Jorge Nieto is right, although perhaps not for the reasons he believes.
Jorge Nieto is right, although perhaps not for the reasons he believes.
The proposals for a presidential pardon or pardon are legally unviable. And in terms of democratic health, freeing the person who conspired for the rebellion – in plain terms, he carried out a coup d’état – would send a disastrous signal to future aspiring autocrats, of whom the country does not lack.
Why, then, is Nieto right? Not because releasing Castillo is the right thing to do for national reconciliation. Castillo is not an innocent martyr, but a professional social agitator, and there is no doubt that that is exactly what he would do from the first day he left Barbadillo, on a larger scale and with more force than from prison.
Nieto is right that keeping Castillo imprisoned is a considerable political liability for Keiko Fujimori. For years it has been questioned how much vote transfer power Peruvian politicians really have, but this election showed that Castillo does have it, although it was not enough – by a few tens of thousands of votes – to bring Roberto Sánchez to the Palace.
Castillo’s true asset, and Keiko’s liability, is victimization. He has exploited her since he won the presidency, and every day he spends in prison, while his allies distort the reasons for his confinement, that narrative grows stronger.
Castillo imprisoned and Keiko in the Palace is fertile ground to deepen this narrative of systemic victimization. It is no longer about Keiko ruling in the shadows: according to that story, Keiko and Fujimorism are the system itself, the one that oppresses the professor who wanted to change it, the revolutionary leader who sacrificed himself to put Congress and the powerful in their place. As long as Keiko is perceived as a guarantor of the status quo, without promoting disruptive changes, Castillo will continue to be, by contrast, the symbol of all the oppressed who dared to challenge laws and institutions that they consider repressive.
That liability is something that the president should not underestimate. A few years of economic growth and tranquility for private investment should not dazzle it to the point of blindness. Keeping Castillo in prison may continue to be, in the long term, a political asset for the left. If not handled carefully, Castillo’s consolidation as a martyr could become the right’s Achilles heel.
