Peru Finally Elects a Leftist: What Happens Next?

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Will Peru’s new leftist leader be allowed to govern by the oligarchs of media and mining?

After months of uncertainty, Peru finally has a president. He ran on a socialist party ticket and is the former leader in a teacher’s union. And unlike all previous presidents, he does not come from the capital, Lima. For weeks, the loser of the national presidential election, Keiko Fujimori, refused to concede the election citing irregularities. She attempted to do the same thing that Donald Trump unsuccessfully attempted in America: delegitimizing free and fair democratic elections in order to secure personal power. Much like Donald Trump, she also failed.

Not only is Ms Fujimori a sore loser, but she is also the eldest daughter of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori, whose authoritarian regime ruled Peru for 10 years. Much like in the rest of the Americas, the current of fascism is bubbling up closer and closer to power in elections all over. Thankfully this time, there was enough juice left in Peru’s working class left to push the winner, Pedro Castillo, across the finish line.

To answer the question of what happens next, The Bitchuation Room was honored to be joined by a historian of Peru and Peru’s political economy: Professor Jose Ragas. Prof. Ragas is a Peruvian historian working as Assistant Professor at Catholic University of Chile. He holds a Ph.d. in History from UC Davis, with a dissertation on the role of identity cards in the Andes. In Chile, he trains students on global history and the circulation of science and medicine in the Global South. Currently, he is writing a book on how Peruvians experienced the 1990s and the authoritarian technocratic regime of Alberto Fujimori.

The Bitchuation Room was joined this week by Brett Erlich, Host, Producer, and Director of Programming at The Young Turks Network. In addition to producing TYT’s flagship show, he recently developed and launched TYT’s fastest growing show “Indisputable with Dr Rashad Richey”, as well as his own shows “Common Room”, “Happy Half Hour” and “The Sunday Stream” on TYT’s Twitch channel. Prior to TYT, he helped develop and launch “The Damage Report” with John Iadarola, Ana Kasparian’s limited series “No Filter”, and worked at Al Gore’s Current TV. Follow him on Twitter here

Recorded August 29, 2021

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