


LIMA, Peru >> In an industrial corridor of Peru’s capital, a dingy stairwell leads to a second-floor safehouse. Dozens of Quechua and Aymara activists lie on mattresses strewn on the floor, resting up for more anti-government demonstrations as volunteers cook a breakfast of donated rice, pasta and vegetables.
Among the makeshift refuge’s occupants is Marcelo Fonseca. The 46-year-old watched as a a friend was shot and killed in December as they battled security forces in the southern city of Juliaca. Within hours, Fonseca joined a caravan of demonstrators that descended on the capital, Lima, to demand the resignation of interim President Dina Boluarte.
“Our Andean blood burns when we become furious,” Fonseca, whose native language is Quechua, said in a halting Spanish. “It runs faster. That’s what brings us here.”
Two months into Peru’s angry insurrection, emotions have hardened. While the unrest has barely disturbed the late-night revelry in Lima’s beachside enclaves, roadblocks still rage across the countryside, scaring away foreign tourists and leading to shortages of gas and other staples.
The tumult, which has left at least 60 dead, was triggered by the impeachment in December of President Pedro Castillo. To Peruvians like Fonseca, the leftist rural teacher was a symbol of their own exclusion, while Boluarte’s ascension to power from the vice presidency in cahoots with Castillo’s conservative enemies in Congress is seen as an unforgivable class betrayal.
The impasse has given a jolt of self-confidence to Peru’s Indigenous movement. Unlike neighboring Bolivia, where Indigenous groups were emboldened by Aymara coca-grower Evo Morales’ election as president in 2006, or Ecuador, where ethnic groups have a long tradition of toppling unpopular governments, Peru’s Indigenous groups had long struggled to gain political influence.
Although Peruvians of all backgrounds take pride in the history of the Inca Empire, the country’s Indigenous population is often treated with neglect and even hostility. Little is done to promote Quechua, despite its being spoken by millions and being an official language since 1975. Not until the 2017 census were Peruvians even asked whether they identify with any one of 50-plus Indigenous groups.
Tarcila Rivera, a prominent Quechua activist and former adviser to the United Nations on Indigenous issues, attributes the disdain to systemic racism stretching back to the Spanish conquest.
“Despite the two hundred years since the founding of our republic, the reality is that those of us who come from pre-Hispanic civilizations haven’t obtained our rights, nor are those rights taken into account,” said Rivera.
The current turmoil has also unleashed a torrent of racism. One lawmaker from the floor of Congress disparaged the rainbow-colored Wiphala flag, which represents the native people of the Andes, as little more than a “chifa tablecloth,” using the word for a cheap Chinese restaurant. Another urged security forces to send protesters to Bolivia with a big “kick.”