“This Impeachment Basically Amounts to a Coup”
Last month, Peruvians took to the streets to protest the seizure of the country’s presidency by the far right after a questionable impeachment, with the likely intention of holding the office past next year’s elections. We spoke to Verónika Mendoza, left-wing presidential candidate for Juntos por el Perú, about the mass protests and the possibility of scrapping the country’s dictatorship-era constitution.
Newly appointed interim president Francisco Sagasti is escorted by a military guard as he arrives at Congress on November 17 for a ceremony to take oath. (Hugo Curotto / Getty Images)
The streets of Peru erupted in protest on November 9 with the news that then-president Martín Vizcarra had been impeached for the crime of “moral incapacity.” On the surface, this was another episode in an ongoing power struggle between the Peruvian executive and Congress that has become familiar to the nation’s citizens. Ever since 2018, when the legislature forced the resignation of President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Peru has seen a series of reprisals and counterreprisals between the two branches of government, each accusing the other of corruption.
Since that time, the country has been rocked by a deepening crisis of political authority — coming to a head November 10 when congressman Manuel Merino, backed by the Peruvian far right, seized on the presidential vacancy and took office with the probable intent of holding the post beyond the 2021 general elections. It was a bridge too far.
While Vizcarra was still a modestly popular figure at the time of his removal, the sudden and emphatic outpouring of indignation across the country has felt more like a sweeping indictment of the system than any particularly intense support for the outgoing president (although he has his supporters).
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