A Fish in the Water: A Memoir

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  I had a great liking for the Peruvian-Japanese community, because of its industriousness and productivity—it had developed the agriculture of the northern section of the departamento of Lima in the 1920s and 1930s—and great sympathy for the dispossessions and abuses of which it had been the victim during Manuel Prado’s first administration (1939–1945), which, after declaring war on Japan, expropriated the property of Japanese and expelled from the country a number of them who were second- or third-generation Peruvians. During Odría’s dictatorship as well, Peruvians of Asian origin had been persecuted, by having their passports taken away from many of them and being forced to go into exile. In the beginning, I thought that those news reports concerning insults and attacks directed against the Japanese were the handiwork of the Aprista propaganda machine, that it signaled the beginning of the campaign to ensure Fujimori’s victory in the second round of voting. But those news broadcasts had a basis in fact. Racial prejudice—an explosive factor that up until then had never been brazenly exploited in our elections, although it had always been present in Peruvian life—would come to play a primary role in the weeks that followed.

  The results of the election had caused real trauma in the Democratic Front and in Libertad, whose leaders, in those first hours after our disastrous showing, had not hit on the proper reaction and fled from the press or answered the questions of correspondents with evasive and confused analyses. Nobody could explain the outcome of the election. The rumors that I was going to withdraw from a second round—which radio and television stations kept repeating—brought on a torrent of phone calls to my house, as well as an endless line of visitors, none of whom I received. Unable to understand what was happening, many friends also called from abroad—Jean-François Revel among them. Beginning shortly before noon, crowds of supporters gathered on the Barranco embankment, in front of my house. With others taking their place every so often, the horde of supporters stayed there all day, till nightfall. They remained silent and sad-faced, or else cried out catch-phrases that betrayed their disappointment and anger.

  Since I knew that the interview with my adversary would come to nothing if it took place under the siege to which the press had subjected me, Lucho Llosa and I organized a clandestine getaway from my house, in his station wagon, that fooled even the team in charge of security. He parked in the garage, I hunched down in the seat and the only thing that demonstrators, photographers, and security guards saw come out of the garage was Lucho, at the wheel of the station wagon. When, a block farther on, I was able to sit up straight again and saw that nobody was following us, I felt greatly relieved. I had forgotten what it was like to go about Lima without an escort and a wake of reporters.

  Fujimori’s house was near the exit ramp of the main highway, hidden behind a wall and the gas station and body shop. Fujimori himself appeared at the door to receive me, and it came as a surprise to me to discover, in that modest district, a Japanese garden, bonsai, ponds with little wooden bridges and small lamps, and an elegant residence furnished in the way an Oriental house would be, the whole secluded by high walls. I felt as though I were in a chifa or in a traditional dwelling in Kyoto or Osaka, rather than in Lima.

  There was no one there except for the two of us, at least no one visible. Fujimori led me to a little reception room, with a large window overlooking the garden, and invited me to sit down at a table on which there was a bottle of whisky and two glasses, each of us directly facing the other, as though for a duel. He was a slender, rather rigid man, a little younger than I am, whose small eyes subjected me to such close scrutiny from behind his glasses that it made me feel ill at ease. He expressed himself in hesitant Spanish, making grammatical errors, and with the defensive mildness and formality of those who are not entirely comfortable with the language.

  I told him that I wanted to share with him my interpretation of the outcome of the first round. Two-thirds of Peruvians had voted for change—the “gran cambio” of the Front and his Cambio 90, that is to say, against “politics as usual” and populist policies. If, in order to win the second round, he turned into a prisoner of the APRA and the United Left, he would do the country enormous harm and betray the majority of voters, who wanted something different from what they had had for the last five years.

  The one-third of the total votes cast that I had received was not enough for the radical program of reforms that, in my judgment, Peru needed. The majority of Peruvians appeared to be inclined toward gradualism, consensus, compromises made on the basis of mutual concessions, a policy which, in my opinion, was incapable of ending inflation, of giving Peru a place in world affairs again, and of reorganizing Peruvian society on modern foundations. He seemed better qualified for furthering such a national accord; I felt that I was incapable of backing policies in which I didn’t believe. In order to be consistent with the voters’ message, Fujimori should try to seek the support of all the forces that in one way or another represented “change,” that is to say, the forces of Cambio 90, those of the Democratic Front, and the most moderate ones of the United Left. I agreed that we should spare Peru the tension and waste of energy of a second round. With this aim in view, at the same time that I made public my decision not to take part in it, I would urge those who had supported me to respond in a positive way to a summons from him to collaborate. This collaboration was indispensable if his administration was not to be a failure, and would be possible if he accepted certain basic ideas of my proposal, particularly in the field of economics. There was a very tense atmosphere, dangerous for the safeguarding of democracy, so that it was indispensable for the new team to begin work immediately, restoring the country’s confidence after such a long and violent election campaign.

  He looked at me for quite some time as though he didn’t believe me, or as though in what I had just told him there were some sort of hidden trap. Finally, once he had recovered from his surprise, he began, in a hesitant tone of voice, to speak of my patriotism and my generosity, but I interrupted him by saying to him that we should have a drink and speak of practical matters. He poured a finger of whisky in each of the glasses and asked me when I was going to make my decision public. The next morning, I said. It would be a good thing if we kept in contact so that, once my letter had been publicly disclosed, Fujimori could reinforce its message and call on the parties to collaborate. We agreed to proceed in this way.

  We went on talking for a little while longer, in a less general way. He asked me if I had made this decision on my own or after consulting with someone, since, he assured me, he always made all important decisions all by himself, without discussing them even with his wife. He asked me who was the best economist among those who were my advisers and I replied that it was Raúl Salazar, and that of everything that had happened what I perhaps most regretted was the fact that Peruvians, by voting as they had, would be left without a minister of finance equal to Salazar, but that Fujimori could repair that damage by calling him. From his questions I noted that he didn’t understand what I meant by the mandate that I had sought from the voters; he seemed to believe that it meant carte blanche to govern in whatever way a head of state with a mandate pleased, with no restraints. I told him that, on the contrary, it implied a very precise pact between a president and the majority of voters who had elected him in order to carry out a specific program for governing the country, something indispensable if thoroughgoing reforms in a democracy were the goal. We went on talking for a moment about several leaders of the moderate left, such as Senator Enrique Bernales, whom he told me he would include in the agreement we had arrived at.

  Three-quarters of an hour had not yet gone by when I rose to my feet. He accompanied me to the front door and as we reached it I made a little joke by bidding him goodbye in the traditional Japanese way, with a bow and murmuring “Arigato gosai ma su.” But he held his hand out to me without so much as a smile.

  I went home hunched down in Lucho’s station wagon, and once there, in my study, with all the “royal family”
present—Patricia, Álvaro, Lucho and Roxana—we held a conclave during which I described to them my meeting with Fujimori and read them my letter withdrawing as a presidential candidate in a second round of voting. Outside on Malecón, the number of demonstrators had grown. There were now several hundred of them. They kept shouting for me to come outside and were chanting Libertad and Democratic Front slogans in chorus. With that din as background music, we had an argument—I believe it was the first time we had had such a heated one—since only Álvaro agreed with my decision to resign; Lucho and Patricia thought that the forces of the Front wouldn’t go along with collaborating with Fujimori and that the latter was already too deeply committed to Alan García and the APRA for my gesture to destroy their alliance. Moreover, it was their belief that we could win the second round.

  We were in the midst of the argument when I heard that outside the house the demonstrators had begun to shout slogans in chorus that had a racist and nationalist ring to them—“Mario is a real Peruvian,” “We want a Peruvian,” in addition to others that were downright insulting—and in indignation I went out to talk to them from the terrace of my house, with the aid of a megaphone. It was inconceivable that those who supported me should discriminate between Peruvians on the basis of the color of their skin. Having so many races and cultures was our greatest source of wealth, the phenomenon that created ties between Peru and the four cardinal points of the globe. It was possible to be a Peruvian whether a person was white, Indian, Chinese, black, or Japanese. Agricultural engineer Fujimori was as Peruvian as I was. The cameramen from Channel 2 were there and managed to broadcast this part of my talk on the news program “Ninety Seconds.”

  Early the following morning, Tuesday, April 10, I had the usual work session with Álvaro, during which we planned how we should disclose the news of my letter of resignation. We decided to do so through Jaime Bayly, who had never wavered in his support for me throughout the entire campaign and whose programs had a large audience. As soon as I had informed the political committee of Libertad, with which I had an appointment at 11 a.m, in Barranco, we would go with Bayly to Channel 4.

  When, shortly before ten in the morning on that memorable day, the candidates for the first and second vice presidencies, Eduardo Orrego and Ernesto Alayza Grundy, arrived, there was already a horde of reporters on Malecón, struggling with my security forces, and the first of those groups which by noon had turned the grounds around my house into a rally were beginning to arrive. There was already a blazing sun and the morning was clear and bright, and very hot.

  I gave Eduardo and Don Ernesto my reasons for not taking part in the second round and read them my letter. I had foreseen that both of them would try to dissuade me, as in fact they did. But I was disconcerted by the categorical statement made by Alayza Grundy, who, as a legal scholar, assured me that the step I was about to take was unconstitutional. A candidate could not refuse to compete in a second round. I told him that I had consulted Elías Laroza, who represented us before the National Election Board, and that he had assured me that there was no legal obstacle. In the present circumstances, my refusal to run a second time was the one thing that could keep Fujimori from becoming a prisoner of the APRA and ensure even a partial change of the policies that were destroying Peru. Wasn’t that a stronger reason than any other? Hadn’t a legal technicality been found to support Barrantes’s refusal to run against Alan García in a second round in 1985? Eduardo Orrego had been informed early that morning of my intention to give up my candidacy by a call from Fernando Belaunde, telephoning from Moscow, where he was attending a congress. The ex-president told Orrego that Alan García had phoned him from Lima, “all upset, since it had been learned that Vargas Llosa was thinking of giving up running as a candidate in a second round, which would invalidate the entire electoral process.” How had President García come by the news of my resignation? Through the one and only possible source: Fujimori. The latter, after his talk with me, had hastened to discuss our conversation with the president and ask for his advice. Wasn’t this the best proof that Fujimori was acting in collusion with Alan García? My resignation would be useless. On the contrary, if we went ahead and proved that Fujimori represented the continuation of the present government, we could reverse what appeared to be a desertion by so many independent voters who had turned to someone whom they believed, out of naïveté and ignorance, to be a candidate without ties to the APRA.

  We were in the midst of this discussion when an uproar outside the front door drowned out our voices. Fujimori had unexpectedly turned up there, and our security force was trying to protect him from the avalanche of reporters who were questioning him as to his reasons for coming, and from supporters of mine who were jeering at him and catcalling. I showed him into the living room, as Don Ernesto and Eduardo went off to inform Popular Action and the Christian Popular Party of our talk.

  Unlike the day before, when he struck me as being calm and serene, I noted that Fujimori was extremely tense, owing either to the hubbub at the front door or to what he had come to tell me. He began by thanking me for having expressed my strong disapproval of the racist slogans the night before (he had seen the telecast of my talk on Channel 2), and without hiding how upset he was, he added that constitutional problems might arise if I gave up my candidacy. This was unconstitutional and would invalidate the election process. I told him that it was my belief that this was not the case, but that, in any event, I would make certain that it would not bring about a crisis that would lead to a coup d’état. I saw him to the door, but I did not go out onto the street with him.

  At the time the inside of my house was full to overflowing, as were the grounds outside. Every last member of the political committee of Libertad had arrived—the one time, it seems to me, that not one of them failed to show up—along with several of my closest advisers such as Raúl Salazar, and Jaime Bayly having been alerted by Álvaro. Patricia was holding a meeting in the patio with a fair number of the leaders of Acción Solidaria. We found room as best we could for some thirty people in the living room on the ground floor, and despite the heat, we closed the windows and drew the curtains so that the reporters and supporters gathered in the street wouldn’t hear us.

  I explained the reasons why a second round impressed me as useless and dangerous, and given the outcome on Sunday, the advantage if the forces of the Front reached some sort of agreement with Fujimori. Keeping Alan García’s policy from continuing any longer was now the top priority. The Peruvian people had refused to give us the mandate that we had sought from them and there was no longer any possibility of carrying out our reforms—not even in the hypothetical case of winning in the second round, since we would have a majority against us in Congress—and therefore we should spare the country another campaign the result of which we already knew, since it was obvious that the APRA and the United Left would make common cause with my adversary. I then read them my letter.

  I believe that all of those present spoke, a number of them in dramatic terms, all of them, with the exception of Enrique Ghersi, urging me not to drop out. Only Ghersi pointed out that, in principle, he did not reject the idea of negotiating with Fujimori if that would allow us to salvage certain key points of our program; but Enrique too had his doubts about the independence of the Cambio 90 candidate to make decisions about anything on his own, since, like all the other advisers, he believed him to be a vassal of Alan García’s.

  One of the most lively contributions to the discussion was the one made by Enrique Chirinos Soto, whom the monumental surprise of the election had pulled out of his lethargy and driven into a state of lucid paroxysm. He abounded with technical reasons proving that resigning from the second round went against the letter and the spirit of the Constitution; but it seemed to him even graver still to abandon the fight and offer a free field to a candidate who had been made up out of whole cloth, without a program or ideas or a team—to a political adventurer who, once in power, might well mean the collapse of democratic rule
. He did not believe in my thesis that in the second round there would be a holy APRA-Socialist-Communist alliance backing Fujimori; he was certain that the Peruvian people would not vote for a “first-generation Peruvian, who did not have a single one of his dead kinfolk buried in Peru.”* This was the first time that I had heard such an argument, but not the last. I was frequently to hear it from partisans of mine as cultivated and intelligent as Enrique: because Fujimori was the son of Japanese parents, because he didn’t have roots in Peruvian soil, because his mother was a foreigner who still hadn’t learned Spanish, he was less Peruvian than I was, less Peruvian than those who—whether Indians or whites—had shared Peruvian life for many generations.

  Many times in the course of the next two months, I had to come out and say that arguments of that sort made me want Fujimori to win, since they betrayed two aberrations against which I have written and spoken throughout my life: nationalism and racism (two aberrations that, in fact, are one and the same).

  Alfredo Barnechea delivered a long historical disquisition on Peruvian crises and decadence, which, according to him, had in recent years reached a critical point, which could be the source of an irreparable catastrophe, not only for the survival of democracy, but for the fate of the nation. The governing of the country could not be entrusted to someone who represented sheer dyed-in-the-wool knavery or was very probably a front for Alan García; my resignation was not going to appear to be a generous gesture to facilitate a change in the current situation. It would appear to be the haughty flight of a vain man whose self-esteem had been wounded. Moreover, it could lead to a ridiculous outcome. For, since it was constitutionally illegal, the National Election Board could call for a second round and allow my name to remain on the ballot, even though I wanted it removed.