In Year of Crises, Raid Restores Luster to Peruvian Leaders

At a full-dress funeral for two fallen commandos Thursday, the triumphant tone of Gen. Nicolas Hermoza, chief of the armed forces, told the story of a political resurrection fostered by the military raid that ended Peru’s 18-week hostage crisis this week.

During the past year, crises had weakened the triple alliance uniting the military, the intelligence service and President Alberto Fujimori that is the center of power here. Critics accused the security forces of drug corruption and human rights abuses. And the grueling siege of the Japanese ambassador’s residence embarrassed a government that had claimed victory over terrorism.

But in 40 violent minutes Tuesday afternoon, the cloud of crisis disappeared. The military and intelligence services could boast that the commando strike that liberated 71 hostages would be admired and analyzed around the world. After being painted as all-purpose villains, Hermoza and Vladimiro Montesinos, the mysterious presidential advisor who runs the intelligence service, are now basking in the glow of vindication.

“The president trusted once more in the armed forces and the national intelligence service to take responsibility for the rescue,” Hermoza declared. “It is an act of justice to tell the entire nation that the information furnished by the intelligence service was a fundamental factor. . . . The mission has been accomplished.”

His words echoed those of Fujimori hours after the attack. The president lauded the intelligence service and said it had been unfairly maligned. New polls Thursday depicted an outpouring of national pride. The president’s approval rating surged from a record-low 38% to 67%.

It is not clear how long the new strength of Fujimori, Hermoza and Montesinos will last and how it will shape politics in Peru.

Dissension in the sometimes-restive military and the attacks on Montesinos, whom critics depict as a Rasputin-like figure, are expected to subside. The aftermath also reinforces expectations that the president will seek a second reelection in 2000.

Fujimori’s admirers believe that he has new momentum to push forward on reforms aimed at ameliorating poverty and strengthening the judiciary and other institutions in a nation that still must recover from 17 years of combat against terrorism.

“In politics, results are what count, and in that sense the Fujimori administration is already reaping the fruits of the impeccable raid,” wrote Manuel D’Ornellas of Expreso, an often pro-government newspaper, on Thursday. The crisis of the Fujimori administration has faded, D’Ornellas said, but it could return.

Detractors fear that the government--emboldened by success--will continue to exert undue influence over the judiciary and press and use intimidation, espionage and even violence against opponents.

Democracy in Peru has been debilitated ever since Fujimori, in concert with the security forces, temporarily shut down Congress during a 1992 self-coup, according to political commentator Fernando Rospigliosi.

“This is not a democracy, it is an authoritarian government that permits certain democratic forms,” Rospigliosi said.

The result of the raid “accentuates the likelihood that this group will remain in power. It fortifies the form in which they have governed.”

The scandal that created the worst problems for Peruvian leaders this month grew out of accusations by an agent of the military intelligence service. From a hospital bed, she showed television reporters scars of torture she said was inflicted by fellow agents enraged over her allegations against a high-ranking intelligence officer, Martin Rivas, who is reputedly close to Montesinos.

Rivas had been sentenced to prison for his role in two notorious massacres of suspected rebels by a death squad.

Rivas is free as the result of an official amnesty. But the agent and some of her co-workers implicated intelligence operatives this month in the murder of Rivas’ former girlfriend, also a military spy, and other murders and abuses.

The uproar was so great that some analysts suggest that it contributed to the decision to launch Tuesday’s attack on the rebels barricaded in the mansion.

The stunning outcome of the raid could give the security forces enough political capital to whitewash the military intelligence scandal, according to Alvaro Vargas Llosa, a journalist and son of novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who lost to Fujimori in the 1990 presidential election.

Tuesday’s operation gave the administration “a new legitimacy born of force, the same kind that it obtained in the 1992 coup and that was confirmed in 1995 in a border war with Ecuador,” Vargas Llosa wrote in an article published Thursday.

As for the aftermath of the raid, there have been scattered questions about the fact that all 14 guerrillas died in the assault. All bore bullet wounds in the forehead, suggesting that commandos administered the coup de grace to survivors, according to newspaper reports and a firefighter who saw the bodies in the mansion.

“They all had been shot between the eyes,” said the firefighter, who entered the mansion minutes after the shootout had ended. “It was as if the soldiers wanted to make sure they were dead. Later we were told that they had the order that no terrorist was to leave that house alive.”

The newspaper La Republica, which often takes an anti-government stance, reported Thursday that long-range eavesdropping equipment used by intelligence agents showed that two women guerrillas shouted, “We surrender!” before they were gunned down.

Nonetheless, Fujimori appears to have largely quieted the opposition. Relying again upon his most hawkish allies--especially an intelligence service that wields silent but vast power--he has attained historic stature.

Perhaps no image better summed up this leader’s singular personality and triumphant reversal of fortune than his visit to the scene of the battle Wednesday.

His sleeves rolled up, Fujimori walked through the mansion scarred by craters and bullet holes. He paused halfway up a circular staircase where the corpse of Nestor Cerpa Cartolini, the rebel leader, still lay where he had fallen the day before.

Fujimori looked down for a moment at his slain adversary, a brawny man sprawled grotesquely in sandals, bermuda shorts and a bullet-riddled T-shirt. The shirtless body of another rebel, Roly Rojas, was huddled partly beneath Cerpa. Then the president resumed walking up the stairs.