Peruvian students ‘radicalised’ by raid eye deeper reforms

Universities have become embroiled in anti-government protests in Peru, with members of the country’s congress who have been targeted by the demonstrations also accused of stifling higher education reform.

The unrest that began in rural areas in early December after the arrest of former president Pedro Castillo has claimed at least 69 civilian lives. Those in power have so far resisted calls for an early election and the resignation of the country’s new leader, Dina Boluarte.

A decision to raid the country’s most important university, Lima’s National University of San Marcos, in January has brought more students into the disparate range of groups taking part in the protests, according to Zaraí Toledo Orozco, postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) at Tulane University.

Students had occupied the university buildings and were helping to house protesters, many of whom were farmers or indigenous people from Peru’s poorest areas who had travelled to the nation’s capital to join the demonstrations. Police raided the site with tear gas and armoured vehicles, arresting more than 200 people, including students who said they were violently forced out of their dormitories.

“This was a crucial moment in the conflict because it triggered solidarity and an alliance of different groups that had been, until this point, inactive,” Dr Orozco said.

“Other students at public universities but also those at private universities and many scholars have started to take part in the protests in their regions or go to Lima because they feel you cannot treat students like criminals.”

Dr Orozco said the violence suffered by the protesters has convinced many more to come out on to the streets for the largest demonstrations the country has seen in decades. But so far little has united the crowds other than a desire to get rid of the current administration.

In recent years Peru has seen a proliferation of low-quality private universities to keep up with student demand.

Such issues are common in South America but, unlike in Chile, Brazil and Colombia – where there have been large student-led protests – Peruvian students generally have not actively challenged the status quo.

Dr Orozco said there are signs that students’ experiences of participating in the protests will lead them to continue to organise and collate demands around the reform of education to put to any potential new government and congress.

Over the past decade there has been an effort to improve quality in Peruvian universities with the creation of a regulator known as Sunedu. But this has come up against the same forces that are now blocking calls for elections, according to Salvador Herencia-Carrasco, director of the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Ottawa’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre.

Many members of congress were affiliated with universities that were shut down because they could not fulfil minimum requirements on higher education, explained Dr Herencia-Carrasco, a former legal adviser to the Peruvian government.

But last year the parliament successfully managed to blunt the reforms and Sunedu’s head, Oswaldo Zegarra, has recently complained that it has become a “ghost organisation”. Universities that lost their licences have gradually begun to reopen as a result.

Dr Herencia-Carrasco said this was an example of how corporate interests hold sway over the country’s congress, which is now being further shown by the prevention of new elections – the “only thing people on all sides of the spectrum agree is what needs to happen”.

He said the government’s strategy appeared to be to “outlast” the protesters, who may eventually need to leave Lima and head home.

The regime’s rhetoric has become increasingly severe, he added, with anyone involved in demonstrations being dealt with under anti-terrorism legislation.

Such a hard-line approach may yet see more universities targeted in the same way as San Marcos, Dr Herencia-Carrasco warned, with worrying repercussions for academic freedom and autonomy.

Police trucks massed outside Peru’s National University of Engineering on the same day as the San Marcos raid, but did not enter the site – which may have been because of the condemnation of earlier violence, particularly from foreign embassies. But Dr Herencia-Carrasco cautioned this did not mean universities would be protected in future.

“My fear is that if they did this in Lima, in one of the biggest universities in Latin America, with the media and social media broadcasting it in real time, what would happen if things would escalate again in other parts of the country where the eyes of the country are not necessarily watching 24/7?”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com