Vladimir Cerrón, Peruvian left leader: “I thought Castillo would be more consistent” | General Secretary of Peru Libre, the party that led Pedro Castillo to the presidency

Page 12 in Peru

By Carlos Noriega

From Lima

In the midst of a serious crisis affecting the government of Pedro Castillo, he was attacked by the right who wanted to overthrow him.Complicated by allegations of corruption and wandering without defining policies of change, Page 12 talked with Vladimir Cheron, general secretary of Peru Libre (PL), the Marxist-Leninist party that brought Castillo to the presidency. The speech took place at his local party, in the center of Lima, a tight-knit house. “Peru Libre is no longer a government party” Cerrone says to start the conversation by indicating who his candidate is from the beginning and distance from the government.

Main character

Neurosurgeon graduated in CubaCerón was an important figure in Castillo’s political career. who chose him as the presidential candidate of PL. They met in 2017 when Castillo led a long teachers’ strike. Three years later, the trade unionist went in search of the General Secretary of the PL to ask him to be the Congress candidate for his party. A judicial conviction for corruption left Cerón as a presidential candidate and allowed Castillo to take his place.

“His victory – Cerrone says – confirms that it was a good choice. Then he was a bad president is a different story, that was not in my calculations. I thought it would be in line with popular fields, because it came from the teachers’ union, because of its peasant class origin.. His transformation amazed me. Not what he expected in the presidency, he showed as a candidate..

The split between Cerón and Castillo led to ups and downs and reconciliations. Castillo was kicked out of the PL a few weeks ago, through the mechanism of demanding his resignation. The party accuses him of abandoning the party programme, excluding it from the executive committee and encouraging a split in the PL parliamentary group to create his own political group. Despite this gap, Cerrone promises that they will not support impeachment of the president in Congress. “We criticize the policies of the government, but we are allies to protect the democratic process and we do not give way to a right-wing conspiracy that will happen by avoiding the removal of Castillo”. He describes the current political situation in the country as “very critical, dangerous and unpredictable”.

Research

The main leader of the PL announces that he will reverse his decision not to support the impeachment of the president if the corruption charges against Castillo, who has six open tax investigations, are proven. Now I could tell There is corruption in the environment closest to Castillo, but there is no indisputable evidence that Castillo was involved. In corruption. If that evidence emerges, that will be the breaking point, and in that case we will support Castillo’s impeachment.” Regarding the corruption charges against him, which include convictions and other ongoing processes in his case, Cerón describes them as “arbitrary” and “political persecution.”

But PL’s general secretary did not hesitate to describe Castillo as “an opportunist” after winning the election. He has abandoned the party. He defines the president as “a very impressionable person and unpredictable in his decisions.” “I’ve had situations where we’ve come to a seemingly solid agreement, and within five hours he’s changed to another completely opposite conclusion.”

Missing changes

Cerón accuses Castillo of “betraying the party’s program presented in the election campaign.” “This government – continues to apply the policies of the right, not a policy of the left, a reversal. Castillo talks about changes that never came. His speech veers between populism and irony. It is a neoliberal government.

Castillo’s neoliberal government, but he says the entire right wing is waging war on the government. “The war against Castillo is an ethnic war – he answers – discrimination against the Andean, against the peasants, because the economy is the main issue, the right-wing opposition has already been solved, because there is no change in it. Say it’s a left-wing government, or at least a progressive one. With that, those on the right Be quiet, but They want to topple him, not because Castillo can create policies for change, but because being in a solo government bothers them.”.

Cauvery

From Congress, the far-right is threatening to take control of the administration by impeaching Castillo, but Ceron says the risk is “important, but not the main risk.” “The main danger, the biggest threat, is caviar,” he repeats several times. “Caviar” is a term used by the right to disqualify progressivism. For Cheron, caviar is “the People who use the language of the left but live like big bosses working for US-funded NGOs.”. From the start, Cerón attacked Castillo’s progressive allies, who left the government a few months earlier. PL aligns with the far right in its attacks on progressivism.

Doesn’t that play right into the hands of the far right by joining forces with the far right to fight other factions of the left? “I don’t think we are playing with him. We don’t have an alliance with the far-right, it’s an arbitrary anti-Cavery coincidence to be there. We agree because we are fighting a common enemy, the Cauvery Left, Social Democracy. I can’t ally with Uzaid’s ally ‘Onejeros’.” We may agree with Fujimori and others, but Caviar is not on the left, they are our main enemy. Caviar is our main threat, the enemy, rather than the neo-fascist far-right”.

A few months ago when the new Constitutional Court (TC) was elected in Congress, PL He joined Fujimoriism and other right-wing groups in voting to appoint new judges. “In the previous TC, we from the PL had two sides against us, the judges from the right and the caviars who were the majority and very hostile to the PL. We are voting for new judges of the TC so that the caviars in the court would come out. Now instead of having two adversaries in the TC , there is an obvious enemy on the right, which is good for us,” Cerrone says to justify the vote.

Speaking at the international level of the left, Ceron points out that he does not deserve “caviar”. Alberto FernandezPresident of Chile Gabriel BoricGovernments Uruguay’s broad front And this The Puebla group “They are caviar”. De Lula says, “It’s an exceptional case, it’s a social democratic government, but a little more left-wing than others”. A Gustavo Pedro He sees it with “prospect” based on the fact that the new Colombian president “comes from the guerrillas and has experience dealing with the law.” He refers to the region’s current presidents, who are closest to Bolivian Luis Arce, “not to mention the Cuban government.” He also declared his sympathy with Nicolás Maduro.

against rights

His war against “caviar” is not the only coincidence of this radical Marxist right. Cerrone insists that she opposes policies that include sexism, same-sex marriage and abortion, even in cases of rape, and only condones them for therapeutic reasons. “We protect the family and the rights of the unborn,” she says. In that conservative line he adds: “Gender policies are part of a global agenda pushed by the US with its NGOs. Gender policies cannot be a priority for the left. The Left’s priority is to solve the socioeconomic problem. Until illiteracy, tuberculosis and infant mortality are addressed in Peru, state forces cannot address non-priority rights.”.

Returning to the urgency of the current political crisis, Cerrone says the president is in a position to deal with it. “Castillo must return to the party’s program of changes, which repeals the current 1993 constitution as a result of the Fujimori coup, convenes a Constituent Assembly, renegotiates contracts with transnational corporations, and implies a natural nationalization to increase profits for the state. Resources.” But he says he doesn’t think that will happen. “We are increasingly skeptical that this government will make a difference as the left proposes.”