Peru’s protesters are a mixture of exhausted, sad, fearful, and angry. As thousands took to the streets in Lima and thirty other Peruvian cities on October 15—one of the largest anti-government protests in recent memory, following the fall of President Dina Boluarte and the ascension to power of José Jerí—the stories they told were similar. They were tired of police brutality, yet resolute in their struggle.
While lethal police violence has long been a part of the state’s playbook for controlling protests, it has been on the rise in recent years. Since 2020, 54 people have been killed by the police in protests, while hundreds of others have been seriously injured. Police repression is now an instrument of governance in Peru, and it has become increasingly common for the police to provoke protesters, fire rubber pellets at point-blank range, and shoot metal bullets as well—all of which contradict the official police’s internal guidelines on maintaining public order. On October 15, Eduardo Ruiz, a 32-year-old rapper known as Trvko, was shot and killed by an undercover police officer.
These mobilizations, which have continued since Boluarte’s fall, are being headed by the “primera línea,” a network of activists that has confronted the most acute forms of police violence. The essential role of the primera línea is admired by fellow protesters but scorned and criminalized by political elites, who have invested heavily in riot-control equipment and labeled protesters as “terrorists.” But this organized resistance will not be squashed anytime soon: the rise of the primera línea is rooted in Peru’s overlapping crises of insecurity, extortion, political instability, and the erosion of democracy. Protesters are not hopeful that a mere transfer of presidential power will solve these entrenched issues.
Peru’s Political Crises
While the catalyst for the latest upsurge of protest has been anger over corruption and insecurity, Peru’s social movements are facing obstacles rooted in deeper histories of state violence.
According to Reynaga Segundo, a hip-hop activist, young people today are dealing with the aftereffects of the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori, who ruled over the country with an iron fist from 1990 to 2000. “Fujimori’s regime destroyed social organizations,” he said. As a result, many Peruvians had lost their faith in protests and collective action. “It was sad to see that during the marches, after just one or two teargas bombs, people dispersed, and the protest ended.”
In the last decade, protesters have sought to recover some of the militancy of past protests and social movements. The most recent reincarnation of the “primera línea” can be traced to 2014, when the government of Ollanta Humala passed the Pulpín Law, which proposed labor reforms framed as efforts to boost youth employment but, in practice, allowed employers to hire young workers by exempting them from standard labor benefits. Fed up with precarity, Peruvians took to the streets with an intensity that had seemingly been dormant in the capital.
The protests in 2014 served as a moment of political awakening for many of today’s activists. According to Scrolili, a young man who identifies as an anarchist, he first began deactivating tear gas canisters in 2015. His work on the frontlines completely changed his perception of the protesters. “I used to think that everyone on the frontline was violent, but then I realized that the police are abusive, criminal, and assassins,” he said. The violence directed at his comrades radicalized him further. “Seeing my compañeros fall beside me made me decide to organize and defend myself.”
Peru has had eight presidents in the last decade.
Since then, democracy in Peru has eroded so far that the country is now considered a “hybrid regime,” marked by “legislative authoritarianism,” rising poverty, and the highest cumulative COVID-19 mortality rate per capita worldwide. Peru has had eight presidents in the last decade.
Anger over these crises has increasingly made itself felt in public spaces, particularly in the protests of 2020, 2022, and 2023, which followed a failed self-coup and the fall from power of left-wing leader Pedro Castillo. Nationwide demonstrations were violently repressed, especially in Ayacucho, Apurímac, and Puno, where the police massacred protesters who were predominantly Aymara or Quechua, and from economically marginalized sectors.
Fighting Back
The resilience of protesters in the face of police violence seeks to counteract a key state narrative: that state policies are not generating outrage. As Pantera Rosa, a student activist who serves as a shield-bearer and deactivator in the protests, recalls, the police’s role is to “clear the way”—to dismantle the protest before it can influence public opinion. Occupying the streets is an act of resistance itself—an act that comes with immense costs.
On the frontline, everybody has a specific role to play: some are defensive and risk-mitigating, others are a strike force. In addition to sustaining the momentum of protests, the frontline coordinates to protect protesters. One of their central roles is to deactivate tear gas bombs. This exceptionally dangerous task is made riskier when the State uses expired gas canisters that can be more harmful.
As the state’s violence has intensified, so too has the preparation of the frontline protesters. Today, the frontline includes health volunteers like Alma, a student and brigade member. “We treat injuries, call ambulances, stay with people in hospitals, and follow up on the injured after mobilization,” she said.
Independent media—especially photojournalists—have come to play a vital role on the frontline as well. Their work goes beyond documentation, producing visual evidence to defend protesters’ rights and challenge mainstream narratives. According to photojournalist José Rubio, his photos have helped him prove the innocence of protesters, as in the case of Aida Aroni, an indigenous protester accused of violently resisting arrest who had only yelled at the police to stop shooting. “The material I had documented helped prove her innocence,” he said. Not just any protester can make it to the primera línea. According to Scrolli, to reach the frontlines, you must prove self-control and loyalty. “Sometimes you tremble with anger at what you see. You need a lot of control to witness that and not go out and do something reckless.”
Who’s on the Frontline?
Contrary to the smears often deployed against “entitled” protesters, Lima’s primera línea is overwhelmingly working-class. According to Vegueta, an activist with eight years as a shield-bearer, “Ninety percent of us on the frontline come from the so-called barriadas in Lima. We all have experienced disadvantage and times when our electricity and water were cut off.” Their collective hardship has burnished an immense commitment to the cause. “We endure three-hour traffic jams just to get to places.”
While most protesters are young, placing Peru’s demonstrations within the broader wave of so-called “Gen Z” uprisings, those in the frontline come from multiple generations. Some are seasoned activists, while others belong to Generation Z. What unites them is not age, but a shared sense of political awareness shaped outside traditional party structures—through leftist and anti-colonial initiatives, anarchist organizing, university activism, hip-hop culture, anti-Fujimorismo, and feminism.
What unites them is not age, but a shared sense of political awareness shaped outside traditional party structures—through leftist and anti-colonial initiatives, anarchist organizing, university activism, hip-hop culture, anti-Fujimorismo, and feminism.
As Scrolli explains, the primera línea is made up of ordinary people with diverse everyday responsibilities—people like him, who built a career in informatics and has a daughter. He admits feeling anger when they are called vandals, but quickly adds, “We’re not superheroes either.”
The composition of these protests’ frontlines is similar to that of others that have swept across Latin America, such as uprisings in Chile in 2019, Colombia in 2020, and Ecuador in 2022, where police repression resulted in the deaths of protesters.
Peruvian activists on the frontlines are versed in the tactics of past movements and draw motivation from their outcomes. Vegueta reflected on the uprising in Chile as an inspiration, noting that he was amazed to find out that there exists a Museo del Estallido Social. When interviewed, he carefully showed his artifacts of struggle: his MDF shield and the spent tear gas canisters he had defused. “I keep these things because maybe one day we’ll be able to tell our story.”
“We Fight So We Don’t Have to Anymore”
In the short term, frontline activists are demanding that the new government guarantee the right to protest, tamp down on crime, and restore the balance of power in Peru. But their visions are also directed towards a longer-term reconstruction of the Peruvian state and society.
Activists like Reynaga Segundo harshly criticize Peru’s enduring inequality and economic model. “Neoliberalism has advanced above rights,” he said. Neoliberalism is not just an economic system formalized in the nineties, but also a belief system that has come to play a crucial role in legitimizing Peru’s political regime. Many interviewees focused on the need for a constituent assembly to reform the National Constitution’s economic chapter in force, which institutionalizes the state’s limited subsidiary role.
The outrage matches the scale of the crisis. Nevertheless, though willing to confront immense violence, protesters were quick to point out that they do not protest because it’s fun. As Scrolli explained, “Who the hell wants to spend their whole life fighting? You’d have to be crazy to want that. We fight so that one day we won’t have to fight anymore.”
Frontliners often experience acute emotional distress after protests, even when returning home safely. “It’s not normal to walk down a street and suddenly feel a chill, to have goosebumps, because that’s where I lived through repression in previous months,” said Pantera Rosa.
They do not have a death wish. “I don’t want to be turned into a tribute or for people to print my face on a T-shirt, because I died,” echoed Vequeta.
Yet not everything is fear and pain. “Sometimes it’s gratifying,” said Nadia Rain, a photographer who has been documenting the protests since 2020. “What moves me is the sense of collectivity—something I can’t find in my formal work. The feeling that there are people who think like me, where I feel understood.”
Today, the desire to remain in the streets is also driven by the need to honor those who have died protesting. To Alma, “their deaths have not been in vain. They will always live on in our memories as long as we are still here.”
Echoing this commitment, Scrolli demonstrates the same persistence: “I’ve heard Trvko speak so many times. What would he think if we stepped back?” Together, their words express not just grief, but a firm resolve to keep resisting.
The identities of some interviewees and the collectives they belong to have been withheld or presented under pseudonyms to safeguard their security.
Raisa Ferrer Pizarro (she/her) is a communicator and interdisciplinary scholar. She is currently a doctoral researcher in sociology at Bielefeld University and a researcher at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. She is also involved in creative writing and audiovisual initiatives, including Cartas Sonoras Feministas, a documentary and oral archive project she co-founded.