MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Humala’s victory in Peru seen from neighbouring but distant Chile

President-elect Humala has toned down rhetoric but Chileans are suspicious

Sunday marked the end of a drawn out campaign for Peru’s presidency, as centre-left candidate Ollanta Humala claimed a narrow victory over centre-right candidate Keiko Fujimori.

“The electoral results indicate… that we have won the presidential elections,” said Humala in a press release on Sunday evening, before official results were tallied.

President-elect Humala was officially declared the winner on Monday and was congratulated by runoff opponent Fujimori. The latest count results from the Peruvian National Office of Electoral Processes gave Humala 7,424,828 votes (51.54%) over Fujimori’s 6,980,398 (48.45%).

The second round of campaigning between the top two vote getters began after none of the original 10 initial candidates won a majority in the April election.

Though the race’s colourful candidates provided ample fodder for political pundits both in Peru and beyond, the controversial profiles of the runoff’s contenders drew attention across the continent.

Lieutenant Colonel Ollanta Humala is a former army officer with past affiliations to ethnocentric ideology known as “etnocacerismo.” The nationalist candidate is perhaps best known for leading an unsuccessful coup d’etat in October 2000, which forced him into hiding until then-President Alberto Fujimori was impeached a few days later.

Despite Keiko Fujimori’s numerous successful philanthropy projects, her profile as a candidate was undoubtedly marked for better or worse as the daughter of controversial former President Alberto Fujimori.

Though credited with taking a tough stance on extremist groups formerly active in Peru, the elder Fujimori is currently serving time in prison for multiple human rights violations. Although the former president targeted groups such as the Shining Path movement known for widespread abuses and killings, many also resented Fujimori as a corrupt and authoritarian ruler, out of touch with Peru’s poorest.

Both Humala and Fujimori struck a fairly conciliatory tone in their run-off race, but neither publicly dissociated themselves from their pasts. Late in the campaign Keiko rescinded her original promise to pardon her father if elected.

She was, however, still paying him weekly visits to his prison cell outside of Lima.

Humala likewise may have lost votes on Peruvians alarmed by the colonel’s apparent exploitation of anti-Chilean sentiment.

“I told the Chilean President when he was visiting Lima,” Humala was quoted in a March 30 Radio Cooperativa interview “Chileans will be treated in Peru the same way you treat Peruvians in Chile.”

The comment is a nod to historic tensions and deep-set racial discrimination against Peruvians, particularly in cities near the nations’ shared border.

The tactic seems to have resonated with some Peruvians living in Chile.

“First people here were asking us why we elected a president who wasn’t from Peru” said Eduardo Martin Garcia, a director of a Peruvian folkloric dance company, on Monday, in reference to former President Alberto Fujimori’s Japanese descent.

“Now they get all alarmed once we choose one of our own.”

Garcia, a native of Trujillo, and one of over 90,000 Peruvians now residing in Chile, has been a Santiago resident since 2000. And like many Peruvians who live in Chile, he has experienced discrimination for his nationality.

“It was bad for the first two years,” he told The Santiago Times on Monday. “But it got better once I set up my own business and became my own boss.”

Though many Peruvian residents of Santiago base most of their bad feeling about Chile on more contemporary issues, political rhetoric has a way of resurrecting the spectres of history into modern day problems.

One of the most notorious examples of bi-national friction was a statement made by Chilean Defence Minister Andres Allamand in early April, accusing Humala of using “warlike and anti-Chilean” language. This was in response to a statement made by Humala asking President Piñera to mind his own business.

Still, many Peruvians in Chile worried about Humala’s warlike past.

“I voted for Castañeda during the first round,” said Javier Avila to The Santiago Times, on Monday. “And on the second round I chose to vote for Keiko.”

Avila, a former Peruvian Air Force veteran, works at the Atahualpa restaurant in Santiago’s Recoleta neighbourhood.

“Chile has been good to many of us,” he said, as he recalled his four years living in Santiago. “It’s been a fascinating experience. The quality of life is good. What I didn’t make in Peru, I made in one year of living here.”

Like other Peruvians who voted in the runoff, he described the feeling of being caught between a rock and a hard place. Explaining his vote for Fujimori, Avila said, “It wasn’t exactly because I loved her platform. But I really didn’t care for the aggressive rhetoric used by Humala.”

Avila saw Humala’s aggressive tone as a way of getting Peruvians to move back to Peru in order to make war an easier option.

Though Humala’s unabashed bravado struck a chord with many Peruvians like Garcia, there is scepticism about how realistic the leftist contender’s threats are.

“Many people here voted for Keiko out of fear that war would break out,” Garcia said. “I personally don’t think Humala is for that.”

Eric Rosales, a professor at the Santiago-based Labor Education Training Institute (ICEL), agrees. The ICEL has a partnership with the Universidad Alas Peruanas, linked to the Peruvian Air Force.

“Peru is in no condition to go to war,” Professor Rosales told The Santiago Times on Monday. “Nor do I think (Humala) has highlighted Chilean-Peruvian tensions during his campaign”.

Rosales’s statement rings true, considering the fact that Chile spends more on its military, per capita, than any other country in Latin America.

Like Avila, Rosales shares a positive perspective on his time in Chile, and dismisses worries that Humala will have a negative effect on Peru’s economy.

“There was some nervousness in the markets today, but Humala’s victory does not really indicate a dramatic shift in the economic model pursued by Peru,” he told The Santiago Times on Monday.

“If anything, Humala’s closeness to the unions could be seen as a good thing. He might be better at negotiating with them.”

The Chilean Embassy in Peru reported no anti-Chilean incidents since the election.

Chilean media estimated that 60,000 of the 90,000 Peruvians living in Chile voted in the elections on Sunday. El Morrocotudo reported that Peruvians in the northern city of Arica voted overwhelmingly for Keiko Fujimori.

By Ivan Ebergenyi - The Santiago Times