Peru combats crime as world leaders arrive

For all its charms, the city of Lima is notorious for its traffic snarls.
Cars and minibuses clow the streets of one of the most congested cities in the world, making Peru’s capital a challenging environment for a large-scale international event like this week’s Apec summit.
The Peruvian government’s solution? The closure of the city’s schools and universities, a mandate for public servants to work from home, and the declaration of a public holiday for the three most important days of the gathering.
The blunt-force measures may have their desired effect – previous visitors have already noted the traffic seems better than usual – but they have also angered locals already at boiling point over the perceived failures of their politicians and unimpresssed with further disruption to their lives.
Peru has gone through six presidents in the past six years, and incumbent Dina Boluarte recorded a staggeringly low approval rating of just 5 percent in one poll earlier this year.
Boluarte’s unpopularity is largely due to her administration’s inability – or unwillingness – to tackle organised crime, with a sharp rise in extortion cases and the high-profile murder of a teacher in front of his students.
The president herself came under scrutiny earlier this year, with local media questioning and police investigating how she had acquired luxury watches and jewellery worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with a presidential salary of just over $7000 a month.
Shortly afterwards, Peru’s Congress passed a law barring prosecutors from investigating certain offences as organised crime and making it harder to carry out raids even with search warrants.
The government’s hope appears to be that playing host to Apec is an opportunity to promote the country’s (genuinely impressive) tourist attractions and local culture, while glossing over some of the more unsavoury aspects of the current situation.
On Thursday (NZT), workers were quite literally rolling out the red carpet for the Apec CEO Summit at Lima’s National Theatre, while motorway walls en route to the Apec venues were being repainted even as leaders were arriving into the city.
But there is no hiding the concerns about security: Peruvian soldiers and police are blanketed on almost every corner of the city, while Peruvian lawmakers authorised the entry of American military personnel to provide support during the week.
Local Peruvians have nonetheless made their displeasure clear: local transport unions declared a strike to coincide with Apec events, while protesters reportedly clashed with police on Thursday.
The country faces other structural problems, too. More than 70 percent of workers are employed in the “informal economy”, paying no tax and lacking access to usual workers’ protections and social services; speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Apec official Carlos Kuriyama said creating a roadmap to formalisation was among organisers’ priorities for the week.
Such issues may seem a world away for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who is unlikely to discuss Peru’s domestic issues in great deal with Boluarte (or anyone else) once he arrives in Lima on Friday night for a flying visit.
But the unrest is yet another reminder that the lofty principles behind Apec’s existence, and its reputation as a “talk shop”, must contend with tougher realities on the ground in its member economies.