Not surprisingly, language and ethnicity were major factors in the 2026 Peruvian presidential election. As can be seen in the maps posted below, the defeated leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez had his best results in areas where Spanish is not the majority mother tongue. In Peru’s southern highlands, Quechua remains the most common first language, especially in rural areas. Sánchez’s campaign highlighted the concerns of the historically marginalized indigenous peoples. In particular, he promised to transform Peru into a “plurinational” republic, recognizing the distinct national identities of non-Spanish-speaking communities and abandoning the idea of the country as a “nation state” defined around a singular political identity. The move from “nationalism” to “plurinationalism” has already been institutionalized in Bolivia and Ecuador, and has been proposed as well in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. Although popular in indigenous communities and among the left more generally, plurinationalism is opposed by the right and is not popular in many of Peru’s Spanish-speaking communities.
Indigenous languages are also spoken across the lowlands of eastern Peru, but most have small numbers of speakers who are not well integrated into the national society. The Spanish language is dominant in most of this sparsely inhabited but rapidly growing region. As the map of lowland indigenous languages posted below shows, only two provinces in eastern Peru have clear indigenous majorities: Purus (in Ucayali Department) and Condorcanqui (in Amazonas Department). Interestingly, these two provinces had completely different voting patterns in the 2026 election. Condorcanqui overwhelmingly supported Sánchez, whereas Purus strongly supported Fujimori. The vote-count in Purus, however, is almost certainly not representative of the province’s indigenous character. Only some 3,200 people live in Purus, and its indigenous communities are small, scattered, relatively isolated, and divided among several different language groups. It seems likely that the votes cast in this province came mostly from the economically dominant Spanish-speaking population. It is a different story in the more populous province of Condorcanqui, which has almost 50,000 inhabitants. Most of them are members of the Awajún (or Aguaruna) ethnic group, who number some 70,000 and have achieved a significant degree of political organization. As noted in their Wikipedia article:
In the later half of the 20th century, the arrival of Protestant and Jesuit missionaries, the building of roads, and the construction of an oil pipeline created substantial tension between the Aguaruna people, poor agricultural colonists, state agencies, and corporations. In response to new threats to their way of life the Aguaruna began to organize a political and social response to defend themselves on the basis of principles consistent with other rights of indigenous peoples.
Given such political organization among the Awajún/Aguaruna people, it is not surprising that Condorcanqui overwhelming supported the leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez in the 2026 Peruvian presidential election.
Although almost all non-Spanish-speaking areas of Peru supported Roberto Sánchez in the election, it does not follow that Spanish-speaking areas correspondingly voted for Keiko Fujimoiri. The coastal strip of southern Peru and the large inland city of Arequipa in the same area, for example, are strongly Spanish speaking, yet gave Sánchez solid support.
