{"id":17518,"date":"2024-11-06T07:48:18","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T15:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17518"},"modified":"2025-02-28T10:13:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T18:13:16","slug":"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-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=17518","title":{"rendered":"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)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ALBERTO FUJIMORI, FORMER PRESIDENT OF PERU, DIES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Subtitle: \u00a0On the eve of a crucial election for the future of democracy in the United States, let\u2019s bid good riddance to another authoritarian, and consider the damage wrought by mixing political machines with family ties.<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Debito Arudou, Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities column 61.\u00a0 <\/span>November 2, 2024. \u00a0Courtesy <\/strong>https:\/\/shingetsunewsagency.com\/2024\/11\/02\/visible-minorities-an-obituary-for-former-peruvian-president-alberto-fujimori\/\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Raise your glass.\u00a0 <\/span>Another authoritarian is worm food. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying not to make a habit of writing obituaries, but people who affected policymaking in Japan just keep dying.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve done ruminations<\/a> on the deaths of Shinzo Abe, Shintaro Ishihara, Henry Scott-Stokes, and even on positive influences such as Ivan Hall and Chalmers Johnson.\u00a0 <\/span>Now it\u2019s Alberto Fujimori\u2019s turn.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Alberto Fujimori, who died last September aged 86, was the President of Peru from 1990 to 2000.\u00a0 <\/span>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. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This sounds like a paragon of tolerance and openness to outsiders, but what Fujimori did with that power became a cautionary tale\u2014of how an outsider, once let in, can corrupt everything.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

FROM IMMIGRANT BEGINNINGS TO AN OUTSIDER-INSIDER<\/strong><\/p>\n

Allegedly born in Peru (although even that would be later disputed<\/a>), Fujimori rose from being a well-credentialed agronomist and mathematics lecturer to a university rector at a national university. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Like many people I\u2019ve met with physical science backgrounds, Fujimori had unsophisticated views about the social sciences.\u00a0 <\/span>A person who preferred solo policymaking behind a laptop rather than the tedious work of meeting and persuading fellow politicians, he found democracy annoying.\u00a0 <\/span>People were either problems to be solved or obstacles to be removed. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Once he got a taste of power in the rectory (we academics know something about what happens to people pampered in hierarchical university administrations), he learned how to bulldoze through anything that got in his way, including the rule of law. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Running as a long-shot outsider, when Fujjmori found no established party would nominate him, he founded his own party, hiring staffers supported by the CIA<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>Although he campaigned on anti-corruption and anti-terrorism slogans, Fujimori also pandered to populism, visiting dozens of remote villages in his \u201cFuijimobile\u201d (a cart pulled by a tractor) cosplaying in Andean garb and advertising himself as \u201ca president like you<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Adopting the moniker of el chino (\u201cthe Chinaman\u201d), he played to Peru\u2019s racial politics<\/a> as a common, hardworking Asian out to stick it to the white ruling elite. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ultimately, he won an upset victory over the establishment candidate, acclaimed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.\u00a0 <\/span>As is the pattern of demagogues worldwide (obvious examples should come to mind), he got elected not despite, but because he had no experience in national politics, offering a clean break from the past.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Although Peru\u2019s ruling class believed they could co-opt him, they soon found themselves shut out of power.\u00a0 <\/span>Fujimori largely abandoned his economic proposals for Plan Verde<\/a>, the American \u201cProject 2025\u201d of its time, designed by the Peruvian military to root out the enemy within.\u00a0 <\/span>Exploiting the executive-branch loopholes within Peru\u2019s Constitution to rule by decree, within three years he declared<\/a> Peru\u2019s democracy \u201ca domestic formality\u2014a facade\u201d and instituted a \u201cFuji-coup,\u201d dissolving congress and the judiciary and creating his own constitution.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Emboldened by a surge of popularity despite the coup, Fujimori became even more authoritarian.\u00a0 <\/span>His crackdowns on domestic terrorists and leftist opponents targeted tens of thousands of people, including students, journalists, and businesspeople kidnapped and executed by the military.\u00a0 <\/span>He also embarked on humanitarian disasters such as the forced sterilization of indigenous women<\/a>, ostensibly because they were suspected of breeding guerrillas, but also were \u201cculturally backward\u201d according to eugenics theory (a favorite of the Mensa crowd blind to the political outcomes of doctrinaire pseudoscience).\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For the remainder of Fujimori\u2019s decade in power, corruption freely flowed.\u00a0 <\/span>By the end of his first term in 1995, Fujimori circumvented Peru\u2019s one-consecutive-term limit to the presidency by getting congress to pass a law<\/a> saying his first five years in power didn\u2019t count because he wasn\u2019t elected under his own constitution. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite all his anti-corruption promises, the rule of law meant nothing unless it furthered his goals.\u00a0 <\/span>Fujimori would eventually be convicted of human rights abuses and corruption, as would 1500 people<\/a> in his government.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

JAPAN SUPPORTS IT OWN, NO MATTER WHAT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where Japan comes in:\u00a0 <\/span>Worldwide observers, human-rights NGOs, and governments were denouncing Fujimori\u2019s antics in real time, yet Japan saw little unsavory.\u00a0 <\/span>Instead, it celebrated him openly as the hometown boy who made good.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

He was the particular darling of Japan\u2019s far-right, feted every time he came to Tokyo by the likes of bigoted Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, as proof that Wajin-blooded people were eugenically superior enough to get elected by foreigners.\u00a0 <\/span>Fujimori thus leveraged the soft spot of Japan\u2019s insecure fascists\u2014their insatiable craving for international affirmation and recognition as some kind of superlative.\u00a0 <\/span>Japan enabled his corruption by increasing investments and business opportunities.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This saprophytic relationship was obvious even to Peru\u2019s insurgents.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s why in 1996 they raided the Japanese ambassador\u2019s residence during a birthday party for Japan\u2019s Emperor and took hostages.\u00a0 <\/span>After a four-month standoff (covered assiduously by Japan\u2019s media\u2014reporters even snuck inside the compound, which is why Fujimori couldn\u2019t act on his impulse to just rush in and shoot everything up), security forces did finally storm the structure and summarily execute all insurgents on the spot (so brutally that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights<\/a> ruled it a violation of international law in 2015).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t matter to Japan.\u00a0 <\/span>Fujimori continued to cultivate their relationship in case things went sour.\u00a0 <\/span>By the end of his second term in 2000, things did.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

FUJIMORI FLEES INTO JAPAN\u2019S EMBRACE<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Fujimori tried to stand for a third term that was unconstitutional even under his own constitution, his consigliere and CIA agent Vladimir Montesinos<\/a> got arrested in Panama after video surfaced of him brazenly bribing politicians.\u00a0 <\/span>So Fujimori fled to Japan after an international summit, famously faxing his resignation from a Tokyo hotel room. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

He soon found new digs.\u00a0 <\/span>Governor Ishihara and far-right novelist Ayako Sono (who famously proposed South-African style apartheid for foreigners in Japan in 2015) put him up as a guest on their properties, and made him the toast of Japan\u2019s ruling elite for years.\u00a0 <\/span>All this while Interpol<\/a> put him on their most-wanted list, and Peru demanded Japan extradite him for domestic trial. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Now on the lam, it looked like the law might finally catch up with Fujimori.\u00a0 <\/span>But here\u2019s the funny thing about demagogues:\u00a0 <\/span>Outsiders not beholden to the standing power structure get used to bending reality around them\u2014to the point where they figure out how do it in other societies. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Consider Japan\u2019s process to become a Japanese citizen.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s arduous, of course, and laws explicitly state that dual citizenship is not allowed, moreover people with criminal records or have \u201cvoluntarily taken public office in a foreign country<\/a>\u201d are not allowed to naturalize.\u00a0 <\/span>Moreover, the process might take years after a series of screenings and difficult paperwork.\u00a0 <\/span>I know because I\u2019ve done it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet Fujimori was issued a passport mere weeks after defecting.\u00a0 <\/span>So that kinda laid bare for the rest of us earnest immigrants that Japan won\u2019t follow its own laws if blood and celebrity are involved.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how Japan ignored Peru\u2019s extradition demands because \u2014 hey, presto! \u2014 Fujimori is a Japanese citizen.\u00a0 <\/span>True to form of \u201cprotecting their own,\u201d like it has done for many Japanese criminals committing crimes overseas (e.g., international child abduction, or even, in the case of Issei Sagawa, cannibalism), Japan granted Fujimori safe haven.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

YOU CAN\u2019T KEEP A BAD MAN DOWN<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fujimori could have lived his years in increasing obscurity, but he got bored.\u00a0 <\/span>So he renewed his Peruvian passport in Tokyo, flew to Chile in 2005, and declared his candidacy for the upcoming Peruvian presidential election in absentia.\u00a0 <\/span>The fool was promptly placed under house arrest.\u00a0 <\/span>From Chile, in 2007 he ran for an Upper House seat in Japan in absentia, and lost.\u00a0 <\/span>He was extradited to Peru shortly afterwards, and in 2009 was convicted in four criminal trials<\/a> and sentenced to decades in prison. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the story doesn\u2019t end there. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In came the family.\u00a0 <\/span>Fujimori\u2019s daughter to Keiko<\/a> ran for the presidency in 2011, 2016, and 2021 to spring her dad from jail; fortunately she lost each time.\u00a0 <\/span>So Fujimori\u2019s son Kenji<\/a> (who also got elected to office) got a pardon from the current president in 2017 after a backroom deal<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>But in 2018 that pardon was overturned by Peru\u2019s Supreme Court, so back in the clink he went.\u00a0 <\/span>After a series of flip-flops by future courts, Alberto Fujimori was finally released from jail on humanitarian grounds at the end of 2023, less than a year before he died of cancer.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But the story still doesn’t end there.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

LESSONS OF THE FUJIMORI CASE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pundit Dave Spector once told me that Alberto Fujimori is an accident of birthplace.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cIf he were born in Canada, he\u2019d be a dentist, not a dictator.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t disagree, but one more dynamic worth exploring here is what happens when political machines get intertwined with family ties.\u00a0 <\/span>They embed corruption and make it generational.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Elections in democracies are often a family affair.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, they\u2019d better be on board.\u00a0 <\/span>Photos of the spouse and kids often appear in campaigns to ground someone as \u201ca family man.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>The \u201cFirst Lady\u201d has a storied role.\u00a0 <\/span>Relatives emerge to capitalize (\u201cBilly Beer<\/a>,\u201d anyone?),\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, \u201cI\u2019m doing it for my family\u201d is usually seen as a positive motivation.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But families have weird power outcomes, and we reflexively tend to excuse them as part of the \u201cwhole fam damily\u201d thing.\u00a0 <\/span>But in public positions, this a recipe for people getting jobs and tasks not based upon merit.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cNepo babies\u201d are a thing.\u00a0 <\/span>You gave that job to your gormless kid because blood is thicker than water, and that\u2019s somehow relatable.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So when governmental leadership structures centralize around families, horrible things happen.\u00a0 <\/span>The most glaring example is the Kim family in North Korea, who have lived as kings for the better part a century, but plenty of autocracies make sure the right blood remains in power.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s precisely what kingdoms are, after all.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet democracies are demonstrably not immune.\u00a0 <\/span>For example, generational families make up the lion\u2019s share of Diet members in Japan\u2019s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.\u00a0 <\/span>In the Philippines, even after decades of kleptocracy and repression under Ferdinand Marcos, his son Bongbong still got elected president in 2022.\u00a0 <\/span>Even wife \u201cshoe closet\u201d Imelda \u2014 who is still alive!\u2014 won multiple elections to the House of Representatives despite all her convictions for corruption. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

For its part, the US has had multiple president Adamses, Harrisons, Roosevelts, and Bushes.\u00a0 <\/span>Canada has their Trudeaus, India their Gandhis.\u00a0 <\/span>Similar generational leadership<\/a> can be found in France, Indonesia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan,\u00a0 <\/span>You get the idea.\u00a0 <\/span>Once they get power, they \u201ckeep it in the family.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why when rich Japan similarly saw Fujimori as \u201cpart of the family,\u201d it opened a sluice gate of money that finessed largesse and forgave excess. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Thus Japan bears a fundamental responsibility in keeping Fujimori in clover and out of jail.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even after Alberto\u2019s death, Peru remains saddled with the Fujimoris stinking up the place.\u00a0 <\/span>Alberto\u2019s daughter Keiko, son Kenji, and ex-wife Susana have all had stints in Peru\u2019s legislature.\u00a0 <\/span>No doubt Keiko is going to make a few more runs at the presidency, since her father\u2019s political machine, according to Transparency International<\/a>, has embezzled approximately $600 million.\u00a0 <\/span>In 2004, TI listed Alberto as the ninth most corrupt leader in the world, joining the good company of leaders from the Philippines, Ukraine, Zaire, Nigeria, Malaysia, Serbia, and Haiti\u2014all countries whose populations can ill-afford billions of government dollars being spirited away by political families.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This matters because come November, the United States seems likely to join these ranks.\u00a0 <\/span>Revelations surface daily about how corrupt the Trump family has been during and after the Trump presidency.\u00a0 <\/span>If he gets back in, expect even worse grift.\u00a0 <\/span>Even if he loses, expect his eldest son to remain a kingmaker<\/a> in the Republican Party.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Still, as of right now, the Trumps are pikers compared to Fujimori.\u00a0 <\/span>For brutally subverting a democracy for the next generation or two, exploiting another democracy by leveraging their weakness for cultural superiority and racial bloodlines, siphoning off more money than the economies<\/a> of entire countries, and killing, maiming, and impoverishing hundreds of thousands of people just for the sake of profit, ego, and hair-brained schemes, Alberto Fujimori deserves a special place in hell.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Accident of birth or not, Alberto Fujimori is the Governor Ishihara who actually managed to achieve his goals. And like Ishihara, that\u2019s worth covering in one of my obits.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

ENDS
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Intro: Raise your glass.\u00a0 Another authoritarian is worm food. \u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying not to make a habit of writing obituaries, but people who affected policymaking in Japan just keep dying.\u00a0 I\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s Alberto Fujimori\u2019s turn.<\/p>\n

Alberto Fujimori, who died last September aged 86, was the President of Peru from 1990 to 2000.\u00a0 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n

This sounds like a paragon of tolerance and openness to outsiders, but what Fujimori did with that power became a cautionary tale\u2014of 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,18,43,49,22,50,35,20,5,12,37,26,4,14,15,56,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-academia","category-bad-business-practices","category-child-abductions","category-cultural-issue","category-gaiatsu","category-good-news","category-history","category-human-rights","category-immigration-assimilation","category-injustice","category-ironies-hypocrisies","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-politics","category-lawsuits","category-nj-legacies","category-on-democracy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17519,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17518\/revisions\/17519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}