Who is Pedro Castillo? The big surprise of the el …

The presidential candidate Pedro Castillo, of the Peru Free party, assured at the end of this electoral Sunday that “the change and the struggle are just beginningAnd reaffirmed its commitment to establish an alliance with “the same and true Peruvian people” to preserve its roots.

The candidate, teacher and union leader, directs both the vote count published by the National Office for Electoral Processes (ONPE) and the ballot box, which almost certainly puts him in the second round of elections next June.

Between the ovations of his supporters and the cries of “President Pedro”, Castillo stressed that “the great alliance to advance” Peru “does not obey the programmatic plans, the great alliance must be made with the same and true people Peruvian”.

Thus, marking a distance from the rest of the well-positioned candidates in the preliminary results, the right-wing radicals Keiko Fujimori and Hernando De Soto, the candidate insisted that he “will not knock on the doors of those who have closed the interests”.

The Straw Hat Candidate

He always wears a straw hat and a pencil, raises proposals like closing Congress, and has gone to vote riding a mare.

Sneak out, Castillo, 51, burst into the campaign’s home stretch. He is a teacher in the Andean region of Cajamarca, where he is from, and gained notoriety from 2017, when led a major national teachers’ strike, who interrupted classes for three months, demanding salary increases and eliminating teachers’ professional performance reviews.

In this great mobilization, Castillo led a dissident faction of the traditional Single Union of Education Workers of Peru (Sutep). To discredit him, he was then accused of maintaining links with the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (Movadef), the political branch of the Shining Path group, which the candidate has always denied.

For the first time aspiring to the presidency of these elections, Castillo began his political career in 2005, when he became a member of the Cajamarca committee of the Peru Posible (PP) party, of the former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) who, after leading a neoliberal government that distanced him from popular support, he was arrested in 2019 in the United States on charges of corruption.

After canceling his PP registration in 2017, Castillo jumped into the Peru Libre movement, led by Vladimir Cerrón, a former regional governor who proclaims himself a Marxist and Marianist and who has been convicted of corruption. In fact, Cerrón integrated Castillo’s ballot as vice president, until the Special Electoral Jury (JEE) declared his request inadmissible because a judgment was in force against him.

In defense of the founder of his party, the presidential candidate defends that Cerrón “was convicted, not for corruption, but for corruption”, in accordance with his government plan which affirms that “corruption is the new state terrorism”.

For a socialist state

With an initially low-profile campaign, Castillo has been among the laggards for months, but his popularity has grown in recent weeks, driven by a sector of left-wing voters who have not finished accepting Verónika Mendoza, the progressive candidate of left presented by the block. of Ensemble for Peru.

His radical and populist speech raises proposals such as a “socialist state”, a law that “regulates the media” and increases the education budget from 3.5 to 10% of gross domestic product (GDP). With this, it would guarantee better infrastructure, better equipment, increased teachers’ salaries and the creation of the Peru without illiteracy program, which would summon 50,000 young teachers to eradicate it.

During the election campaign, he also warned that if he came to power, Congress would be closed if he did not accept a Constituent Assembly to replace the 1993 Constitution, which came into being after the ” self-coup ”by former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000).

In addition, Castillo promises the formation of a new Constitutional Court elected by the people, in popular consultation, rather than by the Congress, because the magistrates “defend a Constitution which put an end to all the rights and the plundering of the country”.

She has spoken out on several occasions against the approach of gender equality in education, as well as against social rights such as equal marriage between persons of the same sex. On the issue of abortion, he assured that, although he did not agree, he would forward it to the Constituent Assembly for decision.

Andean interior man

As unorthodox as his proposals were, they served to captivate the rural Andean interior of Peru, where its dominance was overwhelming by vote numbers.

The candidate made an effort during the campaign to highlight his humble and Andean origins, embodied in the symbol of the hat that still wears, broad-brimmed and made of straw, typical of the peasants of his native Chota, a northern province. of the Andes belonging to the Cajamarca region.

In his hand, he usually carries a giant pencil, which is not only a symbol of his profession but of the logo of the party he represents. With his hat but without a pencil, Castillo went to vote on April 11 in the town of Tacabamba, mounted on a mare which, in the midst of the crowd of his supporters, was about to rear.