Can a bar, club or shop in Peru refuse you entry under "right of admission"?

What the Code says

Article 38 of Ley 29571 has three parts that belong together:

• 38.1 — a business may not discriminate “por motivo de origen, raza, sexo, idioma, religión, opinión, condición económica o de cualquier otra índole”. The list is open-ended.
• 38.2 — “Está prohibida la exclusión de personas sin que medien causas de seguridad del establecimiento o tranquilidad de sus clientes u otros motivos similares”.
• 38.3 — any different treatment must rest on “causas objetivas y razonables”.

That is the so-called derecho de admisión: it exists, but only for reasons of that kind. A venue can keep out someone who is drunk, aggressive or armed. It cannot keep you out for skin colour, accent, clothes that signal income, sexual orientation or nationality.

Who has to prove what

Article 39 is the part almost nobody uses. When you file, you show that there was unequal treatment. From there, the business must prove the objective, justified reason. If you then show that reason is a pretext, discrimination prevails. The article expressly admits circumstantial evidence.

In practice: you do not need the doorman to say out loud why he turned you away. It is enough to show that others were let in under the same conditions and you were not.

Rules must be posted in advance

Article 40 requires venues with objective access restrictions to inform them “de manera directa, clara y oportuna, en forma previa al acto de consumo”, with visible signs outside or by other means. Restrictions cannot be worded in a generic or ambiguous way. A “dress code” invented at the door does not meet that standard.

What it can cost the venue

Indecopi fines under the article 110 scale: minor infractions up to 50 UIT, serious up to 150, very serious up to 450. Discrimination is usually treated as very serious. Micro and small businesses have caps of 10% and 20% of prior-year gross income. That scale was given to us as verified; we could not read article 110 in the official text, which is why the page is marked partial.

When it is a crime

Article 323 of the Código Penal punishes discrimination with imprisonment or community service, and with a heavier sentence plus disqualification when the offender is a public official, uses violence or acts through the internet. The wording we know is that of Ley 28867 (2006); we did not check whether the sentence ranges were amended later, so we do not reproduce them in numbers.

The Indecopi route and the criminal route are independent. You can use both.

A common case: foreigners

“We don’t serve Venezuelans”, “DNI only”, different prices by nationality. Origin and language are on the express list in article 38.1. Asking for an identity document is legitimate; demanding one specific document that only nationals hold, in order to exclude everyone else, is not. If it happens to you, the libro de reclamaciones and the Indecopi denuncia are open to any consumer regardless of immigration status.