'We Knew This Was Going To Be a Sacrifice'

Peru's Indigenous have put their lives and livelihoods on the line in a quest to oust the president

Alejandro Paricahua wants Peru’s president to resign. An apparel vendor and the head of the largest merchant group in Juliaca, Paricahua has been helping coordinate a monthslong economic boycott that regularly brings this city of almost 300,000 people in the Puno region to a near-total standstill. The goal: to pressure President Dina Boluarte to hold new elections.

“We knew this was going to be a sacrifice,” says Paricahua, standing in a market stall, where he’s surrounded by rainbow-hued piles of shirts, jackets and sweaters. “We didn’t know this was going to drag out. We didn’t know this woman would stubbornly cling to power.”

Peru has been roiled by the longest and bloodiest protests in decades, ever since then-President Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve Congress in December, leading to his arrest and impeachment. Puno, a region of 1.2 million people that borders Bolivia, has seen the worst of the violence, with more deaths than in any other part of Peru.

Castillo, a peasant farmer and former teacher who pledged to nationalize Peru’s natural gas reserves and rewrite the country’s market-friendly constitution, was elected president by a razorthin margin in 2021. But he and Boluarte, who ran as vice president, captured 89% of the vote in Puno, whose population is overwhelmingly Indigenous and poor. In the most recent census, just over 90% of Puneños 12 years or older identified themselves as Indigenous, more than three times the total for the country as a whole.