LIMA, Peru — A right-wing populist president who led Peru during the 1990s is serving a 25-year prison sentence for human rights abuses. Three of his four immediate successors faced bribery charges — one killing himself with a gunshot to his head when police descended on his home to arrest him.
The ouster of leftist President Pedro Castillo last week was a dramatic turn of events by any political standard: The embattled chief of state was impeached Wednesday hours after he tried to dissolve Congress, a move denounced by lawmakers as an attempted coup.
But Castillo’s removal from office 16 months into his five-year term was only the most recent manifestation of extreme political turbulence that has buffeted this troubled South American nation of 32 million for decades.
