Background change. José Ragas maintains that the AC is the option for a new social pact. Photo: diffusion
The historian Jose Ragas answers about the political and social situation in Peru. In his balance, Peruvians are facing a government that presents a clear authoritarian drift and that, as he points out, maintains itself in power —mainly— thanks to a disproportionate use of law enforcement.
— The image of thousands of police officers in front of the Palace of Justice is overwhelming. What does it represent for you?
— One falls short with “overwhelming”. There’s a show of force, choreographed, to get all these cops together in an open space, and it’s a dangerous thing. It is part of a logic that the Government has been giving for a long time. We are basically living in a kind of police state and it is not an exaggeration. This is a government that is sustained by the unpunished and excessive use of police force, in urban and rural sectors. Lima is like the nerve center that the Government wants to defend and now we see the Ministry of the Interior, so that anyone can accuse another of terrorism…
— Via email.
– Exact. It is a completely insane question. Not even in the nineties would Montesinos have thought of something like this. It is paradoxical and sad. They warned us so much that Peru could become Venezuela with the previous government (by Pedro Castillo) and, finally, we have almost an occupation force in part of the country at the service of a government that is not legitimate, that does not recognize its own weakness and that does not submit to the rules of the democratic game.
— Is such a display of strength basically a demonstration of weakness?
– Absolutely. Even more so with a security body of which there are recordings of how it has operated. It is a force at the service of the Government and this goes beyond the situation, because they are institutions that are affected. The police must see citizen security and one wonders: “Where are those policemen when there are assaults?” This creates a greater distance with people.
— Is this a government with an authoritarian drift?
– Completely. You have to understand that concepts such as dictatorship or authoritarianism are not fixed. Sometimes the idea that one has of dictatorship It’s the one that comes from the Cold War era…
— The typical military dictatorship.
– Clear. But what we see in the post-Cold War is that this is more nuanced and that the authoritarian governments they adapt. It does not occur to the military to openly launch a coup because it does not last, due to international rejection, pressure and citizen mobilization. Now they have been adapting and, for example, there are changes to the constitution that allow indefinite re-election, or there is the concentration of powers that break the balance between powers, as has happened with Congress. What we have now is an authoritarian government, with a democratic façade, but which is the articulation of a series of projects that came from before and have at their axis the objective of staying in power by criminalizing any citizen or individual action. It is an opportunity that libertarian, conservative and far-right groups have not had for a long time. They had not come to power the way they wanted.
— At least it shows that they have every desire to stay until 2026, without advancing elections.
— Yes, at least four attempts at early elections have been blocked to bring about a democratic transition. For them, this may be a victory, but in the medium term it is a loss for everyone. What is happening with the mobilization is that they are claims within democratic and constitutional frameworks. One can be for or against a constituent Assembly…
— But it is a completely democratic debate.
– Exact. But, beyond the AC, the way in which the electoral advance is being requested is through democratic paths. The longer this takes, the more this type of option backfires, everything will be much more difficult to manage and the transition will be more complicated and costly, with the possibility that, on one side or the other, radical sectors appear, as has been the case since the extreme right, with sectors that justify death and violence in protests. This could be solved before, deaths could be avoided and democratic channels could be maintained.
— How pronounced is the risk to Peruvian democracy?
— Peruvian democracy is at risknot only for the political part.
– So?
— Because of what has been discussed, the inequality, which is seen to the extent that problems are not solved, in which the attention of the political class is to see how many police officers enter the Walk of Heroes…
— From your specialty, history, what can be said about inequality? Isn’t it just an economic issue, then?
— That the figures are not enough. Inequality, to paraphrase, is too important an issue to be left only to economists or data scientists, which have become very fashionable. Of course, it is important to have quantitative information, but, we have seen, they do not agree on it because they are complex variables.
— There are different ways to measure it.
— And there is not always complete information in countries like Peru. And there are, sometimes, think tanks that say that Peru has no problems, that it is the country that has reduced inequality the most, although that is also a discourse to delegitimize the protests. Let’s go back to the pandemic: we had 20 years of growth…
— And we had barely 100 ICU beds.
– Exact. There is a debate that we avoid. And what does it have to do with the constituent Assembly. There are fundamentalist people of the 93 Constitution who refuse to debate that there are elements that can be changed and improved.
— Should the modification be partial or through a CA?
— It is that the AC goes beyond the question of Constitution, is a way of creating a new social pact, which has been exhausted. The Constitution of 93 did not come from a social demand, it was imposed.