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 new head of state of the Andean nation on Wednesday had served as Vice-President of Pedro Castillo until he was voted out by lawmakers after attempting to close the country's Congress.
Boluarte accepted the presidential sash in Peru's congress, but Boluarte said her first task would be to take action against corruption. This cancer has to be extirpated from the country. She said that Peru needs the best Peruvians because of the years of instability and infighting that have seen the executive and legislative branches of government at loggerheads. It won't be easy to govern in Peru. We will put together a cabinet of all bloods to move the country forward. Her reference to all bloods was a reference to a novel by the revered Peruvian author Jos Mar a Arguedas, who hails from Apur mac, the same Andean region as Boluarte, who was born in the town of Chalhuanca.
As a native of Apur mac, I cannot but remember Jos Mar a 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. She added, "I swear by God, by the homeland, by the Peruvians that I will defend democracy until 2026."
Boluarte, who speaks Spanish and Quechua, was a member of the Per Libre, the Marxist party that Castillo represented in the elections until she was expelled earlier this year. She was branded a traitor by the party's controversial leader Vladimir Cerr n, 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 the national registry office of Peru since 2007. She ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Surquillo, a district of Lima, in 2018. Boluarte, who was a practising lawyer for 18 years, has a master's degree in notary and registry law.
Before becoming president on Wednesday, the low-profile lawyer was the country's development and inclusion minister for 16 months.