In his straw hat, Pedro Castillo claims victory in the Peruvian presidential election
DW: President Pedro Castillo has radical plans for Peru
Until four years ago, Pedro Castillo was a teacher in a rural school in the Andes. Then he gained national notoriety as the leader of a teachers strike, and now he's president of Peru.
Only one road leads to Puna. The village in Tacabamba District consists of two dozen houses scattered around a few fields and paths — and a school where Jose Pedro Castillo Terrones taught until 2017. From here it takes a whole day to travel to the regional capital, Cajamarca, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) away.
Born in Tacabamba in 1969, Castillo served as a young man in the local Rondas Campesinas — patrols organized by farmers during height of the the internal conflict to protect communities from guerrilla attacks in the 1980s and '90s, when the armed forces, as well as the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path and the Marxist-Leninist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, terrorized rural Peru. The state did little to help, and many believe that the government continues to neglect the rural poor.
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WNU Editor: It is not going to be easy. Half the country did not vote for him, and Congress is controlled by his opponents.
