Today Pedro Castillo takes office in Peru: rural teacher and leftist trade unionist | Profile of the President-elect

Sons of illiterate peasants, Pedro Castillo, 51, teacher in a rural primary school and leftist trade unionist, He established an important connection with the deep Peru, where he came from. This led him to the presidency. His election awakened the hopes of the popular sectors, the excluded, and the expectations of the region. A stranger to the political class and circles of power, his arrival at the presidency was a surprise to all. His discourse of change and his popular and Andean origin frightened the elites and triggered racist reactions. He was born in the small town of Puña, in the Andean province of Chota. At school, he met his wife, Lilia Paredes. The two also studied together to become teachers. To go and teach in a small rural primary school, she had to walk an hour from home. He combined his teaching work with his work on his small farm. He made headlines in 2017, when he led a nationwide teachers’ strike that lasted more than two months. He did so by leading a dissident faction of the teachers’ union. They demanded salary increases and the cancellation of evaluations for teachers. With this background, in 2020 he was called by the party Free peru be your presidential candidate.

This Wednesday, Castillo will become the first Peruvian president to come to power by running for a leftist party. An antecedent is that of Ollanta Humala, who won the presidency in 2011 backed by the left, but he and his party never defined themselves as the left and a few months after entering government, Humala broke with his progressive allies. The only precedent for a leftist regime in the country is that of General Juan Velasco (1968 – 1975), who came to power with a military coup, and came out in the same way. Velasco led a government that launched a series of economic and social reforms that were the flagship of the left.