[2000 - Present] The Modern Democratic Challenge

The story of Peru in the twenty-first century begins not with a bang, but with the grainy, clandestine flicker of a video recording. As the year 2000 unfolded, the nation was in the tenth year of President Alberto Fujimori's iron-fisted rule. To the outside world, he was the man who had tamed hyperinflation and crushed the brutal Shining Path insurgency. But within Peru, the air was thick with whispers of corruption and authoritarianism. The whispers became a roar in September 2000 when a video was leaked to the public. It showed Fujimori's intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, coolly handing over $15,000 in cash to an opposition congressman, buying his loyalty. This was just the first of the infamous “Vladivideos,” a trove of secret recordings that exposed the rot at the core of the state. The scandal was a dam break. The illusion of stability shattered, revealing a system built on bribes and blackmail. Mass protests, led by a student movement and a charismatic political challenger named Alejandro Toledo, erupted in the streets of Lima. This was the March of the Four Suyos, a name evoking the four corners of the ancient Inca Empire, symbolizing a unified national rejection of the regime. Hemmed in, Fujimori fled to Japan in November, faxing his resignation from a Tokyo hotel room. A decade of control had evaporated in a matter of weeks, leaving Peruvians with a dizzying mix of hope and trepidation as they faced the challenge of building a democracy from the ruins. Alejandro Toledo, a man of humble Andean origins who had risen to become a Stanford-educated economist, embodied that hope. In 2001, he became Peru's first democratically elected president of Indigenous descent, a moment of profound symbolic power. His presidency rode the wave of a global commodities boom. The price of copper, gold, and other minerals soared, and Peru's economy, which had been liberalized under Fujimori, took off. For a time, it was one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America, with GDP growth averaging over 6% annually during the decade. New shopping malls, gleaming with glass and steel, sprouted in Lima, a stark contrast to the crumbling colonial architecture nearby. The burgeoning middle class could suddenly afford cars, foreign travel, and imported electronics. Yet, this prosperity was a shallow river. It flowed robustly through the coastal cities but barely trickled into the highlands and the Amazon, where poverty and inequality remained deeply entrenched. Toledo’s administration established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the horrors of the internal conflict of the 1980s and 90s, a crucial step toward national healing. But his government was also dogged by its own scandals and a perceived disconnect from the very people he claimed to represent, leaving a sense of unfulfilled promise by the time his term ended in 2006. Peruvian politics then took a turn that stunned many observers. The 2006 election saw the return of a ghost from a past era: Alan García. His first presidency in the late 1980s was a national trauma, remembered for hyperinflation that reached an insane 7,649% in 1990, rampant terrorism, and economic collapse. Now, repackaged as a seasoned statesman and a convert to fiscal conservatism, he won a second term. García doubled down on the free-market model, aggressively promoting foreign investment, especially in the extractive industries. The economy continued its impressive run. But this relentless push for resource extraction set the state on a collision course with Indigenous communities in the Amazon. In 2009, this tension exploded in an event known as the “Baguazo.” Indigenous groups, protesting new laws that opened their ancestral lands to oil and mining companies without consultation, blockaded a remote highway. The government response was violent. The resulting clashes left over 30 people dead, including 23 police officers and at least 10 civilians. The Baguazo was a deep wound, a tragic reminder of the chasm between the political elites in Lima and the realities of life in rural Peru, a conflict over whose vision of development would prevail. The pendulum swung again in 2011. Ollanta Humala, a former army officer who had once led a failed rebellion against Fujimori, was elected president. He campaigned from the left, promising a “Great Transformation” that would redistribute the country's mineral wealth and prioritize social inclusion. His victory terrified the business establishment, who feared a return to the statist policies of the 1970s. But once in office, Humala governed from the pragmatic center-right, maintaining the core economic model of his predecessors. While he disappointed his leftist base, he did expand social programs, such as “Pensión 65,” which provided a small stipend to the elderly poor, and “Beca 18,” offering scholarships to talented students from low-income families. These programs made a real difference in the daily lives of many. However, the fundamental structure of the economy remained unchanged, and by the time his term ended, the great transformation felt more like a minor adjustment. It was also during this period that the seeds of the next great crisis were quietly sprouting. A massive, region-wide corruption scandal centered on the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht was about to detonate, and Peru was at its epicenter. The Odebrecht scandal, which broke into full public view around 2016, was not just another corruption case; it was a political apocalypse. The company admitted to paying nearly $30 million in bribes in Peru over a decade, but investigations would reveal a far deeper rot. The scandal implicated a stunning succession of the nation's leaders. Every single living former president who had governed since 2001—Toledo, García, Humala, and his successor, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK)—was investigated for allegedly taking money from the construction conglomerate. The crisis plunged Peru into a period of unprecedented political instability, a dizzying presidential revolving door. PPK, a former World Bank economist, was elected in 2016 but was forced to resign in 2018 to avoid impeachment. His vice president, Martín Vizcarra, took over and became a popular anti-corruption crusader, even dissolving Congress in 2019. But in a shocking twist, he too was impeached and removed from office in November 2020 by that same new Congress on flimsy, unproven corruption charges. What followed was a week of national trauma and civic pride. The man who replaced Vizcarra, the conservative congressional speaker Manuel Merino, was seen as a usurper. A massive wave of protests, led overwhelmingly by young Peruvians who had grown up in this era of cynical politics, flooded the streets. They were not organized by political parties but by social media, a generation communicating through Instagram and TikTok, demanding a democracy they could believe in. After a brutal police crackdown left two young protesters, Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado, dead, the nation's outrage was absolute. Merino’s government collapsed, and he resigned after just five days in power. The image of a nation refusing to accept a congressional coup became a defining moment. An elderly, respected engineer, Francisco Sagasti, was installed as an interim president to calm the waters and guide the country to the 2021 elections. Those elections only deepened the nation's fractures. In a contest that pitted the far-left against the far-right, Peruvians chose Pedro Castillo, a rural schoolteacher and union activist with no prior experience in national government. His victory, by a razor-thin margin of just over 44,000 votes, represented the profound frustration of the country’s forgotten rural and poor populations. His presidency, however, was chaotic from the start. Beset by a hostile Congress, constant cabinet turnover, and multiple corruption investigations, his administration was paralyzed. In a desperate, ill-conceived move in December 2022, Castillo attempted a “self-coup,” announcing he was dissolving Congress and would rule by decree. The move was eerily reminiscent of Fujimori’s in 1992, but this time, it failed spectacularly. The nation's institutions, including the military and his own ministers, refused to back him. Within hours, he was impeached by Congress and arrested while trying to seek asylum at the Mexican embassy. His vice president, Dina Boluarte, assumed the presidency, but her government was met with furious protests, especially in the south, leading to a violent state response that has left dozens dead and the country in a continued state of fragile, bitter polarization. The democratic challenge, born in the year 2000, continues, a testament to the resilience of a people who have weathered economic booms and political chaos, who repeatedly take to the streets to demand a government worthy of their history and their future.