Adios to Alberto Fujimori, a Latino- Japanese Caudillo

 

 

             Adios to Alberto Fujimori, a Latino- Japanese Caudillo

 

 

Alberto Fujimori, who made history in Latin American politics, as the first Japanese immigrant to become President of Peru in 1990, died on 11 September. He has two world history records. He was the first president who resigned from abroad by sending his resignation through fax to the home country. He was also the first to be convicted and jailed for human rights violations within his own country.

 

Fujimori was an outsider when he entered the presidential elections in 1990. He was not member of any political party nor did he had held any government position. He was a university professor. The poor and indigenous people voted for him frustrated by the periodic political and economic crisis caused by the traditional white political oligarchy. When he joined the race for presidential post, he was a dark horse. He had created a coalition including some leftists under the banner of “Cambio 90” (change). He had a surprise win against the famous writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who won Nobel prize later. Llosa was from the right with a neo-liberal agenda. Interestingly Fujimori become a neoliberal after becoming President.

 

As President, Fujimori  took off like a Meiji reformer and Samurai warrior by crushing the guerilla insurgency, taming  hyperinflation and transforming the economy. He became popular. But he succumbed to hubris and the Latino Caudillo (strong man) virus. He wanted more power and less constraints. In 1992, he did a self-coup by suspending constitution, shutting down the Congress and dissolving the judiciary. He drafted a new constitution which would allow presidential reelection. But despite the international condemnation, he got reelected in the 1995 elections and his party got majority in the Congress. 

 

In December 1996, the leftist guerillas invaded the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima during a party and held 72 guests as hostage for 126 days. The hostages included the chief of the anti-terrorist police, the future president Alejandro Toledo and the mother and younger brother of Fujimori.  Fujimori bought time by pretending to negotiate but was preparing for rescue. At the end, he sent in commandos killing all the guerillas and rescuing the hostages in a spectacular operation.

 

After this success, Fujimori became more popular but also more autocratic. He stood for a third term in the 2000 election, violating his own constitution which limited presidency to two terms. And he went on to win but his victory was contested by allegations of irregularities and vote-rigging. There were public protests against his election, abuse of power and corruption. The situation got worse in November after the eruption of a huge scandal of corruption and criminal activities of his chief of intelligence. Fujimori's support collapsed, and a few days later he announced in a nationwide address that he would shut down the intelligence agency and call new elections, in which he would not be a candidate. On 10 November, Fujimori won approval from Congress to hold elections on 8 April 2001. On 13 November, Fujimori left Peru for a visit to Brunei to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum. On 16 November, his government lost a vote of confidence in the Congress. On 17 November, Fujimori traveled from Brunei to Tokyo, where he submitted his presidential resignation via fax. But the Peruvian Congress refused to accept his resignation and removed him from office on the ground that he was "permanently morally disabled". The Japanese government gave asylum to Fujimori, issued a Japanese passport and refused the Peruvian request for extradition. 

 

Fujimori, with his Latino vibrancy, got bored in the staid Japanese society. He declared his intention to return to Peruvian politics. The Peruvian authorities warned him that he would be arrested and prosecuted if he came back.  So he went to Chile in 2005 with the intention to sneak into Peru. But the Chileans detained and extradited him to Peru. The Peruvian court sentenced him to 25 years in jail for crimes of human rights abuse among others. He was released in December 2023, after serving jail term of 18 years. 

 

On 14 July this year, he had announced his candidacy in the Presidential election to be held in 2026, when he would have been 88. On 9 August 2024, the Peruvian government issued a law against prosecution of crimes against humanity committed before 2002. Fujimori was the most important beneficiary of this since there were more pending cases against him. 

 

Fujimori’s daughter Keiko Fujimori has bright chances to become the next president of Peru. She lost the last three elections narrowly. She has founded her own political party which is the strongest in the country. She was close to the father and acted as hostess during his presidency. Fujimori’s son and ex-wife are also in politics but overshadowed by Keiko.

Fujimori was born in in Peru in1938 after his parents migrated from Japan in 1934. They were among the 240,000 Japanese who came to Latin America between 1899 and 1941. Of this 33,000 came to Peru.  They  worked as laborers in farms, mines, industries and building of roads and railways. They endured hardship, racial discrimination and abuses. During the Second World War, the Peruvian government persecuted them with internment, confiscation of assets and restrictions. They even deported about two thousand Japanese to the internment camps in US, which asked for it. But the Fujimori family was lucky and survived in Peru. While his parents were Buddhists, Alberto Fujimori was baptized and raised as catholic. He spoke Japanese besides Spanish. He studied agricultural engineering in a university in Lima and then became a lecturer in  mathematics. He switched to study physics in the University of Strasbourg in France after which he did a masters degree in Mathematics in the US. He married a fellow Japanese-Peruvian Susana Higuchi and had four children. He was Rector of the National Agrarian University of Peru. In 1988-89 he hosted a TV show  in the state television channel on national political and other issues. This experience inspired his interest in politics.

 

The Peruvian political history is colorful with many dramas, experiments, successes and tragedies. Peru was one of the earliest birthplaces of leftist ideology in Latin America. The Peruvian leftist political party APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) founded in 1924  is one of the longest survivor in Latin American political history. Its agenda included creation of a network of anti-imperialist social and political movements in the region. The party’s candidate Alan Garcia won the 1985 elections and was the predecessor to Fujimori. When Garcia was charged with corruption cases, he fled and took asylum in Colombia and later France. He came back and won the 2006 presidential election. In 2019, he committed suicide when police entered his house to arrest him on corruption charges. 

 

In the last eight years, Peru has had 6 presidents, with one of the presidents lasting for just 5 days. Pedro Castillo, a simple rural peasant leftist elected as president in 2021 was impeached and put in jail for trying a Fujimori-style self-coup in 2022. President Martin Vizcarra was impeached in 2020, two years after his election. Alejandro Toledo, who was President from 2001 to 2006, is in jail on corruption charges. Kuczynski, who was President from 2016 to 18 is under house arrest on corruption charges. 

 

But despite the political instability, the economy has remained stable. The inflation has been in single digit in the last 27 years, a record in Latin America. The macroeconomic fundamentals have been relatively strong and healthy.

 

Mario Vargas Llosa, the famous Peruvian writer of Magical Realism novels, won the Nobel Prize. But Fujimori won against him in the 1990 election with his Japanese twist to the Latino Magical Realism.