Peru’s Pedro Castillo Dissolves Congress, Ousted from Presidency
December 9, 2022 5:33 PM Subscribe
LIMA — Peru’s former President Pedro Castillo announced on Dec. 7 that he was dissolving Congress, among other actions. Castillo made the announcement on the same day that Congress was scheduled to hold a vote on his impeachment. The move ultimately failed, and Castillo has been arrested by police for what has been called a “self-coup.”
The best comment on this that I saw was:
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:43 PM on December 9, 2022 [19 favorites]
I heard about him dissolving congress. I hadn’t heard about the rest. Excellent.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:12 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 6:12 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
"Castillo attempted to flee the palace to the nearby embassy of Mexico to seek asylum. However ordinary citizens blocking the road successfully impeded Castillo’s entourage. The president was then arrested and is now being held by the police in Lima."
Only on the internet can a blockade become "stuck in Lima traffic."
posted by clavdivs at 6:17 PM on December 9, 2022 [13 favorites]
Only on the internet can a blockade become "stuck in Lima traffic."
posted by clavdivs at 6:17 PM on December 9, 2022 [13 favorites]
This is very far outside my expertise, but maybe it's the case that there are enough traffic-blocking protests or apolitical interruptions that "stuck in Lima traffic" was meant euphemistically?
posted by eviemath at 6:56 PM on December 9, 2022
posted by eviemath at 6:56 PM on December 9, 2022
Abolish all presidencies. Representative assemblies for all.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:57 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:57 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I encourage America to learn from this.
posted by mhoye at 7:13 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 7:13 PM on December 9, 2022 [8 favorites]
I shall henceforth refer to this tactic as The Peruvian Maneuver.
posted by Soliloquy at 9:18 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Soliloquy at 9:18 PM on December 9, 2022 [6 favorites]
Wait, so he went to jail for an attempted coup?
Like, you can actually go to jail for that?
On the same day?
For a, uh, non-violent coup?
What a world we live in.
I mean, he was a PRESIDENT.
posted by M. at 9:25 PM on December 9, 2022 [32 favorites]
Like, you can actually go to jail for that?
On the same day?
For a, uh, non-violent coup?
What a world we live in.
I mean, he was a PRESIDENT.
posted by M. at 9:25 PM on December 9, 2022 [32 favorites]
Here's one view on this. I'm not an expert so can't vouch for this. tl;dr is this was a failed reaction to laws passed to preserve dictatorships and the neoliberal order, instigated by authoritarians because Castillo was about to do what he promised and was voted for.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:06 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:06 PM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
Abolish all presidencies. Representative assemblies for all.
This sounded good until I watched the video. I mean theoretically a congress is supposed to represent people, I thought? But it doesn't sound from the video like this one was acting in the best interests of the public?
posted by aniola at 11:53 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
This sounded good until I watched the video. I mean theoretically a congress is supposed to represent people, I thought? But it doesn't sound from the video like this one was acting in the best interests of the public?
posted by aniola at 11:53 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Nice executive summary from 'my cousin in Peru' on Tywkiwdbi.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:49 AM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:49 AM on December 10, 2022 [3 favorites]
The second he was elected capital was trying to get rid of him. The second he was elected capital tanked the markets, capital tanked the currency, capital started using their bought and paid for representatives in the Congress to stymie Castillo at every turn. All so they could stop the poorest of Peru have an extra fucking crumb from capital's table.
Fuck the Congress of Peru. Capital's stooges.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:00 AM on December 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
Fuck the Congress of Peru. Capital's stooges.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:00 AM on December 10, 2022 [8 favorites]
The second he was elected
The video said that, too. Do you happen to have a link people can read? The video is a half-hour long.
posted by aniola at 8:56 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
The video said that, too. Do you happen to have a link people can read? The video is a half-hour long.
posted by aniola at 8:56 AM on December 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
There was a Reddit post (maybe r/WorldNews) that had a few people actually in Peru at the time. They were posting and editing their posts and replying at frantic speed as events unfolded.
Knowing that Our Amazing World is now too frenetic for Reddit makes me a little nervous.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:28 AM on December 10, 2022
Knowing that Our Amazing World is now too frenetic for Reddit makes me a little nervous.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:28 AM on December 10, 2022
I've posted a transcript of the video Pyrogenesis posted for anyone who, like me, is curious about the video but averse to spending 30 minutes on it - there's a link to the transcript in my profile.
Based on a cursory skim, it looks like the guy who posted the video (BadEmpanada) may have some really good points - a quick skim of the Wikipedia page on Castillo shows that yes, Castillo ran on promises to help ordinary people, that moneyed and business interested were doing some shady stuff to thwart Castillo's attempts to make things better for the Peruvian people and to follow through on some of his campaign promises, and that the Peruvian Congress tried to impeach Castillo twice before ("Free Peru ultimately supported Castillo through the process and described the vote as an attempted right-wing coup.") - according to BadEmpanada, they impeached him for trying to put through some of his reforms.
From the transcript:
I am really glad to have a moment to learn a little more about the current situation in Peru, about Castillo, and his history as a grade school teacher and teacher's union leader, and about the unjust and outrageous things corporations are doing in other countries to prevent changes that would help people. Thank you so much for posting this, aniola, and thank you for sharing that video, Pyrogenesis.
posted by kristi at 7:32 PM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
Based on a cursory skim, it looks like the guy who posted the video (BadEmpanada) may have some really good points - a quick skim of the Wikipedia page on Castillo shows that yes, Castillo ran on promises to help ordinary people, that moneyed and business interested were doing some shady stuff to thwart Castillo's attempts to make things better for the Peruvian people and to follow through on some of his campaign promises, and that the Peruvian Congress tried to impeach Castillo twice before ("Free Peru ultimately supported Castillo through the process and described the vote as an attempted right-wing coup.") - according to BadEmpanada, they impeached him for trying to put through some of his reforms.
From the transcript:
Anyway, so all of this is precisely why Castillo was never going to be able to do any of what he had proposed. He was just one man who happened to luck his way into an unexpected presidential term.It's pretty widely understood that the US media do a bad job of keeping Americans well informed about the rest of the world, and that Americans are pretty badly informed about the rest of the world anyway, but for me, this was a surprising illustration of just how badly I, personally, am uninformed about the rest of the world. I majored in Hispanic Studies and had multiple classes on the history and politics of Latin and Central America, but when I saw headlines about the crisis in Peru this week, I thought of Castillo as Trump and the Peruvian Congress as good US Democrats returning order to the people - but having read even the little bit I've read today (yes, skimming is all I ever seem to have time for, these days), I can tell it's much more complicated and certainly very different from my initial uninformed take. (And, unsurprisingly, analogies of any kind don't work well, because Peru is Peru, not America or anywhere else.) ( ... Furthermore, when I saw today's post about Tsíimin K'áak, I discovered I had no idea what country Obrador was president of. I am shockingly ignorant.)
He had no backing from any remotely substantial political party. All that he had behind him was the relatively small Peruvian left.
And he had absolutely everything against him. The entirety of the mainstream media, the entirety of the Peruvian political establishment, which has long been entirely dominated by neoliberals who are not exactly amenable to his economic proposals, and the system itself, set up by Alberto Fujimori, a literal far-right dictator to ensure perpetual right-wing dominance.
Castillo never even got to the point of being able to carry out basic everyday governmental functions, let alone actually instituting his reform programs. His proposal to reform the Constitution was shot down by the overwhelmingly right-wing Congress, who treated document written by a dictator to perpetuate himself in power as if it was some sort of holy book, and changing it would be unimaginable.
He did have the power to pass presidential decrees, but whenever he did so, the media and the right-wing immediately framed him every single time as some sort of dictator.
So then he started to try and pass laws through Congress instead. And they did everything possible to obstruct them there. In a situation like that, there's really no way to win. The country was intentionally made completely ungovernable.
One of the most hilariously stupid articles of Fujimori's Constitution, which is at the root of all of this, is Article 113. It states that the President of the Republic may vacate his office for the following reasons. And one of them is his permanent physical or moral incapacity declared by Congress. So that means that the Congress can overthrow the President at any time by voting to declare him morally incapable.
I am really glad to have a moment to learn a little more about the current situation in Peru, about Castillo, and his history as a grade school teacher and teacher's union leader, and about the unjust and outrageous things corporations are doing in other countries to prevent changes that would help people. Thank you so much for posting this, aniola, and thank you for sharing that video, Pyrogenesis.
posted by kristi at 7:32 PM on December 10, 2022 [9 favorites]
I know very little of latin america too, but I know more about how the US media works, so the moment I see something about dictatorships and South America I automatically assume the media is lying. After all, US media bootlicks every dictator and attacks every reformer.
You can look at the beginning of this very thread to see how this works out.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:31 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
You can look at the beginning of this very thread to see how this works out.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 10:31 PM on December 10, 2022 [2 favorites]
what country Obrador was president of
Lopez Obrador.
In Spanish naming customs everyone has two surnames, a paternal and maternal. You get your father's father's name and your mother's father's name. So if Vicente Fox and Salma Hayek had a kid named... why not Zoidberg? he or she'd be Zoidberg Fox Hayek.
Lots (most?) people with Spanish surnames use the father's name as their surname, like most people in English do, but this is the name in the middle. Vicente Fox Quesada and Salma Hayek Jimenez go by Vicente Fox and Salma Hayek. But some go by both, like Lopez Obrador, Enrique Pena Nieto, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And fewer but more than zero usually go by their maternal surname, like Benito Perez Galdos.
Mostly you just gotta know how people go by, which can lead to fun HEY NEW PERSON CAN I ASK YOU A STUPID GABACHO QUESTION moments. But if you gotta guess, going for the first surname is at least less of a gringo move.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:43 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Lopez Obrador.
In Spanish naming customs everyone has two surnames, a paternal and maternal. You get your father's father's name and your mother's father's name. So if Vicente Fox and Salma Hayek had a kid named... why not Zoidberg? he or she'd be Zoidberg Fox Hayek.
Lots (most?) people with Spanish surnames use the father's name as their surname, like most people in English do, but this is the name in the middle. Vicente Fox Quesada and Salma Hayek Jimenez go by Vicente Fox and Salma Hayek. But some go by both, like Lopez Obrador, Enrique Pena Nieto, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And fewer but more than zero usually go by their maternal surname, like Benito Perez Galdos.
Mostly you just gotta know how people go by, which can lead to fun HEY NEW PERSON CAN I ASK YOU A STUPID GABACHO QUESTION moments. But if you gotta guess, going for the first surname is at least less of a gringo move.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 2:43 AM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]
Hopefully this is not too adversarial. Here, on metafilter, the very first comment on this thread is by a metafilter moderator, and it immediately makes fun of the situation. So the narrative of latin america = silly ridiculous dictators started from the very first comment, by a mod. It should be clear now that a better understanding of the situation shows that this was not the case. Maybe just don't do that, and be a bit more reflective in the future.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:51 AM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:51 AM on December 11, 2022 [6 favorites]
Thank you, GCU Sweet and Full of Grace. I should have known the surname customs. I appreciate your clear and helpful explanation.
posted by kristi at 10:10 AM on December 11, 2022
posted by kristi at 10:10 AM on December 11, 2022
This is probably too late to be relevant to the discussion, but I have to vehemently push back on the arguments lamenting a president's arrest for attempting to dissolve the legislature and rewrite the constitution in the face of constitutionally orderly impeachment attempt (the third attempt, in fact - the first two failed because Castillo did in fact have a substantial number of ideological allies in Peru's congress. Even they were ultimately unable to ignore the fact that he tried to destroy Peru's democracy for no other reason than personal preservation, on top of allegedly rampant corruption).
This is obviously most important for Peru's future and for the direction of regional politics, but those of us in the U.S. should recognize the extremely obvious parallels between what happened there and our own near-death experience on January 6. Yet instead of breathing a sigh of relief that another country had strong enough institutions to face down a rogue head of state, the fact that Castillo was ostensibly of the left (despite accomplishing nothing to further his supposed platform and running through 80 ministers in less than a year and a half in office) seems to make some of us susceptible to the argument that he was actually in the right to try to subvert his country's democracy in a bid to stay in power. This ideological blindness should be sobering.
FWIW, I did watch the video and found much of it thought-provoking, especially the historical context. But Castillo is just not the righteous, persecuted leader that he's made out to be by this random Youtuber. Yes, his bid to reform the constitution was shot down in May - only 7% of Peruvians thought he should do so. "Whenever he passed decrees... the media framed him as a dictator... so he tried to pass laws through congress instead, and they did everything possible to obstruct him there... in a situation like that, there's really no way to win," the youtube guy says around the ten minute mark. Anyone could say the same about Trump and his Muslim ban or his environmental regulation rollbacks or his attempt to repeal Obamacare. The video then rails against the Peruvian constitution's provision that congress can remove the president should they find him morally or physically incapable - a provision that many of us U.S.-based liberals wished to be more fully invoked here just a few years ago. The Youtuber is then wholly aghast that this incalcitrant congress twice attempted (unsuccessfully) to impeach Castillo and are therefore totally unreasonable ("unbelievable!" he says) - most of us here on metafilter cheered the U.S. congress' two attempts to impeach Trump and didn't consider it to be a sign that our legislature was stepping beyond its bounds.
The youtuber goes on to say, when speaking about recent events: "imagine if the Republicans impeached Biden three times in 18 months... not just that, but there was actually a reasonable prospect of them succeeding in doing so... Castillo actually probably would have survived this impeachment vote also, but he would have had to move even further away from his platform in the process... So Castillo... went on TV and announced he was dissolving the congress, calling new congressional elections, and decreeing an elected constitutional convention." The reaction should be obvious - you can't just respond to impeachment proceedings by dissolving democracy, and we liberals in the U.S. would be shocked and aghast if Biden attempted such a thing, because he is not Trump, and he is not Castillo, and if he were the type of person to throw democracy to the wind whenever it suited his personal interests we wouldn't support him.
This is putting wholly aside the allegations that Castillo engaged in widescale corruption, which seem to have persuasive evidence but aren't yet clear. Even if he were clean as a whistle, his actions on the 7th should be plenty to fully condemn his actions regardless of his ideology.
posted by exutima at 10:49 PM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is obviously most important for Peru's future and for the direction of regional politics, but those of us in the U.S. should recognize the extremely obvious parallels between what happened there and our own near-death experience on January 6. Yet instead of breathing a sigh of relief that another country had strong enough institutions to face down a rogue head of state, the fact that Castillo was ostensibly of the left (despite accomplishing nothing to further his supposed platform and running through 80 ministers in less than a year and a half in office) seems to make some of us susceptible to the argument that he was actually in the right to try to subvert his country's democracy in a bid to stay in power. This ideological blindness should be sobering.
FWIW, I did watch the video and found much of it thought-provoking, especially the historical context. But Castillo is just not the righteous, persecuted leader that he's made out to be by this random Youtuber. Yes, his bid to reform the constitution was shot down in May - only 7% of Peruvians thought he should do so. "Whenever he passed decrees... the media framed him as a dictator... so he tried to pass laws through congress instead, and they did everything possible to obstruct him there... in a situation like that, there's really no way to win," the youtube guy says around the ten minute mark. Anyone could say the same about Trump and his Muslim ban or his environmental regulation rollbacks or his attempt to repeal Obamacare. The video then rails against the Peruvian constitution's provision that congress can remove the president should they find him morally or physically incapable - a provision that many of us U.S.-based liberals wished to be more fully invoked here just a few years ago. The Youtuber is then wholly aghast that this incalcitrant congress twice attempted (unsuccessfully) to impeach Castillo and are therefore totally unreasonable ("unbelievable!" he says) - most of us here on metafilter cheered the U.S. congress' two attempts to impeach Trump and didn't consider it to be a sign that our legislature was stepping beyond its bounds.
The youtuber goes on to say, when speaking about recent events: "imagine if the Republicans impeached Biden three times in 18 months... not just that, but there was actually a reasonable prospect of them succeeding in doing so... Castillo actually probably would have survived this impeachment vote also, but he would have had to move even further away from his platform in the process... So Castillo... went on TV and announced he was dissolving the congress, calling new congressional elections, and decreeing an elected constitutional convention." The reaction should be obvious - you can't just respond to impeachment proceedings by dissolving democracy, and we liberals in the U.S. would be shocked and aghast if Biden attempted such a thing, because he is not Trump, and he is not Castillo, and if he were the type of person to throw democracy to the wind whenever it suited his personal interests we wouldn't support him.
This is putting wholly aside the allegations that Castillo engaged in widescale corruption, which seem to have persuasive evidence but aren't yet clear. Even if he were clean as a whistle, his actions on the 7th should be plenty to fully condemn his actions regardless of his ideology.
posted by exutima at 10:49 PM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]
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