'Chinochet'?

UNIQUENESS, we are told, does not admit of degree. On the other hand there is Peru.

Remarkable for its disappearing economy; for a terrorist movement responsible for some twenty thousand deaths in 12 years; for a primary hard-currency crop that yields in its most marketable form both a grotesque poison and an occasional $1 billion a month; and remarkable, too, for the richness of its geography, peoples, languages, arts, and mores (not all to the good)-- for all this, Peru must be reckoned as very unique.

So it should not, perhaps, have come as a surprise this spring when, instead of waiting for the army to launch a standard Latin American coup, President Alberto Fujimori launched a self-coup (autogolpe), suspending the congress, parts of the 325-article constitution, and (for two days) freedom of the press, and firing most of the judiciary. Most even of the 80 per cent of Peruvians who approved of the novel autogolpe doubt that those steps will abbreviate Peru's litany of woe. But they despised the timorous judges and positively hated the do-nothing, old-line, $2,000-per-month legislators (in a country where the average annual income is $2,400). After all, that is why they voted for the mysteriously independent Fujimori (over the presumably dependent Mario Vargas Llosa) in the first place.

In the two years since his election, Fujimori has made progress: inflation is down to 50 (from 7,650) per cent per year; a number of smaller state enterprises have been privatized, and two large banks may be; debt servicing has resumed, so that Peru could soon reenter the world financial community. Downtown Lima has been painted and its streets are no longer garbage dumps; there are fewer ambulantes (street vendors) and a commensurate decline in the stench that comes from public streets' being used as public toilets; affluent suburbs are not merely maintained but ornately decorated and their parks secure; and (most remarkably) supermarket shelves are stacked high.

But a medium-sized box of Frosted Flakes costs ten new soles (almost exactly ten dollars), a gallon of gas costs three (a 350 per cent rise since the election), and a lower-middle-class pensioner cannot buy a daily newspaper if he wants toilet paper too. His house will be without running water for several hours a day, and his taxes (thanks to the IMF) are as high as ever. His one domestic will work (happily) for room, board, and four soles a month. So people were enduringly, tiresomely frustrated, especially since no serious inroads had been made against either the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) terrorists or the narcotraffickers.

When I visited Lima two years ago, just before the election, I found only one person who thought Fujimori would win; no one I talked to afterward admitted to having voted for him. This time I could find only one disinterested person who disapproves of the golpe. His reasoning is straightforward: Just what difference can the golpe make? The Dincota, an anti-terrorist strike force, was already enjoying some success against the Sendero guerrillas, and the army will hardly be less corrupt.

The answer is as simple as it is difficult for non-Peruvians to apprehend: The hated and discredited, obstructionist and perverse Apristas (leaders of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, the party of Fujimori's predecessor, Alan Garcia) are virtually gone. Immediately after the autogolpe a cache of arms was found in APRA headquarters; Garcia, with a warrant out for his arrest, remains in Colombia. Most agree that this fumigation alone vindicates "el Chinito," as the Nisei president is known.

Furthermore, the Sendero's clandestine newspaper, El Diario, finally has been raided and, for now, shut down, and the imprisoned Sendero cadres-- who had created a "liberated zone" within the jail--have been dispersed. Even better: the second-in-command of MRTA (Tupac Amaro Revolutionary Movement, an urban kidnapping/terrorist group) has been captured, along with a huge cache of arms, documents, and dollars.

So the closer one gets to Peru the better the golpe looks. On the other hand: there remains Fujimori himself. He badly underestimated the foreign response and, characteristically, had no discernible plan in place. He provided his timetable for a new constitution and free elections only in response to pressure exerted by the Organization of American States and by the United States. Arrogant abroad, even to the faces of foreign chiefs of state, he is insufferable at home. Last December he said that Peru needed an emperor who would rule for ten years but that he was not such a person, since he respected the constitution too much. This is a man whose feet must be kept to the fire.

Vargas Llosa has led the chorus from abroad; but he is as ignored inside Peru as he is echoed outside it. In any terms but the most formalistic, there was hardly a whole democracy in Peru before the golpe and there is hardly any less now. Fujimori is quite determined to do the right things-- just about everything Vargas Llosa suggested, minus (if we will allow) the United States' inadequate anti-drug plan, the more onerous elements of IMF micro-management, and the wearisome interference of a crypto-subversive APRA apparatus. Sometimes a badly healed bone wants re-breaking, in order that it may properly mend.