But national attention was focused on the “taking of Lima”, for which thousands of people from all over the country participated, especially the southern Andes.
The journalist Gonzalo Luis Tovar recounted that the strongest demonstration of rejection against Boluarte and the Congress basically passed in peace, except for relatively minor clashes in the vicinity of Abancay avenue, where the Bolívar square, seat of the Legislative, is located.
Everything took place in a tense atmosphere, but without clashes, and the Police allowed the demonstrators to go through the main downtown streets, except for the surroundings of the Government Palace and inside the strategic Plaza San Martín.
The people who arrived from the interior, and who stayed to a large extent at the state universities of San Marcos and the National University of Engineering, merged with their Lima hosts and paraded next to them.
“We are artists, we are not terrorists”, shouted the visitors, while they took the opportunity to exhibit their folklore.
The “taking of Lima” generated expectation given the readings that in Peru a Creole, conservative and racist capital coexists between harsh frictions, and an Andean south of rural, Quechua and Aymara ancestry, and that demands political solutions by feeling eternally neglected.
The current incidents in Peru, where there has been a permanent crisis since 2016, erupted after Congress last December removed the leftist Castillo, who had previously unsuccessfully tried to shut down parliament and rule by decree, and replaced him with the then vice president. Boluarte.
The new president said in principle that she intended to stay until the end of the term, in 2026, thus ignoring the popular clamor of 83% for immediate general elections, according to the polls, and giving Congress more air than in the measurements is rejected by 88%.
He then backed off, but the country was already on fire. Early elections are now potentially scheduled for April 2024, but the motley opposition not only thinks that date is too far away, but they fear that Boluarte and especially the Legislature are trying to circumvent it.
