ALBERTO FUJIMORI

Halting efforts to promote the Quechua language hit the spotlight last month when Peru’s new prime minister surprised the nation by delivering a speech in the Indigenous tongue to Congress for the first time in Peru’s history.

A leftist political novice who has promised to be a champion of his country’s poor has been sworn in as Peru’s new president.

A teacher in one of the poorest communities in the Andes who has never held office is now Peru’s president-elect after officials in the South American country declared him the winner of a runoff election held last month.

Peru has finished tallying votes in the country’s tight presidential contest but no winner has been declared, with electoral authorities saying they are scrutinizing a small number of ballots amid unproven claims of possible vote tampering leveled by the apparent loser.

A rural teacher-turned-political novice and the daughter of an imprisoned former president have traded the lead in a tight race for Peru's presidency.

Peruvian voters faced a choice between two polarizing populist candidates during Sunday's presidential runoff.

Sunday's presidential election in Peru comes as many citizens are losing hope for their economy and their democracy.

Peruvians are set to pick a new president amid a relentless coronavirus pandemic that has even pushed cemeteries in the South American nation beyond capacity.

Polls show first-time candidate Pedro Castillo leading presidential daughter and former first lady Keiko Fujimori.

In a nation once marked by its successful fight against poverty, voters now face a pair of unappealing alternatives.

As schools across Peru closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Pedro Castillo tried to find a way to keep classes going for his 20 fifth- and sixth-grade students.

Ecuador will be led for the next four years by a conservative businessman after voters rebuffed a left-leaning movement that yielded an economic boom and then a recession since taking hold of the presidency last decade.

Voters in Ecuador appear to have turned to a conservative businessman in their presidential runoff election, rebuffing a leftist movement that has held the presidency for over a decade while ushering in an economic boom and then a yearslong recession.

A surging pandemic that has brought new lockdown measures has pushed the upcoming elections to the background for many weary voters in the neighboring South American nations of Ecuador and Peru.

FILE - In this Oct. 25, 2013 file photo, jailed former President Alberto Fujimori attends his hearing at a police base on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. Fujimori has been implicated in the deaths of five women and the injuries of another 1,301 women who were allegedly sterilized against their will. As president, Fujimori announced at a congress in China in 1995 that his government would undertake a program to help poor Peruvian women decide the number of children they wanted to have. But the program was so controversial that the U.S. Congress cut aid payments to Peru that had been used to fund the program. Fujimori had boasted that the sterilization program dropped Peru’s birth rate from 3.7 children per woman in 1990 to 2.7 children a decade later.

In Latin America, a region not unfamiliar with assaults on democracy, the attack by pro-Trump extremists on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Wednesday prompted widespread alarm —and dark reminders of political upheaval in the region. The phrase “GolpeDeEstadoEnEEUU,” (“coup d’état in the United States”), was trending on Twitter as analysts and others likened the political chaos in Washington to historical and contemporary unrest in their homelands. “The U.S. became part of Latin America,” Lester Ramírez, of the Assn. Advertisement“Authoritarianism is the rule here,” Ramírez said, and now the United States was getting a taste. ... Extremes are the principal threat against democracy.”Some polls have shown a decline in U.S. popularity in much of Latin America since Trump took office.

Peru's new interim President Francisco Sagasti waves to the crowd after he was designated by Congress to lead the nation, in Lima, Peru, Monday, Nov. 16, 2020. Congress chose Sagasti to become the nation's third president in the span of a week after Congress ousted Martin Vizcarra and the following protests forced his successor Manuel Merino to resign. People waved the nation's red-and-white flag and blared horns outside the gates of Congress as Francisco Sagasti of the centrist Purple Party was selected the legislature's new president. Shortly after the vote, he took an oath to become Congress' president. In his speech before Congress, Sagasti recognized the deep wounds the legislature must work to repair before the election.

On Tuesday, Peru swore in Manuel Merino as president, after Perus legislature booted Vizcarra from office on Monday. Vizcarra dissolved Congress last year after lawmakers repeatedly stonewalled efforts to curb graft and reform the judiciary. Furious at his removal Monday, thousands have taken to the streets daily in protest, refusing to recognize the new government. The Organization of American States said Wednesday it is “deeply worried” about the upheaval in Peru. “That has created a political culture of corruption that now people are rejecting.”University student Violeta Mejia said many are simply fed up.

Even amid a global pandemic, theres no sign that corruption is slowing down in Latin America. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)MIAMI Even in a pandemic, there's no slowdown for swindlers in Latin America. Coronavirus clusters are still spreading in Latin America, fueling a spike in deaths, swamping already-precarious hospitals and threatening to ravage slumping economies. To be sure, disasters breed corruption all over the world, not just in Latin America. But stealing state funds is especially vexing in Latin America because of gaping poverty and a tattered social safety net.

She changed her mind in the operating room the next day, but nurses tied her arms and legs to a bed and blindfolded her. As of September, nearly 7,500 people 96% of them women had joined a government registry claiming they never consented. Peruvian women should be the owners of their destiny! Fujimori declared in a 1995 speech to congress. Advertisement::Almost from the beginning, the family program was dogged by complaints that women were being coerced. This program affected women who were farmworkers, the poorest, with the least education, and thats why the state doesnt help them, Goytizolo said.