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Obituary: Alberto Fujimori Transformed Peru—for Better and Worse
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Obituary
ALBERTO FUJIMORI TRANSFORMED PERU—FOR BETTER AND WORSE
AS PRESIDENT, HE DEFEATED THE SHINING PATH GUERRILLAS BUT ALSO OVERSAW
PARAMILITARY DEATH SQUADS THAT MASSACRED CIVILIANS.
September 12, 2024, 10:57 AM Comment icon View Comments (0)
By Mitra Taj, a freelance journalist based in Lima, Peru.
Alberto Fujimori talks into a microphone in the middle of a crowd with his arm
raised.
Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori addresses a crowd outside the government
palace during a surprise public appearance in Lima, Peru, on April 20, 1992.
Dante Zegarra/AFP via Getty Images
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* Human Rights
* South America
In an autobiography he published from prison, former Peruvian President Alberto
Fujimori wrote that his parents, Japanese immigrants, shared one simple hope on
the eve of his birth: “that the newborn be capable of keeping the family name
alive.”
In an autobiography he published from prison, former Peruvian President Alberto
Fujimori wrote that his parents, Japanese immigrants, shared one simple hope on
the eve of his birth: “that the newborn be capable of keeping the family name
alive.”
Fujimori, who died Wednesday at 86, wildly surpassed those expectations. The
Fujimori name not only survived but also has dominated Peruvian politics for the
past three decades. No leader since Fujimori has reshaped Peru as much as he
did—or left as divisive a legacy. “He changed so much about life in Peru,” José
Ragas, a Peruvian historian and the author of the book The Fujimori Years
(1990-2000), told Foreign Policy. “From what we buy and how we’re seen abroad.
Even the way we talk.”
Many in Peru will remember Fujimori for ending an era of bread lines and
terrorist attacks that scarred a generation, and for leaving the country with
fresh wounds and new challenges, chief among them Fujimori himself. During his
two terms in office, bookended by his sudden rise to power in 1990 and his
resignation via fax from Japan in 2000, Fujimori restructured Peru’s economy,
rewrote its constitution, and reordered politics and institutions around support
for his increasingly corrupt and authoritarian regime.
To many Peruvians today, the Fujimori name is synonymous with brutality and
deceit. The courts have upheld that view, finding him guilty in 2009 of murder
in the massacres of civilians and of kidnapping a journalist and a businessman,
and later of embezzling funds and usurping government functions. He will go down
in history as the first president to be imprisoned in Peru through a judicial
process widely considered fair—a watershed moment that won Peru international
kudos for fighting the impunity of the powerful.
Fujimori, who was released from prison last December after Peru’s top court
controversially reinstated a 2017 presidential pardon he’d received, died of
cancer at the home of his daughter, the opposition leader Keiko Fujimori, in the
Peruvian capital of Lima. He also died with two trials against him unconcluded
and millions of dollars in civil reparations unpaid. In addition to his
daughter, he is survived by his son, former lawmaker Kenji Fujimori, and their
siblings, Sachi and Hiro Fujimori, all from his first marriage to the late
Susana Higuchi. He also leaves behind his second wife, Satomi Kataoka, as well
as several grandchildren.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then-Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and his daughter Keiko Sofia wave as he
casts his vote at a local polling station in Lima.
Then-Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and his daughter Keiko Sofia wave as he
casts his vote at a local polling station in Lima on April 9, 1995.Renzo
Uccelli/AFP via Getty Images
Well over two decades after his downfall, Peru still hasn’t fully gotten past
Fujimori. His daughter Keiko has kept his right-wing populist movement alive,
nearly winning the presidency in three elections and locking Peru into a
repetitive battle over the Fujimori legacy—a reminder of the staying power of
even the most controversial political dynasties.
Like other right-wing Latin American strongmen, Fujimori pursued leftist rebels
aggressively and embraced neoliberal policies that swept much of the developing
world at the end of the Cold War, making Peru a close ally of Washington. He
named Vladimiro Montesinos, a former CIA asset with connections to drug
traffickers, as his spy director and chief advisor, a decision that Keiko would
later describe as the worst mistake of his life.
A former math professor who was democratically elected president in a 1990
landslide, Fujimori had an authoritarian streak from the start. During his first
years in office, he was hugely popular, especially because of—and not
despite—his infamous “Fujimorazo,” or self-coup, in 1992, when he sent the
military to close Peru’s Congress, the courts, and newsrooms and suspended the
constitution.
Demonstrators display pictures and signs showing their support for Fujimori’s
government reforms in Lima. Demonstrators display pictures and signs showing
their support for Fujimori’s government reforms in Lima on April 22, 1992.
Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
A member of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance opposition party waves a
Peruvian flag in front of soldiers in Lima. A member of the American Popular
Revolutionary Alliance opposition party waves a Peruvian flag in front of
soldiers in Lima on April 18, 1992. They were demanding the return of their
party’s headquarters that were occupied by the military earlier that month after
Fujimori dissolved the Congress and suspended the Constitution. Roberto
Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Left: Demonstrators display pictures and signs showing their support for
Fujimori’s government reforms in Lima on April 22, 1992. Roberto Schmidt/AFP via
Getty Images Right: A member of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance
opposition party waves a Peruvian flag in front of soldiers in Lima on April 18,
1992. They were demanding the return of their party’s headquarters that were
occupied by the military earlier that month after Fujimori dissolved the
Congress and suspended the Constitution. Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
While the coup marked a clear break with democracy, it was supported by more
than 80 percent of Peruvians. “A good part of Fujimori’s popularity is because a
lot of Peruvians saw a Peruvian [Augusto] Pinochet in him,” Nobel Prize-winning
writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who lost the 1990 election to Fujimori, wrote in
2003, referring to the longtime Chilean military dictator.
Fujimori liked to describe his political project as “reengineering Peru” rather
than governing it. As president, he wore business suits with ties, his hair
parted and brushed into a neat wave, square glasses framing his face. He
crisscrossed the country, visiting far-flung villages and shantytowns, and
projected confidence, as at ease wading into the mud of a flood-stricken village
as he was flirting with regime-friendly female journalists, known as his
“geishas” in Peruvian pop culture.
Fujimori (center) speaks with villagers in Juliaca, Peru.
Fujimori (center) speaks with villagers in Juliaca, Peru, on May 6,
2000.Presidencia/AFP via Getty Images
Dozens of words and phrases used today hark back to Fujimori or episodes from
his government—the “Fujimorization” of Peruvian Spanish. He captivated media
attention for a decade, his public image changing as his grip on power shifted.
There was Fujimori the populist outsider, riding into the 1990 presidential race
on a red tractor; Fujimori the decisive leader; Fujimori the vengeful dictator;
and, finally, Fujimori the prisoner, shouting “I’m innocent!” in a courtroom.
The soap opera that was his family life also played out on the nightly news. In
one six-year period, his first wife, Higuchi, denounced him for alleged
corruption and adultery, accused him of ordering intelligence agents to torture
her, divorced him, and vowed to defeat him in the 1995 presidential election (he
barred her party from participating, but she won a seat in Congress in 2000.
Fujimori responded by appointing their daughter Keiko, then 19, as his new first
lady to replace her.
Like former U.S. President Donald Trump, Fujimori had a knack for connecting to
the working poor in a way that defied the script of identity politics. A
university rector before running for office, Fujimori became the first Japanese
Peruvian president in a country where the majority of citizens were poor and had
Indigenous roots. He co-opted the rhetoric of the left and improved upon it,
promising deliverables instead of ideals, Julio Carrión, the editor of a book of
essays titled The Fujimori Legacy: The Rise of Electoral Authoritarianism in
Peru, told Foreign Policy. “He said, ‘What you need is a little health clinic in
your town, a school, a bridge. You need things you can see and feel. And above
all, security,’” Carrión said, describing Fujimori’s approach. “‘Security,
security, security!’”
Fujimori described his improbable rise to power as fated. He told journalists
that he ran for president because a soothsayer had predicted he would win, and
he claimed in his autobiography that his father had a similar vision when
Fujimori was born.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fujimori shakes hands with well-wishers after arriving in Japan.
Fujimori shakes hands with well-wishers after arriving in Japan on July 4, 1990.
Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images
According to his birth certificate, Alberto Kenya Fujimori was born in Lima on
Peru’s independence day, July 28, 1938. He was the second of four children of
Naoichi Fujimori, a tailor, and Mutsue Inomoto, a homemaker, both from Japan’s
Kumamoto prefecture.
His parents, along with tens of thousands of their compatriots, migrated to Peru
in the early 20th century under labor contracts that were designed to cut costs
at large agricultural estates after the abolishment of slavery a half-century
earlier. They spent their first years in Peru as sharecroppers on a cotton
plantation, until Naoichi saved up enough money to start a tire-repair workshop
in Lima, where the family formed part of a thriving Nikkei community, one of the
biggest outside Japan.
World War II brought an ugly backlash. At Washington’s request, Peru stripped
Japanese immigrants of rights, sending thousands to internment camps in
California and Texas. When Fujimori was a toddler, authorities seized his
family’s workshop and, a few years later, shut down the Japanese Peruvian school
he was attending, forcing him into another school where he didn’t speak the
language and was bullied.
As a boy, Fujimori admired Eva Perón, the populist matriarch of Argentina’s
Peronist movement. Bright and studious, he earned a degree in agricultural
engineering at La Molina National Agrarian University in Lima, graduating first
in his class in 1961. He earned master’s degrees in physics and math,
respectively, from the University of Strasbourg in France and the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He fell in love with Higuchi, a civil engineer, over math
problems they would solve late into the night.
He said it was academia that introduced him to cutthroat politics. In 1977, he
ran a failed bid to become deputy rector of the National Agrarian University,
but he returned with a fresh plan in the 1984 election and unexpectedly won the
rectorship. Instead of trying to forge an alliance with established insiders as
he had before, he courted students, the biggest voting bloc in the election,
entering the field at the last minute and positioning himself as an outsider.
He won the presidency of Peru in 1990 with a similar strategy. He was a virtual
unknown who surged past the lead leftist candidate at the last minute in the
first-round vote, winning himself a chance at defeating, in a runoff, the
election’s longtime favorite, Vargas Llosa, a novelist from a white aristocratic
family.
Read More
The Organization of American States headquarters is seen in Washington on Sept.
22, 2023. The Organization of American States headquarters is seen in Washington
on Sept. 22, 2023.
CAN THE OAS PROTECT PERU’S DEMOCRACY?
The forum has prevented backsliding elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.
Latin America Brief
|
Catherine Osborn
Aerial view showing the construction works in the area where the Chinese company
Cosco Shipping is building a port in Chancay, some 80 km north of Lima, on
August 22, 2023. Aerial view showing the construction works in the area where
the Chinese company Cosco Shipping is building a port in Chancay, some 80 km
north of Lima, on August 22, 2023.
PERU LEARNS TO READ THE FINE PRINT IN CHINA DEALS
A mistaken provision has given Beijing control of a key port.
Argument
|
Elisabeth Braw
Fujimori hands a weapon to a resident in Huancayo, a city in the Andes, to help
them fight the Shining Path leftist rebels.
Fujimori hands a weapon to a resident in Huancayo, a city in the Andes, to help
them fight the Shining Path leftist rebels on June 23, 1991. Marc Thibault/AFP
via Getty Images
Peru at the time was ripe for a radical turn. Former President Alan García’s
1985-1990 administration had left the country in ruins. Nationalizations, debt
defaults, and the excessive printing of money had wiped out a generation’s life
savings and had sunk millions of people into poverty. Inflation ran in the
quadruple digits, food shortages were common, and the Shining Path
insurgency—one of Latin America’s most ruthless and cultlike rebel movements,
which García once said he admired for having a “mystique” that his party
lacked—was gaining ground, massacring Indigenous villagers in the Andes and
bombing electrical towers to cause power outages in the capital, Lima.
“There were so many blackouts in Lima that people basically learned to live
without electricity. We grew up doing our homework by candlelight. No one used
refrigerators,” Peruvian journalist Marco Sifuentes told Foreign Policy. “The
entire family had to go out to wait in line for bread at different bakeries
every morning because bread was rationed and there was never enough.”
Vargas Llosa was a prominent free market advocate and public intellectual who
was seen as the natural antidote to García’s fiery nationalism. But voters were
not enthused by him (he later said he lacked the natural gifts needed to be a
politician), and many worried that his plans for implementing a so-called shock
liberalization program would bring only more strife. Fujimori tapped into those
anxieties. He ran on a “say no to the shock” platform, promising not to
privatize state companies and lambasting his rival for thinking he could “make
Peru a Switzerland.”
“You represent the rich, who have already been in power. And you’re going to
apply a shock against the poorest,” Fujimori told Vargas Llosa in a presidential
debate a week before the election. Fujimori seized on an ad by Vargas Llosa’s
campaign that portrayed bureaucrats as monkeys in suits, warning mass firings
would occur if Vargas Llosa came to power. “You think we Peruvians are monkeys.
Well, we don’t accept being part of an experiment.”
Fujimori beat Vargas Llosa by a stunning 25 percentage points. In his 1993
memoir, A Fish in the Water, Vargas Llosa wrote that he was naive to think
Peruvians would vote “for ideas”: “They voted as people vote in an
underdeveloped democracy, and sometimes in advanced ones, for images, myths,
thrills, or for dark feelings and resentments unhinged from reason.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fujimori leads military commanders during a ceremony in Lima.
Fujimori leads military commanders during a ceremony in Lima on July 28,
1991.Hector Mata/AFP via Getty Images
Within days of Fujimori taking office, his government implemented shock economic
reforms that he had vilified as a candidate. His finance minister wrapped up an
announcement about the end of price and currency controls with a foreboding “may
God help us.” A series of free market reforms followed that laid the foundation
for Peru’s current economic model. Tariffs were slashed, the tax system
streamlined, state industries privatized, and labor laws loosened.
The “Fujishock,” as it would become known, worked to stabilize Peru’s economy,
bringing back Peru’s access to international loans and foreign investment.
Inflation fell to roughly 11 percent by 1995 from more than 7,000 percent in
1990, and recession eventually gave way to years of robust economic growth.
“Almost overnight, as Peru’s doors opened to the world, shiny new cars appeared
on the streets; supermarket shelves were transformed with imported products,”
Sally Bowen, a former Peru correspondent for the Financial Times, wrote in her
memoir, Accidental Journalist.
Doors also opened for Fujimori. His economic strategy had secured crucial
support from Washington and Lima elites, many of whom would now look the other
way as he seized authoritarian powers.
Some considered him a pragmatist, not an ideologue. “Political decisions were
made due to expediency,” Bowen wrote in her book. “He loved to make an
announcement that would surprise or shock: presumably it gave him a thrill of
power.” Political scientists labeled him a “democratic dictator” and an
“electoral authoritarian,” one of a pioneering group of strongmen who disguised
themselves as democrats, using limited competition in elections as cover for
their control of institutions.
Fujimori justified his self-coup as a defense of democracy, necessary to
override corruption and implement his anti-terrorism strategy and economic
restructuring.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán appears in jail in Lima.
Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán appears in jail in Lima on Oct. 15,
1992.Hector Mata/AFP via Getty Images
On Sept. 12, 1992, five months after his self-coup, a new political victory fell
into Fujimori’s lap. While he was pursuing a hypermilitarized strategy to quash
Shining Path rebels, a special police unit that had been formed prior to
Fujimori’s rise to power quietly tracked down and captured the rebels’ messianic
leader, Abimael Guzmán, one of the most feared and despised figures in Peru at
the time. Guzmán had been hiding in a ballet teacher’s apartment in Lima and was
soon paraded in a cage before news cameras.
From captivity, Guzmán called on his followers to disarm. Most of them did,
effectively ending a 12-year insurgency that had terrorized the nation. (One
band of Shining Path rebels refused to give up and formed a splinter group, the
Militarized Communist Party of Peru, that continues to hide out in a
drug-trafficking region of the country today.)
Although Fujimori had been kept in the dark about the police operation, he
framed Guzmán’s arrest as proof that his war on terrorism, as well as the
special powers he had seized to wage it, were working. At the same time, special
forces and paramilitary groups that Fujimori had deployed to extrajudicially
eliminate terrorists were facing growing accusations of horrific human rights
abuses. Critics accused Fujimori of using these forces against his political
foes.
Fujimori, on trial for allegedly authorizing two army death squad massacres,
speaks during a hearing in Lima.
Fujimori, on trial for allegedly authorizing two army death squad massacres,
speaks during a hearing in Lima on April 1, 2009.Ernesto Benavides/AFP via Getty
Images
Peru’s truth commission would later find that of the estimated 69,000 victims of
Peru’s 1980-2000 internal conflict, most of whom were Indigenous people, state
security forces had killed some 20,000. In 2009, Fujimori was found guilty of
commanding paramilitary groups that massacred 15 people, including an 8-year-old
boy, at a party in Lima, and the slaying of nine students and a professor in
1991.
But Guzmán’s capture, along with the improving economy, gave a sense of order
restored, and in 1993, voters rewarded Fujimori by approving a new constitution
that strengthened presidential powers and allowed him to run for a second
consecutive term. In 1995, he was reelected in a landslide, beating his closest
rival, former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, by more than 40
percentage points.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fujimori greets his supporters outside the presidential palace in Lima.
Fujimori greets his supporters outside the presidential palace in Lima on Sept.
19, 2000. He would resign a few months later.Newsmakers/via Getty Images
In his second term, Fujimori racked up more political wins, and fresh
controversies. In 1996, he launched a birth control program that was initially
embraced by feminists but was later blamed for forcibly sterilizing thousands of
Indigenous women in poor Andean regions. In 1997, he commanded a dramatic
operation that freed dozens of hostages who had been held captive by Túpac Amaru
Revolutionary Movement rebels at the Japanese Embassy in Lima, and a year later
he signed a peace deal with Ecuador that ended a territorial dispute, which was
widely seen as a win at home.
It all fell apart on Sept. 14, 2000, when a small cable news channel, Canal N,
broadcast a grainy video showing Fujimori’s spymaster, Montesinos—who reportedly
received millions of dollars from the CIA during Fujimori’s tenure to help fight
the war on drugs—giving stacks of cash to a mayoral candidate. It was the first
of a flood of “Vladivideos” from Montesinos’s private collection that would leak
to the press, fueling further outrage. Montesinos had videotaped his dirty
dealings—allegedly distributing bribes to lawmakers, businessmen, state
officials, and media bosses—presumably to save as receipts or use in potential
blackmail.
Fujimori tried to distance himself from what Montesinos was up to, but by then,
Fujimori had won a third term in a vote that was widely seen as rigged and he
was facing growing calls from Washington and the international community to hold
new elections. On Nov. 17, 2000, as anti-government protests and unrest spread
in Peru, Fujimori flew to Japan after attending a summit in Brunei, checked into
a hotel in Tokyo, and sent his resignation letter by fax three days later.
Japan granted Fujimori exile, and for five years he lived there, where he met
Satomi Kataoka, a businesswoman from Tokyo’s upper class, whom he would marry in
2006. From there, he plotted a comeback. Peru’s then-president, Alejandro
Toledo, was widely unpopular, and Fujimori saw an opportunity in the 2006
elections. This time, however, his audacity backfired. In 2005, he was arrested
during a stop in neighboring Chile and two years later was extradited to Peru,
where he faced more than 20 counts of criminal charges. He was given his first
conviction in 2009.
Fujimori leaves the Barbadillo Prison with his son Kenji (left) and daughter
Keiko after being released in Lima.
Former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori exits the Barbadillo prison in a car
with his son Kenji (left) and daughter Keiko (right) after being released in
Lima on Dec. 6, 2023.Mariana Bazo/Getty Images
But that wouldn’t be the last of Fujimori. While he didn’t participate in the
2006 elections, his daughter Keiko did, winning a seat in Congress and leading a
fujimorista bloc that still holds some sway today.
Fujimori’s supporters in Congress lobbied for a presidential pardon for years,
and on Christmas Eve 2017, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski granted him one
on humanitarian grounds, three days after Kuczynski survived an impeachment vote
with the help of a faction of fujimoristas. The move triggered mass protests.
Within a year, Kuczynski resigned, and Peru’s Supreme Court annulled the pardon,
finding it had been granted illegally. Fujimori was taken back to prison in
2019. In March 2022, Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal reinstated the pardon and
ordered Fujimori’s release, but the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled
against it before he could be released. In December 2023, the Constitutional
Tribunal voted to reaffirm its decision to release Fujimori despite the
Inter-American Court’s orders, and he was released shortly after.
But Fujimori wasn’t the last president to be imprisoned, a source of vindication
for some of his supporters. Three of his successors went on to be jailed in
connection with corruption probes, and a fourth, García, died by suicide to
avoid arrest in 2019. At one point, Fujimori shared his prison quarters, built
for him at a military base, with Ollanta Humala, a former president who once led
a military rebellion against Fujimori’s government, while Humala’s wife was
jailed at a women’s prison where Keiko was detained.
Fujimori never admitted to committing crimes, but at times he showed contrition.
Days after he was pardoned in 2017, amid an angry backlash, he acknowledged that
he had “let down some compatriots.” In a video posted to Facebook, he said, “I
ask them to forgive me with all my heart.” This July, Keiko announced that her
father intended to run for president again in 2026.
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* Human Rights
* South America
Mitra Taj is a freelance journalist based in Lima, Peru, where she has covered
the country for the past decade. She has written for Reuters, the New York
Times, and the Economist. X: @mitrataj
Read More On Human Rights | Peru | South America
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