Because the results of the elections in Peru and Ecuador are not surprising
The elections in Peru and Ecuador reveal that the political womb of Andean America, although different and separate, has the same ailments. The study by Livio Zanotti, author of ildiavolononmuoremai.it
Wrapped in a vertigo that plunges from its peaks into the ocean depths of the Pacific, the Andean world is impervious, separate, eccentric, yet not alien to South America and the West. To whose history he fully belongs (rich as a Peru, it was said 500 years ago and until yesterday; here the world has its paradigm, said Charles Darwin more or less from the deck of the "Beagle" once he arrived in front of the Galápagos). Economic and social rifts, ethnic rivalries, ideological bewilderments and historical forgetfulness crumbled the presidential vote in Ecuador and Peru last Sunday. With rather unexpected results, but by no means inexplicable. And of a not exclusively regional interest.
In Ecuador, a majority vote of popular origin and intention, which arrived divided at the polls , ended up electing an elite exponent, the banker Guillermo Lasso, coherently neo-liberal, as head of state. A triumph with indisputable numbers. In Peru, no less weak socio-cultural conditions have brought three populist candidates to the threshold of the presidential ballot. It has already been said, but it is worth repeating: globalization, as the presumed final chapter in the book of planetary integration, has awakened identities and particularities such as to undermine the national states that had dormant them over the last 2 centuries. The level of development of each situation determines the degree of crisis, but the phenomenon appears very similar everywhere.
In both Andean countries, the sometimes even fictional vicissitudes of recent decades have canceled the respective historical-political cultures, which in Peru metabolized relevant experiences of the twentieth century in Europe and had reached a continental breadth. The "Siete interpretaciones de la realidad Peruana" by José Carlos Mariategui, a prolific journalist and philosopher, who had read Vico, Labriola, Croce and Gramsci in Italy, influenced the entire socialist thought from the Caribbean to Patagonia. Just as it is inevitable to catch echoes of the social indigenism of Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, founder of the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), in the major Latin American populisms.
The parable of the awakening of the original peoples in Ecuador deserves in-depth analysis, but at the moment it has just begun, therefore in a totally insufficient state. As if it is not the prime mover, in fact it coincides with the resumption of the popular political initiative following the tragic fraudulent bankruptcy caused in the country by the presidency of Abdalà Bucaram, banned for insanity by the Congress only after cheating and accused refugee in Panama thanks to the protection of multimillion-dollar current accounts (1998). The Confederation of Indigenous Peoples (CONAIE) and its political arm Pachakutic were essential to the grassroots mobilization that led to the reforming governments of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) at its peak. But subsequently, in rapid acceleration, to their divergence of views with a final confrontation, open and violent.
The break had a nobility of its own. It was not motivated by personal rivalries. These came later. It was caused by a conflict of interests and values within the indigenous communities: among those who were willing to tolerate a certain basic and administrative ease of the government in managing an intense, albeit partial, modernization, because you benefit from the creation of roads, bridges , dams, various services and last but not least jobs; and those that, on the other hand, for various reasons remained (and remain) faithful to the traditional ethical-religious convictions of defense of the environment, of personal and public ethics. There is – to call it more understandable to us – of Lutheranism without Luther in the depths of their feelings.
Hastily, there is no lack of those who accuse them of fundamentalist and fanatical tendencies. Certainly the Indians have very deep convictions, otherwise they would not have survived 5 centuries of marginalization, clinging to mountains of 5-6 thousand meters where just breathing is already a biochemical undertaking. From active allies, Correa saw them become adamant critics; by his ministers, irreducible adversaries capable of filling the streets with effervescent protests. He had dozens of them jailed. Among these Yaku Perez, the economist that Pachakutic presented as a candidate in these elections and by a whisker lost the right to go to the ballot against the very favorite Andrés Arauz, a faithful of Correa. At this point we understand how it was Lasso, the third wheel, who won.
In Peru, however the next ballot ends, the presence of 18 candidates, mostly semi-unknown, has led to an extreme splitting of votes, sufficient in itself to highlight the crisis of political representation. The inhuman violence of Sendero Luminoso still weighs heavily in the collective memory, the guerrillas that in the 1980s bloodied the rural interior of Peru, justifying a no less savage military repression. Nor have the wounds to the national conscience healed, caused by the arrest for corruption of 4 presidents involved in the Odebrecht scandal and culminating in the suicide of Alan Garcia, the best known and most prestigious of them.
There is enough for many comments to find an explanation also for the reluctance of a significant part of the youth vote in the conurbation of Lima, the scenario only 6 months ago of the resounding student protest in the streets that prevented the overthrow of the legitimate government. For 20 years, Peru has been periodically threatened by conspiracies by an extreme right led by Keiko Fujimori, who tries the impossible to free his father, former president Alberto, in prison for unforgivable crimes ranging from genocide to arms trafficking. and corruption, committed when he was head of state (1990-2000), before the careless return from Japan where he had found an accomplice refuge.
And it is precisely Keiko who will once again contest the highest state magistracy in the second round of elections to the first of the elected officials last Sunday, Pedro Castillo, a graduate of the faculty of teaching who has become the most combative syndicalist of teachers. Almost unanimously, the American news presents him today as a representative of the left. Personal history nevertheless makes him a less defined figure. Since he comes from a past of neo-liberal militancy and a strong commitment to demand for his own category, he now corresponds to an open opposition to equality between men and women, divorce, abortion. It indicates at least ambiguity, that from his entourage they explain these closures with the need not to oppose the less developed part of his electorate.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/perche-non-sorprendono-troppo-i-risultati-delle-elezioni-in-peru-e-ecuador/ on Tue, 13 Apr 2021 08:00:02 +0000.