AND – Analysis: Millions in Peru Face Poverty and Hunger, Exposing the Crisis of the Old State
We hereby share an unofficial translation of an article by A Nova Democracia published on the 18th of May.
Peru ends the first half of 2026 with 25.7% of its population living in poverty, according to the most recent report from the National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI). This figure represents more than 8.8 million people unable to fully meet their basic needs. Extreme poverty affects 4.7% of Peruvians, or more than 1.6 million people who cannot even afford the monthly expenses of a family, while food insecurity reaches 51.7% of the population, affecting more than 17 million inhabitants.
The data contrasts sharply with the official propaganda of an “economic recovery” and reveals that poverty remains 5.5 percentage points above the level recorded before the pandemic in 2019. Even with official criteria that fail to capture the full extent of the suffering endured by the masses, the survey shows that Peru remains among the countries in the region with the greatest difficulty in restoring its social metrics.
While the national economy grew by 3.4% last year, driven by the mining sector—primarily focused on exporting to imperialist powers—this progress has not translated into a proportional reduction in poverty. Extreme poverty, according to the data, still afflicts 4.7% of the population. This means more than 1.6 million people cannot even afford a basic food basket, valued at 260 soles per month, equivalent to around R$ 379.
The social division is sharpest in regions where big landlords and mining, presented as the “industry of national wealth,” coexist with high poverty rates. Cajamarca, Loreto, Puno, Pasco, and Huánuco maintain poverty rates above 35%. Cajamarca has led this ranking for a decade. Despite its regional economy growing by 7.5% last year, agriculture—the sector supporting most poor peasant families—only grew by 1.9%. Javier Herrera, director of research at the French Institute for Development Research (IRD), explains that “just because regional GDP grows does not necessarily mean household incomes increase,” highlighting that mining absorbs very little employment and does not benefit the poorest.
Rural regions concentrate poverty and lack of infrastructure
The persistence of misery is strongly evident in Peru’s countryside, a predominantly rural country marked by archaic and semi-feudal relations of production in these regions, along with a lack of infrastructure, low agricultural productivity, and dependence on extractive activities geared toward export. The agrarian problem is primarily the problem of feudalism’s persistence in Peru—a task the old bureaucratic-big landlord State is incapable of resolving.
In Loreto, geographic isolation and the lack of logistical integration drive up the cost of living and limit any development. Miguel Alzamora, an economist at the Peruvian Institute of Economics (IPE), points out that the absence of roads and transportation infrastructure hinders the circulation of goods. This State-planned neglect condemns the Amazonian department to cycles of semi-feudal relations, leaving Loreto’s population at the mercy of exorbitant prices and the absence of basic services.
Social indicators also highlight the weight of the crisis in education and health—pillars destroyed by successive governments. In regions like Huánuco and Puno, severe educational deficiencies persist. Javier Herrera warns that in Cajamarca, more than half the population has not completed primary education, a situation that has barely changed in two decades.
Compounding this are high rates of child anemia and malnutrition nationwide, affecting 43% of children and exceeding 70% in some regions. According to the 2024 ENDES (Demographic and Family Health Survey), chronic malnutrition affected 12.1% of children under five in Peru, a 0.6 percentage point increase from the previous year. This setback is accompanied by food insecurity affecting 51.7% of the population—more than 17 million people.
Poor families are forced into subsistence diets based mainly on cheaper, protein- and iron-deficient foods. “Their meals lack iron-rich foods,” explains Jessica Huamán, coordinator of the Platform for Food Security (PSA), noting that the lack of access to clean water and open sewage perpetuates the cycle of infections and disease.
Lima concentrates nearly a third of Peru’s poor
An alarming trend gaining momentum in 2026 is the “urbanization of poverty.” For decades, misery was almost exclusively associated with Peru’s rural areas. Today, the capital, Lima, is home to 32.6% of the country’s poor. The poverty rate in Metropolitan Lima in 2025 was nearly three times higher than in 2016. Currently, more people live in poverty in Lima than in all of Peru’s rural areas combined. Food insecurity (households not consuming the minimum necessary to survive) is higher in the capital (41.6%) than in rural areas (30.4%).
A report by the NGO Oxfam, presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, reveals that Peru has a concentrated wealth of US$ 3.1 billion in the hands of billionaires, while poverty and food insecurity remain high. The inequality is so profound that in Latin America, the wealth of magnates is growing at a rate 16 times faster than in the rest of the world. Oxfam reports that while the fortunes of millionaires grow by an average of US$ 491,198 per day, the average worker earns just US$ 4,815 per year. In other words, an employee would need to work 102 years to earn what a magnate accumulates in just 24 hours.
Nearly half of the families living in extreme poverty in Lima report having to reduce portions, skip meals, or go entire days without eating. This reality exposes that social programs, designed for rural areas and already failing there, also fail to adequately serve the urban population. While government transfers prevented poverty from being 7.2 percentage points higher, their reach has not returned to pre-pandemic levels. Moreover, these transfers do not address the root causes of food insecurity for millions of Peruvians, within the context of a fiscal austerity policy subordinate to the financial commitments of the old state.
The crisis in Peru is not limited to the social sphere but extends to the entire political regime. In a decade, the country has had nine presidents, a mark that reflects the chronic instability of the old State and the fractures among reactionary dominant class factions—big bourgeoisie and big landlords serving imperialism, particularly the US. The succession of caretaker governments has failed to reinvigorate bureaucratic capitalism, restructure the old State with effective centralization in the Executive, or quell popular rebellion, evidencing a generalized crisis of decomposition in Peruvian bureaucratic capitalism.
The overall crisis also manifested in the rejection of the political regime in the first round of Peru’s recent electoral farce. No presidential candidate received even 20% of valid votes, falling short of the combined total of null and blank votes, which exceeded three million. Of the 27.3 million eligible voters, more than six million did not cast ballots.
