When an armored police vehicle smashed through the gates of her university campus, the National Major University of San Marcos, on Saturday January 21 in Lima, Maria (her first name has been changed), a 17-year-old student, was to prepare meals for the demonstrators. The latter, who had come from various regions of Peru, particularly the Andes, had been staying at the faculty for three days. They had come to take part in the big march called for Thursday in the capital to demand the resignation of Dina Boluarte, the interim president who succeeded Pedro Castillo (left) after his dismissal on December 7, 2022.
Maria then starts running. Behind her, a column of a hundred men enters, determined to expel the protesters. She hears screams, sees people falling, others being hit. Luckily, she manages to escape through one of the gates. ” We were very scaredshe explains on the phone, still shocked by the brutality of the operation. Police threw tear gas canisters, we heard shots, I saw a peasant woman being hit on the head with truncheons, there was a helicopter flying over the campus. It was totally abusive and disproportionate violence. »
Moments later, dozens of people are pinned to the ground, face down, hands behind their backs, handcuffed. Most are taken to the Criminal Police Department in the historic center of Lima. A mother and her 8-year-old daughter are among them. The demonstrators are being held for usurpation and damage to public property. A smaller group of about thirty people is sent to the anti-terrorist police department.
Now, in the university gardens of “San Marcos”, one of the oldest public universities in South America, a melting pot of intellectual debate, lie tents, mattresses and mountains of food that the inhabitants of Lima in solidarity of the movement had come to give evidence. Near the gate of the wall, torn banners are on the ground. It deciphers the messages written by the students: “The bloodshed will never be forgotten. » Next to it are photos of the faces of demonstrators who have died in the south of the country since the start of the conflict on December 7. They now number at least 46, most of them shot dead by police and army forces.
Improper intervention and arbitrary arrests
The violent intervention at San Marcos University testifies to the authoritarian turn taken by the government of Dina Boluarte, which does not hesitate to intimidate, arrest and criminalize protesters and their supporters, with the complicity of the country’s main media groups. “The goal is to break the morale of the demonstrators and to twist the neck of the protest movement. The government sends them a message: do not come to the capital, you have no place to stay, we will arrest and prosecute you explains Omar Coronel, a sociologist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
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