PERU: How Pedro Castillo “Took the Bait”: Hidden Details Behind the Downfall of a Leftist Peruvian President

By Daniel Espinosa
Global Research
June 08, 2026

Unlike other revelations and confessions related to the final days of Castillo’s presidency—which the Peruvian corporate media chose not to investigate or pay attention to—Torres’ recent statement was duly covered, earning a spot on the front page of the print version of “La República”, a very important Peruvian newspaper, on May 23.[2]

Although “La República’s” coverage seems to reduce that “combined effort” to the heavy and very open political, media, and institutional pressure Castillo faced throughout his presidency for having promised a break with the neoliberal status quo—and because of his campesino origins—other information that has come to light in recent years points to a much more specific plot that unfolded during the days and hours leading up to his ouster, arrest and incarceration.

That information suggests that a psychological operation was carried out to push Castillo into a state of panic, inducing him to shut down Congress to save his presidency, an act that would be immediately understood or presented as a “self-coup”, and used to demand his ouster, which is exactly what ended up happening.

Rumors of a psychological operation began to circulate on December 7, 2022, the day Pedro Castillo addressed the nation to announce the closure of Congress. Thirty years earlier, in 1992, Alberto Fujimori (Keiko Fujimori’s father) had also decreed—albeit successfully—the closure of a Congress that did not support his policies.[3] The decisive difference between Fujimori’s success and Castillo’s failure was the support of the Armed Forces. Fujimori had it, Castillo did not. After 1992, Peruvians widely understand acts like the sudden closure of Congress by a president as an obvious attack on democracy, a “self-coup”, or “autogolpe”, in Spanish.

I still remember December 7 clearly: audio recordings of unknown origin circulated through WhatsApp groups explaining how key political figures, the Police, and the Peruvian Armed Forces, had orchestrated a plan to push Castillo into a panic, leading him to break the constitutional order with the aim of immediately using his actions as a justification for his ouster.

The plan was to make the former president believe that his impeachment, which was to be voted on the afternoon of December 7 in the Peruvian Congress[4], was a fait accompli; as I will explain, the plan also included convincing him that he would have the support of the Armed Forces if he decided to shut down Congress right before that impeachment vote. Those recordings, so far unverified, explained that he was also told that, according to polls, the people of Peru would support him rather than the widely unpopular Congress.

But the origin of those audio recordings was and still is a complete mystery, and back then there was no way to verify whether their content was true. Over time, however, a body of evidence, personal accounts and confessions accumulated to support the claims contained in them. Let’s review them in no particular order.

Umberto Jara’s Account
A conservative journalist and political analyst with a very shady past named Umberto Jara, who collaborated in the 1990s with Vladimiro Montesinos—former CIA asset[5] and Alberto Fujimori’s right-hand man, currently in jail—by disseminating media propaganda on behalf of the regime[6], published a book titled: Así cayó Castillo (Editorial Planeta, 2023) openly detailing the psychological operation carried out against the former president.[7]

His intention was not to expose or denounce a highly questionable—and most likely illegal—police operation against a sitting president. Instead, he presents it as a heroic act that saved Peruvian democracy from becoming a “leftist dictatorship”.[8] Jara is well-known for defending far-right talking points on Willax TV, the news network where the Fujimorist politician Miki Torres made his recent declarations regarding Castillo’s ouster, and also for publishing books about recent Peruvian historical and political events.

In the pages of “Así cayó Castillo” (“This is How Castillo Fell”), what happened during the last days and hours of the campesino president is presented in an explicit manner. It details the operations of the Special Team of Prosecutors Against Corruption in Power (by its Spanish acronym, EFFICOP), an elite unit of the Peruvian police directed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and headed by Harvey Colchado, an intelligence police officer trained by the CIA and the DEA, known for fighting “narco-terrorism” in the Peruvian jungle.[9]

What it reveals, extensively quoting police officers working for EFFICOP, is that the police body used civilian agents secretly infiltrated within Castillo’s inner circle to convince him that the Congress had already obtained the votes needed for his impeachment. Jara’s account also reveals that Castillo was told that a former political ally (named Salatiel Marrufo, advisor to the Ministry of Housing until a few months before the downfall of the president) would confess to delivering bribes to him—and even show a video of the president actually receiving the money—right before the impeachment vote, publicly exposing him.

Here are some excerpts from “Así cayó Castillo” (translated by the author of this column; parentheses added for clarity):

“(…) The end of Pedro Castillo and his government began at dusk on December 6, 2022, when members of the Special Team met with a man whose mission was to enter the Government Palace carrying the message. His identity can only be known when he himself decides to reveal it. He was a person with easy access to the Palace and who also had occasional conversations with members of the Special Team…

“(…) The information (the message the unknown man was to take to Castillo) was that the next day, in the congressional chamber, before the debate on the impeachment began, a video would be presented that had been recorded on May 16, 2022, in the office of Salatiel Marrufo when the president visited the Ministry of Housing. In (the video), Pedro Castillo appeared… receiving from Marrufo himself a paper bag containing 100,000 soles… (roughly 30,000 USD).

“The task of the man (secretly working for the Special Team) was to deliver this information to Castillo, and he had to conclude that message with this blunt warning: his fate (Castillo’s) was sealed, because at 3 p.m., before (Congress) discussed the impeachment, the video would be presented to the congressmen and to the country.

“(…) The man who entered the Government Palace on the eve of December 7 had no idea of the effects that his participation would have. In fact, no one could have known. Even within the Special Team, the authors of the intelligence operation, nobody had any certainty, only hope for a good outcome. (…)

“(…) The messenger left the Government Palace and sent this brief WhatsApp message (to the Equipo Especial): “He knows.”

(…) When Castillo delivered his self-coup address, the policemen and attorneys at the offices of EFICCOP were watching it on the state television channel: “(…) Everyone thought at once: “Castillo took the bait”.

“(…) At 13:49 hours, Congress approved the presidential vacancy with 101 votes out of 110 members present, and ten minutes later, on Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Avenue… the driver transporting Pedro Castillo in his attempt to flee to the Mexican embassy received the order to stop. The commander general of the Peruvian police, Raúl Alfaro, had given the order for Castillo’s arrest…”

Allegations of Military Involvement
Additional testimonies aired in recent months suggest that the plot against Castillo also included representatives of the Peruvian Army, who assured the former president that he had the support of the armed forces if he decided to close Congress, apparently, a lie designed to push him into committing the “self-coup”.

In an interview[10] conducted last October, 2025, Peruvian army general Víctor Canales, an advisor to former Defense Minister Gustavo Bobbio—in charge on the day Castillo tried to shut down Congress—said he witnessed highly suspicious activity inside the ministry during the days and hours leading up to December 7, 2022, and told journalist Nicolás Lúcar (around minute 19 of the YouTube interview, in Spanish) that right before the “self-coup”:

“Bobbio made Castillo believe that he had the support of supreme commanders of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and, of course, the police”.

General Víctor Canales was an exceptional witness to the actions of the Army’s high command when the Armed Forces rejected Pedro Castillo and supported Dina Boluarte on December 7, 2022. Credit: Peruvian Army / Source

. The Head of EFICCOP (“Equipo Especial…”) Speaks
More information pointing to a psychological operation has become public since then. In an interview[11] conducted on February 2025 by a very popular Peruvian journalist and podcaster, Marco Sifuentes, the police officer who led EFICCOP, Harvey Colchado, was asked if his team “planted in Castillo’s mind the idea that there was a witness who was going to rat him out” (around minute 49 of the YouTube interview, in Spanish).

Astutely avoiding the part of the question that referred to the suggestion that EFICCOP had planted an idea in Castillo’s mind (an textbook psyop), Colchado didn’t deny anything, but limited himself to confirming that it was true that one of Castillo’s former advisors, the “witness” in question, did betray him and was talking to the police about corruption inside his government.

“Did you plant that idea knowing that Castillo would react and stage a coup?”, Sifuentes asks Colchado later in the interview. Again, Colchado doesn’t deny the “planting” of an idea in Castillo, avoids answering specifically about that, and justifies himself by saying that the real intention of EFICCOP was to “inform congressmen about who Castillo really was, so they would be able to make the right decision” (impeachment).

Colchado insists on saying that they didn’t know how Castillo would react (a point Jara also makes repeatedly in his book, written with full access to EFICCOP’s staff), but the information already mentioned regarding what was taking place in the Ministry of Defense at the same time—as described by army general Víctor Canales—points to a larger plot that did have the aim of inciting, specifically, the closure of Congress by the president.

Furthermore, Sifuentes’ interview with Colchado makes the politicization of a police investigation—supposedly aimed at uncovering corruption allegations that, due to presidential immunity laws, could not be prosecuted until Castillo left office—abundantly clear. Regardless, no media outlet in Peru or abroad has ever investigated what we are revealing in this article.

Here I should note that because presidential immunity laws prevented criminal charges from being brought against Castillo while he remained in office, the alleged plotters needed him to break the constitutional order first and then use that act to justify his removal, an outcome the Peruvian right and the corporate media were clearly seeking, according to Miki Torres’ statements.

The Political Aftermath
Sadly, the Peruvian government and especially the Congress, in the hands of conservative and rightist forces tied to Keiko Fujimori since long before[12] the ouster of Castillo, couldn’t be expected to conduct an official investigation on the matter. The Peruvian media (and even most of the scarce independent media) tend to avoid looking into alleged covert operations and anything that could be deemed a “conspiracy theory”. Naturally, corporate media outlets are unlikely to uncover the hidden mechanisms that allow the elites to shut down or depose leftist governments.

But those interested in finding out the truth about the downfall of Castillo’s government and Peruvian politics in general should abandon any idealized image of the former president of Peru. Although Castillo hasn’t been incarcerated for crimes of corruption (he has many accusations pending, not yet tried)[13], it is a fact that he surrounded himself by very shady figures and was completely ineffective when trying to change his deeply unequal country, or when delivering on his campaign promises. (In his defense, I must remember readers that his mandate lasted only a year and a half, from July 2021 to December 2022, instead of the full five-year term Peruvian presidents are expected to serve.)

The most notorious of those shady figures surrounding Castillo would be Dina Boluarte, vice president to Castillo and then president (2022-2025). Boluarte was the highest responsible authority during the massacres that killed nearly 50 Peruvians in the weeks right after the “self-coup”, massacres she repeatedly denied as crimes or justified by presenting the dead themselves as the culprits.[14] The already mentioned army general Víctor Canales, on the same interview quoted above, said that he believes Boluarte personally gave the orders for the brutal repression that took place in Peruvians cities like Ayacucho and Juliaca (December 2022 and January 2023).

After Castillo’s self-coup, Boluarte and a considerable portion of the former president’s party (Peru Libre), nominally leftists, instantly allied themselves to the conservative right, voting together in Congress and forming what many Peruvians refer to as the “Mafia Pact”,[15] which remains in power.

Peruvians are returning to the polls on June 7, 2026, for a runoff between Keiko Fujimori and Roberto Sanchez, a leftist congressman allied to Castillo’s party who headed the Ministry of Commerce during his mandate, and, in some cases, did vote in alliance with the conservative right in Congress.[16] Either Fujimori or Sanchez will be the next president.

Dina Boluarte governed much like the other brazenly venal politicians who control Congress. She was accused of accepting bribes, most notably in the now infamous “Rolexgate” scandal, in which she accepted a collection of luxury watches as gifts. She also took time off to undergo four plastic surgeries, later misleading the public about the reasons for her unexplained absence.

While one could argue that Boluarte led a particularly weak government, largely hostage to the Fujimori-controlled Congress, she consistently behaved as an ally of those forces and benefited politically from that relationship.

Despite all the information reviewed in this article, no government institution or news organization has conducted any kind of investigation into what really happened and the many murky details surrounding Castillo’s downfall, which is itself a scandal.


Notes

[1] https://youtu.be/tSExspNgSws?t=490 (around minute 8).

[2] https://larepublica.pe/politica/2026/05/22/miguel-torres-admite-que-fuerza-popular-y-el-congreso-conspiraron-para-sacar-a-pedro-castillo-hnews-1524336

[3] 1992 Peruvian self-coup – Wikipedia

[4] Peru’s President Pedro Castillo Faces Impeachment Attempt – The New York Times

[5] https://www.verdadyreconciliacionperu.com/admin/files/articulos/1056_digitalizacion.pdf

[6] Periodismo de chaira y de falsía – IDL

[7] Así Cayó Castillo – Books & Co

[8] https://youtu.be/SEKFXWUGuAM?t=321

[9] Harvey Colchado – Candidato a Diputado por Lima 2026 | Página Oficial

[10] https://youtu.be/3NlzGmp0iH8?t=1142

[11] https://youtu.be/X8h-DMJXvCg?t=2950

[12] Fujimori’s party already controls Peru’s congress. Here’s why observers are worried. – The Washington Post

[13] It’s very likely that some or many of the criminal accusations against Castillo are politically motivated. PJ amplía por 20 meses la investigación contra Pedro Castillo por liderar presunta organización criminal – Infobae

[14] CIDH: hubo masacres y ejecuciones extrajudiciales en Perú – Los Angeles Times

[15] Peru’s political establishment lines up behind unelected far-right government – World Socialist Web Site

[16] Roberto Sánchez y la ley procrimen por la que votó: “Bajo ningún concepto he apoyado situaciones irregulares” – Infobae