The Magic Trick That Killed Peru’s Democracy

Dina Boluarte’s impeachment this month makes her the third Peruvian president ousted in just five years .
Her approval rating, hovering at 3%, places her among the world’s least popular elected leaders.

After a presidency marked by corruption, street killings, and an explosion of organized crime, her removal might have felt like liberation.
Instead, Peruvians met it with weary indifference — even protest.

Because by now, who occupies the presidential palace no longer matters.

Since the mid-2010s, Peru’s presidents have been little more than ceremonial figures.
Real power has drifted toward what political scientists in Lima now call the broker alliance — a loose coalition of legislators, business figures, and local strongmen who command both political and criminal networks.

Among them: Keiko Fujimori, daughter of Peru’s last dictator and perennial presidential candidate;
José Luna Gálvez, head of a major political party;
and Waldemar Cerrón, a congressman wielding regional influence.

These power brokers operate with the quiet efficiency of a parallel state —
a network neither fully inside nor outside the government,
sustained by bribery, black markets, and bureaucratic complicity.

Western observers often imagine that freedom falls to autocrats:
to a Putin, a Maduro, a Pinochet.

Peru offers a subtler, more insidious warning —
a democracy that rots from within its own institutions .

Across Latin America — in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico — a similar pattern is taking hold.
Not the tyranny of one man, but the slow suffocation of accountability by criminalized elites.

As the state loses its monopoly on violence, drug traffickers, illegal gold miners, and mafias fill the vacuum.
They require no coup, only complacency —
and, crucially, the passive cooperation of the officials meant to stop them.

Peru’s shadow power structure has divided the country into fiefdoms.
In each, local mafias enforce their own “law,”
targeting indigenous leaders, environmentalists, journalists, and union organizers.

The economics are staggering:
Illegal gold mines in the Amazon generate billions of dollars annually ,
while cocaine exports rival Colombia’s.
One in three Peruvians knows someone who has been extorted.

To secure protection, criminal bosses fund legislators who in turn rewrite the law :
weakening prosecutors, shielding illegal logging,
and legitimizing corrupt networks under the guise of deregulation.

This is not chaos — it is the system itself .

Unlike Venezuela or Nicaragua, Peru still holds elections — and loudly insists on its democracy.
But its rulers are now brokers, not leaders;
their clients are cartels, not citizens.

They can claim legitimacy while ensuring nothing changes.
Even if one faction falls, the illicit economy — fueled by global demand for gold and cocaine —
simply buys a new protector.

This is the alchemy of modern authoritarianism :
a democracy hollowed out by networks too diffuse to overthrow.

How do you resist a dictatorship that doesn’t exist?
Opponents of classic autocrats have a clear rallying cry: “Down with the dictator.”
But in Peru, there is no dictator to topple — only a system of shadows.

For reformers, the only path forward lies in rebuilding state capacity —
strengthening local governance, civic movements, and independent courts.
It is slow, invisible work — and yet the only antidote to invisible power.

Peru shows that freedom can die quietly —
not with a coup, but with consent.
Not by tanks in the streets, but by laws written in backrooms.

It’s a lesson not only for Latin America but for every democracy:
when corruption replaces conviction,
and governance becomes brokerage,
dictators become unnecessary.