The first round of the presidential elections in Peru this week produced a staggering upset. Pedro Castillo, primary school teacher and candidate for left-wing party Peru Libre (Free Peru), came in a strong first place amongst a crowded field, with around 19 percent of the vote at current count. The result took Lima and international media by surprise. Their focus on more establishment candidates, or those with urban support, ignored the mass of provincial voters who are deeply unsatisfied with Peru’s political and economic status quo.

Castillo came to national prominence in 2017 during a nationwide teachers’ strike against the government of then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. After being recruited by Peru Libre to run for president this year, he was only a minor candidate. Even as recently as a month ago, he was polling around just 3-5 percent. But his performance in the debates pushed him into the public spotlight, and he gained more support from sympathetic voters as other candidates began to attack him. Despite his rise at the end of the campaign, media outlets were unprepared for his success. On election night, CNN in Peru didn’t have an image of him they could use and had to display a generic silhouette while showing the results.

The party he’s representing, Peru Libre, is fairly obscure, founded and led by former Junín governor Vladimir Cerrón. Cerrón has described the party as “socialist left — Marxist, Leninist, and Mariáteguist,” referencing the Peruvian Marxist writer José Carlos Mariátegui. Their platform supports the nationalization of resources and industry, greatly increasing funding to education, and the creation of a new constitution to overturn the one that was imposed by authoritarian neoliberal president Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s.