Article of the Day: Wednesday, June 23, 2021
The filter through which the West often views foreign countries obscures more than it clarifies. A most recent example of that is the Peruvian elections. The winner Castillo is described as a "socialist" and a "far left" candidate for the Presidency. Neither is true. As the leftist article linked herein, the left doesn't like Castillo much. Would a "far left" candidate oppose abortion? Would a "far left" candidate oppose gay marriage? Would a "far left" candidate sound like Donald Trump on immigration? Would a "far left" candidate fought the lockdowns (actually trying to break the order to not hold school open)? Would a "far left" candidate talk proudly of keeping a 2nd Amendment style militia force through the peasantry to defend themselves and the country?
Castillo represents the populist instincts of the Peruvian peasant class he arises from. Unlike the true left (almost entirely dominated by the urbane, professional class, as Shining Path was, needing terroristic violence to hold peasant communities hostage to their power grabs), Castillo's family were illiterate peasant farmers, his wife & kids evangelical Christians, and he himself a farmer and rural school teacher.
Castillo comes from the peasant class caught between the insanity of the Shining Path marxists and the brutal repression of the Fujimori regime. (See a great film, Dancer Upstairs, for demonstrating this, or read the beautiful book, Bel Canto, about related experiences during this time period.) Castillo fought in the peasant militias that gave the Shining Path its death blow (yet idiots on Twitter think he's Shining Path.)
The real divide the western press won't discuss is this is nationalism vs. globalism, working class power vs. elite dominance, and Castillo is on the nationalistic and working class side. That means he wants to take back the nation's natural resources from the foreign elites, which is a populistic cause, not a socialistic cause. Hence, Castillo spent much of the campaign bashing Maduro. Castillo's victory is a populist victory, and that's why the western press can't talk about it in those terms, and why the left is disappointed in his success too.
"Castillo encapsulates the discontent of a wide margin of Peruvian populations—particularly the disenfranchised regions outside Lima—against traditional political classes and the perpetuation of a deteriorated, alienating economic model. International mainstream media has described him as “far-left” candidate. Yet far from being a “comrade” who will champion leftist demands, Castillo is the new face of an anti-system impulse. " In other words, Castillo is the Trump of Peru.
https://nacla.org/peru-elections-pedro-castillo
