The demonstrators who came from the Andes, who claim the resignation of the president, invested the capital.
by Amanda Chaparro (Lima, Special Envoy)
They entered the historic center of Lima, under the applause, in a cacophony of whistles and songs. “This welcome is for our brothers and sisters who come from so far, proclaims Mirella Silva, a 22 -year -old student resident in the capital of Peru and come to join the procession. They defend a just cause against a deaf government and Indifferent to all these dead. “Tens of thousands of farmers, workers, students, who came for most of the Andes, paraded peacefully, Thursday, January 19, in the streets of Lima. Many were clothed with the Red and White National Flag and chanted: “Dina, Renuncia” – “Dina [Boluarte, the interim president], resigned.”
We feared violence, we feared the reaction of the police and the military, in a climate of state of emergency and while the security forces shoot real bullets in the Andes against the demonstrators, who require new Elections after the missed coup and the dismissal of President Pedro Castillo (left) on December 7, 2022. But if the tear gas shots intended to prevent the protesters from arriving at the Congress made around twenty wounded, no death is not to be deplored in the capital, unlike Arequipa, in the South, where a 30-year-old man received a shot in the abdomen.
The trip from their regions to Lima had lasted, for some demonstrators, up to thirty hours, made of trucks or bus, through the Cordillera. “We left us on Tuesday morning,” said Rebecca Chahua Velasquez, from Altiplano, near Lake Titicaca, on the Bolivian border, more than a thousand kilometers from Lima. “We have encountered many obstacles on the way. There were police and army dams. We were checked several times,” continues the woman in her fifty years, her hair tied in a long braid and covered with a cap.
“It was an exhausting journey, blows Felicia Mamani, 30 years old. But we received a lot of donations from citizens.” Food, water, money, enough to be able to hold in the capital Several days if necessary. Because the movement to “take Lima” and be heard of a central power which says that they do not understand why they manifest wants to register over time. “I left my children, my husband. I left everything, because it is a fight for a better Peru,” adds this Altiplano farmer.
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