'Change is coming': Peru's Castillo faces a divided nation after election battle

FILE PHOTO: Leftist Pedro Castillo speaks to supporters from the headquarters of the "Free Peru" party after Peru's electoral authority announced him as the winner of the presidential election, in Lima, Peru July 19, 2021. REUTERS/Sebastian Castaneda/File Photo

LIMA (Reuters) -Peru's Pedro Castillo has won a long and tense presidential election battle. Now he needs to heal the wounds of a starkly divided nation, split between support for his socialist reforms and fears he will upend the Andean nation's traditional politics and mining.

Castillo, a wild card candidate for a Marxist party, was proclaimed the winner of the June 6 run-off on Monday night after six weeks of wrangling over the knife-edge result. He beat right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori by just 44,000 votes.