Peru’s widespread civil unrest
PERU | Thursday, 19 July 2007 | Views [1641]
Over the past week, crippling strikes and demonstrations organised by labour unions and regional protest organisations have paralysed large swathes of Peru. Teachers and farm workers protesting against the economic and social policies of President Alan Garcia’s government have boycotted classes, blocked roads, attacked police and occupied airports and railway stations. Four people have been killed in the nationwide demonstrations and over 300 protestors arrested. The events have rattled Garcia’s government and have serious implications for both his political future and the country’s travel and security environment.
Popular discontent with President Garcia has been growing for some months. Although his administration’s stable macroeconomic management and tight fiscal and monetary policies have continued to build on Peru’s high economic growth and low inflationary rates of the past few years, it has not delivered the promised improvements in terms of employment and poverty reductions. As a consequence, Garcia’s approval rating has plummeted from a high of 60 percent to just 35 percent. It is this environment that has given birth to the recent strikes and demonstrations. On 5 July, the left-wing Peruvian education workers’ union launched an indefinite strike in protest against newly approved government legislation that obliges teachers to take a proficiency test. The government states that the regulation is an essential step to reform Peru’s ailing state education system, but teachers accuse it of being a veiled attempt at privatisation, which will see thousands of teachers arbitrarily sacked. The teachers’ strike acted as a catalyst for further action with Peru’s largest labour group, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP) and a farmers’ union, the Campesino Confederation of Peru (CCP), launching their own strikes last week ostensibly in protest against the government’s recent free-trade accord with the United States.
These three strikes and the accompanying demonstrations mobilised tens of thousands of disenfranchised Peruvians dissatisfied with the political and economic status quo. In Peru’s capital, Lima, a reported 30,000 protesters gathered in the city’s streets and plazas last week to demonstrate against the government and pitched battles between the police and the demonstrators occasionally broke out. Similar scenes were witnessed in the northern city of Piura, where around 15,000 protesters took to the streets, and in the central Peruvian town of Tarma. The Pan-American highway was been stormed and blocked at numerous points, and roads around Iquitos, Andahuayas and Puno were also subjected to protest road-blocks. In Arequipa, some 1,100km south east of Lima, protesters obstructed the Arequipa-Puno highway and took nine police officers hostage after they attempted to clear the road. Although they were eventually released, several of the officers were injured after being beaten during their nine-hour ordeal. Tourist infrastructure was also affected. Anti-government protesters blocked the tracks of a train to Machu Picchu and attacked the stricken carriage with stones, and in southern Peru, some 5,000 protesters stormed and occupied Juliaca airport, blocking the runway and forcing the cancellation of flights and a sharp confrontation with police.
Although the CGTP and CCP strikes have now ended, they have, along with the ongoing teachers’ protest, generated significant anti-Garcia sentiment and there is now considerable momentum to the left-leaning protests and tensions are high. Protests continue to occur, as do sporadic roadblocks and incidents of violence. The situation looks likely to remain tense for the foreseeable future, as the government has ruled out negotiations and/or policy changes. Garcia himself is also in a belligerent mood, calling the protesters ‘radical, suicidal and crazy and resentful, fault-finding parasites’. He has deployed 15,000 police throughout the country to control the unrest and has authorised the armed forces to intervene should the situation require it. Given the entrenched positions of both sides, further strikes, demonstrations and unrest look distinctly possible.
Although the protests and demonstrations have not yet directly threatened foreign nationals or foreign interests in Peru, demonstrations intended to be peaceful can quickly and unexpectedly turn confrontational and violent. As consequence, red24 advises that all foreign nationals avoid all protests and remain in their homes or hotels should violent unrest occur. Furthermore, since the timing and routes of scheduled marches and demonstrations are subject to rapid change, red24 advises members in country to monitor local media sources, or to contact red24, for new developments.
Tags: travel safety, peru, red24, civil unrest, protest
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