[1992–2000] The Fujimori Government

The year is 1992. To understand Peru in this moment, you must first understand the concept of fear. It wasn't an abstract worry; it was a physical presence. It was the taste of dust and smoke after a car bomb, a common occurrence in Lima’s supposedly safe districts like Miraflores. It was the sudden, city-wide blackout, plunging millions into an inky darkness punctuated by the crackle of gunfire. This was the work of the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group of unparalleled brutality. They were a hydra-headed monster, seemingly everywhere and nowhere, their bloody hammer and sickle painted on village walls a death sentence. Simultaneously, another kind of decay was eating the country from within: hyperinflation. The currency, the Inti, was so devalued that people paid for simple groceries with bricks of cash carried in bags. In 1990, inflation had peaked at a staggering 7,650%. Life was a daily, exhausting struggle for survival, a battle fought in breadlines and against the gnawing terror of the next bombing. Into this chaos stepped President Alberto Fujimori, a son of Japanese immigrants and a political outsider who had won a surprise victory in 1990. For two years, he battled a hostile Congress and the twin crises. Then, on the night of April 5, 1992, he decided the rules no longer applied. The rumble of tanks through the streets of Lima was the first sign. Then, the television and radio stations went to static, replaced by the national anthem on a loop. Finally, Fujimori himself appeared on screen. In a calm, deliberate voice, he announced he was dissolving Congress and suspending the constitution. It was an *autogolpe*, a self-coup. He argued that a corrupt legislature and a weak judiciary were preventing him from defeating terrorism and fixing the economy. To a world watching from the outside, it was a dictator’s power grab. To millions of desperate Peruvians, it was a promise of order. The immediate aftermath was a state of suspended animation. Soldiers in green fatigues, rifles held across their chests, stood guard at the doors of the shuttered Palace of Justice. For a time, daily life was a strange mix of the old fear and a new, uncertain quiet. But then, things began to change. The economic medicine, dubbed "Fujishock," was harsh, but it began to work. By 1994, inflation was down to 15%. The endless stacks of worthless bills vanished, replaced by a stable new currency, the Nuevo Sol. Foreign investment, scared away for a decade, began to trickle back in. New construction projects, though often stark and utilitarian, started to dot the landscape. For the first time in years, a semblance of economic predictability returned. Then came the victory that would define his presidency. On September 12, 1992, elite police commandos, acting on a meticulous intelligence operation, stormed a modest two-story house in a middle-class Lima suburb. Inside, amidst ballet shoes and books—it was above a dance studio—they found their target. Not in a mountain fortress, but hiding in plain sight. Abimael Guzmán, the messianic, almost mythical leader of the Shining Path, was captured without a single shot fired. The government made sure everyone saw him. Days later, Guzmán was displayed to the press in a cage, wearing a cartoonish black-and-white striped prison uniform. He was no longer a fearsome ideologue, but a portly, defeated man. For a nation traumatized by a war that had claimed nearly 70,000 lives, it was a moment of profound, collective catharsis. The back of the Sendero Luminoso was broken. Slowly, cautiously, Lima's residents began to reclaim their nights. Restaurants stayed open later. People dared to linger in public parks. This is the story Fujimori told the world: he was the savior who tamed inflation and decapitated terrorism. But behind this narrative of success, a darker machine was at work, operated from the shadows by his indispensable, spymaster, Vladimiro Montesinos. Montesinos, head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), was the architect of the state’s unwritten rules. From his headquarters, he oversaw a vast network of espionage, bribery, and coercion. It was his intelligence that caught Guzmán, but it was also his parallel power that sanctioned atrocity. A military death squad known as the Grupo Colina operated with impunity, carrying out extrajudicial killings. In 1992, they massacred nine students and a professor from La Cantuta University, falsely accusing them of terrorism. It was a brutal message: the state, in its war, would not be bound by law. The government's control extended into the most personal aspects of life. Under the guise of a public health program, a state-sponsored campaign of forced sterilization was enacted, primarily targeting poor, indigenous women in rural areas. An estimated 270,000 women were coerced or forced into surgical procedures they did not understand and had not consented to, a chilling policy of social engineering. By 2000, Fujimori, emboldened by his successes, decided to run for an unprecedented and constitutionally questionable third term. The opposition cried foul, and the election was widely seen as fraudulent. Discontent, which had been simmering beneath the surface, erupted. Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians descended on Lima in a massive protest known as "The March of the Four Suyos," a symbolic reclamation of the ancient Inca empire's four cardinal regions. The regime, once seemingly invincible, began to show cracks. The final blow came not from a bullet, but from a videotape. On September 14, 2000, a local television channel broadcast a grainy, secret recording. The footage showed Vladimiro Montesinos in his office, calmly handing over $15,000 in cash to an opposition congressman, buying his loyalty. This was the first of the "Vladi-videos," a massive library of secret recordings Montesinos had made of himself bribing judges, media executives, and politicians. The effect was instantaneous and devastating. Peruvians were glued to their televisions, watching in stunned silence as the rot at the heart of the government was laid bare. The empire of smoke and mirrors collapsed. In the ensuing chaos, Fujimori flew to an international summit in Brunei. From there, he diverted his plane to Japan, the land of his ancestors. And from a hotel room in Tokyo, the strongman who had ruled Peru with an iron fist for a decade ended his reign in the most ignominious way possible: he resigned the presidency by fax. The chapter was over, leaving Peruvians to grapple with a terrible legacy—a decade of peace and progress bought at the price of democracy and human rights.