Peru president’s power grab recalls country’s dark past

LIMA, Peru — Peru’s ousted President Pedro Castillo rose to power 17 months ago as a populist outsider. But he squandered what little popularity he had when he stunned the nation by dissolving Congress in an act of political suicide that recalled some of the darkest days of the nation’s anti-democratic past.

At a court appearance Thursday, a judge ordered Castillo held on charges of rebellion in the same Lima prison where Alberto Fujimori remains incarcerated 30 years after the former strongman sent tanks and soldiers in a far more forceful attempt to close the legislature.

Castillo, 53, looked downcast as he gave simple “yes” or “no” answers to the judge’s questions.

Most Peruvians took the ouster in stride, with the streets in downtown Lima calm as residents went about their business. Late in the day a few hundred Castillo supporters marched peacefully toward the Congress, where they were blocked by riot police firing tear gas.

Meanwhile, his successor, Dina Boluarte, began the difficult task of trying to rally Peruvians behind institutions gutted for years by endemic corruption and mistrust.

Boluarte, a Marxist lawyer who was Castillo’s vice president, now becomes the country’s sixth president in as many years. She’s the first woman to lead the South American country of 33 million and the only one fluent in Quechua, the Indigenous language spoken by Peru’s poor.

With polls showing Peruvians despising Congress even more than they do Castillo, Boluarte appealed for a “truce” from the political feuding that has paralyzed Peru for years.