By IPS Correspondents
ROME, Sep 25 2007 (IPS)

With former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori and his intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos in jail, Peru faces a new era. How did it come to happen, and what is in store?

Gustavo Gorriti Credit:

Gorriti, an award-winning investigative journalist, covered Peru&#39s internal war in the eighties. He followed former head of intelligence service Vladimiro Montesinos&#39s career since 1983 – Montesinos was the source of Fujimori&#39s power, and his downfall. It was his actions that led to the allegations of murder and drug trafficking.

Gorriti is author of &#39The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru&#39 and the recent &#39Calavera en Negro&#39 (Skull in Black). He is columnist for Caretas newspaper and president of Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, a Latin American association that promotes independent journalism and freedom of expression. He was earlier associate director of Panama&#39s La Prensa newspaper, and co-director of Peru&#39s La Republica.

In the aftermath of Fujimori&#39s dissolving the Peruvian Congress in 1992 and seizing wide powers, a coup as it came to be called even though Fujimori was president already, Gorriti was kidnapped, and held in the Intelligence Service area of the Pentagonito, the army headquarters, where so many others were tortured and killed. Because of an international outcry, he was finally released.

IPS: This is the first time in history that a court orders the extradition of a former head of state to be tried for human rights violations and corruption in his home country. Fujimori&#39s extradition also means that all the main public servants involved in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres are arrested. (The Barrios Altos massacre took place in the Peru suburb of that name Nov. 3, 1991; 15 were killed by a death squad of the Peruvian armed forces. In the La Cantuta massacre, a professor and nine others from Lima&#39s La Cantuta university were abducted and &#39disappeared&#39 by a military death squad). Do you feel somehow vindicated?

Gustavo Gorriti: Fujimori&#39s extradition doesn&#39t vindicate me. It means that justice has, so far, been partially served. It also somehow closes an extraordinary period in our history filled with incredible paradoxes, ironies and twists of fate. Its lessons are that consistent action in defence of democracy and human rights, while exposing the crimes of tyrants will in due time end up with a similar scenario as the one we have in Peru: with Montesinos and Fujimori in jail, facing the results of their past misdeeds.

As for me, it has been a long road fraught with the kind of conflict and peril no journalist should have to face. Do I feel any kind of elation now? None at all. It took too long, most of the time uphill. It cost too much to many people and to the country as a whole. Much was lost, and will never be recovered. We&#39ll have to make sure that our democracy becomes unassailable to the Montesinos and the Fujimoris of the world, and severe measures may have to be taken. But there is no joy in it. At least, I don&#39t feel any.

IPS: The human rights charges against Fujimori date back to the early 1990s. Is anything similar still possible in Peru?

GG: Some perpetrators of atrocities are now in jail, being tried for their crimes, but many are still at large, and a few of their supporters wield considerable influence and power. Just a few days ago, the monument to the victims of the internal war, el Ojo que llora, was severely vandalised by armed thugs. At the same time, the press outlets of the Montesinos mafia, mainly the newspaper La Razón, have notoriously increased the violence of their language to resemble the dirty wars jargon of the 1970s in Latin America. So, I would say that, yes, the danger is still there. They, the corrupt former perpetrators and their supporters, are weaker now but they are still dangerous.

IPS: What will happen now with Fujimori? Does he still have any influence in what happens in Peru?

GG: Fujimori is sitting in a Peruvian jail now, in the very first steps of what is going to be a long trial. His legal situation is very difficult, to say the least. He can get as many as 30 years&#39 jail time for the Barrios Altos and Cantuta cases, and several of the actual perpetrators (that are being tried in a separate process) have implicated him. The unanimous decision of the Chilean Supreme Court in these two specific cases weighs heavily against him, too.

IPS: Does he have influence now in Peru?

GG: Yes, he has. His political group has 13 Congressmen (his daughter and brother among them); the Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani is a good friend; many of the more powerful businessmen in Peru have very fond memories of their mutually profitable times with him; many in the armed forces like him and his ways. Yet, very few will dare to express that support openly, besides his party, of course. The thievery, the blackmail, the violence are still too close even for the most determined amnesiacs.

IPS: It took a lot before the world realised who Montesinos and Fujimori really were. What was the role of the massive Los Cuatro Suyos march in 2000 and former president Alejandro Toledo&#39s campaign in bringing about their downfall? GG: At the time of the Los Cuatro Suyos March, a distinct majority of Peruvians loathed Fujimori and Montesinos, although many crimes were still unknown or not yet properly documented. But the really important things had already been revealed, in some cases many years before.

I kept exposing Montesinos and Fujimori through the 1990s (Montesinos from the 1980s), and other investigative journalists did the same. But in the campaigns of the year 2000, those exposures, that body of knowledge, suddenly became massive, and mobilised the rage and protest of millions. Alejandro Toledo led that campaign and after the Los Cuatro Suyos March, the Fujimori regime was all but defeated. Its will was broken, and after the first video showing Montesinos bribing an opposition Congressman, it just imploded.

IPS: It looks like Fujimori miscalculated his chances when he decided to abandon his self-imposed exile in Japan and travel to Chile in 2005. He even announced that he would run in the Peruvian national election. Did he have any chance of success?

GG: I think that his Japan-Chile flight was an audacious strategic gamble that could well have succeeded. The Toledo regime was at a particularly weak juncture and the shock of a surprise move (Fujimori moving to the Chile-Peruvian border and then landing at an airport previously taken by his supporters) could have destabilised a rather precarious situation. He thought that he would get a degree of support in Chile – at the time in a tense relationship with Peru – where he had many good and powerful friends.

He also counted on the anti-extradition tradition of Chile (think former Argentine president Carlos Menem, for instance). He miscalculated a few things, though, like then candidate Michelle Bachellet&#39s strong reaction and the strong pressure from the human rights community. People that like strong-arm tactics and politics tend to underestimate the capabilities of human rights networks until they, thankfully, are proven wrong.

Many people think that his was a foolhardy move, that showed that without Montesinos, Fujimori exercised very poor judgement. I disagree. I think it was a very risky but, to him, promising move. Fortunately it didn&#39t succeed.

IPS: Would you say that today Peru is a better place?

GG: Compared with the Fujimori-Montesinos regime? Absolutely. Night and day. This is a difficult country and will remain so for many, many years even under the best of circumstances. We suffer from corruption, mediocrity, surreal bureaucratic formalism, horrible social and economic inequities, from demagogues and even from inopportune earthquakes. But we have a real democracy, freedom of expression and of the press, constant accountability demands to those in power, and a historically unprecedented period of economic growth.

We have shown even the most refractory minds that a poorly organised third world country can grow consistently in the midst of almost untrammelled democracy. Yes, this is a much, much better place. But still very far from where it should be now.

There were people who would have preferred Fujimori to be safely away in Japan. But others, like myself, strongly believed that a country has to deal with its past and its present threats if it ever wants to grow up as a country. It&#39s not going to be a picnic confronting the traumas and misdeeds of the recent past, but I trust that in the end our judiciary will weigh the facts, the proof, and rule accordingly. It&#39s going to be risky, maybe even dangerous at some point, but we have to go through it.

IPS: What can you tell us about the campaign in Peru against NGOs, including the IPYS?

GG: It was an unholy alliance of mining companies, lobbyists, Fujimoristas, right-wing or mafia press, and the Apra government (Apra, the Alianza Revolucionaria Americana, is Peru&#39s oldest political party). The main targets were environmental and human rights NGOs, with others, such as IPYS, a secondary target.

But it is a testament to the current vigour of Peruvian democracy that, despite the vocal support of President Alan Garcia and Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo, the anti-NGO law was defeated at the constitutional court and was therefore rendered void.

As you can see, just keeping the achievements of democracy means a daily struggle. So far, most of these struggles have been won. Bad things could happen, of course, but good ones too. But even in this relatively precarious situation, when we compare ourselves with the state of freedom in other nations, we can call ourselves fortunate. At least for today, hopefully for tomorrow and the day after that.

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