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The election in Peru hasn’t been called yet, but it looks as though a Marxist has won.

Even at this point, the official results have not been proclaimed, with Fujimori’s team alleging fraud and filing dozens of appeals. The masses are ready to defend the vote on the streets. There are reports of 20,000 ronderos (members of the peasant self-defence militias created during the civil war in the 1990s, of which Castillo is a member) travelling to the capital to defend the peoples’ will. A mass demonstration has been called today, 9 June, in Lima, where people have gathered for three nights in a row outside Castillo’s election headquarters.

It was the extreme fragmentation of the vote in the first round that allowed Castillo to go on to the run-off with only under 19 percent. However, his electoral success is not by chance. It is an expression of the deep crisis of the regime in Peru. Decades of anti-working-class policies of privatisation and liberalisation in a country that is extremely rich in mineral resources have left a legacy of a bourgeois democracy based on extreme disparity of wealth and pervasive corruption.

Five former presidents are either in jail or indicted for corruption. All of the institutions of bourgeois democracy are extremely discredited. Mass demonstrations in November 2020 were an expression of the deep anger accumulated in Peruvian society.

To this we have to add the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and capitalist crisis. The country suffered one of the worst economic contractions in ...

The masses of workers and peasants wanted radical change and this is precisely what Pedro Castillo represents in their eyes. His campaign had two main policy planks: the renegotiation of terms of contracts with mining multinationals (and if they refuse, they would be nationalised), and the convening of a Constituent Assembly to do away with the 1993 constitution written during the Fujimori dictatorship (Keiko’s father).

Despite all of that, or perhaps precisely because of the hatred it provoked amongst the ruling class, Castillo started the second round campaign 20 points ahead of his rival. That lead narrowed as election day came closer. Partly because the hate campaign pushed wavering voters towards Keiko Fujimori, but also partly because Castillo attempted to tone down his message and moderate his promises.

While in the first round he had promised to convene a Constituent Assembly come what may, now he said he would respect the 1993 Constitution and ask Congress (where he has no majority) to call a referendum on convening a Constituent Assembly. While in the first round he said he would nationalise the mines, now he stressed that he would attempt to renegotiate the contracts first. The more he did that, the more his lead narrowed, to a point where on election day his victory was only razor thin.

The masses of workers and peasants who support Castillo were ready to come out on the streets to defend his victory, as Fujimori cried fraud and appealed the results. In the days leading up to the election and immediately afterwards there have been rumours of a military coup. Prominent Fujimori supporters called on the Army to step in to prevent a Castillo take over.

This gives you an indication of what Castillo will face once he is sworn in. The ruling class and imperialism will resort to all means necessary to prevent him from actually ruling. We have seen the same script being played in the past against Chavez in Venezuela. Prominent members of the coup-plotting Venezuelan opposition were in Lima to back Fujimori. They will use Congress and other bourgeois institutions, the media, the state apparatus (up to and including the army), economic sabotage, to constrain his ability to implement his policies.

Castillo will now be faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, he can rule for the masses of workers and peasants who have elected him, which would mean a radical break with the capitalists and the multinationals. That can only be done by relying upon extra-parliamentary mass mobilisation. Or he can give in, water down his programme and accommodate to the interests of the ruling class, meaning he will be discredited among those who have voted for him, preparing his own downfall. If he attempts to serve two masters (the workers and the capitalists) at the same time he will please neither.

Mariategui, in the conclusion to his “Anti-Imperialist Point of View”, a document which he presented to the Latin American Conference of Communist Parties in 1929, said:

“In conclusion, we are anti-imperialists because we are Marxists, because we are revolutionaries, because to capitalism, we oppose socialism as an antagonistic system, called to succeed it.”

His point of view is today more relevant than ever.

http://www.marxist.com/castillo-s-election-a-major-political-earthquake.htm

Sorry for the long post, but a lot of this seems eerily familiar. Like Biden pretending to be a moderate and then signing all those edicts on the very first day.