Pedro Castillo

José Pedro Castillo Terrones (born 19 October 1969) is a Peruvian schoolteacher, union leader, and politician. Attaining prominence as leading figure in the 2017 teacher strike in Peru, he is currently running for President of Peru in the 2021 general election with Free Peru.
Early life and education.
Castillo was born to two illiterate peasants in the town of Puña, Tacabamba, Chota Province, Department of Cajamarca. Cajamarca, despite being the location of South America's largest gold mine, has remained one of the poorest regions in Peru. He is the third child of nine in his parent's family. 
During the internal conflict in Peru, Castillo worked in his youth as a patrolman of the Ronda Campesina to defend against Shining Path. He completed his elementary and high school education at the Octavio Matta Contreras de Cutervo Higher Pedagogical Institute and earned a bachelor's degree in education and a master's degree in Educational Psychology from the César Vallejo University.
Since 1995, Castillo has worked as a primary school teacher at School 10465 in the town of Puña, Chota, where he was responsible for cooking, cleaning and teaching for his students in the classroom.
Activism.
Teacher's strike.
Castillo was a teacher's union leader during the 2017 strike, which sought to increase salaries, pay the social debt, repeal the Law of the Public Teacher Career, and increase the budget in the Education sector.
The strikes spread to various parts of the Peruvian south and because it was being prolonged, the Minister of Education Marilú Martens, Prime Minister Fernando Zavala, the 25 regional governors, and the Regional Directorate of Lima, were called. Despite reaching an agreement, the teachers remained on strike.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski offered himself as a mediator, inviting the teachers' delegates to meet with him in the Government Palace to reach a solution; only the leaders of the CEN were received, along with the leaders of Cuzco, but not the representatives of the bases led by Castillo. Due to this, the strike worsened, with the arrival of the teachers from all regions to Lima, holding marches and rallies in the capital.
On 24 August 2017, despite the fact that some teachers were still on strike, the government issued a supreme decree making official the benefits agreed in the negotiations. The government issued a warning that if the teachers did not return to classrooms as of 28 August, the Ministry of Education would proceed to hire new teachers.
Castillo announced the suspension of the strike on 2 September 2017, but clarified that it would be only a temporary suspension.
Political career.
In 2002, Castillo unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Anguía with Possible Peru. He served as a leading member of the party in Cajamarca from 2005 until the party's dissolution in 2017, following to the party’s poor results in the 2016 elections.
2021 presidential elections.
First round.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru, Castillo attempted to continue teaching his students through lockdowns. His impoverished community, however, did not have the capabilities; almost none of his students had access to a cell phone, and the educational tablets promised by the government never arrived. After experiencing the struggles his students faced over his more than twenty-five years of teaching, Castillo was inspired to enter as a candidate in Peru's presidential elections.
In October 2020, he announced his presidential bid in the 2021 general election with Free Peru. He was formally attained the nomination on 6 December 2020, confirming his ticket, which includes attorney Dina Boluarte and former Governor of Junín, Vladimir Cerrón. Cerrón was later disqualified by the National Jury of Elections due to serving a prison sentence for corruption since 2019.
During his campaign, Castillo said he would pardon ethnic nationalist Antauro Humala, a ethnocacerist who was sentenced to nineteen years in prison after leading the capture of a police station in Andahuaylas that resulted in the deaths of four police and one gunman.
When concluding his first campaign before the primary round of elections, Castillo held a campaign rally in the Historic Centre of Lima, beginning with a rally at Plaza San Martín, leading a march on horseback to Plaza Dos de Mayo where hundreds of supporters gathered. At the event, he told attendees that if elected, the citizens would supervise his policies, that he would only receive the salary of a teacher and that he sought to reduce the pay for congress and ministers by half.
Castillo secured 18% of the vote in the first round, putting him in the first place of a crowded field of candidates. He will face the second-place candidate, Keiko Fujimori, in the second round of voting to select the next Peruvian president. Fujimori had previously finished second place in the 2011 and 2016 presidential elections. After his victory in the first round, Castillo asked to dialogue with other Peruvian political forces in order to achieve political agreement, however, he ruled out making a roadmap as Ollanta Humala did, thus maintaining an ideological discourse, far-left radical.
Second round.
Approaching the second round of presidential elections, The Associated Press said that if Castillo were to become president, his policy proposals would be unlikely to be enacted, as the newly-elected Congress of Peru is made of opposing parties, with his party having only over 37 of the 130 seats in congress.
Reactions.
Following Castillo's surprising success in the first round of elections, the stock market in Peru fell by 3.2% and Peru's currency the Peruvian sol saw its value drop 1.7%, its biggest loss since December 2017 when the first impeachment process against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski occurred. 
Former Bolivian President Evo Morales congratulated Castillo, stating that Castillo "won with our proposal" and that he had spoken to him on the phone previously. Former Uruguay President José Mujica also shared approval of Castillo's success in the first round of elections.
Political positions.
Analysts have described Castillo as an agrarian, ethnonationalist, populist and socialist. Castillo has been described as far-left by multiple international news agencies, though he has distanced himself from far-leftists within his party, stating "the one who is going to govern is me" and said there will be "no communism" in Peru under his government. While promoting left-wing values on government spending and foreign policy, he trends more right-wing on social issues, directly expressing opposition to the "legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, or euthanasia" and the "gender equality approach" in education.
Domestic.
Economy.
If elected, Castillo promised in a speech directed towards foreign businesses that he would not nationalize companies in Peru, saying that those seeking the nationalization of industry within his party were part of the far-left. A main proposal for Castillo is the increase in the education and health budgets equating to at least ten percent of Peru's GDP. He did not clarify how such policies would be funded as Peru's existing government budget is fourteen percent of the country's GDP. In an interview with CNN, he stated that if elected, he would hold discussions with businesses to ensure "that 70% of profits must remain for the country and that they take 30%, not the other way around as it is today". 
Regarding mining in Peru, Castillo has said that he supports the extraction of minerals throughout Peru "where nature and the population allow it" and that he welcomes international investment regarding these projects. Castillo has made statements supporting regulations against oligopolies, directly criticizing Chilean companies Saga Falabella and LATAM Airlines Group. Citing that LATAM owes Peru nearly $1 billion, Castillo called for a state-owned national airline.
Social.
Another proposal is to elect a Constituent Assembly to replace the constitution inherited from Alberto Fujimori's regime, with Castillo saying "it serves to defend corruption at macro scale". He has said that in his efforts to rewrite the Peruvian constitution, he would respect the rule of law.
Other proposed policies from Castillo include creating paramilitary groups and militarizing Peruvian youth in order to promote a revolutionary experience, calling for citizens to arm themselves in order to provide justice through "socialist administration". He has called for Peru to leave the American Convention on Human Rights and to reinstate the death penalty in the country. Castillo has also called for stricter regulations on the media in Peru as well.
According to Castillo, issues of abortion and LGBT rights in Peru "are not a priority". His "Socialist woman" proposal was described as "a deeply patriarchal, gender-normative view of society disguised under seemingly liberating language" by Javier Puente, assistant professor of Latin American Studies at Smith College, while the rest of his program did not include any policies regarding LGBT groups, vulnerable populations in Peru.
International.
Castillo defended the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, describing it as "a democratic government" while his Free Peru party has shared praise for the policies of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. 
After winning the first round of presidential elections, Castillo said regarding Venezuela that "There is no Chavismo here", saying of President Maduro "if there is something he has to say concerning Peru, that he first fix his internal problems". He also called on Maduro to take Venezuelan refugees back to their native country, saying Venezuelans arrived in Peru "to commit crimes". Castillo has described the Venezuelan refugee crisis as an issue of "human trafficking", and said that he would give Venezuelans who commit crimes seventy-two hours to leave Peru.
Alleged links to MOVADEF.
During Castillo's participation in the 2017 teacher's strike, the Minister of the Interior, Carlos Basombrío Iglesias, stated that Castillo was involved with MOVADEF, a civilian branch of the Shining Path. Castillo denied being involved with MOVADEF, or the more militant teachers' union faction CONARE, stating: "I have my ID at hand ... here in this place, in this teaching there is no space for those factions", and that if there were any MOVADEF-linked teachers in schools, the Ministry of Education was responsible because it hired the teachers. These claims however, have been refuted by Castillo himself, the Guardian, ABC, and a variety of other news outlets. 
The Peruvian newspaper "Peru.21" has also accused Castillo of being linked to Shining Path, and published documents purported to confirm Castillo's relationship with the movement. "Peru.21" again raised Castillo's alleged links to the MOVADEF due to his participation in virtual meetings with the organization's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru.
The leader of the United Union of Workers in Education of Peru (SUTEP), Hamer Villena Zúñiga, subsequently stated that “Pedro Castillo's sister belongs to MOVADEF”, referring to María Doraliza Castillo Terrones.
Personal life.
Castillo is married to Lilia Paredes, a teacher, and have two children together. He is Catholic while his wife and children are Evangelical. His family lives on a farm in the Chugur District; cows, pigs, corn and sweet potatoes are all products of his farm. As for Castillo's appearance, he often wears a straw hat, poncho and sandals constructed from old tires.