Wikipedia Entry for Peru, Read by Jason
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Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon River. Peru has a population of over 32 million, and its capital and largest city is Lima. At 1,285,216 km2 (496,225 sq mi), Peru is the 19th largest country in the world, and the third largest in South America.
Peruvian territory was home to several cultures during the ancient and medieval periods, and has one of the longest histories of civilization of any country, tracing its heritage back to the 10th millennium BCE. Notable pre-colonial cultures and civilizations include the Caral-Supe civilization (the earliest civilization in the Americas and considered one of the cradles of civilization), the Nazca culture, the Wari and Tiwanaku empires, the Kingdom of Cusco, and the Inca Empire, the largest known state in the pre-Columbian Americas. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and Charles V established a viceroyalty with the official name of the Kingdom of Peru that encompassed most of its South American territories, with its capital in Lima. Higher education started in the Americas with the official establishment of the National University of San Marcos in Lima in 1551.
Peru formally proclaimed independence in 1821, and following the foreign military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar, and the decisive battle of Ayacucho, Peru completed its independence in 1824. In the ensuing years, the country first suffered from political instability until a period of relative economic and political stability began due to the exploitation of guano that ended with the War of the Pacific (1879–1884). Throughout the 20th century, Peru grappled with political and social instability, including the internal conflict between the state and guerrilla groups, interspersed with periods of economic growth. Implementation of Plan Verde shifted Peru towards neoliberal economics under the authoritarian rule of Alberto Fujimori and Vladimiro Montesinos in the 1990s, with the former's political ideology of Fujimorism leaving a lasting imprint on the country's governance that continues to present day. The 2000s marked economic expansion and poverty reduction, but the subsequent decade revealed long-existing sociopolitical vulnerabilities, exacerbated by a political crisis instigated by Congress and the COVID-19 pandemic, precipitating the period of unrest beginning in 2022. The sovereign state of Peru is a representative democratic republic divided into 25 regions. Its main economic activities include mining, manufacturing, agriculture and fishing, along with other growing sectors such as telecommunications and biotechnology. The country forms part of The Pacific Pumas, a political and economic grouping of countries along Latin America's Pacific coast that share common trends of positive growth, stable macroeconomic foundations, improved governance and an openness to global integration. Peru ranks high in social freedom; it is an active member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Pacific Alliance, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and the World Trade Organization; and is considered as a middle power. Peru has a population that includes Mestizos, Amerindians, Europeans, Africans and Asians. The main spoken language is Spanish, although a significant number of Peruvians speak Quechuan languages, Aymara, or other Indigenous languages. This mixture of cultural traditions has resulted in a wide diversity of expressions in fields such as art, cuisine, literature, and music.
The name of the country may be derived from Birú, the name of a local ruler who lived near the Bay of San Miguel, Panama City, in the early 16th century. Spanish conquistadors, who arrived in 1522, believed this was the southernmost part of the New World. When Francisco Pizarro invaded the regions farther south, they came to be designated Birú or Perú. An alternative history is provided by the contemporary writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an Inca princess and a conquistador. He said the name Birú was that of a common Amerindian who was happened upon by the crew of a ship on an exploratory mission for governor Pedro Arias Dávila and went on to relate more instances of misunderstandings due to the lack of a common language. The Spanish Crown gave the name legal status with the 1529 Capitulación de Toledo, which designated the newly encountered Inca Empire as the province of Peru. In 1561, the rebel Lope de Aguirre declared himself the "Prince" of an independent Peru, which was cut short by his arrest and execution. Under Spanish rule, the country adopted the denomination Viceroyalty of Peru, which became the Peruvian Republic from its independence until 1979, when it adopted its current name of Republic of Peru.
The earliest evidences of human presence in Peruvian territory have been dated to approximately 12,500 BCE in the Huaca Prieta settlement. Andean societies were based on agriculture, using techniques such as irrigation and terracing; camelid husbandry and fishing were also important. Organization relied on reciprocity and redistribution because these societies had no notion of market or money. The oldest known complex society in Peru, the Caral/Norte Chico civilization, flourished along the coast of the Pacific Ocean between 3,000 and 1,800 BCE. These early developments were followed by archaeological cultures that developed mostly around the coastal and Andean regions throughout Peru. The Cupisnique culture which flourished from around 1000 to 200 BCE along what is now Peru's Pacific coast was an example of early pre-Inca culture.
The Chavín culture that developed from 1500 to 300 BCE was probably more of a religious than a political phenomenon, with their religious center in Chavín de Huantar. After the decline of the Chavin culture around the beginning of the 1st century CE, a series of localized and specialized cultures rose and fell, both on the coast and in the highlands, during the next thousand years. On the coast, these included the civilizations of the Paracas, Nazca, Wari, and the more outstanding Chimu and Moche.
The Moche, who reached their apogee in the first millennium CE, were renowned for their irrigation system which fertilized their arid terrain, their sophisticated ceramic pottery, their lofty buildings, and clever metalwork. The Chimu were the great city builders of pre-Inca civilization; as a loose confederation of walled cities scattered along the coast of northern Peru, the Chimu flourished from about 1140 to 1450. Their capital was at Chan Chan outside of modern-day Trujillo. In the highlands, both the Tiahuanaco culture, near Lake Titicaca in both Peru and Bolivia, and the Wari culture, near the present-day city of Ayacucho, developed large urban settlements and wide-ranging state systems between 500 and 1000 CE. In the 15th century, the Incas emerged as a powerful state which, in the span of a century, formed the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas with their capital in Cusco. The Incas of Cusco originally represented one of the small and relatively minor ethnic groups, the Quechuas. Gradually, as early as the thirteenth century, they began to expand and incorporate their neighbors. Inca expansion was slow until about the middle of the fifteenth century, when the pace of conquest began to accelerate, particularly under the rule of the emperor Pachacuti. Under his rule and that of his son, Topa Inca Yupanqui, the Incas came to control most of the Andean region, with a population of 9 to 16 million inhabitants under their rule. Pachacuti also promulgated a comprehensive code of laws to govern his far-flung empire, while consolidating his absolute temporal and spiritual authority as the God of the Sun who ruled from a magnificently rebuilt Cusco. From 1438 to 1533, the Incas used a variety of methods, from conquest to peaceful assimilation, to incorporate a large portion of western South America, centered on the Andean mountain ranges, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, between the Pacific Ocean in the west and the Amazon rainforest in the east. The official language of the empire was Quechua, although hundreds of local languages and dialects were spoken. The Inca referred to their empire as Tawantinsuyu which can be translated as "The Four Regions" or "The Four United Provinces. " Many local forms of worship persisted in the empire, most of them concerning local sacred Huacas, but the Inca leadership encouraged the worship of Inti, the sun god and imposed its sovereignty above other cults such as that of Pachamama. The Incas considered their King, the Sapa Inca, to be the "child of the sun. "
Atahualpa (also Atahuallpa), the last Sapa Inca, became emperor when he defeated and executed his older half-brother Huáscar in a civil war sparked by the death of their father, Inca Huayna Capac. In December 1532, a party of conquistadors (supported by the Chankas, Huancas, Cañaris and Chachapoyas as Indian auxiliaries) led by Francisco Pizarro defeated and captured the Inca Emperor Atahualpa in the Battle of Cajamarca. The Spanish conquest of Peru was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. After years of preliminary exploration and military conflicts, it was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting but ended in Spanish victory and colonization of the region known as the Viceroyalty of Peru with its capital at Lima, which was then known as "La Ciudad de los Reyes" (The City of Kings). The conquest of Peru led to spin-off campaigns throughout the viceroyalty as well as expeditions towards the Amazon Basin as in the case of Spanish efforts to quell Amerindian resistance. The last Inca resistance was suppressed when the Spaniards annihilated the Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba in 1572.
The Indigenous population dramatically collapsed overwhelmingly due to epidemic diseases introduced by the Spanish as well as exploitation and socio-economic change. Viceroy Francisco de Toledo reorganized the country in the 1570s with gold and silver mining as its main economic activity and Amerindian forced labor as its primary workforce. With the discovery of the great silver and gold lodes at Potosí (present-day Bolivia) and Huancavelica, the viceroyalty flourished as an important provider of mineral resources. Peruvian bullion provided revenue for the Spanish Crown and fueled a complex trade network that extended as far as Europe and the Philippines. The commercial and population exchanges between Latin America and Asia undergone via the Manila Galleons transiting through Acapulco, had Callao at Peru as the furthest endpoint of the trade route in the Americas. In relation to this, Don Sebastian Hurtado de Corcuera, governor of Panama was also responsible for settling Zamboanga City in the Philippines, which now speak a Spanish Creole by employing Peruvian soldiers and colonists. Because of lack of available workforce, African slaves were added to the labor population. The expansion of a colonial administrative apparatus and bureaucracy paralleled the economic reorganization. With the conquest started the spread of Christianity in South America; most people were forcefully converted to Catholicism, with Spanish clerics believing like Puritan divines of English colonies later that the Native Peoples "had been corrupted by the Devil, who was working "through them to frustrate" their foundations. It only took a generation to convert the population. They built churches in every city and replaced some of the Inca temples with churches, such as the Coricancha in the city of Cusco. The church employed the Inquisition, making use of torture to ensure that newly converted Catholics did not stray to other religions or beliefs, and monastery schools, educating girls, especially of the Inca nobility and upper class, "until they were old enough either to profess or to leave the monastery and assume the role ('estado') in the Christian society that their fathers planned to erect" in Peru. Peruvian Catholicism follows the syncretism found in many Latin American countries, in which religious native rituals have been integrated with Christian celebrations. In this endeavor, the church came to play an important role in the acculturation of the Natives, drawing them into the cultural orbit of the Spanish settlers.
By the 18th century, declining silver production and economic diversification greatly diminished royal income. In response, the Crown enacted the Bourbon Reforms, a series of edicts that increased taxes and partitioned the Viceroyalty. The new laws provoked Túpac Amaru II's rebellion and other revolts, all of which were suppressed. As a result of these and other changes, the Spaniards and their creole successors came to monopolize control over the land, seizing many of the best lands abandoned by the massive native depopulation. However, the Spanish did not resist the Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian. The Treaty of Tordesillas was rendered meaningless between 1580 and 1640 while Spain controlled Portugal. The need to ease communication and trade with Spain led to the split of the viceroyalty and the creation of new viceroyalties of New Granada and Rio de la Plata at the expense of the territories that formed the Viceroyalty of Peru; this reduced the power, prominence and importance of Lima as the viceroyal capital and shifted the lucrative Andean trade to Buenos Aires and Bogotá, while the fall of the mining and textile production accelerated the progressive decay of the Viceroyalty of Peru.
Eventually, the viceroyalty would dissolve, as with much of the Spanish empire, when challenged by national independence movements at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These movements led to the formation of the majority of modern-day countries of South America in the territories that at one point or another had constituted the Viceroyalty of Peru. The conquest and colony brought a mix of cultures and ethnicities that did not exist before the Spanish conquered the Peruvian territory. Even though many of the Inca traditions were lost or diluted, new customs, traditions and knowledge were added, creating a rich mixed Peruvian culture. Two of the most important Indigenous rebellions against the Spanish were that of Juan Santos Atahualpa in 1742, and Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II in 1780 around the highlands near Cuzco.
In the early 19th century, while most South American nations were swept by wars of independence, Peru remained a royalist stronghold. As the elite vacillated between emancipation and loyalty to the Spanish monarchy, independence was achieved only after the occupation by military campaigns of José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar.
The economic crises, the loss of power of Spain in Europe, the war of independence in North America, and Native uprisings all contributed to a favorable climate to the development of emancipation ideas among the Criollo population in South America. However, the Criollo oligarchy in Peru enjoyed privileges and remained loyal to the Spanish Crown. The liberation movement started in Argentina where autonomous juntas were created as a result of the loss of authority of the Spanish government over its colonies.
After fighting for the independence of the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata, José de San Martín created the Army of the Andes and crossed the Andes in 21 days. Once in Chile, he joined forces with Chilean army General Bernardo O'Higgins and liberated the country in the battles of Chacabuco and Maipú in 1818. On 7 September 1820, a fleet of eight warships arrived in the port of Paracas under the command of General José de San Martin and Thomas Cochrane, who was serving in the Chilean Navy. Immediately on 26 October, they took control of the town of Pisco. San Martin settled in Huacho on 12 November, where he established his headquarters while Cochrane sailed north and blockaded the port of Callao in Lima. At the same time in the north, Guayaquil was occupied by rebel forces under the command of Gregorio Escobedo. Because Peru was the stronghold of the Spanish government in South America, San Martin's strategy to liberate Peru was to use diplomacy. He sent representatives to Lima urging the Viceroy that Peru be granted independence, however, all negotiations proved unsuccessful.
The Viceroy of Peru, Joaquín de la Pazuela named José de la Serna commander-in-chief of the loyalist army to protect Lima from the threatened invasion by San Martin. On 29 January, de la Serna organized a coup against de la Pazuela, which was recognized by Spain and he was named Viceroy of Peru. This internal power struggle contributed to the success of the liberating army. To avoid a military confrontation, San Martin met the newly appointed viceroy, José de la Serna, and proposed to create a constitutional monarchy, a proposal that was turned down. De la Serna abandoned the city, and on 12 July 1821, San Martin occupied Lima and declared Peruvian independence on 28 July 1821. He created the first Peruvian flag. Upper Peru (Bolivia) remained as a Spanish stronghold until the army of Simón Bolívar liberated it three years later. José de San Martin was declared Protector of Peru. Peruvian national identity was forged during this period, as Bolivarian projects for a Latin American Confederation floundered and a union with Bolivia proved ephemeral. Simon Bolivar launched his campaign from the north, liberating the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the Battles of Carabobo in 1821 and Pichincha a year later. In July 1822, Bolivar and San Martin gathered in the Guayaquil Conference. Bolivar was left in charge of fully liberating Peru while San Martin retired from politics after the first parliament was assembled. The newly founded Peruvian Congress named Bolivar dictator of Peru, giving him the power to organize the military.
With the help of Antonio José de Sucre, they defeated the larger Spanish army in the Battle of Junín on 6 August 1824 and the decisive Battle of Ayacucho on 9 December of the same year, consolidating the independence of Peru and Alto Peru. Alto Peru was later established as Bolivia. During the early years of the Republic, endemic struggles for power between military leaders caused political instability.
From the 1840s to the 1860s, Peru enjoyed a period of stability under the presidency of Ramón Castilla, through increased state revenues from guano exports. However, by the 1870s, these resources had been depleted, the country was heavily indebted, and political in-fighting was again on the rise. Peru embarked on a railroad-building program that helped but also bankrupted the country.
In 1879, Peru entered the War of the Pacific which lasted until 1884. Bolivia invoked its alliance with Peru against Chile. The Peruvian Government tried to mediate the dispute by sending a diplomatic team to negotiate with the Chilean government, but the committee concluded that war was inevitable. Chile declared war on 5 April 1879. Almost five years of war ended with the loss of the department of Tarapacá and the provinces of Tacna and Arica, in the Atacama region. Two outstanding military leaders throughout the war were Francisco Bolognesi and Miguel Grau. Originally Chile committed to a referendum for the cities of Arica and Tacna to be held years later, to self determine their national affiliation. However, Chile refused to apply the Treaty, and neither of the countries could determine the statutory framework. After the War of the Pacific, an extraordinary effort of rebuilding began. The government started to initiate a number of social and economic reforms to recover from the damage of the war. Political stability was achieved only in the early 1900s.
Internal struggles after the war were followed by a period of stability under the Civilista Party, which lasted until the onset of the authoritarian regime of Augusto B. Leguía. The Great Depression caused the downfall of Leguía, renewed political turmoil, and the emergence of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA). The rivalry between this organization and a coalition of the elite and the military defined Peruvian politics for the following three decades. A final peace treaty in 1929, signed between Peru and Chile called the Treaty of Lima, returned Tacna to Peru. Between 1932 and 1933, Peru was engulfed in a year-long war with Colombia over a territorial dispute involving the Amazonas Department and its capital Leticia.
Later, in 1941, Peru and Ecuador fought the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War, after which the Rio Protocol sought to formalize the boundary between those two countries. In a military coup on 29 October 1948, General Manuel A. Odría became president. Odría's presidency was known as the Ochenio. He came down hard on APRA, momentarily pleasing the oligarchy and all others on the right, but followed a populist course that won him great favor with the poor and lower classes. A thriving economy allowed him to indulge in expensive but crowd-pleasing social policies. At the same time, however, civil rights were severely restricted and corruption was rampant throughout his regime. Odría was succeeded by Manuel Prado Ugarteche. However, widespread allegations of fraud prompted the Peruvian military to depose Prado and install a military junta, via a coup d'état led by Ricardo Pérez Godoy. Godoy ran a short transitional government and held new elections in 1963, which were won by Fernando Belaúnde Terry who assumed presidency until 1968. Belaúnde was recognized for his commitment to the democratic process.
On October 3, 1968, another coup d'état led by a group of officers led by General Juan Velasco Alvarado brought the army to power with the aim of applying a doctrine of "social progress and integral development", nationalist and reformist, influenced by the CEPAL theses on dependence and underdevelopment. Six days after the golpe, Velasco proceeded to nationalize the International Petroleum Corporation (IPC), the North American company that exploited Peruvian oil, and then launched a reform of the state apparatus, an agrarian reform. It was the biggest agrarian reform ever undertaken in Latin America: it abolished the latifunda system and modernized agriculture through a more equitable redistribution of land (90% of the peasants formed cooperatives or agricultural societies of social interest). Land was to be owned by those who cultivated it, and large landowners were expropriated. The only large properties allowed were cooperatives. Between 1969 and 1976, 325,000 families received land from the state with an average size of 73.6 acres. The "revolutionary government" also planned massive investments in education, elevated the Quechua language – spoken by nearly half the population but hitherto despised by the authorities – to a status equivalent to that of Spanish and established equal rights for natural children. Peru wished to free itself from any dependence and carried out a third-world foreign policy. The United States responded with commercial, economic and diplomatic pressure. In 1973, Peru seemed to triumph over the financial blockade imposed by Washington by negotiating a loan from the International Development Bank to finance its agricultural and mining development policy. The relations with Chile became very tense after the coup d'état of the general Pinochet. General Edgardo Mercado Jarrin (Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Army) and Admiral Guillermo Faura Gaig (Minister of the Navy) both escaped assassination attempts within weeks of each other. In 1975, General Francisco Morales Bermúdez Cerruti seized power and broke with the policies of his predecessor. His regime occasionally participated in Operation Condor in collaboration with other American military dictatorships. Peru engaged in a two week long conflict with Ecuador during the Paquisha War in early 1981 as a result of territorial dispute between the two countries. The economic policy President Alan García distanced Peru from international markets further, resulting in lower foreign investment in the country. After the country experienced chronic inflation, the Peruvian currency, the sol, was replaced by the Inti in mid-1985, which itself was later replaced by the nuevo sol in July 1991, at which time the new sol had a cumulative value of one billion old soles. The per capita annual income of Peruvians fell to $720 (below the level of 1960) and Peru's GDP dropped 20% at which national reserves were a negative $900 million. The economic turbulence of the time acerbated social tensions in Peru and partly contributed to the rise of violent rebel rural insurgent movements, like Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and MRTA, which caused great havoc throughout the country. The Shining Path had appeared in the universities in the 1970s. These students, many of them from peasant backgrounds, then returned to their communities and organized local party committees. The abandonment by the state of certain rural regions favored the establishment of the party. In June 1979, demonstrations for free education were severely repressed by the army: 18 people were killed according to the official report, but non-governmental estimates put the death toll at several dozen. This event led to a radicalization of political protests in the countryside and eventually to the outbreak of armed struggle. After the beginning of the armed struggle, the new recruits of the Shining Path were generally peasants with little political background, rather than truly political militants. The Peruvian armed forces grew frustrated with the inability of the García administration to handle the nation's crises and drafted Plan Verde – which involved the genocide of impoverished and indigenous Peruvians, the control or censorship of the media in Peru and the establishment of a neoliberal economy controlled by a military junta in Peru – as an effort to overthrow his government. Alberto Fujimori assumed the presidency in 1990 and according to Rospigliosi, the head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN) General Edwin "Cucharita" Díaz and Vladimiro Montesinos played a key role with making President Fujimori abide by the military's demands while "an understanding was established between Fujimori, Montesinos and some of the military officers" involved in Plan Verde prior to Fujimori's inauguration. Fujimori would go on to adopt many of the policies outlined in Plan Verde. Fujimori's policies, prescribed by Hernando de Soto, led to the immediate suffering of poor Peruvians who saw unregulated prices increase rapidly, with those living in poverty seeing prices increase so much that they could no longer afford food. De Soto advocated for the collapse of Peru's society, with the economist saying that a civil crisis was necessary to support the policies of Fujimori. These drastic measures caused inflation to drop from 7,650% in 1990 to 139% in 1991 and 57% in 1992. The description of Fujimori's economic achievements as a "Peruvian miracle" was exaggerated and inequality persisted following his presidency. Due to his controversial governance, Fujimori faced opposition to his reform efforts and utilized coup proposals from Plan Verde, dissolving Congress, suspending the judiciary, arresting several opposition leaders and assuming full powers in the auto-golpe ("self-coup") of 5 April 1992. He then revised the constitution; called new congressional elections; and implemented substantial economic reform, including privatization of numerous state-owned companies, creation of an investment-friendly climate, and sound management of the economy. Fujimori's administration was dogged by insurgent groups, most notably Shining Path, which carried out attacks across the country throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Fujimori cracked down on the insurgents and was successful in largely quelling them by the late 1990s, but the fight was marred by atrocities committed by both the Peruvian security forces and the insurgents: the Barrios Altos massacre and La Cantuta massacre by Government paramilitary groups, and the bombings of Tarata and Frecuencia Latina by Sendero Luminoso. Fujimori would also broaden the definition of terrorism in an effort to criminalize as many actions possible to persecute left-wing political opponents. Using the terruqueo, a fearmongering tactic that was used to accuse opponents of terrorism, Fujimori established a cult of personality by portraying himself as a hero and made left-wing ideologies an eternal enemy in Peru. Those incidents subsequently came to symbolize the human rights violations committed in the last years of violence. His Programa Nacional de Población – an implementation of one of Plan Verde's proposals for the "total extermination" of impoverished Peruvians that would possibly be sympathetic to insurgent groups – also resulted with the forced sterilization of at least 300,000 poor and indigenous women. In early 1995, once again Peru and Ecuador clashed in the Cenepa War, but in 1998 the governments of both nations signed a peace treaty that clearly demarcated the international boundary between them. In November 2000, Fujimori resigned from office and went into a self-imposed exile, initially avoiding prosecution for human rights violations and corruption charges by the new Peruvian authorities.
Into the new century, Peru tried to fight corruption while sustaining economic growth, though Fujimorism held power over much of Peruvian society through maintaining control of institutions and legislation created in the 1993 constitution, which was written by Fujimori and his supporters without opposition participation. In spite of human rights progress since the time of insurgency, many problems are still visible and show the continued marginalization of those who suffered through the violence of the Peruvian conflict. A caretaker government presided over by Valentín Paniagua took on the responsibility of conducting new presidential and congressional elections. Afterwards Alejandro Toledo became president in 2001 to 2006. On 28 July 2006, former president Alan García became President of Peru after winning the 2006 elections. In 2006, Alberto Fujimori's daughter, Keiko Fujimori, entered Peru's political arena to continue her father's legacy and espouse Fujimorism. In May 2008, Peru became a member of the Union of South American Nations. In April 2009, former president Alberto Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad during his government's battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. During the presidencies of Ollanta Humala, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Martín Vizcarra, the right-wing Congress led by Keiko Fujimori obstructed much of the actions performed by the presidents. On 5 June 2011, Ollanta Humala was elected president, with his cabinet being successfully censured by the Fujimorist Congress. Beginning with Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Congress used broadly interpreted impeachment wording in the 1993 Constitution of Peru that allowed impeachment of the president without cause to place pressure on the president, forcing him to resign in 2018 amid various controversies surrounding his administration. Vice president Martín Vizcarra then assumed office in March 2018 with generally favorable approval ratings as he led the anti-corruption constitutional referendum movement. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted with Peru experiencing the highest death rate from COVID-19 in the world, exposing much of the inequality that persisted since the Fujimori administration and triggering an economic crisis that led to Vizcara's removal from the presidency by Congress. Widely seen as a coup by Congress, its head, the newly seated President Manuel Merino, faced protests across the country, and after five days, Merino resigned from the presidency. Merino was replaced by President Francisco Sagasti, who led a provisional, centrist government, and enforced many of Vizcarra's former policies. Elections were held on 11 April 2021, and Pedro Castillo of the Free Peru party won the first round, followed closely by Keiko Fujimori, with right-wing parties allied with Fujimori maintaining positions in Congress. Fujimori received support during the election from Lima's elite, evangelical Christians, businesses, media organizations, and the armed forces.
On 28 July 2021, Pedro Castillo was sworn in as the new president of Peru after a narrow win in a tightly contested run-off election. That same year, Peru celebrated the bicentenary of independence. Castillo faced multiple impeachment votes during his presidency from the right-wing controlled Congress and on 7 December 2022, just hours before Congress was set to begin a third impeachment effort, Castillo tried to prevent this by attempting to dissolve the opposition-controlled legislature and create an "exceptional emergency government. " In response, Congress quickly held an emergency session on the same day, during which it voted 101–6 (with 10 abstentions) to remove Castillo from office and replace him with Vice President Dina Boluarte. She became the country's first female president. Castillo was arrested after trying to flee to the Mexican embassy and was charged with the crime of rebellion. The Boluarte government proved unpopular as she allied herself with the right-wing Congress and the military, betraying her constituents. This resentment led to the 2022–2023 Peruvian political protests, which sought the removal of Boluarte and Congress, immediate general elections and the writing of a new constitution. Authorities responded to the protests violently, with the Ayacucho massacre and Juliaca massacre occurring at this time, resulting with the most violence experienced in the nation in over two decades. The strong response by the political elite in Lima raised concerns that they sought to establish an authoritarian or civilian-military government.
Peru is a unitary semi-presidential republic with a multi-party system. The country has maintained a liberal democratic system under its 1993 Constitution, which replaced a constitution that leaned the government to a federation to authorize more power to the president. It is also a unitary republic, in which the central government holds the most power and can create administrative divisions. The Peruvian system of government combines elements derived from the political systems of the United States (a written constitution, an autonomous Supreme court, and a presidential system) and the People's Republic of China (a unicameral congress, a premier and ministry system). The Peruvian government is separated into three branches:
Legislature: the unicameral Congress of Peru, consisting of 130 members of Congress (on a basis of population), the president of Congress, and the Permanent Commission;
Executive: the president, the Council of Ministers, which in practice controls domestic legislation and serve as a Cabinet to the president, consisting of the prime minister and 18 ministers of the state;
Judiciary: the Supreme Court of Peru, also known as the Royal Audencia of Lima, composed of 18 justices including a supreme justice, along with 28 superior courts, 195 trial courts, and 1,838 district courts. Under its constitution, the president of Peru is both head of state and government and is elected to a five-year term without immediate reelection. The president appoints ministers who oversee the 18 ministries of the state, including the prime minister, into the Cabinet. The constitution designates minimal authority to the prime minister, who presides over cabinet meetings in which ministers advise the president and acts as a spokesperson on behalf of the executive branch. The president is also able to pose questions of confidence to the Congress of Peru, and consequently order the dissolution of congress, done in 1992 by Alberto Fujimori and in 2019 by Martín Vizcarra.
In the Congress of Peru, there are 130 Members of Congress from 25 administrative divisions, determined by respective population, elected to five-year terms. Bills are proposed by the executive and legislative powers and become law through a plurality vote in Congress. The judiciary is nominally independent, though political intervention into judicial matters has been common throughout history. The Congress of Peru can also pass a motion of no confidence, censure ministers, as well as initiate impeachments and convict executives. Due to broadly interpreted impeachment wording in the 1993 Constitution of Peru, the legislative branch can impeach the president without cause, effectively making the executive branch subject to Congress. In recent times, the legislative body has passed semi-successful impeachment and two successful impeachments; Alberto Fujimori resigned prior to removal in 2000, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned in 2018, Martín Vizcarra was removed from office in 2020 and Pedro Castillo was removed in 2022. Following a ruling in February 2023 by the Constitutional Court of Peru, whose members are elected by Congress, judicial oversight of the legislative body was also removed by the court, essentially giving Congress absolute control of Peru's government. Peru's electoral system uses compulsory voting for citizens from the age of 18 to 70, including dual-citizens and Peruvians abroad. Members of Congress are directly elected by constituents in respective districts through proportional voting. The president is elected in a general election, along with the vice president, through a majority in a two-round system. Elections are observed and organized by the National Jury of Elections, National Office of Electoral Processes, and the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status. Peru uses a multi-party system for congressional and general elections. Major groups that have formed governments, both on a federal and legislative level, are parties that have historically adopted economic liberalism, progressivism, right-wing populism (specifically Fujimorism), nationalism, and reformism. The most recent general election was held on 11 April 2021 and resulted in Free Peru winning the most seats in Congress, although it fell well short of a majority. A presidential runoff between Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori took place on 5 June 2021 and resulted in the victory of Castillo.
