“Alberto Fujimori dies at the age of 86.” “Ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori has died.” “The people mourn for ‘Chino’.” “Fujimori in history.” “Will hatred come to an end?” September 12 dawned with these headlines in Peru. It was the day after the death of Alberto Kenya Fujimori Inomoto, the outsider engineer who became president in 1990, staged a self-coup in 1992, and resigned from office in 2000 by faxing a letter from Japan.

Fujimori’s death was announced by his eldest daughter, Keiko, via X at around 6:30 p.m. on September 11. On Thursday morning, a three-day wake began in a room at the Ministry of Culture, in the Lima district of San Borja. He will be buried on Saturday in a private cemetery.

On the first day, as well as family members and political figures, hundreds of supporters came with photos and posters of Fujimori.

“The best memory of our dear Alberto is that he stabilized the economy, defeated terrorism and built schools. Before, we poor people had no televisions or cell phones. Now even the poorest, the humblest little house, has a big TV and a cell phone,” said a woman who had been waiting for over four hours to see the coffin.

How do you explain the popular fervor for a political leader who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for, among other crimes, the intellectual authorship of two massacres that claimed the lives of 25 people?

Nicknamed “Chino” because of his Asian heritage, Fujimori became president in July 1990, after defeating writer (and subsequent Nobel laureate) Mario Vargas Llosa. On the campaign trail, he took advantage of the crisis of traditional politics to........

© Buenos Aires Herald