That same Sunday, in an interview on television with César Hildebrandt, I said that the excesses of our candidates gave an impression of extravagance that the majority of Peruvians found offensive, in addition to causing confusion concerning our program, and I urged the candidates to correct these excesses. I did the same thing on three other occasions, but it was of little use, since not even the candidates of Libertad paid any attention to me. One of the exceptions was, of course, Miguel Cruchaga, who, on the same day as my declaration, drastically cut down on his advertising. And a few weeks later, at a press conference, Alberto Borea announced that, in obedience to my exhortations, he was winding up his campaign. But there were now very few days remaining before the elections and the damage was irreparable.
Not all the Libertad candidates committed excesses or had the financial means to do so. But a number of them did, and waged such extravagant campaigns that the bad impression did damage to the entire Front and to me in particular. It played a role in weakening the support of that 20 percent of the voters who, in the final weeks of the campaign, according to the opinion polls, changed their minds about voting for me and instead favored Alberto Fujimori, who, in January and February, and even in the first two weeks in March, remained at a standstill, with a projected vote of one percent in his favor. In that 20 percent, the least-well-off sector of the entire population of the country, the idea the APRA and the left were trying to drum into the heads of voters in that sector — that if I won the rich would come to power along with me to do as they pleased in my administration — was spectacularly confirmed by that costly advertising campaign that was possible only with powerful and well-organized financial backing.
In the middle of the hectic agenda that I was trying to get through every day, what had happened made me think, very often, about what this augured for the future, once the elections had been won. Our alliance was held together with safety pins, and the fidelity of our own leaders to the ideas, to the ethics, and to the proposals I made was subordinate to mere political interests. Nothing guaranteed me the support of the congressional majority — if we managed to secure it — for liberal reforms. This would come about only if there were enormous pressure from public opinion. From January on, therefore, all my effort was concentrated on winning those sectors of the provinces and regions of the interior where I had not yet been or to which I had had made only very brief trips.
In my travels through the departamento of Lambayeque I visited for the first time the agricultural cooperatives of Cayaltí and Pomalca, both considered solid bastions of Aprismo. In both of them, however, I was able to talk with no problems, explaining the implications of the privatization of communal land and the conversion of agrarian complexes into private enterprises, in which former members of a cooperative would become stockholders. I don’t know whether I got my message across, but both in Cayaltí and in Pomalca there were warm smiles exchanged between the peasants and workers who were listening to me when I told them that they had the good fortune of working marvelously productive land and that, without price controls, without state monopolies, they would be the first social sector to benefit from liberalization. And even more than in the sugar mills, in Ferreñafe, and in Lambayeque, too, in Saña, in the huge rally in Chiclayo, or in the torrid little towns of the departamento, the campaign took on during those days the air of a lively fiesta, what with the inevitable dances and songs of the North opening and closing the rallies. The happiness and enthusiasm of the people was the best antidote against exhaustion. And it was something that made us forget at times the sinister side of the campaign: violence.
On January 9, the former minister of defense, Enrique López Albújar, an army general, was murdered in the streets of Lima by a terrorist commando unit; for a reason that never came to light, the general was not accompanied by an escort on the morning of the attack on his life. Since the sisters of General López Albújar were militants of Libertad in Tacna, I interrupted my tour of the North to return to Lima and attend the funeral rites. That assassination was the beginning of a sudden rise in political crimes in the country, whereby Sendero Luminoso and the Túpac Amaru revolutionaries tried to thwart the electoral process. Between January and February, more than six hundred persons died because of political violence and some three hundred attacks were put on record.
Also, as the elections approached, those who were acting within the law became extremely edgy. The APRA, returning to the weapons that made it famous in Peruvian history — stones, pistols, and cudgels — began to attack our rallies, with groups of “buffaloes” who did their best to break them up. There were frequent skirmishes that ended up with injured victims in the hospital. They never prevented us from holding our rallies, but in the course of a swing through the interior by Libertad, there were incidents that came very close to ending in tragedy.
In that northern departamento, an Aprista cradle and bulwark, the most important and most numerous cooperatives on the coast, such as Casagrande and Cartavio, are located, and I was determined to visit them. In Casagrande, although the counterdemonstration of “buffaloes” made an infernal racket — they were posted on the rooftops and in the narrow streets leading to the main square — the former Aprista senator Torres Vallejo and I were able to deliver our talks from the bed of a truck, and even take a turn on foot about the place, before leaving. But in Cartavio they had set up an ambush for us. The rally, attended by a fair number of people, took place without incident. Once it was over, as the motorcade was getting ready to leave, we were attacked by a horde armed with stones and knives and some with pistols, who hurled all sorts of things at us, even tires that they had set on fire. I was already in the supposedly armored van, one of whose windowpanes disintegrated from the stones being thrown at us, and despite the moments of chaos, I managed to grab the hand of one of my bodyguards when I noticed that, out of fear or rage, he was about to shoot point-blank at the attackers, headed by two Aprista leaders of the region: Benito Dioces Briceño and Silverio Silva. Four cars in our motorcade were smashed to pieces and burned, and among the injured was the English journalist Kevin Rafferty, who followed me all through the North and who, they told me, remained imperturbably calm as the blood streamed down his face. A similar cool-headedness was shown by my brother-in-law, who always stayed behind until the very end to make sure that the camera crews and sound technicians were protected, and Manolo Moreyra, the leader of SODE, who, in one of his usual streaks of inattention to what was going on, had stayed behind to inspect the place when the rally had already broken up. The attack did not give them time to reach their cars. So they then mingled with the assailants, who fortunately did not recognize them. Both of them escaped being thoroughly beaten up. The episode gave rise to many protests and President García made things worse by saying over television that there was no reason to make such a fuss “over a few little stones that landed on Vargas Llosa.”