My SNA Visible Minorities 61: “An Obituary for Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori”: As Trump is set to take the US Presidency again, let us consider the damage wrought by mixing political machines with family ties (Nov 2, 2024)
Intro: Raise your glass. Another authoritarian is worm food.
I’m trying not to make a habit of writing obituaries, but people who affected policymaking in Japan just keep dying. I’ve done ruminations on the deaths of Shinzo Abe, Shintaro Ishihara, Henry Scott-Stokes, and even on positive influences such as Ivan Hall and Chalmers Johnson. Now it’s Alberto Fujimori’s turn.
Alberto Fujimori, who died last September aged 86, was the President of Peru from 1990 to 2000. He was the first person of Japanese ancestry to assume that office, part of the wave of Japanese immigration to North and South America more than a century ago, assimilating into Peruvian society fully enough to be elected their national leader.
This sounds like a paragon of tolerance and openness to outsiders, but what Fujimori did with that power became a cautionary tale—of how an outsider, once let in, can corrupt everything. For when governmental leadership structures centralize around families, horrible things happen. And it’s a cautionary tale for letting the Trumps back into power in the United States…