Solidarity Statement with the People of Peru

By PRALER

To the people of Peru

Today, we extend a fraternal and combative greeting to the masses in Peru that are rising up against the civil-military dictatorship of illegitimate president, Dina Boluarte, who removed president Pedro Castillo from office on the 7th December 2022. Backed by the Peruvian oligarchy, the majority conservative congress, the military and police forces, mainstream media and Western Imperialist forces like the U.S. Government. 

We emphatically condemn the assassinations of over 60 of our siblings in Peru, who have been brutally murdered by the Peruvian elite and this military dictatorship. Their only crime was expressing  their legal right to protest, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly that are enshrined under international law. 

“We express our full support for the Peruvian people, as they defend their peoples’ rights to self-determination, sovereignty and true democratic process”

We express our full support for the Peruvian people, as they defend their peoples’ rights to self-determination, sovereignty and true democratic process that has been stripped from the majority of Indigenous, Andean, Amazon, worker and peasant peoples since the foundation of the Peruvian state 200 years ago. A state that, from its conception, was anti-indigenous and excluded the Peruvian masses, maintained a white-supremacist and classist system, in order to ensure that the territory would continue being subordinate to the interests of global capitalism and imperialism, for its continued plunder, extraction and political, social and cultural subjugation. It is for this reason that we back the popular push for a constituent assembly to draft a plurinational constitution in affront to the current neoliberal 1993 constitution. This would enshrine indigenous nations like the Quicha Nation,Aymara Nation, Awajun Nation, the Wampis Nation and the Shipibo-Konibo Xetebo Nation amongst others, in decision making processes and protect Peoples and Mother Earth rights. 

We also see what is happening in Peru, as a symptom of the lack of sovereignty that our people have continentally, and thus the need for inter-communal action learning and dialogue between communities of resistance internationally and continentally in order to build up effective communities for self-defence that are capable of defending our rights to self-determination. Until there is an interconnected power-base, our struggles will remain isolated and be picked off  as we have seen in Bolivia and now as we see in Peru. We can learn from examples like the Pan-Afrikan movement that are pushing for continental unification with a plurinational framework, which has been conceptualised as Maatubuntumaan in Ubuntudunia.

Finally, we celebrate the necessary Planet Repairs stance that students and educational institutions have taken up, acknowledging their role in serving the people, such as the National University of Engineering (UNI) in Lima and the General Assembly of the University of San Marcos that took over the university campus on the 18 January 2023. Both of these committed to providing refuge to communities that had mobilised to Lima from indigenous and rural communities across the country, to carry out their legal and democratic right to protest. 

We strongly condemn the violent decision by director, Jeri Ramon, of the University of San Marcos, who betrayed the educational role of the institution and the physical integrity of the students, as she called on police forces to militarise the campus. We condemn the violence with which the National Police of Peru (PNP) intervened with tanks and armed forces in the campus on 21 January 2023, where they brutalised and assaulted students, graduates and protesters who were peacefully sheltering at the university campus and arbitrarily detained nearly 250 students. They also broke the University’s legal right to autonomy. We see similarities between this criminality and that perpetrated by Adam Habib at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, who had students shot on campus for calling for free decolonial education; he now works at the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. The Ghana Educational Service is another culprit as it used scare tactics to silence and expel school children from the Chiana Senior High School in Ghana for exercising 

Internationally, students and popular educational institutions should celebrate the heroes that are advancing our peoples education and condemn the criminals that try to impede it. It is for this reason that we hold up the brave students of the University of San Marcos, who liberated their campus in service of the people and the construction of a new democratic Peru, as exemplar students and call on student bodies and educational institutions everywhere to do the same. Globally universities are being privatised and their campuses militarized in order to isolate students and academics from the masses, this must be stopped. 

We also subscribe  to the demands of students from the Professional School for Anthropology at the National University of Toribio Rodriguez de Mendoza in the Amazon, that necessarily call for an integral education that recognises our peoples’ histories and knowledges, and that is committed to advancing practical solutions to the crises we are experiencing today with the recognition of the active role educational institutions need to play in social change but also in producing knowledge, in line with communities, for the construction of a new social fabric towards true intercultural, participatory democratic processes. This is a necessary demand for all educational institutions everywhere.

Globally, reactionary violence is increasing, corrupt mis-leaders remain in power and our Mother Earth is under attack. But from Peru, to Colombia, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Mali and Palestine we are seeing our people rise up pushing forward new peoples plans for liberation. 

Siblings in Peru, we stand with you. Every drop of blood spilled is felt as though it were our own, and every sibling imprisoned must be freed. We will never forgive nor forget. 

We join the calls for Dina Boluarte to be removed from office, for a Plurinational Constituent Assembly, the Resignation of the Board of Directors of Congress and new elections now!

¡Hasta que la dignidad se haga costumbre! 

¡Nunca más un mundo sin los pueblos!

Featured Photo Credit: Mayimbu from Wikipedia.