Verónika Mendoza


Verónika Fanny Mendoza Frisch, popularly known as Vero Mendoza, is a Peruvian-French psychologist, educator, and politician. She was a Member of Congress representing the Cusco region from July 2011 until July 2016. She was the candidate of the Broad Front in the 2016 presidential election.

Early life, education, career

Verónika Mendoza was born on 9 December 1980 in the San Sebastián district of Cusco Province, in Peru’s southern Andean highlands. She is the daughter of Marcelino Mendoza and Gabrielle Marie Frisch D'Adhemar, a French citizen. Owing to her mother’s nationality, Mendoza holds a dual, both Peruvian and French, nationality.
She studied at the Virgen del Carmen school in the city of Cusco and the Université Paris Diderot, in Paris, France, from which she graduated with a degree in Psychology in 2003. Subsequently, she received a Master’s Degree in Social Sciences from the in 2006, and then a Master’s Degree in Education, with an emphasis on Spanish language, from Madrid’s Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, in 2009. Mendoza also speaks Quechua, an indigenous and official language of Peru.
Mendoza worked as a Spanish-language instructor at the Centre Acadomia Prépa Paris. Later, she served as an instructor at the in Cusco, and as a professor at the in Puno.

Political work

While in Europe, Mendoza worked as coordinator for support committees for the Peruvian Nationalist Party. In Peru, she was appointed the party youth’s press secretary in 2009, and as spokesperson for the party’s women’s commission the following year.
In the 2011 Peruvian general elections she ran for Congress, in representation of Cusco, on the Gana Perú coalition’s ticket. She was elected to the office with 47,088 votes. Her term expired in July of 2016.
In 2011, she was named Vice President of the Peruvian Congress’ Committee for Culture and Cultural Heritage. She is also a member of the Congressional Commission on Andean, Amazonian, and Afro-Peruvian Peoples, the Environment, and Ecology. Mendoza is a member of the Campaign in Defense of Water and Territory.
She has served the head of the Cusco Congressional delegation. She resigned from the Gana Perú Congressional delegation on 4 June 2012, following violent repression of protesters and strikers in Espinar Province. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Popular Action–Broad Front parliamentary group.

Presidential candidacy

After winning the party's primary elections in October 2015, Mendoza became the Broad Front's candidate in the 2016 presidential election. She finished third in that contest, with 2.8 million valid votes cast in her favor.