I reflected on all this after talking with Elías Laroza and, as the polling places closed and the television networks began broadcasting the first projections of the results, before I knew that they were still worse than what we had had hints of: between 28 and 29 percent for me and Fujimori a bare five points behind me with 24 percent. The APRA and the United Left won, between them, a third of the votes.
I mulled over in my mind what I ought to do. Negotiating with Fujimori as soon as possible, handing the presidency over to him there and then in return for his consenting to economic reform: putting an end to inflation, lowering tariffs, opening up the economy to competition, renegotiating with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to allow Peru to participate once again in the global financial system, and perhaps the privatization of certain public enterprises. We had the technical experts and the key personnel he lacked to put those measures into effect. My principal argument would be: “More than 50 percent of Peruvians have voted for a change. It is clear that there is not a majority in favor of the radical change that I am proposing; the results show a majority inclined toward moderate, gradual change — for that government by consensus which I have always said would be tantamount to paralysis and inconsistent with our principles. It is crystal clear that I am not the right person to carry out this policy. But it would be a mockery of the decision of the majority for Cambio 90 to serve for one purpose only — to allow the APRA to continue to govern Peru — when it is also obvious that only some 19 percent of Peruvians want to go on exactly as before.”
At 6:30 p.m. I went down to the second floor to talk to the press. The atmosphere in the hotel was funereal. In the corridors, on the stairs, in the elevators, all that I saw were long faces, eyes brimming with tears, expressions of indescribable surprise, and a few, also, of utter rage. The conference room was jam-packed with journalists, cameras, and spotlights, and people from the Democratic Front who even in their dejection marshaled the strength to applaud me. When I could finally speak, I thanked the voters for my “victory” and congratulated Fujimori for the high percentage of votes he had received. I said that the results indicated a clear-cut decision in favor of change on the part of the majority of Peruvians, and that therefore it should be possible to spare the country the risks and tensions of a second round of voting and negotiate a formula that would give rise once and for all to an administration that would put its shoulder to the wheel.
At that point, Miguel Vega interrupted me to whisper in my ear that Fujimori had turned up at the hotel. Could he come in? I said yes, and suddenly there he was on the platform alongside me. He was shorter than he looked in photographs of him and Japanese through and through, down to his slight Japanese accent in Spanish. I learned afterward that, when he appeared at the door of the Sheraton, a group of supporters of the Front had tried to attack him, but that another group had held them back and helped his bodyguards protect him and escort him to the auditorium. We gave each other a friendly embrace for the photographers and I told him that we must talk together, the very next morning.
The nineteenth floor had filled with friends and supporters who, once they had learned the results, had rushed to the hotel and overflowed the security barrier set up to isolate me. The suite had the air of a wake and, at times, of a madhouse. People’s faces reflected surprise, consternation, and great bitterness over the unforeseen results. The radio and television stations had begun to broadcast rumors that I was going to give up my candidacy, and the leaders of the APRA and the United Left were beginning to hint that in the runoff round they would throw their support to Fujimori’s “popular candidacy.” The owners of El Comercio, Alejandro and Aurelio Miró Quesada, the first to arrive, were adamant, insisting that there was no reason whatsoever for me to refuse to run in a second round since I still had every possibility of winning. Shortly thereafter, Belaunde Terry and Violeta arrived, and Lucho and Laura Bedoya and campaign directors of the Front. I stayed there until almost ten that night, saying and hearing the conventional things with which my friends, relatives, supporters, and I tried to hide the disappointment we felt.
As we left the Sheraton, Patricia firmly insisted that I get out of the car and say a few words to several hundred young people of Libertad who had been there since dusk, shouting slogans in chorus and singing. I recognized Johnny Palacios and Felipe Leno, the fervent secretary general of the young people’s section of Libertad, who had been at my side on all the speakers’ platforms everywhere in Peru, raising rallies to a fever pitch with his thundering voice. His eyes were damp, but he forced himself to smile. And on reaching home, despite its being almost midnight, I found myself again in the midst of a crowd of young people who had surrounded the house, whom I felt it my duty to thank for their loyalty.
When I was alone at last with Patricia and the children, dawn was breaking. Nonetheless, before going to bed, I made a first draft of the letter explaining to Peruvians why I would give up running for the presidency in the second round and urging those who had voted for the Front to support Fujimori’s administration. I was hoping to show it to my opponent the following day as an enticement that would encourage him to accept an agreement that would allow certain points of the program to “change Peru, in freedom” to be saved.
Nineteen. The Trip to Paris
One day in September or October 1957, Luis Loayza brought me a piece of unbelievable news: a short story contest, organized by a French magazine, the prize for which was — a two-week trip to Paris!
La Revue Française, a deluxe publication devoted to art and edited by Monsieur Prouverelle, was bringing out a series of issues, each of which was a monograph on a different country. The short story contest, with its coveted prize, was a feature of that series of monographs. An opportunity like that catapulted me to my typewriter, as was the case with every living Peruvian who knew how to write, and that was how I came to pen “El desafío” (“The Challenge”), a story about an old man who sees his son die in a knife duel, in the dry riverbed of the Piura, that is included in my first book, Los jefes, a collection of short stories published in 1959. (In English, the book’s title is The Cubs and Other Stories.) I entered the short story in the contest, the winner of which was to be decided by a jury headed by Jorge Basadre and on which there were critics and writers — Héctor Velarde, Luis Jaime Cisneros, André Coyné, and Sebastián Salazar Bondy — and tried to think of something else, so that the disappointment wouldn’t be as great if anyone else turned out to be the winner. Some weeks later, one afternoon when I was beginning to prepare the 6 p.m. news bulletin, Luis Loayza appeared in the doorway of my shack at Radio Panamericana, elated: “You’re going to France!” He was as overjoyed as though he’d won the prize himself.