As a Peruvian political scientist, I suffer from a chronic ailment: explaining teh politics of my country to a foreigner. As in the old phrase, everything solid vanished into air. The categories that usually provide points of support for political analysis – ideologies, parties, institutions, strategies, actors – crumbled until they meant nothing. A policy emptied of all content. The most serious things simply happen, no one plans them and, even less, has the capacity to control them. They abyss like an avalanche without a channel.
This is what happened last Thursday. Dina Boluarte was vacated in a matter of hours. At noon, no one believed that Congress would impeach her. At three in the afternoon there were more than two-thirds of the Legislature in favor of the proposal and at four a unanimous vote against the president was anticipated. It occurred. Without further ado. No plot, betrayal or Florentine compromise was necessary. On Wednesday no one thought about this, on Thursday she was no longer president.
Within the framework of the Peruvian political emptying, what happened is explained much more from the psychology of the (congressional) mob than from political science.What happened is more like an emotional stampede than a coup d’état,putsch or any other customary concept.
It was not convenient for the “parties” in Congress to get rid of Dina Boluarte six months before the general elections of 2026. In her three years of Presidency, they managed to pass a set of laws aimed at destroying the rule of law and the regulatory capacity of the State. And Boluarte never opposed these initiatives.In return, Congress never bothered her: she rejected seven previous vacancy initiatives and looked the other way at every scandal she was involved in. Boluarte and the congress were nail and grime, a torn to a unstitched.Neither love nor fear united them, only the desire to survive to prey on the public.
Among other measures aimed at destroying the rule of law, the Legislative and the Executive joined forces to pass regulations that blocked investigations for corruption (and the confiscation of assets typical of corruption), destroyed the possibility of meritocracy in Peruvian public schools, reinstated tax exemptions for influential economic sectors, carried out a general amnesty for military and police officers for human rights crimes, prevented dozens of investigations of various kinds-including those into corruption by Boluarte herself-and regulations in favor of various criminal economies such as illegal mining, drug trafficking, illegal logging and even laws in favor of extortion prospered.If the State in Peru had always been weak, in these three years it became complicit.Executive and legislative constituted a accomplished marriage of criminal convenience.
Why did they throw it overboard if they could continue dedicating themselves to plunder? Two events recorded on video Wednesday triggered the collapse. On the one hand, at a concert by the cumbia group Agua Marina-which took place in a military installation! – someone fired a burst of machine gun fire at the musicians because, apparently, they had not paid extortion. Agua Marina has been vocal regarding the defenselessness of musical groups in the face of the proliferation of extortion gangs in Peru. The videos of the explosion against the musicians sparked outrage in the country.
However, there are videos of executions and those executed for extortion every day. And in this one, happily and strangely, there were no deaths.That’s why a second fact was needed. Philip Butters – a far-right radio journalist who intends to run for president – was attacked in the Puno region. The people of Puno rebuked him for asking that the citizens of southern Peru be shot during the protests against the Boluarte government three years ago. The vital thing is that the aggression revealed in a very brutal way the hatred that citizens profess for all those who have participated in one way or another.