Soldiers and police in Peru clean up after protesters.
CUSCO, Peru (KFGO/WCCO) – A Minnetonka couple remains stranded in their Cusco hotel as violent protests continue after the arrest of Peruvian president Pedro Castillo.
Castillo was impeached and then arrested after announcing a plan to dissolve Congress and install an emergency government. The country’s Supreme Court ruled he must remain in pretrial detention for 18 months, prompting his supporters to protest around the country.
“We were in Santiago, Chile when the president was overthrown,” Eric Evenson said. “We contacted the embassy at that time and they didn’t raise the level of alert. We asked if we should go to Peru and they said ‘yes.’”
Eric and his wife Clare took the trip as part of their 10-year wedding anniversary delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Because we were on the Inca Trail, and we were away from a lot of people, we started seeing the tensions on Monday when we were going to Rainbow Mountain,” Evenson said. “On the way back from Rainbow Mountain we started seeing all of the cut down trees and all of the protesters blocking roadways. That’s when we noticed that things were getting pretty tense.”
Once back in Cusco, a ten minute trip to the airport took Eric and Claire an hour. Their vehicle passed a mob of rioters running towards the airport where the perimeter had already been secured by government police.
As they got closer to the airport, the couple exited the vehicle on the street and walked through the gates to get inside.
Their airplane got as far as the tarmac.
The plane returned to the gate and Peruvian military members helped passengers get back inside the airport. Passengers stayed in the terminal until it was deemed safe to leave and they were eventually kicked out.
The airport has been closed since.
“The more stressful thing to us was how stressed out and concerned the locals were and continue to be,” Evenson said. “Our cab driver was very concerned about our safety and he went around the mobs. You could see and feel that he was really stressed. He basically dropped us off and said, ‘Go! Go! Go! Get in the gates!’ So that was kind of stressful.”
Since then, Eric and Clare have been sheltering inside their hotel in Cusco where there’s adequate food and supplies.
Eric says they’re beginning to worry about how they will replenish things like natural gas because trucks likely won’t be on the roadways.
About 100 other U.S. citizens, and another hundred tourists in the hotel. Each of them have been told to reach out to their senators and representatives back home.
As of Friday, there was no timetable for Eric and Clare to fly back to Minnesota and return to their three daughters.
Contacts within the Peruvian government told Eric and Clare that the airport was secured late Thursday night.
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