A Fish in the Water: A Memoir (66 page)

Besides Juan Comas, there traveled with us in the little seaplane the anthropologist Matos Mar, with whom I have been friends ever since, the editor-in-chief of
Cultura Peruana
, José Flórez Aráoz, and Efraín Morote Best, an anthropologist and folklorist from Ayacucho, whom we had to lift off the ground, literally, so that the seaplane could take off. Morote Best had visited bilingual schools and traveled among the tribes, under heroic conditions, bombarding Lima with denunciations of the abuses and iniquities suffered by the indigenous peoples. These latter received him in their villages with great affection and passed their complaints on to him and told him about their problems. The idea I formed of him was that of a very honest and generous man, who had profoundly identified himself with the victims of that country of victims known as Peru. I never imagined that the gentle, timid Dr. Morote Best would, as the years went by, be won over by Maoism, during his rectorate at Ayacucho University, and open the doors of that institution to the fundamentalist Maoism of Sendero Luminoso—whose mentor, Abimael Guzmán, he brought there as a professor—and be regarded as something like the spiritual father of the most bloody extremist movement in the history of Peru.

When I returned to Lima, I didn’t even have time left to write the account of the expedition that I had promised Flórez Aráoz (I sent it to him from Rio de Janeiro, on my way to Europe). I spent my last days in Peru saying goodbye to friends and relatives and selecting the papers and notebooks that I would take with me. I felt very sad in the early morning of the day on which I bade my grandparents and Auntie Mamaé farewell, since I didn’t know if I would ever see those three elderly people again. Uncle Lucho and Aunt Olga arrived at the Córpac airport to say goodbye to us after Julia and I were already aboard the Brazilian military plane, which, instead of seats, had parachutists’ benches. We spied the two of them from the little window and waved goodbye to them, knowing that they couldn’t see us. I was sure that I would see the two of
them
again, and that by that time I would at last be a writer.

On the day following the first round of voting, Wednesday, April 9, 1990, I phoned Alberto Fujimori early in the morning at the Hotel Crillón, his headquarters, and told him I needed to talk with him that same day, without witnesses. He agreed to inform me of the time and place for our meeting, and did so shortly thereafter: an address in the vicinity of the San Juan de Dios clinic, a house next door to a gas station and auto body shop.

The surprising results at the polls on the day before had created an atmosphere of consternation and Lima was a wasp’s nest of rumors, among them one about an imminent coup d’état. The frustration and stupefaction of the supporters of the Front had been succeeded by anger, and during the day the radio stations broadcast news bulletins of incidents, in Miraflores and San Isidro, in which Japanese were insulted on the street or thrown out of restaurants. Such a reaction, besides being stupid, was terribly unjust, since the small Japanese community of Peru had given me many proofs of their support ever since the beginning of the campaign. A group of businessmen and professionals of Japanese origin met every so often with Pipo Thorndike to make financial contributions to the Front. I had held talks with them on three occasions, so as to explain our program to them and listen to their suggestions. And the Freedom Movement had chosen a Nisei agriculturalist, from Chancay, as its candidate for representative for the
departamento
of Lima. (He lost his life, shortly before the elections, when the firearm that he was cleaning went off accidentally.)

I had a great liking for the Peruvian-Japanese community, because of its industriousness and productivity—it had developed the agriculture of the northern section of the
departamento
of Lima in the 1920s and 1930s—and great sympathy for the dispossessions and abuses of which it had been the victim during Manuel Prado’s first administration (1939–1945), which, after declaring war on Japan, expropriated the property of Japanese and expelled from the country a number of them who were second- or third-generation Peruvians. During Odría’s dictatorship as well, Peruvians of Asian origin had been persecuted, by having their passports taken away from many of them and being forced to go into exile. In the beginning, I thought that those news reports concerning insults and attacks directed against the Japanese were the handiwork of the Aprista propaganda machine, that it signaled the beginning of the campaign to ensure Fujimori’s victory in the second round of voting. But those news broadcasts had a basis in fact. Racial prejudice—an explosive factor that up until then had never been brazenly exploited in our elections, although it had always been present in Peruvian life—would come to play a primary role in the weeks that followed.

The results of the election had caused real trauma in the Democratic Front and in Libertad, whose leaders, in those first hours after our disastrous showing, had not hit on the proper reaction and fled from the press or answered the questions of correspondents with evasive and confused analyses. Nobody could explain the outcome of the election. The rumors that I was going to withdraw from a second round—which radio and television stations kept repeating—brought on a torrent of phone calls to my house, as well as an endless line of visitors, none of whom I received. Unable to understand what was happening, many friends also called from abroad—Jean-François Revel among them. Beginning shortly before noon, crowds of supporters gathered on the Barranco embankment, in front of my house. With others taking their place every so often, the horde of supporters stayed there all day, till nightfall. They remained silent and sad-faced, or else cried out catch-phrases that betrayed their disappointment and anger.

Since I knew that the interview with my adversary would come to nothing if it took place under the siege to which the press had subjected me, Lucho Llosa and I organized a clandestine getaway from my house, in his station wagon, that fooled even the team in charge of security. He parked in the garage, I hunched down in the seat and the only thing that demonstrators, photographers, and security guards saw come out of the garage was Lucho, at the wheel of the station wagon. When, a block farther on, I was able to sit up straight again and saw that nobody was following us, I felt greatly relieved. I had forgotten what it was like to go about Lima without an escort and a wake of reporters.

Fujimori’s house was near the exit ramp of the main highway, hidden behind a wall and the gas station and body shop. Fujimori himself appeared at the door to receive me, and it came as a surprise to me to discover, in that modest district, a Japanese garden, bonsai, ponds with little wooden bridges and small lamps, and an elegant residence furnished in the way an Oriental house would be, the whole secluded by high walls. I felt as though I were in a
chifa
or in a traditional dwelling in Kyoto or Osaka, rather than in Lima.

There was no one there except for the two of us, at least no one visible. Fujimori led me to a little reception room, with a large window overlooking the garden, and invited me to sit down at a table on which there was a bottle of whisky and two glasses, each of us directly facing the other, as though for a duel. He was a slender, rather rigid man, a little younger than I am, whose small eyes subjected me to such close scrutiny from behind his glasses that it made me feel ill at ease. He expressed himself in hesitant Spanish, making grammatical errors, and with the defensive mildness and formality of those who are not entirely comfortable with the language.

I told him that I wanted to share with him my interpretation of the outcome of the first round. Two-thirds of Peruvians had voted for change—the “gran cambio” of the Front and his Cambio 90, that is to say, against “politics as usual” and populist policies. If, in order to win the second round, he turned into a prisoner of the APRA and the United Left, he would do the country enormous harm and betray the majority of voters, who wanted something different from what they had had for the last five years.

The one-third of the total votes cast that I had received was not enough for the radical program of reforms that, in my judgment, Peru needed. The majority of Peruvians appeared to be inclined toward gradualism, consensus, compromises made on the basis of mutual concessions, a policy which, in my opinion, was incapable of ending inflation, of giving Peru a place in world affairs again, and of reorganizing Peruvian society on modern foundations. He seemed better qualified for furthering such a national accord; I felt that I was incapable of backing policies in which I didn’t believe. In order to be consistent with the voters’ message, Fujimori should try to seek the support of all the forces that in one way or another represented “change,” that is to say, the forces of Cambio 90, those of the Democratic Front, and the most moderate ones of the United Left. I agreed that we should spare Peru the tension and waste of energy of a second round. With this aim in view, at the same time that I made public my decision not to take part in it, I would urge those who had supported me to respond in a positive way to a summons from him to collaborate. This collaboration was indispensable if his administration was not to be a failure, and would be possible if he accepted certain basic ideas of my proposal, particularly in the field of economics. There was a very tense atmosphere, dangerous for the safeguarding of democracy, so that it was indispensable for the new team to begin work immediately, restoring the country’s confidence after such a long and violent election campaign.

He looked at me for quite some time as though he didn’t believe me, or as though in what I had just told him there were some sort of hidden trap. Finally, once he had recovered from his surprise, he began, in a hesitant tone of voice, to speak of my patriotism and my generosity, but I interrupted him by saying to him that we should have a drink and speak of practical matters. He poured a finger of whisky in each of the glasses and asked me when I was going to make my decision public. The next morning, I said. It would be a good thing if we kept in contact so that, once my letter had been publicly disclosed, Fujimori could reinforce its message and call on the parties to collaborate. We agreed to proceed in this way.

We went on talking for a little while longer, in a less general way. He asked me if I had made this decision on my own or after consulting with someone, since, he assured me, he always made all important decisions all by himself, without discussing them even with his wife. He asked me who was the best economist among those who were my advisers and I replied that it was Raúl Salazar, and that of everything that had happened what I perhaps most regretted was the fact that Peruvians, by voting as they had, would be left without a minister of finance equal to Salazar, but that Fujimori could repair that damage by calling him. From his questions I noted that he didn’t understand what I meant by the
mandate
that I had sought from the voters; he seemed to believe that it meant carte blanche to govern in whatever way a head of state with a mandate pleased, with no restraints. I told him that, on the contrary, it implied a very precise pact between a president and the majority of voters who had elected him in order to carry out a specific program for governing the country, something indispensable if thoroughgoing reforms in a democracy were the goal. We went on talking for a moment about several leaders of the moderate left, such as Senator Enrique Bernales, whom he told me he would include in the agreement we had arrived at.

Three-quarters of an hour had not yet gone by when I rose to my feet. He accompanied me to the front door and as we reached it I made a little joke by bidding him goodbye in the traditional Japanese way, with a bow and murmuring “
Arigato gosai ma su
.” But he held his hand out to me without so much as a smile.

I went home hunched down in Lucho’s station wagon, and once there, in my study, with all the “royal family” present—Patricia, Álvaro, Lucho and Roxana—we held a conclave during which I described to them my meeting with Fujimori and read them my letter withdrawing as a presidential candidate in a second round of voting. Outside on Malecón, the number of demonstrators had grown. There were now several hundred of them. They kept shouting for me to come outside and were chanting Libertad and Democratic Front slogans in chorus. With that din as background music, we had an argument—I believe it was the first time we had had such a heated one—since only Álvaro agreed with my decision to resign; Lucho and Patricia thought that the forces of the Front wouldn’t go along with collaborating with Fujimori and that the latter was already too deeply committed to Alan García and the APRA for my gesture to destroy their alliance. Moreover, it was their belief that we could win the second round.

We were in the midst of the argument when I heard that outside the house the demonstrators had begun to shout slogans in chorus that had a racist and nationalist ring to them—“Mario is a real Peruvian,” “We want a Peruvian,” in addition to others that were downright insulting—and in indignation I went out to talk to them from the terrace of my house, with the aid of a megaphone. It was inconceivable that those who supported me should discriminate between Peruvians on the basis of the color of their skin. Having so many races and cultures was our greatest source of wealth, the phenomenon that created ties between Peru and the four cardinal points of the globe. It was possible to be a Peruvian whether a person was white, Indian, Chinese, black, or Japanese. Agricultural engineer Fujimori was as Peruvian as I was. The cameramen from Channel 2 were there and managed to broadcast this part of my talk on the news program “Ninety Seconds.”

Early the following morning, Tuesday, April 10, I had the usual work session with Álvaro, during which we planned how we should disclose the news of my letter of resignation. We decided to do so through Jaime Bayly, who had never wavered in his support for me throughout the entire campaign and whose programs had a large audience. As soon as I had informed the political committee of Libertad, with which I had an appointment at 11 a.m, in Barranco, we would go with Bayly to Channel 4.

When, shortly before ten in the morning on that memorable day, the candidates for the first and second vice presidencies, Eduardo Orrego and Ernesto Alayza Grundy, arrived, there was already a horde of reporters on Malecón, struggling with my security forces, and the first of those groups which by noon had turned the grounds around my house into a rally were beginning to arrive. There was already a blazing sun and the morning was clear and bright, and very hot.

I gave Eduardo and Don Ernesto my reasons for not taking part in the second round and read them my letter. I had foreseen that both of them would try to dissuade me, as in fact they did. But I was disconcerted by the categorical statement made by Alayza Grundy, who, as a legal scholar, assured me that the step I was about to take was unconstitutional. A candidate could not refuse to compete in a second round. I told him that I had consulted Elías Laroza, who represented us before the National Election Board, and that he had assured me that there was no legal obstacle. In the present circumstances, my refusal to run a second time was the one thing that could keep Fujimori from becoming a prisoner of the APRA and ensure even a partial change of the policies that were destroying Peru. Wasn’t that a stronger reason than any other? Hadn’t a legal technicality been found to support Barrantes’s refusal to run against Alan García in a second round in 1985? Eduardo Orrego had been informed early that morning of my intention to give up my candidacy by a call from Fernando Belaunde, telephoning from Moscow, where he was attending a congress. The ex-president told Orrego that Alan García had phoned him from Lima, “all upset, since it had been learned that Vargas Llosa was thinking of giving up running as a candidate in a second round, which would invalidate the entire electoral process.” How had President García come by the news of my resignation? Through the one and only possible source: Fujimori. The latter, after his talk with me, had hastened to discuss our conversation with the president and ask for his advice. Wasn’t this the best proof that Fujimori was acting in collusion with Alan García? My resignation would be useless. On the contrary, if we went ahead and proved that Fujimori represented the continuation of the present government, we could reverse what appeared to be a desertion by so many independent voters who had turned to someone whom they believed, out of naïveté and ignorance, to be a candidate without ties to the APRA.