Race was one of the reasons why Vargas Llosa lost his 1990 presidential election. Voters of indigenous ancestry chose the first-generation immigrant Fujimori with his shaky command of Spanish because they perceived him as one of their own in a way they didn’t perceive the quintessentially Peruvian writer Vargas Llosa.
Throughout the campaign, Fujimori was referred to as “el chinito”, or “a little Chinese person”, a term of endearment that included the Japanese Fujimori among the Peruvian indigenous people. Peru is profoundly racist, and its indigenous / mestizo majority is very aware that the power and the prestige belong to the whites.
The desire to see somebody who looks like oneself finally come to power in Peru led voters to imagine the wealthy and corrupt Japanese immigrant Fujimori as a poor and downtrodden indigenous fellow of Amerindian origins. Everybody knew, of course, who Fujimori was, but the need to believe that a rich liar who despises voters is actually “one of us” never dies.
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