Sawt Falasteen - In Peru's highlands, hopelessness shapes a bitter presidential runoff

Under the blistering sun of the high Andean plains, 78-year-old Dominga Quenta sorts potatoes with her rough hands, as she has done all her life.

Days before the country's presidential runoff, Quenta says she no longer believes political promises from the men and women in Lima.

"No one will give me even a cent," Quenta says, pondering a hard life at almost 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) altitude, near the shores of Lake Titicaca.

Her husband, Rufino Cutipa, 75, agrees. "No one comes here, no one sees us. We survive on our own."

Around their adobe house, the bleached plains stretch toward distant hills.

A few cows and sheep graze near the well that supplies water for both livestock and the couple.

- 'Life is very hard' -

In neighboring plots, barefoot women in traditional dress strike the earth with hoes to harvest the season's last potatoes.

More than a third of the region's population lives in poverty, according to official figures.

That disillusionment weighs against Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former autocratic president Alberto Fujimori, who is running for president for the fourth time.

"The father already ruled for a long time. The daughter should step aside," Quenta says, smoothing her bright red pollera, the traditional Andean skirt.

Many voters in this part of Peru will back leftist Roberto Sanchez more out of rejection of Fujimori than conviction.

In the first round, Sanchez won 27 percent of the regional vote. Fujimori won under three percent.

"It freezes a lot here. Life is very hard. We do not want our children to live here. They all left," Quenta explains, referring to her four children.

One of them, Cesar Cutipa, 45, is now an electronics engineer in Puno, an hour away by road.

Visiting his parents, he recalls through tears how they sold a cow and a sheep so he could go to school.

He says that Sanchez, a former minister and lawmaker, is "the lesser evil."

Nationally, the two finalists together failed to reach 30 percent of the vote.

Rejection of Fujimori deepened after former president Pedro Castillo was ousted in December 2022, whose political legacy Sanchez claims.

Many here see the jailed leftist former president -- once a rural schoolteacher -- as a symbol of a failed hope for change.

- 'No other choice' -

His fall sparked three months of protests, often violently repressed. More than 50 people were killed, mostly in the Andean south of the country.

Eighteen died in a single day in Juliaca, a commercial hub an hour away from Puno.

Among them was 17-year-old Jhamileth Aroquipa. She was shot while helping her family restock her mother's small shop.

She studied psychology. Her university timetable still hangs on her bedroom wall.

"The only mistake was going out into the street," her mother, Dominga Hancco, 44, says through tears.

"More than three years have passed, and there is still no justice," she adds. "When people demand answers, the state never responds. It silences us. It kills us."

For her, the right-wing candidate represents the same power that repressed the protests.

She will vote for Sanchez, believing "there is no other choice."

Analyst Paulo Vilca says this vote reflects a southern Andean tradition favoring candidates promising change, in a region feeling sidelined by growth centered on the coast.

In the runoff, Sanchez has become "the dike against" Fujimori he says. But the dike has cracks.

Taxi driver and boat owner Efrain Vilca sees Fujimori as an opportunity for tourism around Lake Titicaca. "There are many hidden votes for her," he says.

L.Hussein--SF-PST