Never, in my entire life as a poet, had I felt in such an ambivalent situation as when I was asked to recite against President Alberto Fujimori. It was an act of protest against his attitude of remaining in power. Upon arriving, I realized that in the crowd I was the only participant of Asian origin. I confess: when it was my turn to take the stand, I simply trembled and my Western postmodern convictions began to give way to centuries and centuries of Japanese tradition.

A summer night

The 90s were ending and Alberto Fujimori was beginning to suffer the expected debacle of someone who clings to power for too long. President had been re-elected twice and the Peruvian population was fed up with the prevailing corruption, with the muzzled media, with the false and gruesome mystery of his dark lieutenant: Vladimiro Montesinos. All powers: legislative, judicial and electoral, were puppets of the executive branch. The Fujimori clan was beginning to look like a shogunate or, worse still, an imperial family. Although for ten years the government, among other virtues, had silenced terrorism and controlled hyperinflation, the people were already fed up and the regime could not do any more. The slogan “honesty, technology and work,” with which he had come to power, had lost all credibility.

A network of organized women thought that the best way to celebrate International Women's Day was to protest against the so-called Fujimori dictatorship. Poets and singers were summoned to share our art. To do this, they built a large stage in the Plaza Mayor itself, in front of the Government Palace itself, where the president was supposed to spend the night. I accepted very kindly, but I was unaware that this feminist celebration responded to an anti-government act. “Well,” I thought, “I'm here and I can't go back, it's all because of my democratic convictions.” One by one, singers and poets were called to take the stage and address a very large audience. The loudspeakers filled the square with the voices of women, cheering for democracy and calling for the fall of the dictator. Until they called me, and I really felt very bad. Bad for being there, bad for not being able to fully share with the women's protests, bad for having to face another Nikkei, bad for the ethnic trap in which I involved myself.

Nikkei vs. nikkei

I stoically climbed the stairs, dignified and serious as someone heading to the scaffold to face death. I thanked the presenter with a bow, took the microphone in my hands and looked at the Government Palace located in front of me. The wind was fresh and the night was kind, but I was petrified by the tension, by the expectation of the public who awaited my curses at the president. I have always been sincere with my feelings, and the only thing I felt at that moment was a great feeling of betrayal and disloyalty towards my race and my origins, as if I were committing an inconceivable lack of respect for my oniichan or older brother. He could not insult the Nikkei Alberto Fujimori, at least not in public. And I didn't do it. I remembered William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies , and the scene where the British teenager, ragged and lost on an island, does not dare to throw the stone at his adversary because centuries and centuries of speeches about good behavior outweighed him. than your personal needs.

I was supposed to read some of my writing, and I didn't even do that. It was as if I didn't want to commit or be part of that burdensome bunch. Instead I read the very long poem by Uruguayan Mario Benedetti, Our Latin American Father , which talks about social injustice, the absurd Latin American reality, and the disappointments of life. That's what I did and that's all I felt. Neither today nor ever will I regret confessing the mysterious complicity I felt with a Nikkei I didn't know, who I criticized and even questioned. Why did I feel that we shared the same common destiny, that our lives were linked, that he could also be a victim of the racism and exclusion that I experienced? Why didn't I throw the stone if I was convinced that renewal was imperative? need for the country? Why was he experiencing that ambivalent episode of love and hate?

Like Golding's character, the centuries and centuries of Japanese training outweighed all my postmodern convictions and discourses about democracy. When I finished reading, I went down the stairs in silence and immediately left that square that was suffocating me. For years I kept this event a secret and did not share it with any of my friends, because after Fujimori's fall my behavior would be seen, in the eyes of the opposition, as politically incorrect. Only my friend Francesca Denegri, literary critic and researcher, perfectly understood my ambivalence. His intelligence and humanism allowed him the ability to understand solidarity more broadly; and perhaps because she herself constantly lived migratory experiences around the world.

Racism in the Peruvian jungle

In some ways, Fujimori and I lived the same racist experiences. With his candidacy for the presidency of Peru in 1990, all people descended from Japanese immigrants were once again subjected to mistreatment. He suffered the racist demonstrations on the verge of reaching the top, and I experienced them firsthand like any Peruvian Nikkei. For example, when for work reasons I traveled to Iquitos, the most important city in the Peruvian jungle, coincidentally Fujimori was also there at the end of his electoral campaign.

Mounted on a symbolic tractor, he waved left and right, smiling, without airs of grandeur, like just another citizen walking through the streets. The procession passed by me and I was overcome with emotion to the point of tears. The truth is that I felt very emotional seeing one of my countrymen enjoy so much sympathy and popularity, I even said to myself in silence: "Wow, what a pity that my father and mother do not live to witness this memorable moment, for Finally, a Nikkei president of Peru!

When the procession was leaving, a man of very humble status who was following the procession looked at me with deep hatred and rebuked me: “Shitty Japanese! Why don't you return to your land?” I was perplexed, stunned, what had I done to make that man speak to me like that? My previous emotion was giving way to deep sadness. Once again the barrier of identity, again national exclusion. We Japanese families had already been in Peru for nearly a hundred years, but once again a foreign condition was emphasized to us.

The aforementioned subject did not suffer from ethnic ignorance, since it should be noted that countless Chinese immigrants settled in the Peruvian jungle. There are rich records of successful Chinese merchants who owned large commercial stores. This Asian presence has been benevolent and definitely enjoys great sympathy among the Amazonian inhabitants. The majority even formed mixed households with local women.

Despite the time that has passed, even today I continue to ask myself why the rudeness of a single man affected me so much? Was just one person enough to make me question my belonging to Peru? In fact, it is more interesting to answer these questions than to analyze the behavior of a subject who chased processions, insulting the people in his path.

Racism on the coast

The second experience of racism, at that time, was when Alberto Fujimori was about to defeat Mario Vargas Llosa in the presidential elections. I was driving the car near my house, on the Malecón de Chorrillos, when I noticed that a vehicle wanted to overtake me because of the horns it was honking. I got off on the sidewalk to let him pass, when suddenly the car pulled up next to me and from inside a woman looked at me with deep anger, while shouting at me: “You had to be Japanese!” and he left at full speed, I imagine that he was happy to have thrown that supposed insult at me?

I didn't even have the breath left to react. I just couldn't believe what had happened to me. During all my years as a driver they had thrown all kinds of rude words at me, but this one was inconceivable due to its surprising novelty. Until that date, appealing to the Japanese characteristic was no reason for insult, as being black, Indian, chola and even Chinese was, but never the word “Japanese”.

What happened to the image of those of Japanese descent in Peru, after the Fujimori experience? Did it decline, did it improve, did it remain the same as before his inauguration? That is an issue that must be analyzed in the coming years.

As far as I am concerned, I am very attentive to all the trials that follow the former Nikkei president, with the love and hatred of a blood sister, but my solidarity is isolated and is cold and flat like the television screen at through which I look at his tired and upset face. What I am still convinced of is that racism is the cause that has him in the dock and not far from the country, enjoying the beneficial impunity that many Peruvian presidents had, much worse and more cruel than him.

© 2008 Doris Moromisato