The courtroom in Lima was wrapped in ceremonial silence, as if the hearing were about routine paperwork rather than a life-defining sentence. On September 4, 2025, former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo—once hailed as a “modern Solon” for taking on Alberto Fujimori’s corruption—was sentenced to 18 years in prison for pocketing multimillion-dollar bribes from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. The verdict sparked no shock, no street protests. Peruvians greeted it with a weary sense of inevitability. Toledo became the fifth out of eleven presidents since the turn of the millennium to either land behind bars or face major criminal charges. Peru, it seems, no longer produces statesmen—only future inmates.
Against this grim political backdrop—where ex-presidents cycle in and out of the Barbados prison in Lima—the figure of current president Dina Boluarte is both tragic farce and predictable outcome of a system in freefall. She’s the first woman ever to lead Peru, but she didn’t arrive there through electoral triumph. Her presidency was born in chaos, after her predecessor was ousted and jailed. What was supposed to be a symbol of stabilization has instead become synonymous with bloodshed, cynicism, and a level of public contempt rarely seen in modern democracies. According to the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), her approval rating has sunk to an almost surreal 2 percent—under 1 percent in her native southern provinces. For comparison, even in Peru’s darkest political hours, presidential support rarely slipped into single digits. Boluarte isn’t just unpopular; she’s despised. Internet memes have turned her into a global punchline. But beneath the jokes lies a national tragedy: a country that seems to have exhausted every possible form of governance.
From Civil Registry to the Presidential Palace: The Making of a Political Mishap
To understand the Boluarte phenomenon, you have to rewind through more than a decade of Peru’s political breakdown. Five of the last six presidents have been forced to resign before completing their terms. On paper, Peru is a presidential republic. In practice, it’s a fragile, explosive hybrid where Congress—fractured and combative—wields impeachment like a blunt instrument, and the executive branch has no stable foundation to stand on.
It was in this volatile atmosphere that Pedro Castillo, a rural schoolteacher, burst onto the national scene in 2021. To Peru’s poor, he embodied hope for change. His left-wing party, Peru Libre, needed a vice-presidential candidate. The role was supposed to go to party founder Vladimir Cerrón, but his corruption conviction kept him out. Enter Dina Boluarte, an obscure bureaucrat at the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status—the local equivalent of a county clerk’s office. Her nomination was a last-minute compromise, a political lottery ticket she probably never expected to cash.
Castillo’s presidency was doomed from the start. In just 17 months, he churned through five cabinets and 78 ministers, creating a revolving door that paralyzed the state. A hostile Congress dominated by right-wing factions launched three impeachment attempts. The breaking point came on December 7, 2022, when Castillo tried to dissolve Congress and rule by decree. It was a desperate, unconstitutional gambit immediately branded a coup. Within hours, Congress voted to remove him by a staggering 101 out of 130 votes. He was arrested on charges of “rebellion” and now faces up to 34 years in prison.
By law, the vice president was next in line. And so, Dina Boluarte—a provincial woman with no real political base, no charisma, and no coherent platform—found herself walking into the ornate Pizarro Palace, the seat of Peru’s government. In her first speech, she promised “national unity” and a war on corruption. Her first real act, however, was not reconciliation, but repression.
“Dina the Killer”: A Bloody Harvest of Protests
The country, already fractured, exploded. Thousands of Pedro Castillo’s supporters flooded the streets, demanding Dina Boluarte’s resignation, the dissolution of Congress, and early elections. The heart of the revolt was in the impoverished southern regions—Ayacucho, Puno, Cusco—Castillo’s stronghold. The government’s response was ruthless. Boluarte declared a state of emergency and deployed the military.
From December 2022 through February 2023, Peru descended into violence. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, at least 50 civilians were killed and more than 1,000 injured. The darkest day came on January 9, 2023, during the so-called “Juliaca massacre.” Security forces gunned down 18 people in the Puno region, including three teenagers. A Human Rights Watch report titled We’ll Shoot You Without Discrimination shocked the world: 11 of those killed weren’t even protesters, but bystanders caught in a storm of bullets. Many were shot in the chest, head, or back—clear signs of deliberate lethal force.
Boluarte’s government initially tried to deny the undeniable. Officials claimed security forces “did not use live ammunition” and insisted the deaths were caused by clashes among protesters armed with homemade weapons smuggled from Bolivia. Forensic investigations tore that story apart: bullets pulled from the victims’ bodies were calibers used only by Peru’s police and military.
That’s when the image of “Dina the Killer” (Dina Asesina) was born. A protest song with the refrain, “Dina the killer, the people disown you! How many more must die before you leave?” went viral, becoming both anthem and indictment. A president meant to unify had, for millions, become the face of state-sanctioned murder.
Rolexgate: When Cynicism Becomes State Policy
If the bloodshed stripped Boluarte of moral legitimacy, the scandals that followed torched whatever was left of her reputation as a straight shooter. In March 2024, reporters noticed that the president, once known for her modest style, was suddenly flashing luxury Rolex watches in public—different models at different events. An investigation by the portal La Encuesta identified at least 14 distinct Rolexes, including diamond-encrusted gold editions worth up to $20,000 apiece. None were listed in her asset declarations. Thus began “Rolexgate.”
The uproar forced prosecutors to open an illicit enrichment case. After a police raid on her residence, Boluarte was compelled to testify. Her defense was dripping with cynicism: the watches, she claimed, were merely “on loan” from a “close friend,” Ayacucho governor Wilfredo Oscorima. What she failed to mention was that, just weeks earlier, her government had transferred 100 million soles—about $28 million—to Oscorima’s region for “development.”
In a clumsy attempt at damage control, Boluarte staged a press conference where she showed off cheap jewelry from a local brand called Unique, asking, “Do you know this brand? Unique!” The phrase instantly became a meme, shorthand for her tone-deafness. For Peruvians—27.6 percent of whom, nearly 9.5 million people, live below the poverty line, while inflation erodes their already meager earnings—the spectacle of their president playacting with trinkets while flaunting Rolexes was nothing short of an insult.
The Politics of Plastic Surgery: A New Nose for a New Reality
Barely had the Rolex scandal cooled when another controversy swept the country—this time over Boluarte’s appearance. In July 2023, the 61-year-old president vanished from public view for several days. When she resurfaced, Peruvians were stunned: her face looked years younger, free of wrinkles and dark circles, with a nose that was unmistakably reshaped.
Reporters discovered that Boluarte had quietly undergone at least three cosmetic procedures—a rhinoplasty and two types of facelifts—performed by one of Lima’s most expensive surgeons, Mario Cabani. The bill ran into tens of thousands of dollars. Her excuse—that the surgery was “medically necessary” to fix breathing problems—was met with open ridicule. Prosecutors opened a new case, this time for “abandoning her post,” since the constitution requires presidents to delegate authority during extended absences. Boluarte ignored that obligation.
By the time the 2025 Andean Carnival rolled around, Peruvians had turned their fury into satire. Revelers donned costumes shaped like giant Rolexes and sang mocking verses: “Dear Oscorima, will you send me a Rolex?” and “Dina Boluarte, your plastic surgeries provoke us. You mock the people, showing up fresh as lettuce.” It was a folk verdict delivered in carnival chorus: the people had had enough.
Fight for Survival: Amnesty for the Executioners and the “Ten-Soles Lunch”
Knowing she had no popular support—and no hope of ever regaining it—Boluarte bet everything on the only force that could keep her in power: the military and police. In August 2024, she signed what was trumpeted as a “historic” law granting amnesty to security forces accused of crimes against humanity between 1980 and 2000. Those were the bloody years of Peru’s internal war with the far-left groups Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. According to the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission, around 70,000 Peruvians were killed or disappeared during that period. State forces were responsible for 37 percent of those deaths—through torture, extrajudicial executions, and death squads.
Boluarte’s amnesty wiped the slate clean for about 150 already convicted and 600 accused of such crimes, including defendants with ongoing trials. In a speech, she called them “heroes” and “true defenders of the nation,” spitting in the faces of thousands of victims’ families who had spent decades demanding justice. The move was pure calculation: securing loyalty from the security apparatus while her own legal jeopardy loomed ever larger.
At the same time, she tried—awkwardly and unsuccessfully—to reach ordinary Peruvians. In fall 2024, she proclaimed that women know how to stretch a budget and could cook a three-course meal for just 10 soles (about $2.80). The comment set off a storm of ridicule. Journalists and bloggers proved that such a meal was impossible, except as a pathetic mix of the cheapest staples. They dubbed it “a lunch with the taste of poverty.” The nickname “Dina Ten-Soles” stuck fast.
Meanwhile, reality on the ground was spiraling. Since 2022, Peru’s homicide rate has surged nearly 30 percent. Organized crime—especially extortion rackets—has terrorized businesses. In just the first seven months of 2025, 65 bus drivers were murdered for refusing to pay protection money. The government has shown itself utterly incapable of stopping the bloodshed.
Epilogue: A Laboratory of Collapse
Dina Boluarte has become the perfect embodiment of Peru’s political breakdown. She is not the cause of the crisis, but its symptom. Her journey—from a registry office bureaucrat to the most unpopular president in Latin American history—is the story of how institutions stripped of legitimacy and public trust churn out grotesque, unsustainable forms of governance.
Her desperate attempts to cling to power—whether by pardoning perpetrators of atrocities, trying to obstruct investigations, or tossing out tone-deaf sound bites—only accelerate the day when she joins her predecessors in the dock. Today, Peru is a political laboratory testing the outer limits of democracy’s endurance. A nation that has endured the Inca empire, Spanish colonialism, and a bloody guerrilla war is now hostage to a vicious cycle where power is no longer service, but curse; where the presidential palace is less a seat of authority than a waiting room for prison. And as Dina Boluarte tries on another Rolex or hides the scars of cosmetic surgery, the country of the Incas continues its painful plunge into the political abyss, with no glimmer of light ahead.