 Thank you for the invitation to be part of this event. I am Peruvian activist and internationalist. And I represent the movements that have mentioned our comrades, Moimiento, Micaela Bastidas, on platform 12 of October. One of the things that I wanted to say is that this event that are happening in Peru, we need to analyze clearly and the deep of the impact of the Fujimori. Alberto Fujimori was the patriarch, the start of the Fujimori in 1990. And he won the election. He was a nobody. He was a non-person in the political sphere. And suddenly he became one of the favourites in the last moment of the election in the first and second round. So he was competing in the second round with Mario Vargas Llosa. And because Peruvian people were so tired of the traditional political parties, they were not leaders, they were involved in correction. And they were disappointed with the leaders, left or right-wingers. So they decided to vote for this unknown person, Alberto Fujimori. So he became the president in 1990. And he was supposed to be the president until 1995. But he was a very ambitious person. And he decided that the country need to develop in all the sense. But he was the right opportunity to impose the neoliberalism economy in our country. So he started to make economic contracts in order to sell our resources, our companies. He started to privatize our companies and the resources. And at the same time, while he was the president democratically, he started to have a vision that he could do a new country, a country where a leader can conduct in a form like too many people say that he was a Japanese descendant. So maybe he was seen like an emperor. He wanted to be an emperor in the country. So he started to do some corruptions in the Peruvian, in the states, organism, institutions like the different powers, electoral power, judicial, and other institutions, the banks and the press. So he started to put people that he can trust and the corruption was having money. So he was at the same time laundering money. He was in contact with drugs, cartels, and he started to use people, ask the favors in contrast to give them money. So he started to buy the Congress representative of different parties. He started to buy the press. He was controlling not only the national press, but also the private press. So with money, he had the press and everything. So he was questioned, obviously. But then he decided to have a very sinister mentor, a assessor, his name is Vladimir Montesinos, and he started to impose the idea of having a dictatorship. So for that, he needed to take the power as a coup. How do you plan the coup? So he made an auto coup on the 5th of April, 1992. The Peruvian we all remember that date. Because he, in the national television, started to say that he needed to impose a new regime in the country. Because he was having problems in the Congress with the opposition, but he needed to control the country. And he was imposing with the army and the police forces a systematic repression. He started to battle with the army guerrilla groups, Movimiento, Revolutionario II, Amaru, MRTA, and also Shining Path. Both organizations have different methods. But one of the credit that people in that time gave to Fujimori was that he ends the terrorism. So he did a lot of criminal acts. He killed a lot of people. He started to disappear people, especially in the Andes, where he believed, in Ayacucho, where he believed that the terrorists were there. So even in Lima, in a party, Barrios Altos, there was a barbecue. And he was told that there was one terrorist inside. And so he entered with the army and he killed all people from the party, including children, as long as he killed one terrorist. So it was a lot of violence in Peru. But I wanted to pass over why I mentioned Fujimori, because Fujimori did the state as a country from Peru. He did it in Peru, a country where he can control everywhere. And in order to impose a new regime with children, like Hitler did, with formation of an education of children, in order to get sympathy from the new generations, he started to revise the curriculum, the university curriculum, the school curriculum. He takes off the courses of philosophy, dialectic materialism, historic materialism, and everything that is allowed us to analyze, socially, economically, and politically. So all the schools and all the universities were closed, and there was more repression, and they were checking on every political leader. So with this implication, Keiko Fujimori, her daughter, was growing up in the middle of this corruption system. So she is one of the persons that is behind everything that is happening now in Peru. And in the election of 2021, it was a new prospect of having the people to have a new leader, the title of the Fujimoriism, the neoliberalism, the close of the union, and everything. So they decided to have a new leader where they were looking for. So that is when the search emerged Pedro Castillo, a person that he was known for being a teacher unionist, and that he become from the Andes in Cajamarca, Peru. He was a teacher from primary school, and he was a Rondero, a person who looks at a group, an institution that looked after the fields, the farmers from the vandalized people. So this Pedro Castillo looked for a political party, which was given by one of the leftist organizations. And the right wing, controlled by the Fujimoriist forces, didn't like Pedro Castillo. But at the end, he won the election. When he won the election, during his campaign, electoral campaign, he promised a lot of things that were against the establishment, like privatize our natural resources, like have a new constituency, and also more participation of the people and nation in order to have a plurinational state, like in Bolivia. But the right wing was not happy. At the end, the majority of the congress seats were in control of the right wing. So they joined together and make a front to oppose the government of Pedro Castillo. So Pedro Castillo had very good intentions. He promised a lot of things. He came from the roots, from the earth, and he knew how is the life of poor people. Downward in the south, especially from Peru, they give the majority of votes to Pedro Castillo. The poorer were seen in Pedro Castillo, a new hope to the person who will at least, at last, be a president for the people from the grass root, from the Peru profundo, we say, the deep Peru. And at the end, Pedro Castillo didn't... He did his best, but the congress was blocking every attempt that he wanted to do. New reforms, new laws. So at the end, the right wing started to complot to look for his impeachment for any reason. So when Pedro Castillo put ministers of left wing progressists or any similar, the right wing was opposed. They didn't accept in the congress. They wasn't approved. And at the end, they said, no, you are putting corrupted people. We are going to impeach you for immoral matters. He was called for an impeachment once, and then they accused him of having a corruption involvement, which, in fact, was his family started to do some corruptions. And then that was the second impeachment. And they were planning and plotting how to turn down Pedro Castillo. But at the end, Pedro Castillo, we don't know. We were all surprised at Peruvian people how it was happened. And on the 7th of December, Pedro Castillo, we don't know if he was pressured or what was going on. He decided to make a coup, like Fujimori, but with no forces. So he said, we are going to close the congress because people was fed up with this congress that it was opposing and putting barriers in the Castillo government. So industry people were saying, close the congress. So Pedro Castillo said, I'm going to close the congress. I'm going to do a state of emergency in order to put in place all the people's demands. So at the end, the right wing from the congress was the right moment to impeach Pedro Castillo in the reason that he did a coup to our country. So that was the fault of Pedro Castillo. They took the detaining Pedro Castillo. He was feeling a bit weak and was going, heading to the Mexican embassy in order to ask for help for him and his family. But his own people, his own bodyguards, were called by the police. And they handed, even instead of going to the embassy, they went to put in a police place. So obviously Peruvian people were so angry with this situation. They see that they started the right wing, who lost the election, started to have control of the country. And they put Dina Loarte, who was the vice president. She was supposed that according to her speeches, she said that she was the left wing. And she also said, if Pedro Castillo is going to be impeached, I'm going to going with him. But instead of doing that, if they of giving support to Pedro Castillo, she decided to took the presidency with them, with the permission and the consent of the Congress, the majority of the Congress. So the surprise was also that even left Congress persons, people, both for the impeachment of Castillo. So there is a lot of things that were going on, that people have to judge every person that he did this echo to the right wing and the Fujimori. So now Dina Loarte obviously was not recognized by the people, Peruvian people. And the people started to protest. I'm not going to say too much about that because my colleague is going to talk about that. But the thing is that also I wanted to mention that there is a fight, a struggle of classes. But not only classes. It's a small group in Lima, especially, that is people very racist. And they don't see the other part of the country, especially from the Andes and the Amazon, that they are people. They think that they are rare, like many, maybe animals. They are ignorant. They are cholos. They call them mestizo people. They are indios. They call for the indigenous or original people. So with this new government, the racism has started to come out. So now we see there is a struggle, fight of classes, which is inside a very deep racism. So I just wanted to finish in this moment. And maybe for a question that you have, I will be able to answer. Thank you. Thank you to the Marxist Student Society for allowing us to have the opportunity to share with you what is happening in our country and also to the Marxist Student Federation. Yeah, as Sergio said, I'm going to tell you a little bit how is the movement going in Peru. But before that, I've also considered it necessary to describe very shortly the coup that has happened in Peru. And starting from what Betty just said, because we can understand the corruption of the press. We can understand the power of the ruling class in the court and in the Congress without the coup of Fujimori. He implemented a way of corrupting the media, the state institutions that remains at present. And most of the things that we have seen before the coup in Peru have been just the same things that we saw during the government or the dictatorship or Fujimori. This strong relationship between the bourgeoisie and the media and the court and also the Congress. Because if we are going to understand the coup, it's necessary to see how the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie, but also the foreign, use their power in the Congress, the court, and the media to harass Castigliano's government and to push him to take a decision of closing the Congress. But yes, among all these actions that were conducted by the ruling class, we have, for instance, the illegal limitation of powers of the president, because we talk about the coup of Castillo, but we don't say, we don't mention how the Congress violated the Constitution. The Congress started limitating illegally the powers of the president. There's a way, there's an institutional way of how to solve the contradictions between the executive power and the Congress. And it's by closing the Congress and calling to new parliamentary elections. This is an attribution of the president. But the Congress changed this attribution illegally again and used their power in the court, in the judiciary, to, yes, legalize this unconstitutional decision. So on the other hand, we have also the harassment of the court. They started a political persecution, not only against Pedro Castillo. First of all, they started attacking Pedro Libre, which was the organization. They, yes, they attacked his leader, which was Vladimir Tsarron, a politician in Peru. They also attacked the structure of the party and the court ordered the detention, the arrest of most of the political dirigents or leads of this party. And after isolating Castillo from his political party, at the same time that they were isolating Castillo from his political party, they started to attack any leftist measure, any leftist policy that he could decide to take. For instance, naming ministers, leftist ministers, there's the case of Héctor Bejarra, who was a minister in Peru and who was attacked by the press and also by the Navy until he was pushed to resign. Also, the prime minister, Guido Beguido, who decided to renegotiate the contracts with the extractive transnational enterprises, he was pushed to resign by the media and also by, yes, by the attack of the media, by the attack of the bourgeoisie, by spreading a lot of lies against the government, by separating the government from the middle class of professionals, because it was also something important to make it a coup, to isolate the government from the technocrats, yes, trying to say that the president was an ignorant, that how you are going to serve to a corrupt government and all the stuff. So there was an isolation of the president and during all his government, he was attacked, he was, well, the press said constantly that he was an ignorant, that his family was corrupt, they, well, the court impressionate his daughter. So it was a strategy to isolate again the president. And of course, we can say that the president also had a mistake, he gave in to the pressures of the ruling class. He thought perhaps that by taking these decisions by accepting the demission of Hector Bejar or by changing the prime minister, he was going to make the change that the country need peacefully. But of course, the ruling class didn't want a change, a peaceful change or a radical change, they didn't want any change. So yeah, perhaps that was the mistake, but what I wanted to say with this is that for me and for many people who have lived the government of Pedro Castillo, we consider that in Peru, there was already an illegal regime before Castillo decided to close the parliament because the Congress violated the constitution, because the media also was constantly, yes, spreading lies and there was no way to control this because the courts constantly violated the presumption of innocence, which is a principle of any constitutional system and they were pushing to impression the family of the president and all the stuff. So there was no legal regime for us and there was no way to return to that legal regime. And in that context, yeah, Castillo decided to close the Congress and by that, yeah, he was arrested because of that he was arrested, but it's also important, I think, to understand that if Castillo gave into the pressures at first by the last two or three months of his government, he has started to retake contact with the population. He organized it, some manifestations in, in, yes, the, well, with the people in Lima, but also in the regions and in those manifestations, people constantly demand, as Betty said, close the Congress and call to a national constituent assembly. So yeah, there are many hypotheses of why Castillo took that decision. One of them is that, yeah, there are a lot of hypotheses. Some of them are very, very strange, but there is not, it has not been considered one hypothesis that is that, yeah, Castillo decided to give back the power to the people so we can, by the struggle, define who is going to rule the government. And I think that the events, the struggle that has been started, that started after Castillo was arrested is precisely the result of this decision that Castillo took, right? Because by giving back the power to the people, the people have decided now that they don't want this government and they want to, yeah, more radical measures, right? It was impossible to make any change institutionally in Peru because all the system was, first of all, was violated by the Congress, by the media and by the courts. And of course, with the support of the bourgeoisie. And now by the struggle and by the protest is possible again to make more radical change. So how started the protest? We must say that the protest started by the pressure of South Piscins. As Betty said, again, South Piscins was the sector that supported Pedro Castillo the most. It's interesting to understand South Piscins because there is the idea of an individual farmer when we talk about, yes, peasants, but in Peru there is, yeah, there are of course individual farmers, but South Piscins are in general communal farmers. Or yes, communal peasants. We call them communal peasants. They are part of communal organizations which democratically decide how to make the, yes, the exploitation of the land and also how to trade with the city. So it's a different form of peasantry. And this peasantry is more radical. It has been always the class that has voted for radical changes. In 2006 voted for Ollantumala, who was very radical. Also in 2011, has constantly been deceived and imprisoned by the political class. This sector has started the struggle and in the South of the country, in immediately most of the urban sectors, the working class and the students joined to this struggle. And yeah, they started the protest against the government of Dina Voluarte that we must remind us, as Betty said, again, he was the vice president and he promised that if Pedro Castillo was removed, he was also going to leave the charge, but he didn't do it. He has decided to continue with the government and he has named Ota Rola, Alberto Ota Rola as the prime minister. So Alberto Ota Rola is also the responsible of the repression against the peasants in 2012 when Umala treason the government, the his promise of transformation, Alberto Ota Rola was in charge of the army. So he ordered also the repression. His background, his history of repression comes from a very long time and some of the people think that actually Ota Rola is the real chief of the government because the way how the government has evolved is constantly given more and more power to the army, more and more power to the police and less and less power to the civic institution. So that's also why some of the people in Peru say that we are living and actually we are living dictatorship where constitutional rights are not expected and where there is a greater control of the political power in the hands of army and also of police institution. So as I said, peasants from the South, communal peasants, started the protest and working in class joined in the cities of the South. However, we consider for what we have seen in Peru that the support of the urban classes are not being enough. It could be better. There could be higher improvement. However, there's still a great support. There's a great solidarity in Peru which comes from the working class and also from the students organization. As you may know, students in San Marcos and the National University of Engineering, which are like most greatest public university in Peru have given, have offered their, yes, their buildings to receive the peasants that are coming to protest in Peru. So while in the National University of Engineering, it was a decision of the authorities and the students in National University of San Marcos, it was a decision of the students movement. They decided to take the university and to offer, socialize if you want, the control of the university to democratize the control of the university and put it in favor of the peasants and also the working people that was coming to Peru. So since the government saw that this was like the headquarters of the movement, this was the place where the protest, the people from the South had food, had a house, well, they decided to, yes, take control or take the control of the university by using the force. Yeah, that's what happened recently. They, yes, violated the university's autonomy, which is a constitutional right. Again, a constitutional right. And it's important because constitutional rights are being constantly violated in Peru. That's not something we should mention. They also arrested people without the presence of any civic authority. There was no civilian authorities when they arrested people. And yeah, they took them and imprisoned them by two days. And of course, with the violence and all the stuff, we have the videos of the humiliation of the people that was arrested. The answer of the people was the solidarity of popular organizations of the working class and of certain sectors of the middle class. And yeah, some of us consider that what happened in San Marcos has produced a change in the correlation of forces in the support of the government because now the biggest parts of the middle class are also demanding the resigning of Dina Boluarte, so it's important. However, we think that it's not enough to just ask for the resigning of Dina Boluarte. There is a great movement who is demanding some other stuff. One of them is the resigning of Dina Boluarte, of course, but also the referendum for a constituent assembly and also the freedom of Pedro Castillo. So these are like the three rate demands of the population. And yeah, that's what is joining the movement in Peru. Of course, again, as I said before, the bourgeoisie and the government is giving more and more power to the police than to the army because those are just the only institutions who are supporting this government. And the mass mobilization, the protests continue to rise and also the international pressure. However, we think that it's not going to be enough. We have to continue supporting the protests in Peru and we have to continue supporting the mass mobilizations and we have to make whatever is possible from where we are to isolate the government and to push him to resign and also to stop with the violation of constitutional rights and also to call for a constituent assembly in Peru. So that's like a brief resume of what was happened. And that's it. Yeah, well, thank you everyone for coming and we had two really very interesting and wonderful speakers from Peru. They know more about the situation than I do, but I wanted to add a few points. The first one is that I think that many people in this room, they're not fully aware of the scope and the bravery of this courage, of this movement of workers and peasants in Peru. The media in Britain has remained almost silent about this. We talk about the situation where the police and the army have killed, I don't know how many, perhaps up to 60 people in just over a month, 62 people, 64, every day there's more reports of more people being killed. And when we're talking about people being killed, we're talking about the police using assault rifles. The Peruvian police carries an assault rifle which is called an AKM, which is basically a modified version of an AK-47. This is a war weapon that's being used against civilian population. Many people have been killed by direct hits from assault rifles to the head, right? Others have been killed by pellets shot from police guns. And in order to be killed by pellets, you have to be hit many times or at very close range. Otherwise, you'll just have injuries, right? So we're talking about 60 people being killed by the police and the army, because the army has been used against the unarmed civilian population over and over again. The first massacre was on the 15th of December, the day when there was a general strike against the coup. The coup was on the 7th of December. By the 15th, the movement had grown into a general strike called by the CGTP, the Main Trade Union Confederation, and many other organizations. And at that time, the people, this is an insurrectionary movement. People, these are not just normal demonstrations where people march from A to B and demand something. People want power. They cannot accept a basic thing, which is that they put a president in power, whom they consider one of their own, i.e. a teacher trade unionist from a rural area, and the oligarchy has decided to remove him. So the people just not just want to protest, they want the president back and they want the oligarchy out. And the Congress closed and they kicked them all out. That's the basic idea. So the people on the 15th, in many different places in Cusco, in Arequipa, in Ayacucho, in many of these Andean region cities, they decided to take over the airports, to blockade the roads, to take over the installations of public buildings and so on. And it was in these clashes at the airport, for instance, in Ayacucho. In Ayacucho alone, on that day, I think, 10 people were killed, 20 people were killed across the country in that massacre on that day. One will have thought that during the Christmas break, the movement will go down, it will go back home and be defeated. But no, on the 4th of January, an all-out general strike in the South restarted. And people again fought. For what they believe, it's their right. Democratic, basic democratic demands. On the 9th of January, just over two weeks ago, 10 days ago, in Juliaca, in Puno, again, the army and the police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing nine people in one day, in one town, and so on. We can give many different examples of this, and people should familiarize themselves with these facts, because they're not reported in the mass media. The most you see is an article on the BBC website saying that some foreign tourists are stranded in a Machu Picchu, and they can't come back. And of course, that's to be mentioned, but that's not what is happening in Peru. What's happening in Peru is that, one, there has been a coup, a coup against democracy. That's a basic fact. And who's behind this coup? People in Peru are saying, this is a golpe patronal impresario, is a coup carried out by the ruling class, by the capitalist class. Confieb, the confederation of private businesses, which is like the Peruvian CVI, is behind this coup. The U.S. embassy is behind this coup. The U.S. ambassador, very nice lady. I am joking, I'm trying to be... Sorry, that was misunderstood. No, the U.S. ambassador was meeting with the coup plotters the day before, and who, which was the first country to recognize the coup, the United States. So that tells you all you need to know about this coup. This is a coup in favor of the bosses' organizations, the capitalist oligarchy, and the mining multinationals, which play a key role in the Peruvian economy. Peru is a rich country, is a wealthy country, and this Castillo was completely right. His election slogan, for which the oligarchy will never forgive him, thank you, was, never again, poor people in a rich country. Nunca más pobres en un país rico. And that kind of sums up the political economy of Peru, if you want, and the meaning of this struggle. Peru is one of the largest producers in the world of copa, of gold, and many other minerals. Lithium, Peru is part of the Lithium Triangle, together with Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, and so on. And the other day, another nice lady, this is Irony, another nice lady who is now the head, the general in the U.S. Army, and she's the U.S. Navy, and she's now the head of the South Command of the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army. And she said in, she was talking to the Atlantic Council, is where they decide the imperialist policy towards Latin America, and she said, she said, Latin America is very important for us. It has many natural resources, including Lithium, which is very important, but these resources are not the United States resources. These resources should be this country's resources, but they are not. As the comrades have explained, for 30 years now, Peru has been looted by multinationals and private corporations. There are 17 big economic groups that control the country's economy. 17, I'm not talking about a large number of people, I'm talking about 17 families that control the country's economy. The country's media is extremely monopolized. There's one group that controls most of the newspapers, TV stations, website news outlets and radio stations and so on. And then on top of this, there's the multinationals. From Spain, controlling telecoms, banking, and from many other countries, as it's a very wealthy place. There's this Canadian multinationals, Chinese multinationals, there's Mexican multinationals. And yes, there are also British multinationals heavily involved in mining in Peru. Last year, the country that has the largest amount of investment in mining in Peru was the United Kingdom. So that's why what's happening in Peru is not something that's happening in a country far away about which we know very little. It's something that's directly linked to the designs of the imperialist ruling class in this country, Anglo-American, BHP, Hot Shield. And I can't remember the names of all the mining companies, but many of them are based in this country. And they go there and they exploit this. And what was Castillo's program? Castillo's program was in fact very moderate if you think about it. First of all, he said, we're gonna re-nationalize the gas field at Camisa. This is a basic demand. Shouldn't be in the hands of foreign multinational. He also said, we're gonna renegotiate the contracts with the multinational. He didn't say we're gonna expropriate them, which in my opinion, it should perhaps have said. But he said, we're gonna renegotiate the contract. So the contracts are more favorable to the royalties and tax that these companies pay a larger and so that with this money, which belongs to this country, this country is wealthy, we're gonna improve the living conditions of the people. How many times have you heard this before? How many presidents in Latin America have attempted this? And where have they ended up? With coups, military coups, US state intervention and so on and so the same thing happened with Castillo. But Castillo said, and if the mining multinationals don't want, don't accept the renegotiation, then we will expropriate them. It's a perfectly reasonable, very moderate program that he defended. But one that obviously was against the interest of the 17 families, US imperialism and the big multinationals. And from the very beginning they, I mean, he won by a very small margin. I think it's about 500 or 800 votes in the last count of the second round. But he won big majorities in the whole of the South. In the mining districts, he got over 80% of the vote. The people, the workers, the peasants, the poor, they wanted fundamental change. Fundamental change in Peru also means an end to national oppression. In these districts in the South, 80% of the people speak Kichwa or Aymara, their own languages, and this is not recognized as a system. Team racism linked to capitalist domination of the capitalist oligarchy in Peru. And that's the meaning. When they say we want to constitute an assembly, what they're basically saying, we want to change everything. We want to change all the institutions in the way this country is being run. And I'd say this, look, it's not that Peru doesn't need a new constitution because the constitution they have dates back to 1993. It was the constitution that Fujimori implemented in the first year of his coup. How can you have a country that's supposed to be a democracy with a constitution? Plus, Congress over 20 years has passed so many amendments to this constitution. The constitution is completely meaningless anymore. But I will add one thing in my opinion, this is just my opinion. I don't know whether the Congress will agree or not, but a constitution assembly in itself is not enough because what Peru needs is not just a change of political organization, the political setup, it needs the expropriation of the oligarchy. And a new constitution can be a very nice thing. Many countries in Latin America have had constitution assemblies not so long ago. Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, in some cases it's worked out better, in some cases it's not worked out. I mean, Ecuador has a new constitution and it says it's a plurinational country. And the oligarchy in Ecuador still rules because they have economic power. And through economic power, they have political power. The oligarchy needs to be overthrown, not just politically, but also economically. This is my opinion. Now, back to the movement, I think that this is a heroic movement. And the fact that over 60 people have been killed. And it's not only that. Imagine a situation like this. Most of the districts in the North, but also now Lima, Callao, and so on, are under the state of emergency. What does the state of emergency mean? Constitutional guarantees are no longer valid. There's no freedom of expression. There's no freedom of assembly. There's no freedom of movement. There's no freedom of organization. All these freedoms can be violated by the police under the state of emergency. This is now legal in many districts in the country. The other day, the government extended the curfew, which is already in existence in a number of districts in the South, extended the curfew in Puno for another 10 days. This means people cannot leave their homes, from I think it's from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. in the morning. They cannot leave their homes. I mean, this is like a military police dictatorship. That's what it is. The government, that's a regime that's only in power through brutal repression of its own people. And despite that, the people are not being caught. They're not giving in and they continue fighting. On the 14th, was it the 14th of January? No, the 19th of January, they call for a march on Lima. They call it La Marcha de los Cuatro Suyos, which is a reference to two things. The march in 2000, which brought down the Fujimori dictatorship finally. And also the Cuatro Suyos is the four cardinal points of the country, administrative divisions of the Inca empire, meaning the whole country is coming down to Lima to kick out this regime. This is quite something. I will say the one aspect in which the movement is still, or perhaps two aspects in which the movement is still weak, or could improve, is one, the level of coordination and organization of the movement. There are many different organizations involved. There is certain degree of coordination, but still like, for instance, the other day, there were two separate demonstrations in Lima. On the 19th, one was going to one place. The other one was going to Congress. There's certain element of this lack of coordination. The other point is that the participation of the working class, although it's been very important, is still not what it could be. There is one section of the working class that has not yet entered the struggle, and this is the mine workers. If the mine workers, there's about 200,000 or more, maybe perhaps up to 300,000 mine workers in Peru, is the key section of the working class. If the mine workers enter on a general strike, then the regime is finished. They can't resist that for a very long period of time, and they have not yet. The mine workers' federation is participating in the movement, is present at the demonstrations, but there's still no strike of the mine workers. And the mine workers' federation met about a week ago, and they decided to go on an all-out strike from the 14th of February. I'd say this is a bit long. It should come earlier, but perhaps I mean, I don't know exact discussions that took place. Perhaps they need some more time to discuss, convince all the workers. If they go on strike on the 14th of February, that will be another big step forward for the movement. Because, and I'll finish with this, what is posed in Peru is a very simple question. Who rules the country? Who rules the country? Is it the majority of the people in a democratic election? Is it the working people and the peasants who voted for a president? Or is it the unelected, unaccountable, corrupt, murderous, oligarchy, and their political parties, and their agents in the state apparatus, in the army, same people who carried out the dirty war and the Fujimori, in the police, the control of the media, and the mining multinationals in the US embassy? Who rules the country? Is it one or the other? The people of Peru decided to put Castillo in government. And I have many criticisms of Castillo. Castillo faced with a congress that was boycotting his initiatives. He then decided to start making concessions. He went to the United States. He had a meeting with the US Chamber of Investors and this and that, and he said, no private property is going to be respected. We're not going to touch the interest of them. But still, they could not accept him because he is, let's put it this way, he's a man of the people. He comes from the working class. He was wearing his peasant hat in the presidential office. Imagine that, the oligarchy, capitalist oligarchy, cannot accept that. They have ruled the country for 200 years at their leisure and they're not going to give up power easily. So that's what's at stake, who rules the country? And I will say what would be a step forward if all these organizations convened a national assembly but not a constituent assembly called by a corrupt congress but one called by the working people themselves. There are many organizations, the defense fronts, regional defense fronts, peasant organizations, the peasant rondas campesinas, the trade unions, all these organizations who get together and call a national assembly of elected delegates and say, we are the people, we rule the country and you have no power in here. And that will bring things to head. This is already what's being prepared. Now, we don't know how the movement is gonna end in Peru. We have full confidence and we have, I will say, enormous admiration for this movement. I have to confess, when I was writing an article on the day of the coup and if you read it at the end, it says, what's not clear is how strong will be the response of the people. I didn't know because many people had become disillusioned in Castillo's concessions to the ruling class but nevertheless, the people came out again. When they went to the Christmas break, I didn't know whether the movement was gonna restart after that. I mean, repression was already quite heavy at that time but the people have come out once and again. You can't fault the Peruvian workers, peasants and student youth and whichever way the movement ends up or however many things they achieve because now I think contrary to what it seems, the government is not strong. The government is very weak, I will say. A recent opinion poll said that 80-something percent reject the president, 90-something percent reject the Congress. This is the basis of this movement. It is deep hatred of all the rotten bourgeois oligarchic institutions but this is down to the people in Peru. What is our duty here, our duty is to organize the solidarity, internationalist solidarity. This might not seem like a lot but the British labor movement is quite strong. It has millions of people in trade unions which is now starting to move and this pressure should be used to organize solidarity with the working people in Peru being killed for defending basic democratic rights and our first duty is one to explain what is happening because the bourgeois media is not saying anything. There's a conspiracy of silence. We all heard about what happened in Brazil the other day. We all hear about what's happening, I don't know, in Ukraine. We all hear about what they are interested in telling us but we don't hear about the struggle of working people in Peru because this is a dangerous example from the point of view. So first of all, we need to spread truthful information. Number two, we need to mobilize. There have been a couple of pickets in London, one in Trafalgar Square, the other one in Parliament Square. We need to come out in more numbers and it cannot be just Peruvians and Latin American solidarity organization. It has to be everyone, students, workers, trade unionists and then we need to bring this movement into our own organizations. If comrades here are members of a trade union, they should bring a motion to the trade union branch. If you are members of a Marxist society, you should organize a meeting. We should spread the word about what is happening because our class, the working class is an international class and our victory for our class in Peru is a victory for our class here and a defeat for our class in Peru will also be a defeat for us here. It will make us weaker in our own struggle and a victory for us here in advance of the working class movement in Britain will also help the movement in Peru. From many points of view, but one point of view which is very important is the fact that the mining multinationals that are exploiting and looting Peru, many of them are based in this city in London, not far away from here where we are meeting now. So yeah, that's what I wanted to say.