Authoritarian escalation in Peru : Extractivism, racial discrimination and democracy

• The current political crisis in Peru manifests long-standing social discontent over historical ethnic, class and environmentalinequalities that are largely created and supported by the extractivist model. • Traditionally, extractivism has developed in the country in a localized authoritarian manner. Emergency decreessuspending fundamental rights and guarantees and opening spaces for the disproportionate use of public force happenedonly in particular zones of social conflict. • Extractivism has imposed itself within racist imaginaries rooted in how society is territorially distributed. Theseimaginaries depoliticize specific rural communities by recognizing only as a valid political agenda their struggle againstpoverty and welfare and nothing else. • The current crisis is not an authoritarian turn but the escalation of a regime that has already been authoritarian forracialized and excluded sectors of society.