He promised to transform rural Peru. Instead, he faces his third impeachment.

SAN LUIS DE PUÑA, Peru – At a cattle market in the northern Andes of Peru, Estaurofila Cieza recalled the joy that erupted in the region when a peasant, or poor farmer, was elected president last year.

“Everyone celebrated it. Even the least of us,” says Cieza.

“We thought: ‘finally someone who knows what it’s like to work the land'”.

Last year, Pedro Castillo became Peru’s first leftist president in more than a generation after vowing to address the poverty that rural Peruvians have long suffered disproportionately and which has worsened with the pandemic.

But today it is immersed in a crisis in which questions about the survival of his presidency multiply.

The leader’s setbacks come at a time when Peru is experiencing economic hardships that have hit the rural base of Castillo particularly hard.

In less than a year and a half in office, Castillo has appointed five different cabinets, addressed six criminal investigations and, on Wednesday, he will face a third impeachment attempt in Congress, which the Peruvian leader has threatened to unwind.

Prosecutors accuse Castillo of running a criminal organization of profiting from government contracts and of repeatedly obstructing justice, charges the president has denied.

Peru’s fledgling democracy has already been swallowed up by years of high-level corruption scandals which have spawned five presidents since 2016.

Castillo’s tenure has only compounded the feeling that the the country’s political system is broken.

At the same time, global supply disruptions caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have pushed the country’s inflation to its highest rate in decades, raising the stakes of political dysfunction in a nation where a fourth part of the population of 33 million live in poverty.

The United Nations warned last month that Peru has the highest rate of food insecurity of South America, with half the population without regular access to adequate food.

Unlike other leaders who have been part of a leftist trend across Latin America, Castillo has never been very popular with many voters.

One of nine brothers from a peasant family in an area devoid of sewage and far from well-equipped hospitals and schools, Castillo was a farmer who raised cattle to supplement a teacher’s income before running for office.

“There have been quite a few strangers in Peru, but none that far from the centers of power,” said Mauricio Zavaleta, a Peruvian political analyst.

During his campaign, Castillo raised expectations in rural Peru by talking about structural changes and promising to replace the country’s constitution, nationalize natural resource extraction and double spending on education.

In the first round of the elections, he surprisingly won among 20 candidates, with 19% of the vote.

In the second round he prevailed by a narrow margin Keiko Fujimoripolarizing figure and daughter of an authoritarian former president, Albert Fujimori, jailed for human rights violations and corruption.

But today, many of Castillo’s rural supporters struggle to purchase basic goods and services and have been disappointed with his performance.

Cajamarca, a largely rural region 350 miles north of Lima where Castillo was born and built his career, has long been one of the poorest areas in the country.

In communities that stretch from the regional capital to Castillo’s small hometown of San Luis de Puña, supporters like Cieza said they expected more from him.

“He said he was going to change the country.

“He deceived us.”

Since taking office, Castillo has ushered in an era of considerable controversy for his clumsiness and frequency, while not making much progress on many of his campaign promises.

has gone through more than 80 ministers and has held many positions with officials with no relevant experience.

His administration failed to buy fertilizer for the biggest planting season of the year after three private company contracts were canceled by negligence and corruption.

His government has also delayed cash payments and grants to low-income Peruvians.

Castillo has survived two impeachment attempts in Congress, where critics say he is morally unfit to be president.

The Peruvian leader denies doing wrong and denounced what he describes as “new form of coup“orchestrated by prosecutors, lawmakers and the media.

His government has taken an initial step to try to dissolve Congress in response to lawmakers’ refusal to cast a vote of confidence in his government.

Congressman Guillermo Bermejo, a close ally of Castillo, said the president’s opponents will not stop until they return power to traditional elites based in Lima, the capital.

“People with extravagant surnames wear 200 years cut the cod,” he said in a TV interview on Sunday.

However, in recent weeks truckers and farmers in rural areas have staged protests over high fuel, food and fertilizer prices.

In Cajamarca, farmers said they planted half as many potatoes this year as they did in the past after prices of the most widely used synthetic fertilizer nearly tripled after the war broke out in Ukraine.

The cost of cooking oil, rice and sugar has doubled, making them unaffordable for poorer Peruvians.

High fuel prices have made it more expensive to transport produce to markets.

In a part of Peru where Castillo’s campaign slogan, “no more poor in a rich country,” drew applause, today it draws laughter.

San Luis de Puña, the rural village where Castillo was born, is a five-hour drive from the regional capital on mostly dirt roads that wind through verdant mountains and valleys, open-pit gold mines and adobe houses in stone. water.

Ranchers in the area complain of falling livestock prices due to oversupply as desperate families in need of cash sell off their animals.

Mothers cannot afford school supplies for their children.

“Now we have to work more to eat a little less,” says César Irigoin, 67, a farmer from Tacabamba, the district that includes San Luis de Puña. Castillo “promised the opposite,” he added.

Even so, the president has his own defenders.

“They say he’s a bad person,” said María Núñez, 77, who lives in San Luis de Puña.

“No. He was a good citizen here in the community.”

He blamed his hardships on the powerful elite.

“Unfortunately they don’t let him work as they should,” he added.

Even after 18 months in office, Castillo stayed in power longer than many expected.

Three of his predecessors were ousted early in his term amid a spate of corruption scandals.

Castillo seemed destined for a similar fate.

But analysts say the opposition has repeatedly failed to position itself as the best alternative, starting with its refusal to acknowledge the president’s electoral victory last year.

For weeks after the vote, Fujimori tried to undo rural votes in an unsuccessful attempt to overturn the results, claiming, without evidence, that there had been electoral fraud.

Congress has since banned Castillo from traveling abroad to represent Peru on an official mission, turning a routine and perfunctory vote that allows a president to travel out of the country into a political weapon.

Lawmakers sought to charge Castillo with treason over a comment he made in an interview about his desire to cede part of the Peruvian coast to Bolivia, a comment for which he quickly apologized.

“They really hate him, don’t they? Because he’s from Tacabamba,” said Alicia Delgado, a 68-year-old farmer who lives in Castillo’s home district, emphasizing the president’s rural roots in a country where rural Peruvians have faced centuries of discrimination .

Although Castillo’s approval rating has plunged to 19% in Lima, in rural areas outside the capital it remains at 45%, just 4 percentage points lower than a year ago, according to polls conducted last month by the Institute of Peruvian Studies.

“The country is divided,” says Segundo Huanombal, 50, a farmer and carpenter in San Luis de Puña.

“Do you know why? Why the poor are despised“.

He added that many wealthy people in Lima “look down on us, because we always travel on foot and come back dirty from the fields.”

But there is a clear feeling of awe in what was once the stronghold of Castillo.

One night in November, Heriberto Quintana, a farmer from the province of Chota, went out on patrol with other members of the rondas campesinas, the security patrols, made up of farmers and acting as local police.

Quintana said Castillo, who was part of the rondas as a youth, used his identity as a farmer to garner support without actually helping the rural population.

“He’s really offered one thing and he’s doing another,” she said.

“It hurts more when it’s someone who knows you.”

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