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The Strongman's Story
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
Hank Paulson and His Wall Street Cronies Move to Plan B
Nomi Prins
Democracy and Elections:
The Presidential Debates Are a Scam
David Bollier
DrugReporter:
As the Violence Soars, Mexico Signals It's Had Enough of America's Stupid War on Drugs
Silja J.A. Talvi
Election 2008:
Todd Palin: If You Thought Cheney Was Bad, Watch out for the "First Dude"
Bill Boyarsky
Environment:
Dear Mr. Next President -- Food, Food, Food
Michael Pollan
ForeignPolicy:
The Coming "Sugar Economy" -- Sweet for Multinationals, but a Bitter Pill for Everyone Else
Hope Shand
Health and Wellness:
Cancer at 23: How Health Insurance Failed Me
Carey Purcell
Hurricane Katrina:
From the Bayou to Baghdad: Mission Not Accomplished
Amy Goodman
Immigration:
In Mississippi, Immigration Raid Tests Community's Cross-Racial Bonds
Marcelo Ballvé
Media and Technology:
John McCain Sows the Seeds of Hatred
Rory O'Connor
Movie Mix:
The "Battle in Seattle" and Beyond
Stuart Townsend
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Obama vs. McCain on Equal Pay
Kay Steiger
Rights and Liberties:
Telecoms' Holy Grail of Internet Profits Is the Next Frontier in Corporate Spying
Timothy Karr
Sex and Relationships:
Why Everyone Loves Hot, Smart Older Women
Vanessa Richmond
War on Iraq:
Following Threats, Doctors in Karbala Refuse to Work
Water:
Can the People Who Live in Coastal Towns Ever Be Safe From Hurricanes?
Lizzy Ratner
Early on in Ellen Perry's jaw-dropper of a documentary, Fall of Fujimori, the controversial former leader of Peru is seen applying his makeup, dabbing on foundation with a sponge and peering into a mirror. It's a disarming and curious moment, made all the more incongruous by the information that has preceded it: Alberto Fujimori is living in exile in Japan, wanted on charges of corruption, kidnapping, and murder in Peru.
In its own way, the scene is a subtler reworking of the footage of U.S. pols primping, prepping, and running spit-covered combs through their hair in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Like Moore's film, Fujimori aims to show its viewers what goes on behind the stagecraft of politics and the ugliness behind its faade. Perry has a lighter hand than Moore does, however; as a result, her film disturbs in a more nuanced fashion. She intrigues, perturbs, and asks many questions, but provides few answers -- an approach that will likely provoke viewers into scurrying to find out more about the underreported story of Peru and its self-anointed savior-turned-strongman.
"Hollywood actors pale next to my husband," says Susan Higuchi, Fujimori's former wife. And indeed, the former president seems to have a knack for framing his dramatic narrative: By turns, he presents himself as the ethnic outsider who could speak for Peru's indigenous groups, the tough-on-terrorism leader, the school-builder. On camera, Fujimori has a gentlemanly affability, only occasionally broken by his overweening confidence in the story of his presidency.
"God gives everyone a duty," he says. "I really like the work of a president." He's a true believer, all right -- in himself.
Perry charts the arc of Fujimori's rise and fall against the backdrop of Peruvian history -- the government's brutal battles with leftist guerrillas, the country's' towering inflation, and its lack of infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. The son of Japanese immigrants, Fujimori was a university president at the time of Peru's 1990 elections, a quintessential dark-horse candidate who was completely untried in politics. Yet, by dint of his ethnic otherness (the Peruvians dubbed him "El Chino," the Chinese one), and his insistence on driving into shantytowns in a "Fujimobile," one commentator explains, Fujimori was able to secure a surprising victory.
As presented by Perry, Fujimori's reign is a fascinating study in means and ends. Thousands of deaths in terrorist attacks, the all-out pursuit of a shadowy leader, a campaign against suspects that included torture -- these elements of Peru's story may ping U.S. viewers with uncomfortable similarities to our own "war on terrorism." As Perry frames it, Peru serves as a potent warning of the corruption that can take root when power is wielded in the name of righteousness.
"Terrorism was done in the name of revolution," says Fujimori. "I started a revolution myself ... for the citizens."
Citing the country's battles with the Maoist Shining Path movement and the Marxist-Leninist Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, Fujimori declared a "self-coup" and dissolved his congress -- in effect, he declared martial law and set himself up as dictator. While his government did much to quell the violent leftist movements in his country, and was, according to some of the film's commentators, a positive force on the whole, Fujimori's regime was later marked by the terror he claimed to eradicate. The president's adviser to the national intelligence service, Vladimiro Montesinos, ran amok, bribing politicians, detonating bombs outside naysayers' homes, and setting paramilitary death squads on suspected leftists. Fujimori's detractors claim Montesinos operated with the full knowledge and support of the president; Fujimori's supporters, meanwhile, declare El Chino's innocence.
Noy Thrupkaew is a Prospect senior correspondent.
Copyright 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.
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