NPR continues to wake me up in the mornings with predictably skewed "news" coverage. Today Morning Edition's summaries twice claimed that in Peru's upcoming presidential election, voters must choose between "two unpopular candidates." That was all: they didn't even name the offenders. I suppose they are saving real coverage for the coup that will surely ensue if the left-wing guy wins. It's odd, though, because NPR, like US mainstream news in general, prefers to report on what hasn't happened yet; why aren't Steve Inskeep and Noel King asking some corporate think-tanker "what we can expect" in Peru if the Commie is elected?
Left-wing guy? C'mon, it was obvious: left-wing candidates and (worse) winners have been troubling the sleep of US and Latin American elites for some time now. And when I looked it up, sure enough, the current front-runners in Peru are Keiko Fujimori, the far-right-wing daughter of a famously corrupt former President -- think of her as the Ivanka Trump of Peru -- and Pedro Castillo, a former schoolteacher who "attained prominence as a leading figure in the 2017 teacher strike in Peru" according to Wikipedia.
Fujimori and Castillo emerged as the front-runners in a field of seven, which included a member of Opus Dei who scourges "himself daily to repress sexual desire" and "a former goalkeeper for the Alianza Lima football club". Castillo came in first on April 11, but without a majority, hence the runoff.
NPR's characterization of Fujimori and Castillo as "unpopular" is dubious at best. It may accurately describe Fujimori, with her baggage as the scion of a vicious right-winger, but Castillo came more or less out of nowhere, from only about 2% in the polls in March to the front-runner, ahead of candidates with a lot more name recognition. (That Fujimori only made it to the second round with 13% of the vote confirms that she, at least, really is unpopular.) According to Jacobin's article, he didn't even have a Twitter account, and "So unlikely was Castillo’s first round triumph that CNN failed to locate a photo of the candidate in time to announce his victory."
Unfortunately, like many on the Latin American left, Castillo embraces a "pronounced social conservatism".
Castillo opposes the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and policies promoting gender equality — a stance unremarkable on its face given those same positions, in one form or another, are common to many of the region’s progressive leaders.
But Peru is also, along with Brazil, one of the Latin American countries where religious fundamentalism has made the biggest inroads into national politics. Rafael López Aliaga of the Popular Renewal party almost made it into the second round by branding himself the “Peruvian Bolsonaro,” and Peru is home base for the “Con mi hijo no te metas” campaign, a continent-wide propaganda movement that incites hatred against women and the LGBT community.
This is not good. (Remember, though, that US liberals and progressives rallied deliriously around an antigay Democrat in 2008.) Read the whole Jacobin article for details and nuance; it's much better than the usual suspects. Even if you're not sympathetic to the left, left-wing media tend to do a better job of covering the news than the respectable corporate media.
"Two unpopular candidates" is what I'd expect from NPR. Aside from the probably unconscious echo of the 2016 presidential race in the US, what it means is that Castillo is unpopular among those who really matter: wealthy Peruvians and US political and media elites. I'm not sure why they wouldn't like Fujimori, though.
