Learning about Fujimori...

I haven’t yet decided how I feel about Peru. In many ways it is quite spectacular, with Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail and some of the 'must-see' sights in South America, but perhaps because of this the places that I have been have been so touristy that it is hard to get an idea of what the “real” Peru is like… but that could also be because I’ve had to speed through the entire country in a couple of weeks, in order to make my next plane trip from Quito to Miami that is in two weeks time.


But I think what stands out the most from my time here is the extraordinary contrasts and juxtaposition of dramatic opposites in the same country, often in the same city and even the same street. From wealth to poverty, luxury to hovels, indigenous to Hispanics… This has been particularly the case in Lima. In many ways it reminds me of the large cities in China, the incredible levels of development side by side along basic manual labour, the clean, sparkling, modern shopping malls with the world’s most expensive brands in one street, in the next a market with people selling things from the street… Multi-national companies positioned alongside boys that shine shoes… I find the contrast interesting and confronting at the same time.

Ever since I picked up my first local newspaper a few weeks ago, whenever I have the time it has become part of my daily ritual to buy a paper and sit over a cup of coffee and try to make sense of the world through the local news in Spanish. While the Bolivian papers were full of the Constitution and evil Evo Morales, here in Peru the papers have been dominated by ex-president Fujimori and his trial. Admittedly I didn’t know a lot about the situation before arriving here, and despite following the articles in the paper I still hadn’t been able to work out what exactly he did that was bad.

Today while wandering the main street Lima I happened to run into a guy that I knew… His name is Daniel, and he was on a tour that I took in Cusco. He is Peruvian, and lives here in Lima, but we both never imagined that we would run into each other here accidentally, especially because he hardly ever comes into central Lima! So Daniel and I grabbed a drink in the main square, and he took me on a short walking tour of the central area, seemingly proud to talk about his city as we walked. Through Daniel I got to see parts of the city I wouldn’t have dared to go to on my own. We walked from the clean, sparkling streets of the Plaza Mayor into Chinatown through the central market. While interesting in itself, the most interesting thing that he pointed out was the multitude of effigies of Fujimori that were on sale to be burned on New Year’s Eve! Apparently it is something of a custom here to burn effigies for the new year, and in years past the unlucky victim might have been, for example, the coach of an unsuccessful football team…

This gave me a fantastic opportunity to find out from a local source, firstly, what Fujimori did that was so bad, and secondly, how the Peruvian people feel about it. In terms of what Fujimori did, well, that’s a little complicated. He got himself elected in 1990, then through a number of almost dictatorial moves created dramatic improvement in the economy. In 1995 he changed the constitution in order to allow himself to run for a second term, and he was re-elected, and then again in 2000. However, sometime into his third term there were thousands of videos released of Fujimori’s head of intelligence, a guy called Montesinos, bribing officials, congressmen and other influential figures, and implicating them all in widespread corruption and money-laundering. Initially Fujimori proclaimed his innocence, saying it was done without his knowledge, but then after about a year, during a trip to Japan, he resigned and stayed there for a few years while Japan refused extradition requests...

Additionally it appears that throughout Fujimori’s reign there had been a number of problems with terrorism, culminating with the most famous, an attack on the residence of the Japanese Ambassador that inspired the famous book Bel Canto (which is a wonderful book if you have never read it!) Anyway, the government ordered an extremely strong response in dealing with the terrorist groups (into this read ‘they killed them all’). The military went into areas where terrorists were thought to be hiding, and many dodgy things happened, like torture and mass murder of entire villages, those who happened to be guilty and those who happened to be innocent alike, without a trial. So Fujimori is being held responsible for that too, and at the moment the survivors of massacres that happened in certain villages are giving evidence.

According to Daniel the public is divided in their opinion about Fujimori’s guilt. There were a lot of people who benefited under Fujimori, and who still support him to this day. But Daniel says that people with education and intelligence realise that he was a dictator, and that he did bad things, and should be held accountable. He was pretty strong on the matter and left me in no doubt which group he fell into... But I was too shy to ask whether he and his family will be buying an effigy to burn!