Fujimoris Fracturing Fragile Peru

May 24, 2016 / Posted in  Alberto Fujimori, Fujimori (Keiko), Fujimori (Kenji), Keiko Fujimori, Perú

A daughter of the notorious, thief, drug pusher, convicted of human rights abuser,¹ former dictator and currently imprisoned Alberto Fujimori, Keiko Fujimori has conducted a political career filled with do-nothing activities and absences. Keiko, as a presidential candidate in 2016, echoes her father’s tenure as president (1990 to 2000): despotic rule riddled with corruption, theft from the national treasury, extortion, torture and other human rights abuses. Linking her campaign to her father’s “achievements,” she has justifiably sparked fears that if elected she would replicate the worst of the Fujimori dictatorship. Even so, Keiko continues to gain support as she hands out bags of rice to the impoverished masses starving in Peru. They are willing to exchange their vote for a mouthful of food. Now they count on more rice as Keiko is in a runoff for the presidency.

 

To understand Keiko, a person must first understand her father. Far from any semblance of a democratic rule, Alberto shut down Congress and ruled, essentially, by decree.² It is a path Keiko vows to imitate and augment as easily seen in her own congressional record on corruption and flagrant absenteeism, as a dismal do-nothing legislator who only collected an exorbitant paycheck.

 

To her credit, Keiko acknowledges that her father stole from the National Treasury (to put her sibling and herself through schools in the USA, noting education in Peru has never been of sufficient caliber to education or train Peruvians.).³ Alberto recognized that Peru’s educational system was worthless and want his children trained in a system better than that of Peru. Alberto’s recognition that the educational system in Peru was bargain basement and the students had little opportunity to excel or find jobs, led anyone with money to start any school, college of university. The most odious opportunist who came to the front to milk the people of their money was from the venal family of Acuñas: Cesar Acuña Peralta.

 

Cesar Acuña Peralta, the Fundador (founder) of UCV, and USS saw centers of learning as an untapped source for his own enrichment, and the students could serve as drones to work for his political aspirations if they had an incentive. This was the only reason for the establishment of the universities.

 

Cesar Acuña was determined to raise money for his (failed) 2016 bid for the presidency of Peru.⁴

 

Along with Intelligence Minister Vladimiro Montesinos, Alberto Fujimori personalized the government to their standard of autocracy. His administration’s 10-year rule featured defamation, extortion, lies and cynicism. Congress was shut down. All vestiges of democracy were swept away as Fujimori sold Peru’s economic interests, ore, timber and crops and fish production to foreign investors⁵ for pennies on the dollar. Along with Cesar Acuña’s son, Richard, who bought his seat in Peru’s unicameral congress with no experience in governing, Cesar Acuña destroyed the already impoverished and disintegrating education system that was turned over to profiteers by Alberto Fujimori. Little was said, and no protests came from the illiterate department heads, for they had to protect their own jobs. They were silent about the bludgeoned abortion of education on their campus. It was reminiscent of the non-existent education of their Fundador.

 

Cesar Acuña was exposed as a mass plagiarist in 2016. He copied and pasted together his master and doctoral theses thinking no one dared tell; bribes for silence were lavish and clandestine.⁶ Not only were the Fundador’s writings “copied”, but Cesar Acuña was exposed as fraudulently using the title Engineer⁷ after inventing the Universities of Senior Sipan (Universidad Señor de Sipán, initially located in Pimentel, Peru) and Cesar Vallejo (Universidad César Vallejo, headquartered in Trujillo, Peru).⁸ There is no effort at the local, provincial or national level to improve the crumbling education system especially by the Acuñas, except if it would help to pay for his presidential ambitions.⁹

 

Students who received failing grades had nothing to worry about. The grades were overturned by the administration. Many had received had its degrees from UCV for “services to the university.”¹⁰ Since most educational institutions use the International Baccalaureate program I was tasked with teaching the IB Programme at SENATI whose students were only interested in passing an exam to “get more money”–and laughed that they would forget what they studied as soon as the “promotion as announced.” The IB Progamme texts distressed me. This was especially true with the First Certificate of English program. It contained so many errors (e.g. beginning sentences with gerunds, and conjunctions, such as: “And he liked it. But she ran away” where a single word—such as an exclamatory “No!” was labeled a complete sentence, as with “But!”) but many schools bought into the IB nonsense–for the money. Peru schools that use IB, get a 50% kickback on charges for the program and purchase of textbooks typeset and printed in China. It is the reason for significant profits demanded by for-profit schools. ¹¹ Government and corporate control of education was everywhere, and according to Julio Cotler and Romeo Grompone of the Institute of Peruvian Studies, it exemplified mafia-style characteristics. ¹²

 

The Fujimori-style of governance in the 1990s paved the way for two of the most controversial human rights crises in the region to occur—the massacres of Barrios Altos in 1991 and La Cantuta in 1992.¹³ Fujimori ordered the police-military death squad Grupo Colina to execute Shining Path members in Lima’s Barrios Altos neighborhood, and at the Universidad Nacional de Educación Enrique Guzmán y Valle, or La Cantuta, in the Chosica area. The two attacks resulted in the disappearances and deaths of more than 30 individuals including university members, women, and children. Fascists in Peru’s Congress, led by the nefarious and notorious Martha Chavez, and seconded by apologist Keiko Fujimori, applauded the slaughter of students and faculty and when there was an attempt by their parents and siblings to honor their memory, this vulture wanted to tear down the monument erected to their memory.¹⁴

 

The National Electoral Jury, or JNE (Jurado Nacional Electoral), began investigating Keiko’s campaign following allegations that she had been seen giving out monetary donations in the name of her candidacy.¹⁵  Videos have emerged showing Keiko handing out envelopes of money to buy votes.¹⁶ Keiko openly bought votes in 2011.¹⁷ She had no problem doing it again in 2016. This tactic was refined by her brother Kenji. The poor rallied behind him unconcerned that Kenji was embroiled in a massive drug scandal.¹⁸ Kenji, like his father Alberto, profited from the misery of teenagers making it easy to enter a life of addiction and crime.

 

Tantamount to ever-expanding police corruption in Peru, justice in Peru is commonly bought and sold to the highest bidder. Several jurists discounted the importance of Kenji’s criminal past or current investigation into drug smuggling and selling. They noted, “off the record”, that they would benefit economically if they overlook Kenji’s “indiscretions”—when Keiko took the presidency and returned to the autocratic rule of the minority to Peru. As Judge Castro commented, “With the promise of a rise in murders, political assassinations, drug smuggling and other crimes, our jobs are secured.” He promised to vote for Keiko.

 

Consummately, comprehensively corrupt the Jurado Especial Electoral (JEE), deeply indebted¹⁹ to the point of being owned by Fujimoristas, exonerated both Fujimoris to the delight of backers of a returned to dictatorship in Peru. Clearing Keiko of all charges, remembered as Alberto’s First Lady,²⁰ gave strength to the JEE push to sway the election of Keiko who vowed she would pardon her father of all crimes against humanity and treason—and later backtracked and said, with a wink, she would not pardon Alberto.²¹

 

The peoples’ protests fell on deaf ears “as the people have not the means to convince us otherwise,” another member of the JEE remarked. The jurist, commenting that Keiko’s brother, Kenji, was delighted that the son of the imprisoned dictator “will have the force to vanquish all protestors” as occurred under Vladimiro Montesinos who oversaw the barbarity of Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (acronym: SIN the secret service of spy network) in Peru.

 

Montesinos has been compared by many to el Doctor (Paul Joseph Goebbels)²² He was the architect of the pogrom to slaughter Jews and undesirables.²³ y el Rasputín²⁴ of the Fujimori regime similar to the Third Reich and Imperial Russia during the Romanov period in the first decades of the twentieth century. ²⁵ He was ultimately sentenced to prison for suppressing and ultimately disbanding congress, committing voter fraud, theft from the national treasury,²⁶ torture, assassination, organized terrorism,  having 30 assassin groups under his control, etc. Vladimiro Montesinos Torres was handed a maximum prison sentence to be served at the Naval Base in Callo in maximum security under marine watch.²⁷

 

Keiko remarked that these were trivial charges trumped up to discredit her father, and cast aspersions on her own candidacy. She styled her self as the friend of the common people. Keiko styled her self as compassionate and easily accessible to the common people who she would warmly welcome to visit her in the Presidential Palace. Most inost importantly Keiko vowed she would bring back Montesinos in her government who was keenly interested in the poor and struggling.²⁸ She is seen as a reborn Isabel Báthory de Ecsed (in Hungarian: Báthory Erzsébet),²⁹ by some Peruvian historians. They were in the minority in Peru, as to come out against Keiko or the Fujimori family: to do so could cost them their jobs. Free speech does not exist in Peru unless the speaker is independently wealthy and own a judge.

Keiko’s indifference to the common man and woman in Peru, is seen by her acceptance of the mass forced sterilization of more than 283,500 mountain women during her father’s dictatorship (the estimates run to over 300,000 as physicians had to meet quotas of those sterilized to be paid, The number of men castrated and by other means sterilized in the mountain range from 22,000 and higher. The statistics are not certain since it is considered shameful in Peru to admit to being sterilized (or even using birth control, that the churches denounce). Despite the evidence and protests of hundreds of thousands of victims who suffered under Fujimori, the totally corrupt Congress and Court system cleared the dictator of all charges—many of them receiving bribes and promises of advancement, with one Supreme Court justice, Eduardo Palacios, a provisional Supreme Court magistrate, selling his vote for $300.³⁰

 

One frequently ignored fact is Montesinos relationship with Cesar Acuña and the founding of UCV and USS, and the Acuña family.³¹ Montesinos assured Cesar Acuña would have a role in Keiko’s government. Furthermore, Montesinos promised that Acuña and his universities would not be investigated for corruption, the sale of degrees, and the worthlessness of teachers who only had a marginal knowledge of their subject field and relied heavily on pedagogy courses they took so that they appeared to be subject matter experts. Most of those with submarginal skills ended up teaching at UCV campuses, where Richard Acuña began his inept teaching stay. The for-profit universities have been cited as neither educational centers nor centers of advanced research. They exist to enrich their founder(s) and investor(s). As has been noted by Rudy Acuña: En suma, es posible que la vigencia del neoliberalismo esté en proporción directa de la confusión de todo tipo que sus opositores tienen y no por qué tenga algo válido que ofrecer salvo las riquezas de los capitalistas y las becas de sus investigadores que son también sus más enconados defensores en la academia y en la elaboración de las políticas económicas que tanta miseria y desesperación están sembrando por todo el mundo. ³²

 

Montesinos’ offer to Cesar Acuña did not include media investigation or protection for the rampant plagiarism of Acuña’s own publications, thesis or dissertations, or those he brought into senior positions in his for-profit universities since most of their theses were accepted by the universities they served.  Those that served Acuña well were promoted within the university or ran with an Acuña brother for a post as an “adviser” that none had any qualification for–but with Acuña money laundered for the occasion won in the election. Nothing has been done about it, for Lambayeque Province has long been known for corrupt politics and politicians with the Mayor of the capital of Lambayeque: Chiclayo, Roberto Torres Gonzáles–who brought down with him police, judges, and others who profited from political corruption and money laundering. Torres and some 20 other people in his organization  have moved or amassed close to $100 million in vehicles, real estate, jewelry and cash.    Torres himself received 10% of all municipal contracts and project.³³  Torres fall led to other insights. Cesar Acuña’s name and that of his brothers came up as Cesar was mayor of Trujillo, and Humberto the President of Lambayeque, while Virgilius and Mary , and his son Richard, sat in Congress. It was learned that Cesar Acuña was considered for a post in Keiko’s “future” government, and would be rewarded for his role in the election. The role of the other Peruvian dynasty, the Fujimoris, was only beginning to come under scrutiny. Keiko’s brother Kenji had regular run-ins with the police, but always bought his way out of troouble.

 

Kenji Fujimori, is seen, by his supporters, as the next president of the Congress of Peru, to bring about a police state equal or surprising the dictatorship of his father. There is no organized opposition, in spite of the fact that Kenji is openly linked to Montesinos especially with drugs and weapons.³⁴ He is planning to use unpaid student labor to fuel his campaign with threats and lies both for the presidency of Congress, and when he might run against his sister for the presidency of Peru. He hinted at this during his run for Congress. Following the first round of voting in 2016, Kenji achieved his first goal and is to be the next president of Congress of Peru, and will control further drug traffic out of Peru, with the silent support of Keiko and his imprisoned father.

 

Keiko pledges to make Montesinos her adviser of “security” and clandestine activities. Kenji shares the family’s support of the assassin.³⁵ The majority of Peru does not care about political corruption, especially in the Fujimori family.³⁶

 

Using Alberto and Keiko as their inspiration, more than 200 Fujimoristas have been sentenced for corruption in Congress. Martha Chavez remains free regardless of the numerous charges of corruption against the leader of the Fujimoristas in Congress as she has the support of Keiko and Kenji.³⁷ Martha Chavez claimed that she could not understand why she was charged with crimes associated with Alberto Fujimori, although she spearheaded his programs and policies and pushed them through Congress.³⁸ It was all window dressing and image polishing. Chávez personally introduced the clauses of the Peruvian Constitution that allowed Fujimori to run for a second term and suggested that she might attempt to abolish all term limits on the presidency.³⁹ Even those held in esteem, like Martha Hildebrand (an elitist and gifted linguist but no friend of poor people or democracy, but a strong supporter of Fujimori’s family, autocracy and dictatorship), labored to justify and defend the carnage of the Fujimori years–and keep getting reelected to feed longer at the public trough as fat pigs as the poor live in shacks without running water and live in sewer surrounding Lima. Garbage litters the streets of towns and villages. Debris clogs rivers and lakes. Taxes are for the military, police, and tourism. Taxes are not used to better the lives of the lives of the poor or elderly. No one gives a voice to this injustice.

 

Keiko is not universally popular. She has more than her share of detractors but these men and women (and young children) are silenced. Many protests are stopped. Some are arrested. Those that do get public attention get slandered, ridiculed, and sometimes beat. The protests continue. With the upcoming election, there are more protests. Signs are bigger. Denunciations are louder. Keiko is seen as wanting cuts for the poor, further endangerment to the environment, and the continuation of mediocrity in the government. Nothing changes except the people are taking a more active stand for their livelihood and that of their children and grandchildren. The election of 2016 has seen more popular unrest than past elections, giving the Fujimoristas reason to argue for a police state and a dictatorship like Alberto Fujimori. This terror brings votes, cries for curbing civl liberties and human rights.

 

Like most voters, Peru people vote their stomachs and what their religious leaders say ⁴⁰. Unsurprising, the Fujimori dynasty has the support of the most corrupt prelate in Peru: Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne, who was publicly accused of murdering his predecessor and multiple other crimes.⁴¹ The Roman Catholic Church, like the evangelical and Mormon churches that are flourishing in Peru, is intimate and intricately woven into the fabric of Peru and controls many. There is no separation of state and church. Religion is frequently the “hammer” of the state, and like the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow incites and condones violence against any it considers apostates⁴² One such notorious notary of theological terrorism is Pastor Lay who wants to do away with any separation of state and church. ⁴³

 

Keiko embraces Lay and welcomes religious support and intolerance, in contradiction to what she proclaimed in Utah at a convention held at the for-profit Utah Valley University.⁴⁴ Keiko told an appreciative audience that 90% of the Peruvians in Utah supported her candidacy. Keiko noted that Peruvians abroad must vote, by law, in Peru’s election. This did not offend anyone. Utah Valley University is like any for-profit university in Peru or the USA. It exists for the money–education is at best secondary. Speakers were chosen for their conservative point-of-view. Keiko was the ideal speaker. She was there to raise money for her campaign, as she had previously in New Jersey and in communities where people from Peru lived and had a strong tie to their native land and even to the Fujimoris, as in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and other communities few would think about, turning instead to Miami and Hollywood, Florida, Dallas and Houston, Texas.

 

Utah Valley University is not a respected university. Utah Valley University is ranked 1,330 out of 1,391. This means that about 96% of the colleges in our system rank as well or better than this college.⁴⁵ Keiko studying in the USA was not stellar and she never mastered the English language.]  The dismal future awaiting Peru would have delighted Tomás cardinal Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.⁴⁶ It delights the current Tomás de Torquemada, Juan Luis cardinal Cipriani Thorne, who has to battle accusations that he either directly, or indirectly, killed his predecessor to secure the plum archdiocese of Lima,⁴⁷ even more so. Keiko seems set to exceed the record of Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed.⁴⁸ Electing Keiko president, Peru is set to go down in the pages of history equal to Germany on the cusp or 1939, and Hungary-Transylvania in 1600 and their rise in the culture of assassinations, murder, legitimized state theft, and more. Assassinations are up 60% since last year (2015) and Fujimoristas promise even more.⁴⁹

 

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