The death of Alberto Fujimori should signal the end of a devastating and tragic era for the Peruvian masses. However, the violence and corruption that were staples of his regime remain prominent features of the current government.
Former dictator and genocidaire Alberto Fujimori died on September 11, nine months after Peru’s Supreme Court illegally reinstated his pardon for crimes against humanity. His daughter and three-time presidential election loser, Keiko Fujimori, announced his death on the X platform a day after rumors started swirling. Sadly, Fujimori died peacefully in his home surrounded by family despite being responsible for massacres, torture, forced sterilizations, crimes against humanity, economic shock therapy and the selling off of the country to US economic and military interests. The families of his victims received neither reparations nor a formal apology. Though the former far-right ruler has died, his reactionary anti-communist political legacy carries on in the current coup regime and Congress and the parties of the racist petit bourgeois class in Lima (where law students mocked George Floyd’s lynching).
Before moving to the United States as a child, I grew up in Barrios Altos, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Peru. My mother grew up there with her 6 siblings and her single mother who would wash the neighbors’ clothes to feed her kids. When I was a child, three generations lived in the same home. Every Sunday I went to Plaza Italia to climb the statues and stop by our favorite choripan spot (RIP Yo Mismo Soy) with my brother and paternal grandfather, who we affectionately called Pacapaca. Though it was considered a “rough” neighborhood, it was home. And then came the early November 1991 massacre that killed 15 people, including an 8-year-old boy, at a birthday party.
By the end of the following year we left the only home I had ever known. This was one of only two massacres under Fujimori’s rule that he would eventually be judged for by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as well as internal legal institutions. The other was the case of La Cantuta , during which a professor and nine students were kidnapped and disappeared by the army death squad Grupo Colina, which was armed and funded by the dictatorship. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2009, 18 years after the massacre in my barrio.
Fujimori fled to Japan in 2000 amid mounting evidence against him and faxed in his resignation . He was later arrested in 2005 in Chile and extradited to Peru two years later to face trial for corruption, crimes against humanity and human rights abuses. In 2009, it was found that none of those massacred had any ties to the Shining Path, which was the supposed basis for the massacres.
Fujimori was held in Penal Barbadillo (where the legal president of Perú, Pedro Castillo , is still held under pre-trial detention) for 12 years of his 25-year sentence. Though Fujimori’s conviction marked the first time a head of state was extradited and tried on the charge of crimes against humanity , his illegal pardon by the Supreme Court shattered any pretense of justice having been served. It did, however, prove that Fujimori was still in charge institutionally and his daughter Keiko was his dutiful mouthpiece. On September 12, 2024, a day after his death, current president Dina Boluarte, knowing where her power comes from, decreed an official three days of mourning to honor the genocidaire. Without a Congress ruled by Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular and its satellite parties, Boluarte would not be in power. After his release from prison he publicly endorsed Boluarte’s government and stated she should remain in power until 2026.
This was not Fujimori’s first time being released on an illegal pardon for the two massacres for which he was found guilty. On Christmas Eve 2017, amid accusations of corruption , money laundering and the formation of a criminal organization, then president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK) pardoned Fujimori as a reward for Kenji Fujimori (his son and a Congressman) voting against PPK’s impeachment. Almost a year later, the Supreme Court overturned the pardon and Fujimori was forced back to prison.
The political corruption, neoliberal policies, austerity measures, selling off of natural resources, and handing over Peruvian sovereignty to the Yankees have continued. Perhaps the biggest example of Fujimori’s continued ideological and systematic control is the 1993 constitution, which he rammed through during his dictatorship and remains in effect. That constitution effectively privatized Peru’s resources under 30-year contract laws, which were due to expire in 2023. These contract laws are currently being reworked by the Fujimori controlled Congress to continue for a longer period of time. This is the constitution that Castillo was voted in to scrap and replace by a constituent assembly that would write a more just constitution that would return Peru’s resources to its peoples.
Boluarte’s call for three days of national mourning last month signaled that the US-backed regime was the ideological continuation of Fujimori’s dictatorship. It also indicates that despite being convicted for crimes against humanity and human rights abuses among other crimes, the system Fujimori forced upon us at the barrel of US guns remains alive and well. I write this report from a bar not far from Barrios Altos, pouring one out for my neighbors and compatriots who never saw justice. La lucha continúa.