Dina Boluarte, Peru’s first female president, vows to fight corruption

Peru’s new president, Dina Boluarte, is the first woman to hold the office in the country’s 200 years of independence. The 60-year-old leftist lawyer, who was sworn in as the Andean nation’s new head of state on Wednesday, had served as vice-president to Pedro Castillo until he was swiftly voted out of office by lawmakers after attempting to close the country’s congress.

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Accepting the presidential sash in Peru’s congress, Boluarte said her first task would be “to take action against corruption. This cancer has to be extirpated from the country.”

Amid years of instability and infighting which has seen the executive and legislative branches of government at loggerheads, she added: “We need the best Peruvians. Governing Peru will not be an easy task. We will put together a cabinet of all bloods to move the country forward.”

Her mention of “all bloods” was a reference to a novel by the revered Peruvian author José María Arguedas, who hailed from Apurímac, the same Andean region as Boluarte, who was born in the town of Chalhuanca.

“As a native of Apurímac, I cannot but remember José María Arguedas and, in his memory, I commit myself to fight so that the nobodies, the excluded and the outsiders have access to what they have always been denied,” she said in her acceptance speech. “I swear by God, by the homeland, by the Peruvians that I will defend democracy until 2026,” she added.

Boluarte, who speaks Spanish and Quechua, was a member of Perú Libre, the Marxist party which Castillo represented in the elections until she was expelled earlier this year. She was labelled a traitor by the party’s controversial leader Vladimir Cerrón, who could not run for vice-president due to a criminal conviction for corruption.

Before accepting the vice-presidency, she had worked as head of Peru’s national registry office since 2007. She ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Surquillo, a district of Lima, in 2018. Boluarte, who was a practising lawyer for 18 years, also has a master’s degree in notary and registry law.

Before becoming the president on Wednesday, the low-profile lawyer was the country’s development and inclusion minister for 16 months.