Fujimori, still arguing

He dies on 11 September 2024, fifty-one years to the day after the Santiago coup, still saying he saved his country.

On 11 September 2024, Alberto Fujimori dies of cancer in Lima at age 86. He is at home — released the previous December under the restored pardon — and gives interviews until weeks before the end, in all of which he says he saved Peru. The date is a coincidence and is not a coincidence. The bargain works because the man who made it gets to die saying he was right. Pinochet died under indictment but free. Fujimori served, was pardoned, was un-pardoned, was pardoned again, died still arguing he saved the country. Both men outlive the moment in which their bargain could have been honestly evaluated. Both men leave behind constituencies that need them to have been right, because if they were wrong, the constituency was complicit.