This week’s reading focus on the period in which Latin America underwent the “dirty wars”, a period filled with armed civil conflict, authoritarian government, terrorism, and overall violence. In periods like this people tend to look for a “hero” and a “villain”, so it makes sense for testimonio genre to become popular in Latin America during this time. But I believe that nothing is black and white, an example of this is Alberto Fujimori in Peru. The public’s opinion of Fujimori varies around Peru, people dislike him because he dissolved congress in ’92 (thus becoming a dictator for a while), because he committed human right violations, such as carrying out mass sterilizations (involuntary) to women in the andes, having a special forces group who targeted suspected terrorists usually without sufficient evidence, therefore eliminating countless innocent people (two famous cases: Universidad La Cantura, in which he stormed dorms and killed an abounding number of students and the Bairros Altos) and because he stole money and fled the country and resigned to the presidency via fax from japan. But then again, people like him because he dissolved congress in ’92 (thus actually getting stuff done). Alberto Fujimori dissolves the parliament, places opposition politicians under house arrest on the pretext of coping more effectively with the country ‘s rampant inflation, drug trafficking, and terrorism. After rewriting the Peruvian constitution to allow himself to run for office again, Fujimori was re-elected in 1995 with over 65% of the vote. Although Fujimori’s undemocratic methods provoked criticism at home and abroad, the achievements of  his government won widespread domestic and international support: inflation was cut in half, the country recorded impressive rates of economic growth; the leader of Sendero Luminoso (terrorist organization financed by the sales of narcotics) was captured and jailed; both el Sendero Luminoso and Tupac Amaru revolutionary movement declined in influence; and incident of political and drug-related violence dropped for the rest of the decade. So this just demonstrates how complex the notion of “good” and “bad” truly is. How one can’t brand the stereotypes of women as passive (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), indigenous peoples as mystical, primitive, and non-political (many had a great deal of experience living in the cities, and understood the law) and that all Latin American men are ‘violent machos’. So my question is: Was “mildly authoritarian government” the only way forward for certain countries in Latin America?