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Fallece Alberto Fujimori, expresidente peruano controvertido y divisible

A las 11.45 de la mañana del jueves, seis portadores con guantes blancos 🗝 llevaron un ataúd que contenía el cuerpo del político peruano más divisivo, amado y vituperado de las últimas cuatro décadas. 🗝 Pasaron ante los dolientes, las cámaras y las lanzas con banderas del regimiento de Húsares de Junín, y lo dejaron 🗝 en el vestíbulo del ministerio de Cultura de Lima, un edificio brutalista.

Detrás del ataúd, con las manos entrelazadas y vestidos 🗝 de luto bajo un cielo primaveral suave pero cálido, vinieron su hija mayor y su hijo menor. Una multitud de 🗝 ministros, aliados políticos y altos mandos militares los esperaban en las puertas dobles del ministerio.

Así comenzaron tres días de luto 🗝 nacional en honor de Alberto Fujimori, el político que sorprendentemente se convirtió en presidente del Perú de 1990 a 2000 🗝 y que, nueve años después, fue ordenado a cumplir una sentencia de 25 años por autorizar secuestros y asesinatos durante 🗝 su "guerra contra el terrorismo".

El hecho de que Fujimori, quien murió de cáncer a los 86 años el miércoles, recibiera 🗝 el tipo de funeral no visto desde el funeral de 2024 del exsecretario general de la ONU peruano Javier Pérez 🗝 de Cuéllar, puede haber enojado a muchos en el país sudamericano, pero vino como poca sorpresa.

Después de todo, la vida 🗝 y el legado de Fujimori - quien fue indultado y liberado de la cárcel solo 10 meses antes - es 🗝 quizás el tema más amargo y disputado en el Perú contemporáneo.

Para muchos, siempre será el autócrata cínico cuya corrupción, hambre 🗝 de poder y desprecio por los derechos humanos envenenaron la nación. Para otros, siempre será el outsider político que, de 🗝 alguna manera, logró derrotar las plagas del terrorismo y la hiperinflación.

Aquellos en el último campamento eran evidentes en las calles 🗝 fuera del ministerio de Cultura el jueves, donde hacían cola, aplaudían y lloraban mientras recordaban al hombre cariñosamente conocido como 🗝 "El Chino", mientras que las coronas florales enviadas por la élite empresarial del país se apilaban.

"Está recibiendo los honores que 🗝 merece porque fue el mejor presidente en la historia del Perú", dijo Milagros Parra, de 54 años, quien había venido 🗝 con compañeros del vecindario San Juan de Lurigancho en las afueras de Lima.

"Heredó un país lleno de sangre con una 🗝 hiperinflación masiva. Tenemos que agradecerle."

Fujimori, el hijo de inmigrantes japoneses, fue el candidato casi desconocido que se postuló contra el 🗝 novelista peruano - y futuro ganador del Premio Nobel - Mario Vargas Llosa en las elecciones de 1990, que se 🗝 llevaron a cabo después de casi una década del terrorismo de Sendero Luminoso y años de agitación económica.

Con Vargas Llosa 🗝 percibido como otro candidato de la elite blanca y centrada en Lima de Perú, Fujimori, ingeniero agrícola y matemático educado 🗝 en Francia y Estados Unidos, capitalizó su atractivo para los peruanos comunes al conducir un tractor y prometer "honestidad, tecnología, 🗝 trabajo".

La propuesta funcionó y Fujimori ganó. Sus reformas económicas drásticas y la desregulación de la economía peruana apelaron a la 🗝 elite empresarial, mientras que los programas para construir escuelas, carreteras y puentes en comunidades pobres, abandonadas, ganaron votos y apoyo 🗝 de por vida.

Como resultado, dijo José Alejandro Godoy, autor de dos libros sobre Fujimori, "tanto los sectores ricos como los 🗝 pobres continúan siendo las principales bases de apoyo para él y el movimiento político que fundó".

Pero, enfrentado con el caos 🗝 económico y el terrorismo desde el principio, Fujimori gobernó con una mano cada vez más autoritaria en connivencia con su 🗝 jefe de inteligencia, Vladimiro Montesinos, un abogado corrupto y exsoldado que le ofreció el control de la judicatura y las 🗝 fuerzas armadas.

Emboldened by broad public support, Fujimori embarked on the "war against terrorism" that eventually crushed the Shining Path insurgency 🗝 and then the smaller Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, which made headlines when it took hostages during a party at the 🗝 Japanese ambassador's residence in December 1996. The capture in 1992 of the Shining Path's leader, Abimael Guzmán, proved a major 🗝 coup – the much-feared terrorist mastermind was paraded in a cage in prison stripes – as did the operation that 🗝 ended the siege at the Japanese ambassador's residence in April 1997.

Desperate for an end to the bloodshed – the country's 🗝 truth and reconciliation commission would later establish that 69,280 people were killed between 1980 and 2000, 54% of them by 🗝 the Shining Path – many Peruvians supported Fujimori's "by any means necessary" tactics.

In the early 1990s, Fujimori holed up in 🗝 the intelligence service headquarters from where he directed a dirty war using a death squad, the Grupo Colina, to carry 🗝 out massacres for which he was eventually convicted and jailed for 25 years in 2009 in a landmark trial against 🗝 a former head of state.

These crimes, which included the murder of an eight-year-old boy and a string of other human 🗝 rights violations, turned a large sector of public opinion against Fujimori, as did increasing revelations of corruption.

But it took time. 🗝 Even when he dissolved congress in 1992, allied himself with the military and co-opted the institutions to rewrite the constitution, 🗝 allowing him to run for re-election, he still had broad support.

With a chokehold on power, he gutted and corrupted public 🗝 institutions and, via Montesinos, controlled a significant part of the press that trashed his opponents through tabloids known as the 🗝 prensa chicha.

He perfected the use of "fake news" to control and subjugate the population

"He perfected the use of 'fake news' 🗝 to control and subjugate the population," said Jo-Marie Burt, professor of political science at George Mason University and a senior 🗝 fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Things finally began to fall apart towards the end of his second term 🗝 when he began pushing for a third mandate using much of the apparatus of a co-opted state. Protests against his 🗝 regime grew until they became daily in Lima and, after an election in 2000 that was beset with allegations of 🗝 ballot-rigging – and the emergence of videos that showed Montesinos bribing lawmakers with stacks of cash – Peruvians tired of 🗝 the Fujimori government and its graft.

Soon after, on an official trip to Asia, Fujimori fled to Japan, his parents' homeland, 🗝 and resigned the presidency by fax. But Peru's congress rejected his resignation and, instead, stripped him of the presidency, arguing 🗝 that he was "morally unfit" to be head of state.

With Fujimori in disgrace and, latterly, in prison, it was left 🗝 to his daughter, Keiko, who had been his first lady since 1994 when her parents separated, to defend and perpetuate 🗝 her father's legacy. Today, Keiko, who has finished second in the past three presidential elections, remains the standard bearer for 🗝 the political force known, after her father, as fujimorismo – a viciously divisive movement that has contorted Peruvian politics since 🗝 he won power.

Fujimori may be dead, but experts say his shadow lingers – and will continue to do so for 🗝 a while yet. Hundreds of thousands of women and men – many poor and Indigenous – are still seeking justice 🗝 after being forcibly sterilised under his presidency.

For Godoy, the late president "degraded Peruvian politics to extremes rarely seen in national 🗝 history" and can be considered the father of the "competitive authoritarianism" seen today in El Salvador under Nayib Bukele.

The author 🗝 Michael Reid describes Fujimori as "a transformative president for better and for worse".Although many, unsurprisingly, associate the late president with 🗝 human rights violations and the poisoning of democracy, Reid points out that "most poorer Peruvians look back on Fujimori as 🗝 somebody who saved the country and somebody who improved their lives and the economy" during a time of crisis.

But, he 🗝 added, Fujimori "introduced corruption as an instrument of rule and I think that was immensely damaging ... Above all, his 🗝 legacy, sadly, has been one of dividing Peruvians because he did rule as an autocrat from 1992 to 2000."

As Peru 🗝 digs in for the mourning period and the many memories it will stir up, some have noted that, in a 🗝 quirk of fate, Fujimori died exactly three years to the day after his terrorist nemesis Guzmán died in a military 🗝 hospital , also at the age of 86.

Some have even dared to imagine that the coincidence might herald a better 🗝 future for a country desperately in need of a break with its recent past.

"And so Alberto Fujimori dies on the 🗝 same day as Abimael Guzmán," the Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo wrote on X. "Let's hope this is an omen for 🗝 an era with neither terrorists nor dictators. Let's hope the universe is saying that Peru can be a democracy."