Susana Baca looks sadly at Peru but has hope for young people

ANDn an interview with Lusa from Peru, via the Zoom platform, Susana Baca confessed that she sees the situation in her country as “very difficult”.

“I have a lot of hope for young people, but young people take to the streets to protest, to say what they think and what they feel, and they are killed. So, the situation in Peru is not a pleasant one to live in,” he lamented.

Peru is experiencing a political crisis that began at the end of last year. In December, the then President, Pedro Castillo, who faced several investigations for corruption, tried to dissolve Congress, but his mandate was challenged, he was arrested and replaced by the then vice president, Dina Boluarte.

Castillo, the first leader in Peru of rural Andean origin, was never accepted in the Presidential Palace by the capital’s elite and oligarchy, and by the main ‘media’ owned by millionaire businessmen.

After Castillo’s arrest, several demonstrations began to take place in Peru, which lasted for months, triggering the most serious crisis of political violence in more than two decades in the country. In the protests, dozens of people died and hundreds were injured, mainly due to the actions of the police and military forces.

For Susana Baca, the rulers “don’t want to listen to anyone”: “they want to rule from above, attacking, arresting people, mistreating young people, insulting them”.

“It is quite sad and I feel that those who govern us do not know how to govern. They believe that repression is the only form of dialogue. They do not want to listen to young people. They do not want to listen to them, because they know that they will be told things that are true”, he defended .

The political crisis that shakes Peru is also a reflection of the huge gap between the capital, Lima, and the poor provinces that support Castillo, “places forgotten by the government”.

“We need better schools, a better health system, so that all the people who live in this territory have the right to life. them and they don’t care about the people of this country,” he criticized.

For Susana Baca, Pedro Castillo “could have been a good president, but he never prepared himself”.

The singer recognizes that Castillo wanted “the poor not to be poor anymore”, a job “that needs to be done”, but for which “he was not qualified”.

“He came to power and didn’t realize that he had very little support, but that he had to govern all of Peru. And he had to surround himself with capable people,” he said.

Susana Baca recalled that when she accepted the post of Minister of Culture of Peru, in 2011, there were “concrete things, about rights, law, very concrete things, that I didn’t know”.

“So I had to surround myself with people who would advise me, and that their role was not to say ‘yes ma’am, you’re right’, but ‘no, no Susana, you’re not right'”, he recalled, saying that he felt that Pedro Castillo “assumed power, and felt powerful, and perhaps with that he would cover all his needs”.

“He was a man from the mountains, provincial, ‘cholo’, to whom they must have closed the door 25 times. But it’s not because you assume an important position, that you think ‘now I’m going to take revenge for everything they did to me’. You didn’t have the capacity to govern. You didn’t have the greatness to look for people to advise you and follow a path and have an intuition of a path”, he said.

Susana Baca considers that she lives “in a racist country”, and remembers with sadness that “many doors were closed to her because she was black”.

“Now everyone respects me, because I have three Grammys, I have achievements in the world, I managed to make Afro-Peruvian music heard all over the world, with all my tours, on the most important stages. same people shut the door in my face,” he said.

The 78-year-old Peruvian singer returns to Portugal this month, as part of the tour of the album “Palabras Urgentes”, awarded by Songlines magazine. The singer has shows scheduled at Teatro Tivoli, in Lisbon, on the 4th, at the Espinho Auditorium, on the 6th, and at Theatro Circo, in Braga, on the 7th.

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