Few people in Peru had heard of Alberto Fujimori, an agricultural engineer and university rector, when he stood for the presidency in 1989. In the runoff he faced the internationally renowned novelist turned politician Mario Vargas Llosa, who was expected to win.
However, Peru is a divided society, and poorer, indigenous voters regarded Vargas Llosa as part of the elite, out of touch with ordinary Peruvians, and Fujimori as more likely to understand their concerns. In the end, Fujimori won convincingly, and Vargas Llosa returned to writing.
During his first term in office from 1990, Fujimori, who has died aged 86 after suffering from cancer, was credited with restoring economic stability thanks to his “Fujishock” neoliberal policies, which in fact were closer to what Vargas Llosa had been proposing than to his more populist promises. This shock treatment succeeded in bringing hyper-inflation down and attracted foreign investment, although poverty also increased.
Apart from this, Fujimori’s efforts were directed towards defeating the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) leftwing guerrillas, who brought violence and turmoil to many of the Andean regions of Peru in a war that claimed around 70,000 victims. To counter the guerrillas, Fujimori gave free rein to the armed forces, who were later accused of many human rights abuses in their campaigns.
But the capture of the Sendero Luminoso leader Abimael Guzmán in September 1992 followed by the dismantling of the organisation led to a much more peaceful country, and increased Fujimori’s popularity.
Born in the Peruvian capital Lima, Alberto was the son of Japanese parents, Mutsue (nee Inomoto) and Naoichi Fujimori, who had come to Peru in 1934. At first Naoichi was a cotton farmer, and later a tailor. (A repeated claim that Alberto was in fact born in Japan, which would have disbarred him from becoming president, was later dismissed as inaccurate.)
He studied agricultural engineering at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina in Lima, physics at the University of Strasbourg in eastern France and mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, gaining a master’s degree in 1969. After this, he pursued an academic career, becoming interested in politics only in the late 1980s. At the time, he was perhaps most widely known for appearing on a tractor discussing agricultural issues on a regular television programme.
His first term as president was marked by a turning point that brought to the fore his autocratic tendencies. Frustrated at the congress’s opposition to his policies, in April 1992 he staged what became known as an autogolpe (coup against himself) that he orchestrated together with commanders of the armed forces. With the military on the streets, he shut down congress and dissolved the judiciary, subsequently bringing in a new national constitution that strengthened his powers.
Despite these anti-democratic moves, in 1995 he won a second five-year term as president. However, his popularity declined: the economy was not performing as well, and there were increasing allegations of corruption and human rights abuses, mostly centring on the man he had appointed as head of the national intelligence service, Vladimiro Montesinos.
He had to deal with a second insurgency in December 1996, when the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement took 490 hostages after storming the Japanese ambassador’s residence. All but one survived – the building was taken back the following April, and 14 guerrillas died.
At the end of 1999, Fujimori again stood for the presidency. Although the opposition claimed this was against the constitution, Fujimori and his supporters argued that he had only served one term under the new constitution, and that he was therefore eligible to stand. He again won in a runoff vote, and was sworn in in July 2000, but by now the opposition to him had spread to the streets, where daily protests took place.
Fujimori tried to defuse the situation by promising fresh elections, to come in April 2001, when he would not stand. However, the revelation of the corrupt practices by him and Montesinos revealed in what were known as the Vladivideos – videos made by Montesinos himself as he bribed and blackmailed opposition politicians – only further incensed much of the population.
In November 2000, while on a visit to Japan, Fujimori finally admitted defeat and faxed a letter of resignation. This was rejected by the Peruvian congress, who instead stripped him of the presidency, arguing that he was “morally unfit” to be head of state. He remained out of Peru for several years, before being arrested in Chile in 2005 and extradited two years later to face many criminal charges.
He was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison on charges of murder, kidnapping and bribery and corruption, and given further prison terms for abuse of power and embezzlement. He was also accused, though never tried, of instigating a programme of forced sterilisation of as many as 300,000 indigenous women during his period in office.
For many years, his daughter Keiko Fujimori, who became a prominent politician in her own right, repeatedly pressed for her father to be released from prison on health grounds. This was repeatedly refused, until in December last year the rightwing government of Dina Boluarte agreed for him to be pardoned.
According to Keiko, her father had been planning to return to politics now that his name had supposedly been cleared, and was hoping to stand for president again in the next elections, due in 2026.
In 1974 he married Susana Higuchi, and they had two daughters, Keiko and Sachi, and two sons, Hiro and Kenji. They divorced in 1995, and in 2006 he married Satomi Kataoka. She and his children survive him.
• Alberto Kenya Fujimori Inomoto, politician, born 28 July 1938; died 11 September 2024
