Alberto Fujimori Fujimori won the presidency of Peru when he was 52 years old. His official biography states that he was born on July 28^th 1938, reaching the top with a successful political campaign. However 3 months before obtaining the victory he was a perfect stranger for the mass of the population. And without exaggerating he was also a stranger for the specialized press.

Even today, a lot of people recall the desdainful smile of the closest supporters of the novelist and candidate Mario Vargas Llosa , when by the end of summer 1990 somebody said that the dark presidential candidate with japanese last name began to grow in the surveys. That smile and many others would vanish as dayswent by.

From the bottom to the top
A report of the first week of march stated that the candidate of Cambio 90 barely had 2.8% of acceptance, It was something !! .He didn´t even appear in the reports before . But in the second week, he had reached 6.1% , in the third week he had 10.1% and in the fourth week he was settled with 18% of potential votes. During the first week of April 1990, a week before the electoral process , the japanese man registered 26.2% of electorate acceptance and at the headquarters of the famous novelist , everybody was quite surprised and about to faint. What had happened in Peru ? Had the electorate become mad ? What sort of attraction did that candidate have that he was over politicians and challenge the ruling class of the country to listen to him?

The Four most important ones
To have an idea of the dimension that the uncertainty that the novelist’s followers had and in general that of all the people who supported the other candidates, we have just to remember the end of February 1990, when the electorate preference was shared as follows : 45% for the novelist, a growing 19 % for Luis Alva Castro of Apra, a decreasing 12 %for Alfonso Barrantes of Izquierda Socialista and a low 9% for Henry Pease of Izquierda Unida .

We were witnesses of the coming out of what was called by then “Tsunami Fujimori” phenomena that, as years went by ,would have lots of imitators in Latin America.

A chinese like you
Alberto Fujimori had been one of those thousands of japanese sons settled in the country, to whom peruvian people always showed affection and respect. Known as serious and hard-working, his image was related to his moderate success and to his honesty on business. Japanese always married among themselves and there were just few peruvian people who had family with this not so common race coming from so far away.

Alberto Fujimori studied elementary school at La Merced and later he would finish at La Rectora , a public school of the popular district of La Victoria.

He made his five years of school at La Gran Unidad Escolar Alfonso Ugarte , one of the many schools that gave dictatorial government of General Manuel Odría prestige.

Rosa, Alberto’s sister, recalls him as a quiet young man , and a careful newspaper reader. During his adolescence , he helped his father on the flower business. He was in charge of the sales and he handed the flowers out riding a bicycle after his school journey.

La Agraria
He finished school with very good grades , especially in mathematics , something that was related to his image of neat and well-organized young man. He applied for Universidad Nacinal Agraria and he entered without any difficulties. There, he devoted to study and nobody remembers that he had had any active participation in the student’s movements , so intense in the 60’s and 70’s. From being at the desk of an outstandsing student he became a professor ,after a short experience as constructor businessman.

Once he graduated , he married Susana Higuchi ,who was also an engineer but she was more related with the business world. His field was to buy plots of land , build houses and leave them ready to be used , this let a fast sale with appealling prices. The couple had a prosperous life and they had 4 children: 2 sons and 2 daughters.

By the middle of 1978 during the military government, a Fujimori colleague said that a students strike brought Universidad Agraria .To a standstill because 300 students had been put aside due to the failure of some exams which they considered arbitrary . It was a huge and never-ending problem . These young students demanded a replacement, new tests but the authorities wanted to show the government that they deserve their trust and therefore they acted with strict rigidity . Everybody lost.

The math professor Alberto Fujimori was propósed as a mediator because he was famous for being a good negotiator.

The Messiah
The negotiator began by taking food stuff to the strikers and keep the police away from where the youngsters sheltered . These were points for him, the rest would be quite easy. He convinced the authorities .They were impressed by the great support that the negotiator had. So ,there were new exams and the expelled students were back to university . In 1980 he ran for the university rectorship but he lost in spite of having the third students support .He explained the contrast by a “betrayal”of his colleagues who didn’t support him in spite of engaging their votes with his programme. In 1984 he was already dean of the Faculty of Sciences and from that post he ran again for the rectorship, this time with a policy of public alliances that involved many professors. This time, he won and then he reached the National Council of Rectors, an entity that gathered the most important academic authorities that worked for the state.

“Concertando”
By the end of his rectorship, there was still a year for the electoral process . He was convinced of the need of being a senator but later he thought that it would be better if he set up a party that would allow him to run for the presidency. The law at that time, let him search for both alternatives and it was not him who would deny them to himself. Before that,he was in charge of a tv programme in the state channel : “Concertando” that made him be known by the public. Executives of the state channel assured that it was president Alan Garcia who supported him so that they would give the professor a chance. It was a weekly programmme that had 2 topics to debate and two opponents.” La Concertacion” was in the atmosphere and engineer Fujimori already had prestige , a concept defined in a society that always had lived among conflicting interests .