In 1990, during Peru’s election campaign, some buses began to display stickers of a new candidate, a complete unknown of Japanese origin with no political experience and no more speech than a vague promise: “Honesty, technology and work.”
At the time, I was a teenager and I looked at the unknown’s advertising with pity:
-Poor Fujimori -he thought-. He doesn’t have the slightest chance.
Peru didn’t seem to have one either. The war between Marxist terrorism and the State had already cost seventy thousand dead and missing. Blackouts, bombs and curfews had become a daily occurrence. Inflation was over 7000% a year. My parents received their salaries in thick wads of bills that disappeared in two grocery purchases. And that was when there were products.
Nobody believed in the political system anymore. Neither in one side nor in the other. The most illustrious Peruvian in the world, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, participated in those elections… But Fujimori won.
Or perhaps it should be said that everyone else lost. Voters preferred the complete unknown to any of the well-known candidates.
Lacking a party, ideology or experience in government, Fujimori adopted the right-wing programme: privatisation, reduction of the State and a heavy hand. For political management, he appointed the head of Intelligence to a lawyer for drug traffickers: Vladimiro Montesinos.
And at first, it worked.
In the first year, the economy stabilized. Inflation was contained. Those accused of terrorism were tried by faceless military judges who were not afraid – rather eager – to hand down sentences, fair or not. With these measures, the new president became immensely popular. In April 1992, he dissolved the legislative and judicial branches with fairly solid support from the population. Almost as a reward, five months later, the police captured the terrorist leader Abimael Guzmán. And his organization, Shining Path, collapsed.
On the back of this dazzling success, Fujimori invented the dictatorship of the 21st century. The end of military coups and military governments. The new formula was civil and electoral: reforming the Constitution to allow reelection, controlling judicial decisions and managing the media. Today, rulers as diverse as Bukele, Maduro and Putin employ similar strategies.
Within ten years, however, Fujimori’s regime was already falling apart: the economy was in recession. The second re-election required obvious fraud. The United States discovered that the advisor Montesinos was selling weapons to the Colombian guerrillas. And a video was leaked to the press in which Montesinos bribed an opposition congressman with fifteen thousand dollars.
Fujimori understood that he could not resist. He announced a state trip to Japan. And from there, he sent his resignation from the presidency. By fax.
This could have been the end of the most delirious political adventure in our republican history: from anonymous engineer to president, then to idol of the masses, then to dictator and finally to fugitive. A story that would be unbelievable in a novel, but which was real and determined the destiny of a country.
But Fujimori wanted more. Perhaps he overestimated his popularity. Perhaps he needed money. In any case, he misjudged the risks. In 2005, he traveled to Chile to influence a new Peruvian election campaign. There, he was arrested and extradited to stand trial for corruption and crimes against humanity.
His 25-year prison sentence was emblematic of a society that believed in human rights, historical memory and the separation of powers. Peru aspired to build a serious democracy, with institutions instead of leaders, and sent Fujimori to the dustbin of history.
And yet, that country would not last much longer than Fujimori’s own. In the last decade, as Peru fell into an abyss of criminal insecurity, lack of public services and corruption, the once-dead former president regained his aura. He began to go in and out of jail, pushed by political pressure. The debate about him has taken up many thousands of pages more than the discussion on reducing anemia – which already affects almost half of children – or dengue fever.
His defenders argue that every president has been prosecuted for corruption, but Fujimori at least solved real problems. By contrast, after twenty years of perfect democracy, when a pandemic hit, there were no hospitals. There was not even oxygen. “Peru is not Sweden,” one told me, “let us not be deluded. Only someone like Fujimori – and with his methods – can save the country from Chavismo or disaster.”
It is a sad argument, based on resignation. But it spreads along with disillusionment.
Two months ago, in his last political act, a dying Fujimori, confined to a wheelchair with an oxygen machine, agreed to be a presidential candidate in the 2026 elections.
It is the best portrait of the failure of a democracy.
#perfect #stranger