Elections in Peru: Pedro Castillo, professor of …

From Lima. Son of peasants, Pedro Castillo, 51, teacher and leftist trade unionist, is the surprise of these elections. Two weeks before the first round, it wasn’t in anyone’s calculations. Suddenly in the last hour he started to stand up and won that first round – albeit with the lowest vote a presidential candidate had won, 19% – and he stepped into the ballot that brought him very close to the Presidency.

Of popular and Andean origin, Much of the population identified with his face and his message of changing the neoliberal economic model. Got support in the depth discontent with inequalities and marginalization aggravated by three decades of neoliberalism and dramatically exhibited with the pandemic. There is a lot of social demand and hope for change in favor of his candidacy. Anti-Fujimorism is also playing in its favor.

Castillo was born in the province of Chota, in the Andean region of northern Cajamarca, an area with high levels of poverty, among the highest in the country. He was part of the peasant rounds, created to fight against crime in the countryside and which in the 80s and 90s faced the Maoist armed group Luminous path. Castillo remembers this every time the right-wing campaign links him to the last supporters of the defeated Sendero. He has always lived in Cajamarca, where works as a teacher in a rural school and in his farm. Throughout the campaign, he did not part with his wide-brimmed straw hat, typical of Cajamarca compatriots, and a giant pencil, a symbol of his party.

Running for the party Free peru, a group that defines itself as Marxist-Leninist and to which Castillo, who does not call himself a Marxist, recently joined to stand in these elections. It is a new party, which from within the country – it comes from an Andean region – quickly launched into national politics. Its founder and secretary general, Vladimir cerron, former governor of the region of Junín, cradle of Free Peru, was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence for corruption. This fact, and Cerrón’s radical rhetoric, was a flank that Castillo’s rivals used to strike him down.

Prior to joining Peru Libre, Castillo was, for more than a decade, a member of Peru Posible, the party of the former president. Alejandro Toledo, who led a government of neoliberal continuity and now faces legal proceedings for receiving bribes. When Toledo was president, Castillo ran for the then-ruling Peru Posible for mayor in his region, but lost. He was in the Toledo party until 2017. That year, he led a nationwide teachers’ strike that lasted more than two months. He led a dissident faction of the country’s largest teachers’ union, which called a strike against the advice of the official leadership, demanding salary increases and the cancellation of teacher evaluations. To discredit the strike, the government of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski accused the union leadership led by Castillo of being linked to the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (Movadef), political heir of the Shining Path. This strike put him on the national political scene.

“No more poor in a rich country”, was the slogan of his campaign. Those who know him say that he is a pragmatic trade unionist.