High Anxiety in the Andes: Peru's Decade of Living Dangerously

In 2000, Peru experienced an extraordinary political transformation. After a decade of President Alberto Fujimori's increasingly authoritarian rule, during which he systematically dismembered virtually every institution that could stand in the way of his insatiable thirst for power, the entire structure that he had erected suddenly came crashing down. As recently as August 2000, no one would have believed that we would be speaking of the Fujimori regime in the past tense before the year was out. Against all odds, though, it happened. All it took to set the process in motion was the leaking of one videotape, showing Fujimori spy chief and "legal adviser" Vladimiro Montesinos bribing a congressman-elect.