Democracy and the Streets: Protests and Counter-Hegemony in Peru

Abstract

In this book, Carmen Ilizarbe analyzes the emerging forms of political praxis in Peru between 1997, the beginning of the end of the Fujimori dictatorship, and 2006, the end of the Toledo administration, with the transition in between. The March of the 4 Suyos (M4S) constitutes the nodal point for examining the previous processes that led to the street becoming the main arena of politics, a space "that competes side by side with the institutional arena" (p. 19). An arena where popular sovereignty comes into play, one that has demonstrated the capacity for confrontation and veto against various governments, and which has staged a particular political subjectivity. A space of dispute and encounter, of conflict and carnivalesque subversion of the social order, the street has also been the place to verify the limits of politics in neoliberal times.