Broad Front (Peru)

The Broad Front for Justice, Life and Liberty (Spanish: Frente Amplio por Justicia, Vida y Libertad), or simply Broad Front (Spanish: Frente Amplio), is a major political coalition of parties, political organizations, social movements and activist citizens of Peru whose main objective is to consolidate the different leftist, progressive, socialist and communist sectors.

It was founded in June 2013. It had its origin in the Encounter of Social and Political Organizations held in 2007 and its initial objective was to promote the defense of the territories. It has been part of the Congress of the Republic since 2012 as part of the Popular Action-Frente Amplio parliamentary group, and since 2016 with its own bench. During the Parliamentary Interregno after the dissolution of the Congress it has two members in the Permanent Assembly.

In the general elections of 2016, the party participated by running Verónika Mendoza as a presidential candidate. In the elections, held on April 10, the party became the third largest political force in the country, obtaining its first parliamentary minority in the Congress of the Republic. In the 2016-2021 Parliamentary Period, before the dissolution of the Congress, it obtained 20 congressional seats. In July 2017, the bench was divided and 10 of the 20 congressmen created the New Peru party.

A group of leaders of the Northern Macroregion of the country proposed in mid-2008 to develop meetings to promote an initiative of political organization, following the reflections of Marco Arana and the conclusions reached by the social movements participating in the First Meeting of Social Organizations and Policies, which took place in 2007.

In the context of the Amazon indigenous movement in August 2008 and the political polarization of the country, driven by the policy of the government of Alan García in the ancestral territories of the Amazonian indigenous people in favor of the transactional groups, the urgency of building an alternative was recognized. Renewal policy incorporating programmatic reflection on the plurinational state and this proposal gained strength.

Thus, in the last quarter of 2008, Marco Arana convened meetings of social leaders and environmental defenders of Piura, Lambayeque and Cajamarca, held in Eten-Lambayeque; and among the participants that were later founders of Tierra y Libertad [es] were: Marco Arana, Wilfredo Pajares, Nicanor Alvarado, Julio Castro Castro, Marlene Castillo and Juan Vilela.

At these meetings, the need for a national political organization was discussed and the possibility of creating local or regional political platforms to allow representatives of the social movement to participate in the elections of municipal and regional authorities, as part of the defense of their territories. The leaders came from different ideological currents, with and without previous partisan political experience, concluding that "none of these currents is sufficient separately for the construction of a proposal for deep democratization in the country."

At the beginning of 2009, several meetings were held in the city of Lima at the request of Marco Arana, with intellectuals linked to the socialist party that came supporting the struggles, who considered it very difficult to create a new political party. In the north and in the south, more social and political leaders were visited, obtaining more adhesions, especially from roaming leaders; In Cusco, the accession of decentralist leaders was achieved. Finally, the acceptance of various nuclei was achieved to discuss the possibility of creating a new political organization.