The Surgeon and the Acupuncturist : Peru: Voters rejected the hard economic prescriptions of Mario Vargas Llosa to express their infatuation with things Japanese and a hope for painless rescue.

Barely a month ago, people closely connected to Peru’s President Alan Garcia began to tout unknown presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori as the upset prospect for the April 8 election. The few analysts who were even aware of the maneuver thought it was a desperate last-ditch effort by Garcia to prevent an outcome that would have ensured his exile to the fringes of political power.

At the time, a runoff was predicted with near-certainty between Garcia’s political and personal enemy, Mario Vargas Llosa, and his own Apra party candidate, Luis Alva Castro, long Garcia’s rival for party leadership. Either man would probably be able to block a presidential bid by Garcia in 1995, when he could constitutionally run again.

Fujimori, a 52-year-old engineer, the son of a Japanese immigrant, was the leader of an ad hoc movement called Cambio-90 (Change-90). He wasn’t even well-known among the roughly 100,000 Peruvians of Japanese descent, and had barely emerged from that statistical netherworld described by political pollsters as “Others.”

Yet, in the span of one month, Fujimori emerged as the most remarkable phenomenon in Peru’s electoral history. In a development that probably stunned even Garcia, Fujimori surged to feverish popularity in the week before the elections, and then accomplished a virtual draw with Vargas Llosa on election day. What’s more, according to all serious polls, if the runoff were held tomorrow, Fujimori would win by 47% to 35%.

His success cannot be ascribed to President Garcia’s machinations, although they certainly helped. But Garcia’s intuition certainly turned an almost certain personal defeat into an upset victory. With his political prospects now intact, he was the indirect but very real winner.

What made all of this possible? Well, several unnoticed things were happening; many people were doing their own tinkering, utterly unaware of the effects; and everybody--perhaps even Fujimori--got more than they bargained for.

There was nothing rational about the tidal wave that within a couple of weeks swept away the parties of the legal left (for long the second electoral force in Peru) and now threatens Vargas Llosa’s Fredemo coalition with ignominious defeat in the runoff. People flocked to Fujimori as poor, desperate, uncertainty-filled people have flocked throughout history to reputed prophet-thaumaturges who promised, directly or indirectly, salvation, peace and maybe plenty. There are other such prophets in Peru now. One is a warrior-prophet, the Shining Path guerrilla leader Abimael Guzman.

Most people thought that after Garcia’s long term of unfulfilled promises and empty charisma, people would be sick and tired of political quackery and would prefer a realistic, strongly analytical approach to Peru’s plagues: insurgency, hyperinflation, poverty, drought. Most people’s lives are lived in low-intensity chaos that worsens a notch from one day to the next. Addressing those problems head-on, Vargas Llosa’s candidacy grew steadily at first. Rational diagnosis, realistic measures. Leave the quacks who have not cured you--and who have taken your money in the process--and come to the doctor.

But Vargas Llosa was a born-again true believer in major surgery; what’s worse, one who considered it good taste to describe in advance the details of the operation. The fiscal shock that was needed to bring inflation under control; the swift dismantling of state properties to stabilize the economy; the pure free market that was necessary afterwards. He talked at length about his surgical strategy, but not much about the sickness he was trying to eradicate and very little about anesthetics.

The ruling Apra party people--veterans of 60 years in this kind of struggle--sensed the patient’s fears and did their best to heighten them. They plucked a key word from Vargas Llosa’s program: shock --and tried to make it a synonym for apocalypse. They used footage from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” video to illustrate their dire vision: The shock would kill us or turn us into mutants--hungry, Third-World mutants at that. The quacks were hooting down the crazy doctor, and intimidated voters began to look for alternatives. An acupuncturist, perhaps.

As the campaign got under way, Vargas Llosa’s Fredemo coalition burst into independent campaigns by its candidates for Parliament. Dozens of little men proffering at all hours their tin-sounding pitches. One, misreading demographic trends, became suddenly enraptured by old people. The candidates had jingles singing their names; they declared almost tearfully how much they loved Peruvians, 30 times a day on every TV channel. They spent in propaganda more money than they would earn as senators or members of Parliament throughout their five-year terms. People felt manipulated. In the usually justified, suspicious Peruvian way, they had inklings that the shock probably was going to be profitable for a chosen few. Moreover, they saw Vargas Llosa as more an endorser than a candidate.

At that point, Fujimori was emerging from the “others” field. He was also noticed by Garcia (for whom Fujimori had been an adviser on agricultural matters some years ago), who tried to aid Fujimori’s progress. He did.

Fujimori’s one and only ad appeared on all major TV stations, alongside the cacophony. It was very effective. An impressionistic collage of TV news’ daily dose of violence, a Peruvian song of fast rhythm, sad but hopeful. Then Fujimori himself, opening his arms with soothing strength, a movie vision of a Zen master, commanding Peruvians to get up and move forward.

People began to desert the doctor and the quacks and flock to the acupuncturist. Everybody agreed that the emergency was great. But wasn’t Shiatsu better than surgery?

Instant myths proliferated. If Fujimori were elected, Japan would virtually adopt Peru and solve its problems. Foreign debt would be taken care of. Japanese capital would be invested in Peru. Japanese technology would be applied. A Toyota outside every home. A Sony VCR inside. Pointed remarks to the contrary by the Japanese Ambassador, and by the leaders of the Peruvian-Japanese community, who weren’t particularly thrilled with Fujimori’s candidacy, were of no avail.

Fujimori did little to discourage the myths. In contrast to Vargas Llosa’s obsessively detailed prescriptions, especially on the economic front, Fujimori talked about the “Fujimori Way.” It had something to do with his motto, “Honesty. Technology. Work.” He only specified that by technology he meant Japanese technology. People understood.

He channeled an intense admiration that Peruvians feel for Japan, which comes in second (after Argentina) in Peruvian popularity polls. This is a new stage in Peruvian-Japanese mutual feelings. During World War II, most Peruvian-Japanese properties in Lima were looted. That traumatic experience still lingers in the memory of the Peruvian-Japanese community, which fears renewed racial violence if Fujimori fails in the role of high-tech messiah. There are already signs of a nascent anti-Asian backlash.

This is not a matter of immediate concern for Fujimori, however. Right now Vargas Llosa is pondering, at a beach-side retreat, whether to continue in the presidential race. If he is helped to understand that quitting would be political and character suicide, and harmful to Peru’s fragile democratic stability, and if he manages to get some fight back into his performance during the runoff campaign, Fujimori might be compelled to step out of his Zen-like sayings and be more specific about the “Fujimori Way.” And Peruvians might settle down to figure out a more or less rational choice.