I had already heard of Fujimori and the terror that he caused in Peru. Both my parents are from Peru, and I myself was born there, so this chapter wasn’t new to me. The only way that I can relate to this chapter is through persona; experiences, and stories which my parents experienced and had to live through.

Both of them we born in Lima which meant that in some ways they experienced more privileges that others did not. In Lima, at the time, there were many more opportunities, technologies and social systems that weren’t available anywhere else. So when the people outside of the city felt compelled to fight to have those same resources, it felt justified. The internal war that broke out in Peru, was supposed to be mitigated by Fujimori, but in reality, he was responsible for the killings of innocent people, who were wrongfully prosecuted. Fujimori had violated many human rights regulations and was ultimately punished for his crimes.

I think for me this takes a personal turn in the stories that my parents told me about that time, they said that there were power outages and bombing within Lima. That the city didn’t feel safe. My father once told me that he would have had to fight in the war if he hadn’t been in university. The Lima of that time was not the Lima I had grown to know. I only really found out about the events that occurred in the 80s. when I asked my father if we had ever experienced any wars like the ones I had learned about in school. I found it odd that we weren’t required to learn about this important and saddening event in school because it wasn’t required. Although it’s no secret that the school curriculum is very westernized, I still felt that we had to learn about these kinds of events, because if we didn’t then we all would have a very narrow and limited view of the world around us.

In the latest presidential campaign in Peru, Fujimori’s’ daughter chose to run. It’s a little scary because she came very close to winning as well.