Fujimori

I am not a political pundit, but someone I find an interesting figure in world politics is Alberto Fujimori. He is currently on trial in Perú for violation of human rights during his presidency, which is argued to have been more of a dictatorship than a presidency.

When trekking around the mountainous and altiplano region from Cusco south to Titicaca back in 2000 with a girlfriend, we noticed there was a great deal of local support for Fujimori in the upcoming elections against Alejandro Toledo, a man with indigenous roots who did, in the end, win the election. When inquiring to people about what made them favor Fujimori over Toledo, I was overwhelmingly responded to by one word: El sendero.

The Shining Path is a Maoist--and extremist--rebel organization that, in short, believes the path to true communism to be through a cultural revolution that would extend world-wide. There is a very sendero-esque group that has recently taken political control of Nepal.

The Sendero Luminoso began to show its public face in 1980 when, for the first time in years, the military force governing Perú permitted open elections. Ballot boxes were burned and, soon thereafter, dead dogs were found hanging from streetlights and the terror-filled battle for power began. The popularly-elected president at the time, who happened to be the great-uncle of a personal friend of mine, was wary of giving the military too much control to nip this in the bud as it was a dominant military that had ended Belaúnde's presidency in a coup before. So the Sendero gained strength, mainly in the Andean highlands, marking its force with brutal massacres that did not exclude women and children.

A Peruvian who has studied the actions of the Sendero in great detail for intelligence training in the 1990s taught me a lot about the Sendero. It was the children of the Sendero that would first lead the group into a community. The children would draw the attention of the citizens, who would come out and be met by the men, and then the women. The women are colder and more calculating, it was explained to me, than the men so they were often the masked killers as they were least likely to exercise mercy and would carry out much of the actual brutality.

The violence was not limited to the Andes. Over time it filtered into what had been popularly been considered the "untouchable" cities, with deadly car bombs in the districts I now visit regularly when I visit Perú. It is hard to imagine the terror that kept limeños off what are now such busily bustling streets.

How does Fujimori enter this picture? Upon election to the presidency, he established a forceful military power with right to fight the Sendero. The military, upon (apparent) orders from above, carried out various human rights violations, killed many more civilians than necessary and made themselves, in essence, look worse than the Sendero.

My informant was also behind the design and planning of the liberation of the Japanese Prime Minister's residence in Lima of 1997. Interestingly, I was in Japan at the time, watching everything unfold surrounded by a completely different cultural context--that of a horrified Japanese public who suddenly felt themselves almost as under attack as they had in the bombings of WWII, but this time without reason. The MRTA behind this seizure, a militant group similiar in ideology to the Sendero. The tunnels...the signals...everything in that liberation was so carefully timed, tunnels so painstakingly dug, the details of how they managed to drill without the rebels hearing the noise...amazing details...only (if I remember correctly) three deaths in the rescue.

Fujimori had the support of many because it was realized a very firm, dictatorial hand was required to put this group down. It is not like Colombia's FARC. The FARC are kidnappers with motives to raise funds for its survival, thus its involvment not only in the cocaine trade but also in the secuestros of high-profile individuals. The Sendero are killers. The only way to revolutionize is to annihilate and start clean with new ideology in place. There was no way to reason with them. Was Fujimori acting within his bounds in his military orders? Was he too firm of a hand? That will be for the judges hearing his case to find. I think that, when all is said and done, history will see Fujimori as the one who brought peace back to Perú. At a price, mind you, but there is a freedom and a peace that did not exist for over 15 years there. Can Alan García keep this up? We shall see. His economic policies are sure to reestablish a passionate fire amongst the Maoist groups.

What happened? When top Sendero officials were captured, the group went in different directions as "peace talks" were requested. Some wanted to go that route, others did not. The central driving force was gone. However, militant factions continue to exist. There is the Proseguir movement which sounds driven by many similar motivations as the FARC. Plus, there are a generation of children who have been raised with this Maoist mentality who are now coming of age and power. Captured senderistas are ending their terms and are being released. There is a degree of reorganization, with spotty activity in the highlands mainly north and east of Lima.

So where will I go in 16 days? Not into Huánuco or Ayacucho. This time I will stay closer to Lima but still head out to the highlands to explore. I had wanted to go to Trujillo but have been warned against that; even Peruvians consider Trujillo extremely dangerous right now for various reasons. The province also borders Huánuco region. Much in how I would love to explore Colombia or Venezuela, now is just not the time to go to certain places, and the State Department can only tell you so much with their list.