Mr. Castillo goes to Lima, Peru.

[bobabode]

'In Peru, a rural schoolteacher rises from obscurity to the presidency' WP

"LIMA — Mr. Smith went to Washington. Now, Mr. Castillo is coming to Lima.

The rise of Pedro Castillo, a previously obscure leader of a rural teachers union, to Peru’s highest office is the most glaring example yet of the power of the pandemic to upend politics in Latin America.

The ravages of the coronavirus, and the surges in poverty and inequality it has caused, have sparked nearly 1 million people to protest in Colombia and saw a communist elected mayor of Santiago, the capital of Chile, the region’s free-market model.

Here in Peru, a what-more-have-we-got-to-lose mentality helped propel one of the most unusual candidates ever to win a Latin American presidency. A 51-year-old, straw-hat-wearing schoolteacher and farmer who reported an income last year of $16,600, Castillo has never held public office.


After finally being declared the winner of the June 6 runoff election on Monday evening, he will now trade his adobe abode in the Andean highlands for the grandeur of the Presidential Palace, going from nurturing poor children in a multi-grade classroom to handling the weightiest matters of state — including his pledges to rewrite the constitution and force a reckoning with foreign mining interests.

In Peru’s pandemic election, a rural schoolteacher challenges a political dynasty

In a race that pitted Peru’s elites against a man they derided as a country bumpkin unfit to rule, Castillo edged out the right-wing political veteran Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori. After losing a six-week effort to challenge the results, the Peruvian right is now gnashing its collective teeth, warning of a communist wolf in peasants’ clothing who they say will turn Peru into so************************t Venezuela.

Some members of Castillo’s Marxist-Leninist party, Free Peru, have called for the expulsion of the U.S. military and the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as a broad legalization of coca, the leaf that is the building block of cocaine. The party defines itself as a group of leftist thinkers who embrace “Marxist theory, using its light it to interpret all phenomena that occurs in world.”

His opponents wince at the idea of Castillo taking power." WP

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...eru-president/