You can be a leftist and not lament over the removal of Pedro Castillo from office. In fact, as a leftist, you should rejoice. Castillo was a reactionary and an opportunist. He did absolutely NOTHING for the people of his country, the people he was supposed to have represented. Let’s not water things down to the point where every change of power that happens in a global south country is a US backed coup positioned to curb socialist transitions. Castillo was neither embraced by the populace of Peru nor the left-wing parties he was supposed to have come from. And because he has this origin story as a backcountry teacher, he’s easily deified as a leader of the working classes. But regardless of one’s background it’s possible to become a corrupt and spineless servant of the capitalist class, which is just what Castillo became. While, sure, he might be a step up from the fascist Keiko, son of fascist Alberto, he was elected as the lesser of two evils and on day one became a puppet of the oligarchy with no convictions to speak of.

And if you want to talk about authoritarianism, he had the curious strategy of imposing a curfew, by force of the military, any time he did something that he felt could potentially cause a rebellion.

Finally, it’s absolutely beyond me why the author of this article decided to specifically add Black people to the mix of underrepresented Peruvian citizens when Black people compose no significant portion of the Peruvian population. Is not the majority Peruvian population with indigenous ancestry worthy of liberation? To me, this seems to be a desperate attempt to jump on the bandwagon of the popular yet reactionary and counterproductive BLM movement. When we mix liberal virtue signalling trends into the class struggle, we are just diluting our own message.

Castillo got what he deserved and it’s gonna take a bit more struggle before any form of socialism takes hold in Peru (i.e. something more than just elections).