Don’t worry, this isn’t Venezuela

Patricia del Río

The Peruvian elite is hyperventilating because our new president is a Marxist schoolteacher, said Patricia del Río. Pedro Castillo, 51, eked out a win last week over right-wing ex-congresswoman Keiko Fujimori, thanks to overwhelming support from rural areas for his pledge to redistribute the nation’s mineral wealth. Fujimori and her backers shriek that Castillo will remake Peru into a socialist hellhole like Venezuela, where Presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro destroyed the economy and crushed democratic opposition. But let’s “put panic aside.” Castillo has already backed away from early hints that he might nationalize the mining industry,

and now says he simply wants it to pay higher taxes. Any drastic changes to our economic system are “unfeasible without a majority in Congress,” which Castillo does not have. Nobody should believe that this political neophyte, “without a solid political platform to sustain him and without the support of the military or the economic powers, is going to be able to do whatever he wants.” Castillo will likely accomplish little besides boosting spending on social programs and education for the poor and the indigenous, who have long been ignored by Peruvian leaders. If he can manage that, he might just “transform us into a more just society.”