From 2001 to 2019, amid democratic governance, Peru achieved economic growth with equity. But in 2020, the pandemic exposed long-standing problems, especially limited investment in public goods and fragile social networks. As anger mounted, so did political turbulence. After the impeachment of President Martรญn Vizcarra, massive protests forestalled a political takeover by rightist political dinosaurs, but the same challenges that faced Vizcarra face the new president, Francisco Sagasti. For political and economic recovery, success in the battle against COVID-19 is key.
For the first nineteen years of the twenty-first century, Peru was a Latin American success story. Economic growth was rapid; poverty and inequality declined; democracy was uninterrupted. In 2020, however, the pandemic hit Peru very hard; long-standing problems were exposed, and protests intensified. Fortunately, many political leaders, including those in the current government, agree that it is past time that Peruโs democracy responds more effectively to citizensโ concerns. In the immediate term, the government must ensure transparency in the purchase and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine and increase investment in public health.
It is not clear why the pandemic hit Peru so hard, but it is clear that it has been devastating. In January 2021, Peruโs mortality rate was the tenth worst in the world and the worst in Latin America. In nine months, almost forty thousand Peruvians died of the virusโmore than half the number that died amid the Shining Path insurgency that wracked the country for more than a decade in the 1980s-1990s. In 2020, Peruโs GDP is forecast to plummet approximately thirteen percentโthe steepest decline ever recorded in Peru and the steepest in Latin America except for Venezuela. By one estimate, more than six million Peruvians, or more than fifteen percent of the population, lost their jobs.ย
Of course, despair and anger were pervasive. As data from World Bank Indicators show, the limitations to Peruโs recent advances were glaringly evident. Although Peruโs GDP (in constant international dollars) almost doubled between 2000 and 2017, a rate greater than the Latin America and Caribbean average of roughly twenty-five percent, attention to critical public goods was lacking. For example, from 2000 to 2017, the percentage of the population using safely managed drinking water rose from forty-five percent to fifty percent, much less than the regional increase from fifty-six percent to seventy-four percent. Peruโs maternal mortality rate improved, but at 88 deaths per 100 thousand live births in 2017, was still much worse than the regional average of 74 deaths. Similarly, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people was 1.59 in Peru in 2017, below the regional average of 1.90.
Why, despite democracy, did Peruโs post-2000 governments fail to prioritize public goods? Legions of scholars, including Steven Levitsky, Patricio Navia, and Martรญn Tanaka cite Peruโs weak political parties. There is no doubt that most of Peruโs parties have been mere electoral vehicles that broke down when the leaders could not deliver on their campaign promises.
However, the weakness of Peruโs political parties is in good part the reflection of the weakness of its social networks. Tragically, since the Spanish conquest of South Americaโs largest and most sophisticated indigenous civilization, social cleavages have been particularly severe in Peru. Without shared communities and without common norms, corruption has been endemic. By the estimate of the historian Alfonso Quiroz, under no administration since Peruโs independence was the cost of corruption less than 1 percent of Peruโs GDP.
In 2016, after Odebrecht, a huge Brazilian construction company, acknowledged the payment of more than 700 million dollars in bribes across ten Latin American countries, including 29 million dollars in Peru, a war against corruption began in Peru. As Peruโs democracy endured, anti-corruption forces were gaining strength: investigative journalists were bolder, the media freer, and the judiciary more independent of the executive. Amid the pandemic,ย a plethora of reports were published that state authorities were taking bribes to purchase sub-standard equipment and medicine and approve the construction of sub-standard infrastructure, including hospitals. Of course, Peruviansโ anger escalated.
All four presidents elected since 2000, scores of additional authorities, and more than half the members of the current legislature have been investigated. The president elected in 2016, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, resigned in 2018 to avoid impeachment due to his unreported dealings with Odebrecht. Kuczynski was succeeded by his first vice-president, Martรญn Vizcarra. Vizcarra championed the war against โthe traditional corrupt political classโ and, as a result, won hearty applause from the overwhelming majority of Peruvians.ย
At the same time, however, resistance was fierce, and politiciansโ tempersโshort in any case amid the pandemicโwere shorter yet amid long pre-trial detentions, frequent judicial delays, and inconsistent rulings. In October, allegations of corruption erupted against Vizcarra himself. Although these allegations were made by suspects in criminal cases aspiring to plea bargains and were not credible to most Peruvians, legislators were beguiled by the possibility of ousting the confrontational president.
Legislators were also considering their immediate political and financial interests. They were angry at the brevity of their terms (elected in January 2020, they are barred from re-election in 2021). Presidential and legislative elections are due in April 2021, and legislators hoped to delay the elections and tilt the electoral playing field in their favor. Further, numerous legislators had financial interests in for-profit universities that were threatened by newly introduced higher standards for universities.
On November 9, Vizcarra was impeached by Peruโs Congress, with 105 of 130 legislators in favor. As stipulated by Peruโs constitution, Vizcarra was succeeded by the Congressโs Speaker, Manuel Merino. A three-term legislator for the long-standing mainstream party Acciรณn Popular, Merino had no legislative achievements to his credit and was perceived as the embodiment of the โtraditional corrupt political class.โ His cabinet appointments were far to the right.
Immediately, Peruvians came together against Merino and made their voices heard. The protests were the most massive in Peru since the 1970s. The protestors hailed from all social classes and all regions of the country; more than one-third of Peruvians reported that they participated in some way. Millennials participated in huge numbers. โMerino does not represent usโ was one of the most common chants. When attempts at repression by the police led to two deaths and more than sixty injured, the protests intensified further.
The protests succeeded. Merinoโs coalition fragmented and ultimately his only recourse was to resign. In previous impeachments of Latin American presidents that polarized the countryโthe impeachment in Honduras in 2009, Paraguay in 2012, and Brazil in 2016โthe new, rightist governments were consolidated, but not in Peru.ย
The next challenge was to choose a new Congress Speaker who would succeed Merino as president. This time, legislators were sensitive to the transcendental importance of their decision, and on November 16, 2020, they rallied around a respected centrist, Francisco Sagasti. A policy analyst and professor with a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, Sagasti is a first-time legislator for the Partido Morado, the only party in the legislature that had voted in its entirety against Vizcarraโs impeachment. Like Sagasti, the new cabinet members are professionals with advanced degrees and considerable experience in their respective sectors.
But the problems that faced Vizcarra also face Sagasti. Sagasti and his ministers promised to dialogue, negotiate, and pursue common ground, and have done so to date. However, as the pandemic continues to rage, with its devastating toll on human life and the economy, it is vital that the government prioritize the battle against COVID-19. In the next few months, as the Biden administration shifts US foreign policy towards multilateralism, international support for the equitable supply of vaccine worldwide would be very helpful to redress the insufficient supply in Peru and other developing countries
Right now, Peruโs strategies for vaccine purchases (currently of Chinaโs Sinopharm) and distribution should be analyzed rigorously and explained thoroughly. Both to win the battle against COVID-19 and to restore citizensโ trust in government, immediate emergency funding for public health centers, conditional upon rapid vaccinations, is key. Draconian measures against vaccine-related corruption would also be very helpful to these ends.
In addition to the severe challenges posed by the pandemic, presidential and legislative elections are due in April. While the elections provide an alternative to protest, there is also the possibility that electoral authoritiesโ rulings will be deemed unfair, stoking tensions. Sagastiโs party, the Partido Morado, is a leading contender, and Sagasti will have to be careful to keep his promise of neutrality.
Turbulence is likely to continue in Peru in 2021โas, with similar triggers, it is likely to continue in much of the world. Without a commitment to Peru as a nation and without social trust, it is very difficult to build political organizations that bring leaders and citizens together and it is very difficult to build state capacity. Yet, it has often been pointed out that โThe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,โ and this has been true for Peru.
. . .
Cynthia McClintock is Professor of Political Science at George Washington University. She is the author of Electoral Rules and Democracy in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2018), Revolutionary Movements in Latin America: El Salvadorโs FMLN and Peruโs Shining Path (U.S. Institute of Peace, 1998), and Peasant Cooperatives and Political Change in Peru (Princeton University Press, 1981). She is also the co-editor of The Peruvian Experiment Reconsidered (Princeton University Press, 1983) and The United States and Peru: Cooperation at a Cost (Routledge, 2003). She was the President of the Latin American Studies Association in 1994-95, a member of the Council of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1999-2000, and Chair of APSAโs Section on Comparative Democratization in 2003-05. Awarded a Fulbright grant, she taught at the Catholic University in Peru in 1987, and in 2008 received the Orden del Sol del Perรบ (Order of the Sun of Peru, awarded by the Peruvian state for extraordinary contributions to Peru). In 2019, she won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Latin American Studies Associationโs Peru Section.
Image Credit: Congreso de la Repรบblica del Perรบย

The Biden administration is pursuing a plan to end the war in Yemen through diplomacy. Peace is essential for a country that has witnessed over a half-decade of battles, bombings,…

Six years after all combat positions were opened to women, the legality of a male-only draft registration awaits a potential Supreme Court review. Beyond this existing institutional constraint, a number…

Half a century after the end of its civil war, Nigeria is seeing a revival of the secessionist movement that started it. However, the cause that โBiafranโ activists espouse today…