Out with Boluarte and the corrupt Congress! Calling for a Workers’ and Popular National Strike!

By PST (SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY), PERU

The poor and working people are in revolt throughout Peru. They are fighting against the representatives of the bosses’ economic and political power concentrated in Congress: the Boluarte government and its main institutions.

Protests have a massive and furious character from the poorest and historically forgotten places to the biggest cities. Women and children are in the front ranks, and fighting with what they have at their disposal, facing the fierce repression unleashed against them and which has already claimed seven lives and hundreds of wounded and arrested.

Those who have fraudulently seized power wear democratic garb. They do so in the name of a Constitution that the masses repudiate. With the support of a sector of the “left” in Parliament and presenting Boluarte as the “first woman president of Peru,” the government inaugurates its administration by repressing the people with viciousness. The people in the streets expose their exploiters and their representatives in Congress.

The rebellion over the last days is the response to what important sectors of the population identify as the consummation of the bosses’ plan to impede, slow down, sabotage and, finally, liquidate the elected government in whom they had placed their hopes. These were hopes that Castillo renounced during the constant onslaught by the parties in Congress and the media, without ever resorting to the struggle of the workers and popular movement.

It should be seen as an embarrassment that the sectors that supported Castillo and are directly responsible for his resounding failure (Peru Libre, JP and his followers in the CGTP [Workers’ General Confederation of Peru]), now attempt to reposition themselves in the face of the rebellion underway without renouncing their petty pretensions to power.

Despite false “democrats” and the support of “leftist” sectors hanging on the skirt of the Boluarte [regime], the reactionary character of this government is beyond any doubt: the ministerial cabinet is filled with recognized members of the bosses with the support of Congress.

We also see this ruse in the repressive response to the social explosion from the first hour, instigated in reactionary unison, causing numerous wounded and casualties, together with measures such as the declaration of a State of Emergency and the intervention of the Armed Forces in the repression. The sole purpose of these measures is to suffocate the rebellion without attending to any of the fundamental demands.

As a maximum concession, now-President Boluarte, after swearing an oath to serve “until 2026” now offers—in agreement with her partners in the corrupt Congress—to move forward the elections to April 2024. In other words, she offers to squash the riots and, as a reward, to stay in power for another year and a half. The poor and working people have rebelled because they do not want these people in power for one more minute. They justly demand that they all leave: Baluarte and the entirety of the Congress, and that there be new elections that include the convocation of a Constituent Assembly.

And they will not stop in this struggle, even if it costs more blood and pain. Neither the bullets nor the partial concessions, nor the dialogue tables, nor the hypocritical calls for peace from our class enemies are going to dent the popular struggle, which will continue to deepen and extend until it reaches its main objectives.

However, it must be said in plain language: even if we achieve these aspirations—which would be a colossal triumph—they will be limited because they will leave new opportunities for the bourgeoisie to regain control of the situation. The failure of the Castillo government showed clearly that it is not possible to produce the changes we need through the institutions of the bourgeois state, “conquering the government,” and conciliating or dialoguing with its representatives. We need to take power.

This means not only defeating Congress and Boluarte but all the institutions on which they are based and building on their remains a new one founded on workers’ and popular organizations. And it means fighting for the expropriation of the big mines, banks, industries, and businesses on which the bourgeoisie bases its power and through which imperialism bases its domination of the country. There is no other way to finally attend to the immense urgencies of the countryside and of the poor and working population, and there is no other way to conquer our true independence after 200 years of bourgeois republic.

In a word, this means fighting for a fundamental solution by winning a Workers’ and Popular Government.

For this we require at this time not to lower our banners and not to accept any “negotiation” with Boluarte’s fraudulent government. We need to strengthen, extend, and unify the struggle by setting up everywhere independent organizations of struggle in every town, neighborhood, university, and workplace. [We need] organisms where the struggle and self-defense are prepared and coordinated.

We need the working class as a whole to fully enter the fight with its own banners and proposals for change. We also require its democratic and unitary organization from below, through assemblies and the call for a National Strike now.

And we need to establish the coordination of the struggle at the national level, constituting a true national assembly of the peoples that truly centralizes and unifies the struggle.

Long live the workers’ and popular rebellion! Not one step back, out with Boluarte and the corrupt Congress! For a Workers’ and Popular Government!