On December 7th, 2022, Pedro Castillo—then President of Peru—went on live television. What should’ve been a routine presidential address turned into horror: he announced he was dissolving Congress and would rule by decree. Within the hour, his own cabinet started resigning. The military flat-out refused to back him. By nightfall, he was arrested, and Congress had already sworn in his replacement: Dina Boluarte, Peru’s first female president. Castillo’s coup had lasted less than a day.

Peru’s democracy survived that day, but its problems did not go away. Castillo’s attempt to seize total power in Peru should’ve been dramatic and horrifying—and in the early moments it was—but his coup failed almost instantly. The erosion of Peru’s democratic institutions is not so cinematic.

The tradition of the caudillo is nothing new to Peru or even Latin America as a whole. The caudillo has emerged from the power vacuum left by the Spanish after Latin American independence. They aren’t just authoritarian leaders; they treat institutions as mere obstacles to remove on their path to power. The 19th century was the Age of the Caudillos, and since then, they still loom large. For most of history, the only thing capable of removing a caudillo wasn’t a court or Congress, but rather the military. 

The most famous modern example of the caudillo in Peru is Alberto Fujimori. Elected in 1990, he dissolved Congress himself in 1992 and ruled by decree for eight more years. His rule was tolerated by the armed forces, and the institutions were powerless to stop him. In the end, what finally brought him down wasn’t a court ruling—it was a corruption scandal so large that even his own allies abandoned him.

Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but even that could not kill the caudillo. Its appearance has only changed shape. Now, instead of just one person controlling the military, it’s a legislature steeped in corruption handling all of the paperwork, and this has turned out to be even more effective. Turkish author and scholar Ozan O. Varol calls this shift “Stealth Authoritarianism.” It lets the caudillo (and other authoritarian leaders) use ordinary legal and democratic tools to entrench their power in ways that are much harder to challenge than an outright coup. This, then, raises the question: just how does a 130-member Congress manage to consolidate power to act as a single caudillo?

When writing about Fujimori during his first term, political scientist Philip Mauceri noted that a caudillo of Fujimori’s style typically does three major things in its rise to power. First, it consolidates its power instead of sharing it. Secondly, it works to disable existing institutions that are present to check its power. And finally, it removes itself from the accountability those institutions are meant to enforce. During Fujimori’s reign, he took control of the military and sidelined the courts. Now, in a similar fashion since ousting Castillo, the Peruvian Congress has done the same thing through legislation instead of force.

The current iteration of Congress has been on a power trip. In 2024, Congress barred two justices from the National Board of Justice from public office, only to quietly reinstate them shortly after. This matters because the board disciplines judges and prosecutors, and it’s one of the few institutions still fighting to hold powerful people accountable. Additionally, in July 2024, Congress passed a statute of limitations that shields the people responsible for the atrocities committed during Peru’s internal conflict in the 1980-90s. And they have raised the signature threshold so high for new political parties that regional parties struggle to compete, thus concentrating power in the existing parties. These are just a few examples. 

None of this required tanks and armed forces down city streets. None of it drew the same outrage that Castillo’s coup did. Each of these laws can be defended on its own terms, which is exactly why this caudillo pattern is so effective now.

Dina Boluarte was called in to replace Castillo, but she did not bring reform. In March 2024, journalists uncovered an alleged case of illicit enrichment nicknamed “Rolexgate,” and it led to a raid on the Casa de Pizarro—the presidential palace–and her office. The sad reality is that this isn’t new or unusual. From Vladimiro Montesinos—Fujimori’s intelligence chief—getting caught on tape bribing a lawmaker in 2000, to the Odebrecht scandal where no less than four presidents were complicit, to “Rolexgate,” this is just another case in the long list of political bribery and corruption in Peru.

The corruption has seeped into everyday life. Fifty people were killed during the crackdown on protests shortly after Boluarte came into power, and at least twenty of them were killed extrajudicially. In Lima, roughly 3,000 stores had to be shut down in 2024 alone simply because the owners could no longer keep up with paying the extortion fees. The institutions meant to protect life and liberty are failing time and time again, and the people are paying the price.

Peru has had six presidents in five years. For context, a presidential term in Peru is five years, and it took four presidents to complete one term between 2016 and 2021. Each new president comes in with promises of change and builds the institutions to survive bad actors, and each of them fails. This is “democratic hollowing” in action; Peru isn’t just sliding toward a single strongman, but toward weak parties and short-lived leaders with few ties to the average citizen. This complicates the idea of the caudillo because no single person holds the reins for too long, but it’s also why the role stays open. It’s the same power vacuum that produced the first caudillos almost two centuries ago. The caudillo isn’t a simple dictator. It’s a figure who rises at the first opening created by political instability. Right now, 130 people are filling that role, and that may be worse than just one man on a horse.

Democracies don’t die in a single afternoon. Even in the weakest administration, it takes one step at a time. A signature requirement here, a statute of limitations there. Come and watch the coup fail on national television, and miss the signs of Peru losing its democracy anyway.