Could Anti-Fujimorismo Prevail Again?

Keiko Fujimori—the daughter of the late Alberto Fujimori, former president, autocrat, and convicted human rights violator—has advanced for the fourth consecutive time to the presidential runoff. Her previous defeats against Ollanta Humala (2011), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016), and Pedro Castillo (2021) consolidated her legacy as one of the most unsuccessful presidential candidates in the history of the world. On June 7, Fujimori will confront Roberto Sánchez, a psychotherapist, former congressman (2021-2026), former minister of foreign trade (2021), self-claimed ally of ex-president Pedro Castillo, and the latest electoral outsider in Peru’s recent history. This will be the second presidential election since the beginning of the almost-decade-long institutional crisis that began in 2018, which—heightened by the convergence of the Covid-19 sanitary crisis and the bicentennial of Peru’s independence—has toppled eight presidents and fueled a widespread sense of political debacle.

One of the available explanatory narratives of the runoff suggests, once again, that the enduring legacy of a fractured country continues to shape the contours of Peru’s sociopolitical life. Accordingly, a conservative Lima ends up opting for representatives of the post-Alberto Fujimori Peruvian status-quo: adamant protection of foreign investments and big capital, strict fiscal discipline, the promise of everyday safety from domestic threats, all recently topped with permissiveness towards informal and increasingly illegal extractive economies. In the last election, these candidates were both Keiko Fujimori (17.19 percent) and former Lima mayor Rafael López Aliaga (11.91 percent). Together, they harvested nearly half of all valid votes in Peru’s capital. Conversely, the rest of the country—particularly the Andean south-center departments of Huancavelica, Ayacucho, Cusco, Puno, and Arequipa—favored the option of a political transformation, this time embodied by Roberto Sánchez. Resentful of the capital’s disdainful centralism, classism, and racism, the “highland vote” turns left in what is perhaps the only opportunity every five years when their voices count as much as those of Lima. 

As happened with the election of Castillo in 2021, the combination of Sánchez’s identity and electoral platform—both perceived by many as Lima’s provincial “other”—has polarized the national debate in deeply corrosive ways. On the one hand, Keiko is accurately portrayed as the continuation of the Fujimorista dynasty, the revalidation of the neoliberal model of economic governance, a final threat against the country’s weakened post-conflict human rights agenda, and the vindication of a party once legally classified as a criminal organization. Sánchez, much like Castillo in 2021, is instead inaccurately perceived as the leftist antithesis to all things Fujimori: a potential rupture with Fujimori’s authoritarian legacy, a champion of a new economic model, an unequivocal affirmation of the human rights agenda, and the beginning of a long-awaited moralizing campaign within Peruvian politics. Framed through their own progressive form of essentializing romanticism, Sánchez’s figure—albeit to a lesser extent than Castillo’s—is cast as the long-awaited return of (rural) social justice. The return of an Inca, as Peruvian historian Alberto Flores Galindo might have put it. Yet neither of these candidates offer a resolution to Peru’s enduring institutional crisis. 

Illusions and Disappointments

The electoral map of the first round in 2026 once again evoked the electoral geographies of 2021, 2016, and 2011. In each of those elections, Keiko captured a wide share of Lima’s vote, particularly in the districts of so-called “modern Lima”—the affluent neighborhoods of Miraflores, San Isidro, Barranco, Santiago de Surco, La Molina, and San Borja. Yet despite being empowered by majority support in the capital, Keiko consecutively lost to Humala (2011), Kuczynski (2016), and Castillo (2021), all of whom capitalized on anti-Fujimorista sentiment and, crucially, secured the support of the Andean south-central regions.

What did Humala, Kuczynski, and Castillo share? Beyond simply not being Keiko, and much like Sánchez today, each embodied a particular form of hope—grounded or not—in a radical redirection of Peru’s social, political, cultural, and economic trajectory. Similar hopes once fueled the social mobilizations that supported the agrarian reform of 1969. Frustrated by the ambivalent outcomes of land redistribution and communal reorganization, some of those same hopes cautiously aligned themselves with the radical visions of Sendero Luminoso’s revolution. Later, falling victim to Sendero’s ideological fanaticism and political orthodoxy, those hopes reorganized militarily, formed campesino militias, and ultimately supported Fujimori’s election in 1990, the autogolpe of 1992, and his reelection in 1995. Sánchez represents the latest chapter in a long history of illusions, mobilizations, unfulfilled promises, and political disappointments. Would this time be any different? Sánchez’s alliance with Antauro Humala, brother of former President Ollanta Humala and leader of the right-wing, conservative, nationalist, chauvinist, self-claimed etnocacerista movement, is far from a good omen. 

The downfall of Castillo after the so-called “autogolpe” of December 2022 revealed several realities to be true at once. Elected amid yet another consolidation of anti-Fujimorismo as the defining political force of 21^st century Peru, Castillo’s palpable political incompetence quickly became the target of racist and classist attacks from his adversaries, the oligopoly of mainstream media, and Lima’s middle and upper classes. Within government, a corrupt coalition of electoral alliances representing the informal and illegal activities that sustain large sectors of Peru’s economy—led by Keiko Fujimori and the Fuerza Popular—systematically blocked Castillo’s initiatives, including multiple cabinet nominations. After several impeachment attempts, politically isolated and lacking a solid enclave of popular support, Castillo attempted to unconstitutionally dissolve Congress and, in a tragic turn of events, reenacted Fujimori’s autogolpe of April 5, 1992. Unlike the original autogolpe, however, Castillo’s authoritarian move was not met with any immediate or substantial form of popular support. Cornered amidst Lima’s rush-hour traffic, Castillo was arrested and remains imprisoned awaiting a highly politicized trial. 

Sánchez’s emergence as a presidential contender, and his growing visibility on the eve of the first round and throughout the weeks leading to the runoff, have sought to capitalize on the interrupted and violently repressed legacy of Castillo. Wearing the same Cajamarca sombrero that came to characterize Castillo, Sánchez has concealed his own Huaral-based, fairly coastal origins while claiming a deeper rural identity meant to bring him closer to the highland vote. Drawing on the social platform mobilized during the protest waves of December 2022—which culminated in the state-sponsored illegal killing of more than 50 Peruvians in Andahuaylas, Ayacucho, and Juliaca—Sánchez has promised to pardon Castillo, whom he portrays as the victim of a political complot. Reviving parts of Castillismo’s unfulfilled agenda, Sánchez has also pledged to convene a constituent assembly and draft a new constitution to replace the illegitimate 1993 charter written at the height of Alberto Fujimori’s autocratic rule. The legacy of those state atrocities continues to loom large in the highlands while repression and the criminalization of protest, once again, foreclosed the possibility of grassroots visions of democratic life.

Yet these proposals coexist with an alliance with Antauro Humala, the chauvinist, misogynist ethnonationalist who once promised to wage another war against Chile, shoot homosexuals and other dissident identities, and who has more recently invoked the need for a Nayib Bukele-style approach to eradicate everyday crime. Sánchez has also recently incorporated José Domingo Pérez, a prosecutor once regarded as the leading face of Peru’s anti-corruption crusade and responsible for conducting some of the most thorough investigations into Keiko’s criminal activities. To label this uncanny blend of strategies, symbols, and alliances as simply “left” is, to say the least, profoundly myopic.

Two Projects, No Resolution

If Keiko finally prevails, on her fourth run for office, Fujimorismo would return to power 26 years after Alberto Fujimori’s resignation amidst the political scandal unleashed by his unconstitutional reelection and the “Vladivideos”—hundreds of videotapes that unequivocally revealed how Alberto, his advisor Vladimiro Montesinos, and members of the right-wing political alliance Perú 2000 corrupted elected officials, the military, and the mainstream media in order to perpetuate themselves in power. Under Keiko and the Fuerza Popular, money laundering, criminal compacts, obstruction of justice, and other forms of institutionalized corruption would likely become normalized procedures of everyday politics. If Sánchez wins, the current alignment of political forces in the newly reestablished bicameral Congress, together with his own internal contradictions, makes it reasonable to anticipate a trajectory similar to Castillo’s. Fuerza Popular and Renovación Popular, Keiko and López Aliaga, will obstruct most—if not all—of Sánchez’s proposals, impeachment attempts will soon follow, racism and classism will intensify unchecked, and the institutional crisis will deepen even further.

Decades ago, foreshadowing developments that would later emerge elsewhere in the hemisphere and across the globe, the ideological entanglements of military reformism and authoritarian revolutionary projects rendered “left” and “right” meaningless as political coordinates. Instead, Peru came to be divided between at least two competing visions of a national future. On the one hand, a Lima-based, neoliberal, and exclusionary project championed by domestic elites and sustained through the control of foreign investment, which claims the need to protect material progress at all possible costs. On the other, a non-Lima-based, largely highland and rural, protectionist project advanced by incipient popular and grassroots movements alongside provincial bourgeoisies demanding a profound shift in the internal balance of geopolitical and economic power. Mutatis mutandis—that is, with the historical changes accounted for—versions of this divide continue to shape the 21^st century political spectrum of many other countries, including the United States. In their pursuit of power, both visions have increasingly resorted to radical polarization, the erosion of civility, constrained electoral practices, and authoritarian impulses.

The June 7 runoff should serve as yet another omen of what may lie ahead for the erosion of 21^st century democracy. Regardless of who prevails—whether anti-Fujimorismo succeeds once more or not—the crisis that has settled over Peru shows no resolution within sight. Nor, for that matter, does the broader crisis of democracy across the Americas and much of the rest of the world.

Javier Puente is a scholar of Peru and the Andean region. He is author of The Rural State and currently serves as Associate Professor and Chair of the Latin American and Latino/a Studies program at Smith College. He is a member of NACLA’s Editorial Committee.