José Pedro Castillo Terrones (; born 19 October 1969) is a Peruvian politician, former elementary school teacher, and union leader who served as the president of Peru from 28 July 2021 until he was removed from office after attempting a self-coup on 7 December 2022.
Born to a peasant family in Puña, Cajamarca, Castillo began working in Peru's informal economy as a teenager to earn funds for his studies in education and later returned to his hometown to become a primary school teacher. He attained political prominence as a leading figure in a school teachers' strike in 2017. He ran in the 2021 presidential election as the candidate of the socialist Free Peru party. Castillo announced his presidential candidacy after seeing his students undergo hardships from the lack of resources in rural Peru, with the election occurring amidst the country's COVID-19 pandemic and a period of democratic deterioration in the nation. With the support of individuals living in rural and outlying provinces, he placed first in the initial round of the presidential vote and advanced to the second round where he won against his opponent Keiko Fujimori. Castillo's victory in the presidential race was confirmed on 19 July 2021 and he was inaugurated on 28 July.
Characterised as conservative-left, Castillo was described as a left-wing candidate with conservative tendencies. After taking office, Castillo named far-left and left-wing cabinets, due to the influence of Free Peru leader Vladimir Cerrón and other more left-wing politicians. A social conservative, Castillo ultimately began to align his policies with Congress and Evangelical groups on social issues, including his opposition to same-sex marriage, gender studies and sex education. He left the Free Peru party in June 2022 to govern as an independent. In attempts to appease the right-wing Congress, he later appointed members of center and center-right political parties as ministers of state. Castillo was noted for appointing four different governments in six months, a Peruvian record.
Castillo's presidency had a minority in Congress, and faced opposition which led to three impeachment proceedings, although the first two failed to reach the necessary votes to remove him from office. Following the second failed impeachment vote in March 2022, protests took place across the country against high fuel and fertilizer prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. Mining protests also intensified as the country's economy plummeted. On 1 December 2022, Peru's Congress approved a motion initiated by opposition lawmakers to start the third formal attempt to impeach Castillo.
On 7 December 2022, Castillo, facing imminent impeachment proceedings, attempted a self-coup, tried to form a provisional government, instituted a national curfew, and called for the formation of an assembly to draft a new constitution. Castillo was impeached by Congress within the day and was detained for sedition and high treason. He was succeeded by First Vice President Dina Boluarte. After his removal, pro-Castillo protests broke out calling for new elections and Castillo's release, leading Boluarte to align herself with the opposition to Castillo. His trial began in March 2025 and on 27 November he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Early life and education Castillo was born to an impoverished and illiterate peasant family in Puña, Tacabamba, Chota Province, Department of Cajamarca. Despite being the location of South America's largest gold mine, Cajamarca has remained one of the poorest regions in Peru. He is the third of nine children.
His father, Ireño Castillo, was born on the hacienda of a landowning family where he performed labor-intensive work. His family rented land from the landowners until General Juan Velasco Alvarado took power and redistributed property from landowners to peasants, with Ireño receiving a plot of land he had been working on. As a child, Castillo balanced his schooling with farm work at home, completing his elementary and high school education at the Octavio Matta Contreras de Cutervo Higher Pedagogical Institute. Castillo's daily trek to and from school involved walking along steep cliffside paths for two hours.
As a teenager and young adult, Castillo traveled throughout Peru to earn funds for his studies. Beginning at the age of twelve, each year he and his father walked for seasonal work in the coffee plantations of the Peruvian Amazonia. Castillo also claims to have sold ice cream and newspapers and cleaned hotels in Lima. He studied Primary Education at the Octavio Carrera Education Institute of Superior Studies and gained a master's degree in Educational Psychology from the César Vallejo University.
During the internal conflict in Peru that began in the 1980s, Castillo worked in his youth as a patrolman of Rondas campesinas to defend against the Shining Path.
From 1995, Castillo worked as a primary school teacher and principal at School 10465 in the town of Puña, Chota. In addition to teaching, he was responsible for cooking for his students and cleaning their classroom. According to Castillo, the community constructed the school after receiving no government assistance. Rural teaching in Peru is poorly paid but highly respected and influential within local communities, which led Castillo to become involved with teachers' unions. With his working background as a patrolman for Rondas campesinas and being a schoolteacher, two of the most respected jobs in Peruvian society, Castillo was able to establish a high level of political support.
Early political career In 2002, Castillo unsuccessfully ran for the mayorship of Anguía as the representative of Alejandro Toledo's centre-left party Possible Peru. He served as a leading member of the party in Cajamarca from 2005 until the party's dissolution in 2017 following its poor results in the 2016 Peruvian general election. Following his leadership during the teachers' strike, numerous political parties in Peru approached Castillo to promote him as a congressional candidate, though he refused and instead decided to run for the presidency after encouragement from unions.
2017 teachers' strike In an interview with the Associated Press, Castillo said that his motivation for entering politics was seeing his students arrive to school hungry without any benefits while, at the same time, Peru experienced economic growth from mineral wealth. Castillo became a teachers' union leader during the , which sought to increase salaries, pay off local government debt, repeal the Law of the Public Teacher Career and increase the education budget. At the time, the Peruvian government sought to replace a system of career teachers with temporary unskilled educators. The strikes spread through southern Peru; due to their longevity, Minister of Education Marilú Martens, Prime Minister Fernando Zavala, and other government officials jointly announced a package of salary increases and debt relief, though the teachers remained on strike.
President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski offered to mediate, inviting the teachers' delegates to meet at the Government Palace to reach a solution; only the leaders of the union's executive committee and its Cuzco leaders were received while representatives of the regions led by Castillo were excluded. The strike consequently worsened as teachers from across Peru travelled to Lima to hold marches and rallies in the capital. Keiko Fujimori and her Fujimorist supporters, who were opponents of the Kuczynski administration, assisted Castillo with the strike in an effort to destabilize the president's government.
On 24 August 2017, the government issued a supreme decree making official the benefits agreed in negotiations, issuing a warning that if teachers did not return to their classrooms by 28 August, they would be fired and replaced. On 2 September 2017, Castillo announced a suspension of the strike; he said it was only a temporary suspension.
2021 presidential election
The 2021 presidential elections occurred amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru and a political crisis in the nation that continued during the election. These crises created multiple political currents that eventually consolidated into a growing political polarization among Peruvians.
First round Initial discussions between former Governor of Junín, Vladimir Cerrón of Free Peru, and Verónika Mendoza of Together for Peru, recommended a leftist coalition to support a single presidential candidate in the 2021 general election. Mendoza's advisors argued that Cerrón's beliefs were too radical and of an antiquated left wing ideology. Mendoza's camp also raised concerns about Cerrón's alleged homophobic and xenophobic rhetoric. In October 2020, Castillo announced his presidential bid, running as the candidate of Free Peru, and formally attained the nomination on 6 December 2020. His ticket included attorney Dina Boluarte and Vladimir Cerrón; Cerrón was later disqualified by the National Jury of Elections due to a corruption conviction.
Pedro Castillo was chosen by a national assembly of teachers' representatives to be their candidate for the presidential election of 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of financial resources led them to give up building a political party. Approached by several small parties, he chose Free Peru (Perú Libre, PL), of which he was not a member at the time.
During the first part of the campaign, unknown to most Peruvians, Pedro Castillo was very low in the polls and received very little media coverage. His campaign accelerated from March, when he crossed the threshold of 5% of voting intentions.
Castillo cited the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on his students as a motivation for his presidential run. In response to the pandemic, President Martín Vizcarra initiated COVID-19 lockdowns in Peru, inhibiting trade and travel to rural Peru. As a result of the lockdowns, individuals in rural regions felt an increased sense of abandonment from the national government, with political groups in these regions beginning to act autonomously and experiencing growth in their legitimacy. Castillo told the Associated Press that he had attempted to continue teaching his students through the lockdowns, but the impoverished local community did not have the resources required for remote learning; almost none of his students had access to a cell phone, and educational tablets promised by the government never arrived. Using this experience of abandonment and distrust of the national government established in urban Lima, Castillo had a genuine ability to relate to rural voters and used his knowledge of their issues to establish support.