The government mobilized thousands of troops and police to enforce the order, which bans strikes and protests. They have fired upon demonstrators, and used tear gas and water hoses to suppress the popular mobilizations. At least 21 people have been wounded and 95 were arrested the first day, according to government officials.

The increasingly unpopular government announced the 30-day state of emergency, after nearly two million people joined in strikes to demand wage increases, jobs, and relief measures for the country’s peasants.

Some 280,000 school teachers, who had been on strike for more than two weeks before Toledo’s announcement, vowed to continue their protests despite government threats to declare their strike illegal and fire them.

“The 100-sol ($29) raise they have offered us is insufficient,” said Nilver López, head of the teachers union. “So we teachers have the right to keep expressing our unhappiness in the streets.” Teachers, who earn about $190 a month, are demanding a 210-sol ($60) raise.

Minister of education Gerardo Ayzanoa ordered the schools open May 28. He gave the strikers six days to return to their classrooms before the government begins hiring unemployed teachers to replace them.

In the face of this government repression, health-care workers and court employees, as well as peasants organizations that had joined the growing protests in the days leading up to the state of emergency, called off their strikes temporarily.

An estimated 1.5 million peasants have participated in the mobilizations. Some have set up roadblocks along Peru’s 1,500-mile Pan American highway to stop farm produce from getting to Lima and other cities. The peasants are demanding lower taxes on the sales of domestic agricultural products and other protections from imports.

In Barranca, north of Lima, local peasants and their supporters—who had kept a roadblock with barricades and tires set ablaze in defiance of the state of emergency—were attacked by government forces May 29 forcing the peasants to defend themselves with rocks.

Workers and peasants in Peru have taken to the streets to protest the effects of the deepening economic depression and the relentless squeeze for profits by local and foreign capitalists. Despite registering a 5.2 percent economic growth last year, the fastest in the region—compared to 0.2 percent in 2001—half of the country’s 27 million people live in poverty, and 10 percent are unemployed, according to government figures.

Toledo, who made promises he has not delivered on to create jobs and fight government corruption before his election, now faces widespread popular discontent and plummeting ratings in public opinion polls.

Peru’s rulers have run into wide opposition to their plans to privatize the country’s resources, and implement austerity measures demanded by the imperialist banks as conditions for loans.

Seeking to reassure foreign capitalists of Peru’s reputation as “Latin America’s safe haven” for investments, the Washington Post downplayed Toledo’s decision to impose a state of emergency saying that “such decrees are not uncommon in Latin America,” where governments sometimes resort to military responses to protests against “unpopular policies.”  
 
 
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