Peru’s Fraying Democracy

When a virtually unknown university rector named Alberto Fujimori entered Peru’s 1990 presidential race, few observers thought he had any chance of winning. Yet in one of the most stunning political upsets in Latin American history, Fujimori came from nowhere to defeat the world-renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa, a future Nobel laureate, in a second-round vote.   

Three decades later, Fujimori’s daughter Keiko, a former lawmaker in her third run for the country’s highest office, is facing off in a June 6 runoff election against Pedro Castillo, a rural teacher and union leader from the northern region of Cajamarca. Today,