More than 3 dozen people have died since president Pedro Castillo's ouster in December.
In Peru's south, a mining region that has been roiled by deadly protests over the ouster of former president Pedro Castillo, protest leaders say they are ready for an "endless battle" against the government, threatening to destabilize the deeply divided Andean nation.
Seventeen protesters were killed on Monday in the southern province of Puno in the worst day of violence since the leftist president's Dec. 7 dramatic removal, which has seen a total of 39 people killed in protests and seven more in related accidents.
The anger in the Andean south looks likely to harden, protest leaders told Reuters, a major risk to firms in the world's No. 2 copper producer, home to large mines including MMG Ltd.'s Las Bambas and Freeport-McMoRan's Cerro Verde.
"This is an endless battle," said Edgar Chura, leader of the Puno Defence Front protest group before the Monday clashes, a view shared by other protest leaders.
Chura said a key demand of the southern regions was overhauling the current market-friendly constitution dating back to conservative President Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s, which he called "an enemy of the people economically and politically."
The protests, sparked by Castillo's removal and arrest after he illegally tried to shutter Congress to avoid an impeachment vote, have focused anger on new President Dina Boluarte and the widely reviled legislature seen as corrupt and self serving.
Protesters want new elections this year, a clear-out of Congress and a new constitution. Boluarte, Peru's first female president and Castillo's former deputy, has tried to appease the protesters, offering elections two years early in early 2024. But she says many of their demands cannot be met.
Boluarte, who speaks the indigenous Andean language Quechua and Spanish, had appeared to get something of a grip on the situation as protests cooled in recent weeks, partly due to the festive season.
But with the new explosion of violence, her administration is now under renewed pressure, caught between a hostile Congress and angry rural voters who felt Castillo, though flawed, was their representative against the traditional political elite as a former teacher and son of peasant farmers.
"In the south he always had support and approval, so there is a sector that genuinely feels that they have removed the politician who represented them," said Jeffrey Radzinsky, director of political consultancy Grupo Fides Peru.
Get revenge
Peru's south, a poor area flush with copper, had been key in driving Castillo's unexpected rise into office in 2021, when Boluarte had been his vice-presidential runner.
Castillo won support pledging to reform the constitution to spread more of the country's copper wealth and empower marginalized indigenous groups. But he largely failed amid accusations of corruption, protests and revolving cabinets of more than 80 ministers in just 17 months.