Peru's Swing Left?

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For the past ten years, Peru and the United States have been good friends. A succession of fairly elected presidents in Lima pursued closer ties with Washington, culminating in a free-trade agreement approved by the U.S. Congress in 2007. During the controversy following the 2009 coup against President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras, Peru supported the United States in recognizing elections in Honduras in November. Yet, in Peru’s presidential election this month, the pro-American candidates were defeated. Instead, Ollanta Humala, a mestizo leftist who in 2006 had been allied with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, won the first round of the elections and eked out a narrow victory in the runoff.

In the run-up to the first round of voting, on April 10, Peru’s mainstream politicians seemed overly confident that their market-friendliness and proven democratic credentials would carry them to victory, as in the decade’s previous elections. After all, the past ten years had seen enormous growth: Peru’s GDP had risen by more than 6 percent annually, the highest rate of any country in South America. Much of Peru’s economic boom was thanks to a worldwide surge in mineral prices (Peru is the world’s largest producer of silver, its second-largest of copper and zinc, and sixth-largest of gold). The growth lifted millions out of poverty: between 2001 and 2011, Peru’s poverty rate fell from 55 percent of the population to 31 percent. Unemployment declined considerably. And projects to improve infrastructure and communication were visible nationwide.

It stood to reason that Peru’s voters would want to maintain the basic economic and political principles that had guided the past decade’s policies and elect one of the three mainstream candidates who upheld them -- Alejandro Toledo, Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006; Luis Castañeda, the mayor of Lima from 2003 to 2010; or Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, one of Toledo’s premiers and finance ministers. These three candidates were overconfident, however, and failed to ally. In the first round, they split the market-friendly, pro-democratic vote. They won 44 percent of the vote together, but none won enough votes individually to move into the runoff.

The two anti-establishment candidates, Humala and Keiko Fujimori, won 32 and 24 percent of the vote, respectively -- not stunning victories, but enough to move forward. The Peruvians who voted for them were doubtful that free markets had worked for them and were very concerned about crime and corruption. Although many of the country’s overall socioeconomic indicators were positive, the gains had been unevenly spread and discontent in the country’s interior was higher than many had imagined. Throughout the country, salaries were rising slowly at best. Most workers remained outside the formal sector and were vulnerable to abuse. Moreover, indigenous peoples believed that their fears about pollution from the mining and energy industries were being ignored. And increases in crime and corruption plagued the country; by one estimate, Peru’s murder rate tripled between 2002 and 2008.

Accordingly, a sizable portion of Peruvians voted for change. During the first round of the election, Keiko Fujimori promised a return to the policies of her father, Alberto Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000. Rightly or wrongly, some Peruvians believe Alberto Fujimori saved Peru by cracking down on the country’s brutal Maoist insurgency in the early 1990s. Keiko Fujimori argued that, just as her father had defeated terrorism, she would defeat crime. Further, Alberto Fujimori had initiated Peru’s transition to the free market; with huge revenues from the privatization of state companies, he had provided schools, roads, and other benefits to remote communities. As a result, in some Peruvians’ views, his government had been more socially inclusive than the governments of the 2000s. Yet Keiko Fujimori’s closeness to her father was problematic -- Alberto Fujimori was also authoritarian and corrupt and he is currently serving a 25-year sentence in a Lima prison for his abuses. Nonetheless, Keiko Fujimori expressed pride in her father and promised that she would pardon him. In doing so, she was able to galvanize the support of the Fujimori base, while alienating many others.

Humala’s ethnic heritage helped him appeal to Peru’s large indigenous population. Peru has been an unequal country since its birth; ethnic, class, and geographical disparities endure. So, although Humala was always very unlikely to win Lima, he was extremely popular in several highlands areas. Yet his background also had troubling features. In 2005, while he was serving as a military attaché to South Korea, he had endorsed his brother Antauro’s failed rebellion against the Toledo government, which he saw as corrupt. During an attack on a police station, four policemen were killed and Antauro was convicted and imprisoned. Meanwhile, Humala’s parents have publicly supported an ideology called etnocacerismo -- named after General Andrés Cáceres, a Peruvian hero of the 1879 War of the Pacific, who rallied indigenous Peruvians against Chilean invaders. This ideology is ultranationalist and, to some analysts, fascist. Humala’s parents were also prone to making shocking statements; for example, in March 2006, his mother commented that homosexuals should be shot. And, of course, Humala had ties to Chávez, who reportedly helped fund his 2006 presidential campaign and possibly his 2011 one, as well.