The latest missive from our desk in Lima is enough to make any student of history weep into his morning coffee. Peru, a nation once rich with the promise of silver and the pride of the Incas, now finds itself in the grip of a presidential race that reeks of insecurity and instability. The United Kingdom, ever the nervous nanny, has sent monitors to watch the chaos unfold. I suppose we must admire their optimism: as if a few polite observers in suits could stem the tide of a civilisation in decay.
Consider the parallels. The late Roman Republic, bloated with ambition and hollowed out by corruption, entered its death throes with elections that were less about policy and more about survival. Sound familiar? In Peru, the leading candidates are not statesmen but figures of desperation: one a former soldier with a history of strongman rhetoric, the other a leftist whose economic policies would make a Soviet apparatchik blush. The electorate, caught between fear and fury, votes not for hope but for the lesser evil. This is not democracy as the Victorians imagined it; this is a gladiatorial contest where the crowd cheers for blood, not ideas.
And what of the UK’s role? Our monitors, no doubt equipped with clipboards and a sense of moral superiority, will file reports that gather dust in Whitehall. The British have a long tradition of meddling in foreign elections, but at least in the 19th century we had the decency to bring gunboats. Now we bring press releases. The paradox of our age is that we possess more information than ever and yet understand less. We tweet about Peruvian instability while ignoring the intellectual decadence that has made such instability inevitable.
National identity, that fragile construct, is crumbling in Peru as it is in the West. The nation once unified by a shared language and a tragic history now fractures along lines of ideology, class and region. The candidates exploit these fractures with a cynicism that would make Machiavelli blush. One speaks of restoring order, the other of social justice. Both mean the same thing: power for themselves. The British monitors, bless their hearts, will note this with concern in their reports. But concern is not a policy. It is a sentiment, and sentiments do not stop a nation from sliding into the abyss.
I am reminded of the Victorian era, when Britain faced its own crises of identity and governance. But we had the wisdom to cultivate a ruling class that believed in duty, not just self-advancement. Today, Peru’s elites are no different from our own: they lecture the masses on virtue while lining their pockets. The result is a political vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum as much as history does. Into this void step the populists, the authoritarians, the fools. The UK monitors are a fig leaf, a gesture of concern, a palliative for guilty consciences.
What is to be done? I suspect nothing. The cycles of history turn slowly, but they turn. Peru will make its choice, and the choice will be wrong, or at least inadequate. Then the protests will begin, the economy will falter, and the monitors will return to London with their tails between their legs. We will read about it in the newspapers, shake our heads, and move on. Such is the fate of nations that forget their past: they are condemned to repeat it, but without the grandeur.
So let the election proceed. Let the monitors watch. The real tragedy is not who wins but what has been lost: the idea that politics can be something other than a circus, that leaders can be something other than clowns. Peru is not alone in this. It is merely a mirror. When you look into it, what do you see? A civilisation in decline, or a chance to learn from the wreckage? I suspect the answer is neither. We are all too busy tweeting to notice.
