Master, president, god? On the trail of Peru’s mysterious new political power broker

Monitoring Desk

LIMA: In Peru’s capital, a group dressed in biblical-style robes, veils, and sandals gathered one recent Sunday night to celebrate an unlikely victory: their congregation had overnight become a major force in the country’s new Congress.

One by one, a dozen of those who had ran for office paraded on stage, thanking their “master” and party president Ezequiel Jonas Ataucusi Molina, who is sometimes revered as a god.

“In 2021, our master will be president!” proclaimed Esther Yovera, alluding to presidential elections next year.

Ataucusi himself was not there, however. He has ruled the secretive Christian group behind the party for 20 years but has been seen in public just once. Most followers have never met him and so little is known about his day-to-day whereabouts and activities that his sister and some followers have previously gone to the police to report him missing.

The rise of this fringe party, the Agricultural People’s Front of Peru (Frepap), is one of the effects of a political upheaval in the copper-rich country that has toppled much of the ruling class – leaving an enigmatic religious leader in charge of the country’s no. 3 legislative force.

“As president of our party, he can propose laws, and that’s what we are here for, to make them happen,” said Maria Teresa Cespedes, one of 15 Frepap lawmakers who will be sworn in later this month.

Ataucusi could not be reached for comment.

“He’s very busy, as you all know,” Cespedes added.

While Frepap ran in January’s election on a secular platform focused on stronger labor laws and more congressional accountability, over a dozen followers told Reuters that the party’s mission is religious at heart.

“Strategically, it is to show the world that we are the chosen people,” said Isai Huanaco, who has been part of the church since birth and ran unsuccessfully for Congress.

The church, called the Israelite Mission of the New Universal Pact, has for 50 years preached strict Bible adherence, while proclaiming that Peru’s most powerful pre-Columbian indigenous people, the Incas, were blessed by the Judeo-Christian God. Its followers have been encouraged to wear robes and colonize remote lands in Peru’s rainforest.

Now, their mysterious leader wields potentially significant political power, but his agenda remains unknown. Frepap’s elected lawmakers have been noncommittal on potential alliances with other parties while Ataucusi, who has made no known political statements, remains silent.

“I think nobody before the election could have predicted this,” said Eduardo Dargent, a professor at Peru’s Catholic University. “We’ll have to explore it and study it.”

In a turquoise room awash with burning incense, Felipe Pumacayo, dressed in a gray robe, spoke to a group of believers. He mixed religion and politics, diagnosing Peru as filled with corruption and injustice that needed fixing. (Reuters)