Presidencia Perú (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte shows her jewelry during a press conference at Government Palace in Lima, Peru, Friday, April 5, 2024.
There is a growing corruption scandal in Peru around conservative president Dina Boluarte.
The scandal emerged in late March when the president was photographed on multiple occasions wearing Rolex watches valued at between $14,000 and $25,000. The investigation expanded in April 2024 to include a name brand Cartier bracelet, valued at $56,000, and undeclared bank deposits of 1.1 million Peruvian soles, or about $298,000.
On March 30, investigators and police raided Boluarte’s home in Lima, Peru, as part of the inquiry.
“I have always said that I’m an honest woman,” Boluarte said after the raid, according to the Associated Press. “I ask myself a question: since when does a sector of the press care about what a president wears or does not wear? I hope and I want to believe that this is not a sexist or discriminatory issue.”
The investigation and scandal have expanded to include investigations into Boluarte’s brother, Nicanor, and her lawyer, Mateo Castañeda. Both were arrested on May 10 as part of the corruption scandal, but days later on May 18, a Peruvian court ordered their release.
Faced with the growing political scandal, a small group of opposition legislators submitted a motion in parliament on May 16 to remove the embattled president due to “moral incapacity,” a charge that Boluarte’s predecessor faced in 2022. But this time the attempt to impeach the president over acts of corruption failed the following day for lack of votes.
Paula Távara, a political analyst and political science professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, tells The Progressive that this is the eighth time there has been an attempt to impeach the president since she assumed office in 2022. Each attempt has failed, as political parties have sought to protect the president and their own power.
“There are negotiations [in the government] that are no longer about ideologies,” she says. “They are no longer about public policies. Parties in congress are seeking survival. I consider it to be a kind of regime of impunity.”
Boluarte had previously served as the vice president under Peru’s leftist president Pedro Castillo. Upon assuming office, she became the first female president of the South American country.
Her approval rating is currently at 8 percent.
Boluarte took office following an attempted self-coup by then President Castillo on December 7, 2022. That night, the president announced that he was dissolving the country’s congress. The legislative body had sought to impeach the president for “moral incapacity” ahead of an investigation into accusations of corruption in his administration.
The coup was met by widespread protests, with Indigenous communities blocking roads across the country. At least forty-nine people were killed during the protests, which lasted three months. Boluarte is also facing another investigation for these deaths.
The 2022 coup d’état ushered into office the new president, who quickly aligned with the far-right forces in Peru, which have maintained influence in the government for decades. Following the coup, the Boluarte administration has been accused of perpetuating democratic backsliding beginning before Castillo took office.
“We have been in a crisis since 2016,” Távara says. “The [social] movements are no longer mobilized. So, with the loss of movement on the part of political participation on the part of citizens, it makes it even easier for political actors to maintain this situation of impunity.”
Under the administration of Boluarte, Peru has drifted further into line with the global religious far right. The administration officially classified transgender and intersex people as “mentally ill” on May 10.
The declaration resulted in protests against the decision on May 17.
Previously, the legislative branch had banned the language of “gender equality” from school textbooks following the influence of evangelical and neo-Pentecostal groups. This type of legislation was pushed through by the conservative head of the Women and Family Commission within Congress, Milagros Jáuregui de Aguayo. She is a Pentecostal pastor turned politician and a member of the far-right anti-LGBTQ+ Con mis hijos no te metas (“Don’t Mess With My Kids”) movement that emerged in Peru in 2016.
Evangelical churches have successfully placed candidates like Jáuregui in office in order to push through their regressive legislation.
“In parliament, it is the evangelical churches, which have placed candidates within the right-wing and extreme-right parties,” Távara says. “They have financed the campaigns and have achieved the placement of those parliamentarians in positions of high leadership. And what the government does in every case is—rather than object to them, or oppose them, or return the legislative proposals—is to sign them.”
The Don’t Mess With My Kids movement has gained significant influence in Peruvian politics. While Távara says the movement is currently slowing down in the South American country, since its founding, this movement has expanded across Latin America, with branches forming in Argentina and Guatemala. It is also increasingly finding footing in the United States.
But this movement has not been devoid of scandal.
In 2023, a criminal investigation was launched against the founder of the far-right movement, Pastor José Luis Linares Cerón, who was accused of abusing his daughter sexually, psychologically, and physically. According to prosecutors, he had abused her from age seven to sixteen-years-old. In another case, Christian Rosas, who is tied to the far-right movement around the former dictator Alberto Fujimora, was accused of abusing his wife in 2021.
The far right in Peru has echoed archaic libertarian philosophies that are common on the far right in the United States, including working against reproductive rights, especially abortion.
“Here, libertarian speech is accompanied by a kind of [personal] sovereignty,” Távara says.
She goes on to explain that this is rather contradictory, as part of their political efforts are to further limit the bodily autonomy of Peruvian women.
“They want to criminalize abortion again—abortion is already not legal here,” she explains. “But they [want to] close any door and want to criminalize clandestine abortion. They are asking for the approval of ‘unborn child’ laws, and they are seeking to reconsider gender diversities and [the classifying] gender disorders.”
She adds: “It may seem incoherent to call them libertarians. But at the end of the day I actually believe that that is the way in which all these Latin American libertarians express themselves.”
Boluarte is poised to continue to utilize the networks she forged following her 2022 rise to power to derail any attempts to impeach her. The country is scheduled to hold presidential elections in 2025 to elect her successor, but she is likely to continue to avoid prosecution for the acts of corruption during her time in office due to negotiations with the influential right-wing political circles that seek to maintain impunity.
“Whatever it takes them to make all those changes, they seek the power for the next elections to turn out the way that they want,” Távara says. “But since they will wait for Boluarte’s term to end, the most likely thing that will happen is that they will offer her, in the long term, [the possibility] that she cannot be prosecuted for crimes, including [violating human rights].”