In December 2022, Peru’s president, Pedro Castillo, botched his attempt at orchestrating a self-coup, or autogolpe. His constitutional successor, Dina Boluarte, stated her intention to remain in power through 2026 (rather than resigning and holding new elections), prompting mass protests led by poorer, indigenous, working-class, and rural Peruvians. In response, the police and security sector used lethal force against unarmed protestors, killing almost 50 and injuring almost 1,000 people injured, echoing Peru’s civil conflict of the 1980s and 1990s. Castillo’s swift impeachment by Peru’s congress after his autogolpe attempt may seem like a win for democracy, since one institution (Peru’s legislature) corrected an anti-democratic overreach by another (the executive). However, the messy affair actually reveals the weak foundations of Peruvian democracy, a legacy of an autogolpe by President Alberto Fujimori three decades prior—which began an autocratic period characterized by political murders, human rights abuses of indigenous communities, purges of the judiciary, and rule by decree. Since the post-Fujimori Unity and National Reconciliation Government, none of the nine Peruvian presidents have successfully served out a full term without resigning, being impeached, or being prosecuted for corruption.
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