Opinion | Dictators Die, but Their Legacies Live on Much Longer

I was born in Peru in 1992, the same year President Alberto Fujimori announced he was dissolving Congress and suspended the Constitution, performing what was later called a “self-coup.” He sent tanks through the streets and arrested journalists and his political opponents, while assuming full legislative and judicial powers. He turned a democratically elected government into a dictatorship that came to define modern Peru. As long as I can remember, I’ve only known my country under the shadow of Mr. Fujimori and his political movement: Fujimorismo.

My own identity became defined, in large part, by opposition to Mr. Fujimori. The first political event I attended during my freshman year of college was a celebration of the conviction for violating human rights that sent him to prison. The first presidential campaign I volunteered in was to prevent his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, from becoming president. And I joined protests against the pardon Mr. Fujimori received from President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Christmas Eve in 2017. That night, Christmas arrived in Lima while the police choked us with tear gas.

When I found out that Mr. Fujimori died on Sept. 11, I was left questioning both his legacy and the future of my country. Today, the most important division in Peruvian politics is still between Fujimorismo and antifujimorismo. Followers of Fujimorismo see the former leader as the savior of Peru for ending the hyperinflation and terrorism of the 1980s. Followers of antifujimorismo — including me — believe the crimes committed during his regime are unforgivable. But the true inheritance of the controversial leader’s legacy is the belief that the ends justify the means — that anything goes in politics. And today that approach to politics, the idea that democratic procedures can be disregarded for allegedly higher goals, has been embraced by most Peruvian politicians, even many who have made a career positioning themselves against Mr. Fujimori’s ideals.

Before Mr. Fujimori, Peru’s liberal democracy was still young. In 1980, after 12 years of military dictatorship, a progressive constitution was enacted that established robust union rights and guaranteed universal suffrage. Freedom of the press returned. Yet the 1980s were also a disaster in Peru. Tens of thousands of Peruvians were killed by Shining Path, a terrorist organization that sought to impose radical Maoist ideologies and started a war with the Peruvian state. Thousands of people were “disappeared,” extrajudicially executed and tortured by members of the Peruvian armed forces — who could detain anyone they suspected of subversive activity — and the police. In the 1980s, poverty increased dramatically, with Peru reaching hyperinflation. The government reported that consumer prices rose 1,722 percent in 1988. Those who could fled the country. We continued to have a formal democracy, but what good was such a democracy to Peruvians who were dying either by hunger or by bullets?

When Mr. Fujimori was elected in 1990, he promised to take action. Not long after, he was convinced that democratic procedures impeded him from addressing both terrorism and the economic crisis, arguing that the separation of powers, human rights and political pluralism were luxuries we could no longer afford. When he met some resistance from Congress, the judiciary and social organizations, he effectively overthrew his own democratically elected government and imposed a new constitution — still in place today — that was tailor-made to concentrate power into one leader’s hands.

Under his rule, everything was fair game: arbitrary detentions, death squads, buying off political opponents, censoring the media, firing inconvenient judges. And yet he still had public support. Many Peruvians, weary of a system that couldn’t protect them, trapped between terrorism and hyperinflation, were willing to sacrifice democracy at the altar of authoritarianism in exchange for some stability. And Mr. Fujimori delivered it — at a terrible price that we will continue to pay, even after his death.

During Mr. Fujimori’s presidency, well-known figures would march into Peruvian intelligence service offices to sell their loyalty for bribes. In September 2000, a video showing Vladimiro Montesinos, the intelligence office director, trying to bribe an opposition congressman was broadcast on Peruvian television. In the following months, videos of bribe deals — including others involving politicians, media figures and judges — were broadcast nationally each day, and became known as the vladivideos scandal. After the first vladivideo was broadcast, Mr. Fujimori fled to Japan, where he submitted his presidential resignation to the people of Peru via fax. Congress refused to accept it, instead voting to remove him from office, declaring him “morally unfit.”

The attorney general’s office filed multiple charges against Mr. Fujimori, and he was eventually detained in Chile and extradited to Peru to face trial. In 2009, Peru’s Supreme Court convicted him of violating human rights. Mr. Fujimori received a 25-year prison sentence for the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres, where a combined 25 people, including an 8-year-old child, were killed by Grupo Colina, a death squad linked to the military. At the time of his death, Mr. Fujimori was facing charges over the Pativilca massacre, where Grupo Colina killed six farmers. Over the years, in different trials, Peruvian courts convicted Mr. Fujimori of several charges, including illegal wiretapping, embezzlement, bribing lawmakers and media outlets, and crimes against humanity.

To this day, many Peruvians believe those crimes were a fair trade-off for the stability his government brought to the country. Others do not. After his death, the Peruvian government declared three days of national mourning to honor Mr. Fujimori. Much will be written and debated about him. Some will try to downplay his successful policies while others will try to deny the gravity of his crimes.

But all of that will be missing the point. Above all, what Mr. Fujimori’s legacy has done is to change the conventions of what is acceptable for an elected government. He used his congressional majority to attack and capture the institutions in charge of holding the government accountable, a practice that his contemporary followers and even some opponents keep very much alive.

Today, Mr. Fujimori’s authoritarian streak lives on even in those who claim to be against the former leader’s political movement. Many of those who openly despise him are now apparently willing to adopt the same practices under different ideological banners. During the 2021 elections, Pedro Castillo, a populist, leftist candidate, promised to “deactivate” the Constitutional Court and the ombudsman’s office. He was elected that year with the support of several antifujimoristas. In 2022, Mr. Castillo tried to dissolve Congress and announced he would rule by decree until a new legislature was elected, attempting a self-coup eerily similar to the one Mr. Fujimori enacted the year I was born.

In 2024, several members of congress representing left-wing parties, traditionally considered antifujimoristas, voted with Fujimoristas and their allies to modify almost a quarter of the Constitution with almost no public debate. Those modifications entrenched their power and weakened the independence of the constitutional institutions in charge of overseeing Congress, as well as guaranteeing the separation of government powers.

Mr. Fujimori died without ever apologizing for his crimes. Many in Peru mourn him. But my mourning is reserved for his victims. Others are celebrating his death, but there is nothing to celebrate while his destructive legacy remains alive and our institutions continue to suffer. I will celebrate when the attacks against democracy in Peru end and we move beyond Mr. Fujimori.

Fernando J. Loayza Jordán is a legal scholar at the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law and Yale Law School.

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