there also very socially conservative underpinnings, and the Peru Libre party does not have the type of political trajectory and experience that the PT of Lula or the MAS of Evo Morales had.

The leader Verónika Mendoza, of the “Juntos por el Perú”  party, who represents one of the most recognized progressive forces in the country, has come out in support of Pedro Castillo, and they have signed a political agreement to concentrate the left or progressive vote in the second round, which will have its outcome on June 6. The commitment outlined agreements on very general issues, such as the fight against corruption, the review of contracts with transnational companies that have invested in extractive industries, and attention to the health emergency caused by the COVID pandemic. Verónika Mendoza has defended the candidate and has described him as a person “open to dialogue” and has offered him the technical and political support that is required, although shortly after signing the agreement, differences around gender issues  arose. In that short trance, and which happened as a detail in the electoral juncture , the congresswoman elect of  Castillo's party, "Peru Libre", Betsy Chavez, made a distinction, picked up by the press, between the politics  positioning  of  the "popular left" versus one of the "progressive left". The latter would be that of “Juntos por el Peru”, which includes the demands identified with feminism and the movement for diversity. The former is part of what we could call the "conservative left populism" of Pedro Castillo, against abortion, same sex marriage, as well as the disqualification of the debate on gender identity, as the concerns of “minorities”. 

When one analyzes the speeches and interviews with Pedro Castillo, that idea of ​​“openness to dialogue” becomes of capital importance because the candidate's speeches are literally riddled with inconsistencies. This "son of the people" seems to be a committed man and truly free of corruption, with his heart set on the destiny of his people, but in terms of his potential public policies there is a feeling of a leap into the void. His idea of ​​a constituent assembly at the beginning of his term, in which he assures there will be a majority of 60%, sometimes he says 75%, of representatives from "social organizations" committed to the Peruvian people, leaves many unknowns. Is he  thinking of a "corporate" constituent assembly attended by representatives of social organizations? Which ones, who differentiates between the legitimate ones and the ones he calls “shells”? On the other hand, he says that he will promote the creation of this assembly through a referendum, but the comment is that a referendum must be approved by Congress, which he almost disqualifies from the outset. He has also made proposals that support the idea of Constitutional Court made up of elected magistrates, through universal, free and direct suffrage. At one point he called department stores like Saga Falabella "monopolies." During the campaign he promised that state officials and congressmen would earn a school teacher's salary. The ideologues of the modern "technical-bureaucratic and meritocratic" state will be rolling in their graves. 

The softest thing we can say is that the candidate Pedro Castillo, if he wins, will have a very steep “learning curve”. If he does not have a stable technical team, if his listening capacity is limited, does not have a dialogue with Congress, and remains unaware of the realities of an interrelated and dynamic world, this son of the people is going to be shipwrecked very soon. Yes, he has displayed an enormous capacity to organize and carry out a national campaign, and he has been helped by the fact that he himself symbolizes a paradigm shift, but the benefit of the doubt is left hanging by a thread. We all know that campaigning and governing are very different things. How will he fare when he is faced with the complexities of the debate on public policies and the institutional management of the State?. Doubts about his ability to do so are manifest and the Peruvian voter faces one of the most difficult decisions in history. Hopefully they can take it wisely.