Hello, leaders: other characters that the government must identify soon

In this second installment, this newspaper offers more clues to the government to immediately identify the leaders of Junín, Cusco and Tacna who rock the cradle of the mobilizations. Although they are radical characters, they enjoy acceptance among their hosts.

In Junín there are two leaders who have a past linked to Sendero Luminoso. One of them is Robert Huaynalaya, who in 2003 was one of the founders of Conare, the radical wing of the Peruvian teaching profession. He has now come back in force to recover his social capital within these political protests. The other became known thanks to this newspaper; it is about comrade ‘Melquiades’.

The Cusco region has also been the nerve center of the crisis since January. The University Federation has taken a leading role. Branches of the so-called National Assembly of the Peoples – a construction of 21st century socialism – have also appeared in the Imperial City; They call themselves the Regional Youth Assembly.

Tacna is no exception. Although the region of former premier and congresswoman Betssy Chávez has not registered violent protests, it does report shortages of food and other products due to the blockades that originated. There two sectors keep the city in suspense. The merchants of the main wholesale market and the Fenatep teachers headed by one of Pedro Castillo’s best friends, Mery Coila.

Junín region fueled by old radical faces

After the newspaper Perú21 revealed the active presence of Melquiades Ponce Hilario since the beginning of the protests in the province of Huancayo, the man sentenced for terrorism disappeared from the police radar and was not seen in the last two demonstrations that included the partial blockade of the main streets of the city.

Melquiades, 59 years old, not only registers his participation in various attacks as shown by documents from the PNP’s Directorate Against Terrorism (Dircote), but is also included in deaths such as that of the prison director Miguel Castro Castro and the attack against the embassy of India where three military authorities were assassinated.

Characters such as Soraya Morales Valer (c) ‘Tania’, Víctor Raúl Vivanco Mendoza (c) ‘Isidro’, among others who served jail time for terrorism, have accused Melquiades Ponce of being in charge of directing popular schools held in the home of his uncle Luis Ponce Martínez in the fence of Lima.

María Elena Rosas Muñoz, 50 years old, wife of Ponce Hilario, has also participated in the marches in Huancayo. Like her husband, Rosas Muñoz has also been sentenced for the crime of terrorism and homicide.

Melquiades appeared from the first days of January at the head of the mobilizations in Huancayo. He has under his command a movement called ‘To Transform and Peruvianize Peru’. And his main platform is “fighting for a new Constitution through a constituent assembly.”

ROBERT IS BACK

Presiding over these demonstrations is also the radical ex-leader of Conare Robert Huaynalaya Campusano, remembered for leading, along with approximately three thousand people, riots at the facilities of the Regional Government of Ayacucho and the Provincial Municipality of Huamanga in 2004.

Huaynalaya is an old acquaintance of Iber Maraví Olarte (Castillo’s former minister who, after the capture of comrade ‘Cusi’, took control of Fredepa in Ayacucho). They have known each other since Maraví served as SUTE regional secretary, in the province of Huamanga, in Ayacucho. In 2003, both were part of the foundation of Conare, the faction of teachers linked to Sendero Luminoso.

Years later, in Conare a struggle for power broke out. And in 2006 it ended up dividing. The group led by Robert Huaynalaya, identified by the Police as a member of Proseguir, the faction of Sendero Luminoso that vindicates Gonzalo Thought and still believes in the armed struggle, decided to continue on its way. Currently, the teachers that make up this group are fervent followers of the Quispe Palomino del Vraem.

Huaynalaya disappeared from the press radar for many years, and in December he returned to show off his most radical face.

The other faction of teachers founded Conare – Movadef and in 2017 they decided to call themselves Fenatep with the coup leader Pedro Castillo as the main leader. Also in this group is Congressman Edgar Tello.

In Cusco, young people take center stage

At barely 22 years old, Leonela Labra Panocca is the president of the Cusco University Federation (FUC) of the National University of San Antonio Abad, the same group from which former premier and parliamentarian Guido Bellido emerged. She and she has come to the fore especially in the latest protests registered in the Imperial City against President Dina Boluarte, arriving in Lima with a delegation of students a few days ago.

Labra points out that they are aware that the current government “is constitutional”, but insists that “this does not imply that it is legitimate”. “Because she, from the first day she has taken charge of her, what she has done is repress and kill those who protest,” she said in an interview. She also remarked that Congress is delegitimized and that “it is governing with its back to the country.”

However, in addition to the new elections, the agenda for a Constituent Assembly is also promoted. “Regardless of who gets into Congress, what is urgently needed is a new Constitution,” he asserted.

He also stressed that they will continue with their measures until their agenda is fulfilled. “Mrs. Boluarte’s days are numbered because Cusco and Peru will not leave Lima until Mrs. Boluarte resigns,” she said on January 19.

Another face that has emerged is that of Josué Mauro Marocho Orué (27 years old), a former member of the FUC and president of the Cusco Regional Youth Assembly, who also arrived in Lima in mid-January to participate in the protests.

Marocho, like Labra, emphasizes in his interventions that they are not financed by drug trafficking or other illegal sectors, and that they are only young university students.

“A call to the National Police, you decide which side of history you are going to place yourself on, to be with this illegitimate coup civic-military government, and that does not represent the great majorities, or to defend that people that you swore to defend. ”, he said in an interview. He has also accused the government of wanting to “impose the democracy of bullets.”

Another of the visible heads in Cusco is Samuel Acero Hurtado, president of the Fight Committee of the Coordination of Social Organizations, and who was accused in 2012 –along with another group of community members– for the burning of the Anabi mining camp. In the process they were all finally acquitted.

As in other regions, in Cusco the bullies prefer to remain in the shadows, amid the increase in acts of vandalism.

Tacna of the merchants and professors

The Miguel Grau wholesale market, one of the largest in Tacna, has been closed for a week. The merchants under the command of Alex Quinto Cerrón decided not to sell more food to the retailers that had their supply point in this market.

Not content with that, Quinto and company decided to block the pass next to the Pan-American highway.

This supply center groups more than 3,000 merchants, between the stables and the street vendors who pay daily to have a space.

“We will call a meeting to make decisions. We protest peacefully because Tacna is not happy,” Alex Quinto told the press, who also confirmed that they initially depended on the National Assembly of the Peoples.

But not all the protesters are happy in Tacna. Local journalists reported to Perú21 that a fight occurred on Friday afternoon in Plaza Quiñones, in the Alto de la Alianza district. The mobilized argued with a woman whom they accused of depositing the balances of a collection –for transfers and per diems– in an account of the Arequipa Fund.

The amount, according to the complaint, amounts to S/34,857. In Plaza Quiñones they cornered the defendant and did not allow her to leave. In her defense, she said that she had not seized the money and that the travelers were not abandoned to her fate in Lima. The issue was not resolved and the screaming continued.

THE MARY FACTOR

The one who is also behind the protests in this region is Mery Coila Ramírez, a friend of Pedro Castillo, a Movadef leader and a Fenatep activist in Tacna. She got a position in the State with the arrival of the professor to the government. Coila became, by the work and grace of her presidential friend, a member of the board of the Sociedad de Beneficencia de Tacna.

When the coup leader was imprisoned in the Diroes, Coila traveled to Lima to lead the first mobilizations in defense of Pedro Castillo, being an official. Throughout December she was active at the forefront of the demonstrations for the freedom of the ex-president.

It was only in January of this year that the Executive decided to remove it from the State payroll.

Coila was secretary of organization of the Tacna base of the Movadef. In 2018 she accompanied Pedro Castillo to Bolivia along with a group of professors linked to Conare to participate in an event where they claimed their Marxist ideology.

Mery Coila can mobilize about 800 teachers in the border region.

If both leaders are joined by the radical congresswoman and ex-premier of Pedro Castillo, Betssy Chávez, Tacna can have three representatives at a dialogue table with arrival to the hosts that are currently blocking the city and the supply and breaking with the tranquility of the Heroic City.

RECOMMENDED VIDEOS: