In memory of Trvko

An artist and activist for democracy

In the night of the 15th of October 2025, a police infiltrator shot Eduardo Mauricio Ruiz Saenz, also known as Trvko. In the hours before his death Trvko marched with thousands of his people on the streets of Lima to demand an end to the yearlong corruption and injustice. He was an artist, father, brother, son, killed at the age of 32. And with his assassination he’s one of more than 50 martyrs of democracy in Peru.

What came before: the uprisings of 2022/23

When in 2022 the elected president Pedro Castillo, the first Peruvian president of peasant upbringing, was overthrown, the people especially in the South-Andean region revolted. Roadblocks, strikes and protests all over the country lasted for months, followed by the heaviest and deadliest repression wave the country has seen in the 21st century. When Pedro Castillo ran for the presidency in 2021, much of the Peruvian population with peasant backgrounds—long invisible throughout 200 years of republican public politics—saw themselves represented in a candidate for the first time. People from remote communities traveled for hours to reach the nearest polling place, hoping that this time their vote would matter and that it would bring real change for the better. So, when not even a year later the congress decided to dismiss the popular vote for their own agenda, the outrage of the people, especially in said communities, was big and manifested itself in months of spontaneous and well-organized protest. The police and military forces killed almost 50 people only in December of 2022 and January of 2023. Since then, the fall of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism in Peru is escalating: three different presidents in one year, increasing street-violence and extorsion-gangs terrorizing the workers of Lima and the Northern parts of the country, drug-trafficking networks in the South, corruption scandals left and right, and congress politicians being increasingly disconnected from the people. Mauricio, like many people, took his anger on the streets this 15th of October, when the student federations, the unions of bus drivers and different social organizations called for a national strike. Like many others, he was killed by a neoliberal regime of death that will annihilate anyone to preserve itself.

When state repression escalates, the people will always organize

This system has its roots in the history of Peru. In the 80s and 90s the country lived through an era of terror, violence and repression that marked its people to this day. The people, especially in the rural areas found themselves amidst the violence of subversive communist groups that turned against its own population and brutal statal repression against the population and any form of political or social organizing. The military and police forces committed massacres and oppressive persecution in universities, peasant villages, especially in the South of Peru, where also in 2022/23 most of the massacres happened. The consequence was a widespread fear of politics in any form. Especially with the presidency of Alberto Fujimori in 1990 and the implementation of neoliberalism the fear of political movements and organizations grew. But, as history teaches us, democratic forces will always find a way to organize. Trvko was part of the Hip Hop Movement that formed in the beginnings of the 2000s in the neighbourhoods of Lima. After the experience of the 80s and 90s a lot of people lost its faith in the traditional leftist movement lead by parties and communist groups. But the spread of neoliberalism and US-imperialism caused, like everywhere in America from Mexico going south, a new wave of social organization, rooted in creating community. In Peru, especially in Lima, it followed also the memory of what happened under the Fujimori-Regime. Young people in the lower-class neighbourhoods of Lima, such as Comas, San Juan de Lurigancho, San Martin de Porres, formed collectives and social centres centred on making hip-hop music and offering young people an alternative, to becoming police officers or turning to drugs and organized crime. They also trained themselves for the protests, learning how to self-defend against the police and how to deactivate tear-gas bombs. After his death, the media and police tried to paint the picture of a violent, drug-addicted criminal to distract the public from demanding justice and holding this state responsible for the killing of Mauricio. But we see through this kind of manipulation, and we will hold his memory just like of all the martyrs of democracy in Peru, we know they are the children of this land, of its people.

The people will struggle, and the people will win.