Ten years after Verónika Mendoza almost went to the second round with her progressive ideology, the electoral left has buried the caviar agenda. And it has unearthed the old communist, materialist and extractivist agenda.
PROGRESSIVE CLOSET
Why have the demands of the LGBTIQ+ community been kept in the closet? Mainly, because the left seeks to replicate the electoral phenomenon of Pedro Castillo, who was a provincial conservative. And that is why gender issues, the decriminalization of abortion, the green agenda and civil union have also been left behind. The left seems to have renounced all that progressive ideology because it is very unpopular, centralist and from Lima. After Castillo’s victory, these ideas were seen as “democratic nonsense,” citing the winner of the primary elections in the Venceremos alliance. And that is why the left seems to have said goodbye to them. In a cruel irony, the progressive agenda has been hidden in the closet.
MARXIST THOUGHT
The leftist bet on 2026 is to win with another Pedro Castillo because of that Marxist phrase that history always repeats itself twice. Although in Peru, both times it happens as a tragedy.
In terms of Marx (Karl), the post-material, identity or cultural causes that the progressive left raised as flags in the 2016 elections have been lowered, with pragmatism and a lot of opportunism. Even more so after the defeat of the academic Vicente Alanoca in the primaries and the triumph of the lawyer Ronald Atencio. If the first juggled to avoid saying that Venezuela was a dictatorship, the second is clear and direct in his delirium: Venezuela is a democracy and Peru is a dictatorship.
Along these lines, the left’s current commitment is more towards the classic material demands (change the economic model) and maximalist promises (Constituent Assembly, new Constitution). It is worth saying that the left has returned to its more authoritarian and conservative origins.
Since the caviar agenda did not stick, they returned to the red plan: Constituent Assembly and new Constitution. In terms of Marx (Groucho), paraphrasing him: if you don’t like progressive principles, we have other communist principles.
HELLO AND BYE
After the fall of Alanoca, some of these left-handed survivors have docked Alfonso López Chau’s ship on Ahora Nación. And following the sign of these times, they have rewritten their past and their present. That alone explains why Ruth Luque harshly criticizes Congress without remembering that she is a congressman. Or that Indira Huilca accuses a “dictatorship” and criticizes all the latest governments, but refuses to return the US$250,000 she improperly received as compensation. Or that now Mirtha Vásquez insists that she is not anti-mining to reconcile with the symbol of the mining helmet of her new party.
But the biggest problem for Vásquez to swallow is, without a doubt, his ability to harshly criticize Pedro Castillo’s government, ignore the fact that she was his prime minister and maintain that he would pardon him in any case. All at once and without gagging.
The new socialist, materialist and extractivist agenda of the left is like that of the 80s. And that is why they get along with López Chau, who is basically an ’80s APRA, that is, a social democrat of yesteryear. For this reason, his proposals and his sympathy for Víctor Polay are reminiscent of the first Alan García. And perhaps that is why Indira Huilca feels so comfortable in her party, perhaps re-editing the original Alanism of her parents.
DOUBLE SPEECH
As happened with Tambogrande, now illegal mining threatens to exploit Conga without the environmental protocols that formal mining would have had, the one that the anti-mining left boycotted.
The hypocrisy of the left, which was previously ecological and today is pro-mining, is not surprising. It was always known that the green agenda of the lefties was pure display. And that’s why they called them watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside).
Today, the left’s mining doublespeak becomes more evident. The formal ones are hindered from working with bureaucracy and state ‘red tape’. Like Conga. But nothing is required of the ‘noble savage’ artisanal pick-and-shovel miner. Paraphrasing Marshal Benavides: for my friends, informality, and for my enemies, the law.
