Peru: They should all go!

November 24, 2025

Jaqueline Katherina Singh

Impeachment of the president, several days of national protests, a 30-day state of emergency – events in Peru have been moving thick and fast. The national strike of October 15 marked a new turning point in the class struggle. What started as a call from Gen Z, the student movement, and numerous sectors of the workers and popular classes, turned into a huge protest against the regime. From Puno in the south-east to Piura in the north-west, from Cuzco to Trujillo, people took to the streets to shout: „Enough!“ – enough of the hunger, insecurity, unemployment and institutional violence that has turned the country into a land of fear and death. It quickly became clear that José Jerí’s government, less than a week old at the time, had neither social basis nor legitimacy. It relied solely on corrupt congressional agreements and the bayonets of repression.

A brief outline

First reports of massive protests came on September 20, 2025, triggered by the pension reform pushed through by the government. The turning point, however, came a few weeks later, on October 8, when an armed criminal gang raided a concert by Agua Marina, one of the country’s most popular cumbia groups, on a site guarded by the army. Four of the musicians were injured and the attack provoked nationwide outrage, exposing the state’s complete loss of control in the fight against organised crime.

With parliamentary elections due in 2026, the political alliance that had previously supported the president, Dina Boluarte, in Congress, also began to disintegrate. Her former allies turned away to protect their own interests and distance themselves from the increasingly unpopular president. At the same time, GenZ youth once again poured into the streets of Lima, demanding Boluarte’s resignation, clashing with the police and denouncing excessive repression. This determined, rebellious youth movement finally sealed the president’s total political isolation.

On October 10, the Congress of the Republic of Peru drew the consequences: In a lightning decision, it declared Boluarte deposed for „permanent moral incapacity“. She was charged with political responsibility for the deaths of over 50 people during the 2022 and 2023 protests, as well as allegations of corruption related to luxury gifts and Rolex watches. With 122 votes out of 130 – far more than the required 87 – her impeachment was carried. Since there was no vice president, José Jerí, president of the Congress and leader of the right-wing party Somos Perú, immediately took over the interim presidency – opening a new chapter in the country’s political crisis.

Deadly repression

For this reason, numerous organisations called for a nationwide protest on October 15. In Lima, the Plaza Francia became the centre of resistance but also of pain. There, the young Eduardo Ruiz Sáenz, a member of Bloque Hip Hop, a cultural collective, was shot dead by a plainclothes policeman from the „Terna“ unit – a force that deliberately infiltrates demonstrations in order to sow terror and demobilisation. His death was not an „excessive use of force“ but a political execution, a sign that the state is willing to continue killing in order to prop up a crumbling regime. The Ministry of Health reported 15 injured, including two in a critical condition and four journalists suffering shotgun wounds – also victims of state censorship.

These crimes are not isolated cases, but the continuation of the same repressive regime that killed over 50 people under Dina Boluarte during the 2022/23 protests. Today, history is repeating itself under José Jerí: a capitalist state that reacts to the demands of the masses with repression and bloodshed. There are no significant differences between Boluarte and Jerí, both are part of the same bourgeois-neoliberal bloc that protects the interests of big business, mining companies, organised crime and the military.

Meanwhile, the Jerí cabinet had still not received a vote of confidence, indeed, a motion of no confidence threatened to break up the fragile political balance in congress. The entire country was in a deep crisis, in which no institution had any legitimacy and repression could no longer contain social discontent. On October 20, the protest for justice for Eduardo Ruiz and all those who died was followed by the immediate downfall of the Jerí government and the dissolution of the corrupt and criminal Congress – as part of a growing resistance that demanded the end of the entire system.

Backgrounds

With José Jerí gone, Peru has now had seven presidents in seven years: Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Martín Vizcarra, Manuel Merino, Francisco Sagasti, Pedro Castillo, Dina Boluarte and now Jerí. Three former presidents – Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala and Pedro Castillo – are in jail for corruption or abuse of power. This rapid succession reflects a structural crisis of classical bourgeois institutions that cannot be solved by mere changes of leadership.

Since the end of the commodity boom in 2014, Peru has been in a profound social and political crisis. It remains the world’s second-largest copper producer and an important supplier of gold, tin, zinc and natural gas. Nevertheless, its dependence on imports of agricultural products, fertilisers and fuels has made the country particularly vulnerable to global shocks in recent years, from the impact of the Ukraine war to price increases as a result of international sanctions.

In addition, the Corona pandemic massively exacerbated existing inequality. At times, the proportion of the population working in the informal sector skyrocketed to almost 90%, and large parts of the overwhelmed health system collapsed, leaving Peru with one of the world’s highest per capita Covid death rates. Even years later, the social and economic consequences are still being felt. Poverty, unemployment and inflation are a particular burden on the rural population and the poorer urban districts.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Peruvian economy is recovering slightly – growth of around 2.9% is expected for 2025. The purchasing power of the population, however, is undermined by high prices and stagnating wages. With a national debt of around 33% of GDP, Peru is in a better position than many other countries, but the IMF explains that the current crisis is slowing down confidence in investment. That is only one factor, however, because, since 2010, China has rapidly become the country’s most important economic partner: Peruvian exports rose from a few $billion in the early 2010s to around $24-25 billion in 2024, mainly due to sales of copper, gold and fish products.

With a trade volume of $26.7 billion, the USA remains important, but it is losing economic weight and trying instead to secure its influence through military cooperation, for example, through a new US training mission for the army and police.

This development means nothing more than a redistribution of dependence: between Chinese capital, which exploits Peruvian soil, and US imperialism, which consolidates its control over the police and military.

Socialist perspective

In view of all these facts, the way forward cannot simply be to replace one bourgeois government with another. Peru’s Fujimori regime, which emerged under Alberto Fujimori and continues to have an impact today under the 1993 constitution, laid the foundations for an authoritarian, neoliberal model that concentrates power in the hands of a small elite. It is an anti-democratic system that underpins corruption and secures the rule of those layers that have penetrated deep into the institutions of the bourgeois state – Congress, government and the judiciary. This regime is supported by the capital associations, above all the CONFIEP (Confederación Nacional de Instituciones Empresariales Privadas; the National Association of the Private Sector of Peru) and the National Agreement, which act as political umbrellas for the economic oligarchy.

This system is responsible for the fact that around 70% of the population has to work in the „informal sector“, for the unbounded extractivism that impoverishes the country. It also lies behind the deterioration of basic rights such as access to health and education. Meanwhile, a wealthy minority, based in corporations such as mega-mining companies that destroy natural resources, banks and pension funds (AFPs) – continue to enrich themselves.

What is needed is a complete break with the 1993 regime and the bourgeois state. What is needed is a mobilisation that opens the way to a free and sovereign constituent assembly, one controlled by the streets not the elites, one that reorganises the country on new foundations: the power of the workers and peasants.

To allow the existing or a newly elected parliament to channel the resistance into a bourgeois constituent assembly organised by the official institutions would be a fatal mistake, allowing the bourgeoisie to regroup and arm themselves for a new offensive. That is why revolutionaries must demand a constituent assembly, convened and controlled by the wage-earning and poor peasant masses through their own democratic institutions of struggle, independent of the present state. Those organisations must lead an open struggle in such an assembly for a socialist transformation of the country. That will mean the expropriation of Peruvian and foreign big capital, as well as large landowners, under workers‘ control, the cancellation of foreign debt and an immediate plan to combat poverty.

Such a programme could not be carried out by the institutions of the bourgeois state nor by any constituent assembly, no matter how democratic, but would have to be driven forward by a workers‘ and peasants‘ government that itself relies on councils of workers, peasants and ordinary soldiers, as well as armed militias of the masses.

How to achieve this

The central question is: How do we get there? It is important to take advantage of the current situation and to agitate in enterprises, districts, universities and rural communities for the establishment of action committees that coordinate the struggles, organise strikes and build self-defence organs against the police and military. Such bodies can form the basis of a new, democratically elected assembly of the mass movement. Three central demands could unite this process:

Establish control: Expropriation of mining, energy and ports under workers‘ control, so that the enormous raw material profits no longer disappear into the pockets of multinational corporations (especially from China and the USA), but are used to finance education, health and infrastructure.
End poverty: State-guaranteed minimum wage and price controls on basic foodstuffs and fuel, controlled by trade unions – to ensure the survival of millions in the informal sector and to stop social impoverishment.
Self-defence: Punishment of those responsible for the massacres of 2022/23 and 2025 and the establishment of democratically organised self-defence committees against police and military violence – only in this way can we defend ourselves against arbitrary repression and defend our interests!

It is also important to put pressure on the trade unions, including the CGTP, the largest union confederation, to take up and mobilise for such demands.

In the past, both the trade union bureaucracy and the centre-left parties have played a fatal role in containing mobilisations, thus becoming, for example, the de facto pillar of the Boluarte government. Revolutionaries have the task of organising a fight in the unions against the bureaucratic leaderships that slow down strikes, collude with employers and block any real mobilisation. It is necessary to build grassroots structures that take control of decisions and actions back into the hands of the workers, to make them a tool of struggle – not for symbolic strikes without perspective, but for a nationwide, coordinated mobilisation in the interests of the working class.

The sacrifice of Eduardo Ruiz must not have been in vain, his name must become a symbol of resistance. May his assassination be the point at which the Peruvian people say „Enough!“ and workers and youth unite in a common, revolutionary programme and party that unites all these struggles.

It is clear that our struggle can only be successful if it is consciously directed against the imperialist exploitation that has kept Peru dependent for decades. If a constituent assembly does indeed take place and revolutionary forces gain influence in it, it is clear that the imperialists will not give up their goldmine without a fight. This makes it all the more important to set up self-defence structures in companies, districts and municipalities that are able to fend off attacks by the military, police or paramilitary forces.

At the same time, the struggle in Peru must be understood as part of a common class struggle across Latin America – united with those who oppose US imperialist aggression in Venezuela and in solidarity with the current protests such as in Ecuador. Only through internationalist solidarity and joint organising can the working class of the region break imperialist domination and open up a new, socialist perspective.