Thou­sands of pro­test­ers took to the streets of Pe­ru’s cap­i­tal Fri­day and were met with vol­leys of tear gas for the sec­ond straight day, as demon­stra­tors made clear they will keep up their mo­bi­liza­tions to de­mand the res­ig­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Di­na Bolu­arte.

Many of the pro­test­ers in Li­ma had ar­rived from re­mote An­dean re­gions, where dozens have died amid un­rest that has en­gulfed large por­tions of the coun­try since Pe­dro Castil­lo, Pe­ru’s first leader from a rur­al An­dean back­ground, was im­peached and im­pris­oned af­ter he tried to dis­solve Con­gress last month.

“Di­na, re­sign al­ready! What is that you want with our Pe­ru?” said José Luis Ay­ma Cuen­tas, 29, who trav­eled about 20 hours to get to the coun­try’s cap­i­tal from the south­ern Puno re­gion, which has been the site of the dead­liest state vi­o­lence over the past month. “We’re stay­ing un­til she re­signs, un­til the dis­so­lu­tion of Con­gress, un­til there are new elec­tions, oth­er­wise we aren’t go­ing any­where.”

Un­til re­cent­ly, the protests had been main­ly in Pe­ru’s south­ern re­gion, with a to­tal of 55 peo­ple killed and 700 in­jured in the un­rest, large­ly in clash­es with se­cu­ri­ty forces.
Pro­test­ers now want Li­ma, home to around one-third of Pe­ru’s pop­u­la­tion of 34 mil­lion, to be the fo­cal point of the demon­stra­tions that be­gan when Bolu­arte, who was then vice pres­i­dent, was sworn in­to of­fice on Dec. 7 to re­place Castil­lo. The protests sparked the worst po­lit­i­cal vi­o­lence in the coun­try has seen in more than two decades.

At the be­gin­ning of the Fri­day’s protests, the demon­stra­tors seemed more or­ga­nized than the pre­vi­ous day and they took over key roads in down­town Li­ma wav­ing flags while chant­i­ng, “The spilled blood will nev­er ben for­got­ten,” “The peo­ple don’t give up,” and oth­er slo­gans.
Po­lice ap­peared more com­bat­ive than the day be­fore and af­ter stand­ing watch over pro­test­ers that had been blocked in­to down­town streets they start­ed fir­ing vol­leys of tear gas.

The fir­ing of tear gas al­so ap­peared more in­dis­crim­i­nate. A group of pro­test­ers who were sit­ting in a plaza in front of the Supreme Court with­out caus­ing a dis­tur­bance sud­den­ly had to start run­ning as ap­proach­ing po­lice fired round af­ter round of tear gas that filled the area with smoke and a pun­gent smell per­me­at­ed the air.

“I’m in­dig­nant, fu­ri­ous,” said Mad­dai Par­do Quin­tana, 48, as she of­fered wa­ter mixed with bak­ing so­da to pro­test­ers to flush their eyes from the tear gas. “They want us to re­spect them but if they led by ex­am­ple and re­spect­ed us, we’d al­so re­spect them more.”

Par­do came to Li­ma to protest against Bolu­arte from the cen­tral province of Chan­chamayo and vowed to stay in the cap­i­tal un­til the pres­i­dent agrees to re­sign.

Anger at law en­force­ment was a con­stant through­out the march as demon­stra­tors yelled “mur­der­ers” when they passed rows of po­lice of­fi­cers wear­ing hel­mets and hold­ing up shields.
A few blocks away, Doris Pa­cori, 56, stood be­tween po­lice of­fi­cers and pro­test­ers who had been blocked from reach­ing Con­gress.
“They are ser­vants of the cor­rupt, cow­ards with them but abu­sive with the peo­ple,” Pa­cori, who held a sign that read, “Di­na mur­der­er.”

As night fell, pro­test­ers got locked in­to run­ning bat­tles with po­lice while some demon­stra­tors threw wa­ter bot­tles filled with rocks at of­fi­cers.
Late Fri­day, In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Vi­cente Romero praised po­lice ac­tion dur­ing the protests, say­ing that it “has been very pro­fes­sion­al.”

Pro­test­ers were par­tic­u­lar­ly an­gry at Bolu­arte for a de­fi­ant speech she gave Thurs­day night in which she ac­cused pro­test­ers of fo­ment­ing vi­o­lence, vowed to pros­e­cute demon­stra­tors and ques­tioned where they re­ceived their fi­nanc­ing.

“You want to break the rule of law, you want to gen­er­ate chaos so that with­in that chaos and con­fu­sion you take pow­er,” Bolu­arte said Thurs­day night.
“The la­dy is very cold, she has no feel­ings, no com­pas­sion for oth­er peo­ple,” Par­do said.
Bolu­arte has said she sup­ports a plan to hold fresh elec­tions in 2024, two years ahead of sched­ule, but pro­test­ers unan­i­mous­ly say that isn’t fast enough, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing all the deaths in re­cent weeks.

Protests and clash­es with law en­force­ment al­so took place in oth­er parts of the coun­try.
In Are­quipa, Pe­ru’s sec­ond city, po­lice clashed with pro­test­ers that tried to storm the air­port.

Al­so in south­ern Pe­ru, multi­na­tion­al firm Glen­core de­cid­ed to tem­po­rary shut down its An­ta­pac­cay cop­per mine af­ter pro­test­ers at­tacked the site.
Castil­lo, a po­lit­i­cal novice who lived in a two-sto­ry adobe home in the An­dean high­lands, eked out a nar­row vic­to­ry in elec­tions in 2021 that rocked Pe­ru’s po­lit­i­cal es­tab­lish­ment and laid bare the deep di­vi­sions be­tween res­i­dents of the cap­i­tal and the long-ne­glect­ed coun­try­side.

LI­MA, Pe­ru (AP) By DANIEL POLI­TI and FRANKLIN BRICEÑO