That is what happened. The bishop of Cajamarca, Monsignor José Dammert, a progressive in the Church, turned up on May 28 in La República, the daily paper capable of any imaginable calumny, to criticize the archbishop of Lima, who, according to him, “had fallen into the trap” and allowed himself to be used as a tool by the Front, and to condemn him for seeking to revive “the Catholicism of the Crusades, the Catholicism of the Conquest — what used to be called in Spain national Catholicism.” That was how this prelate interpreted the archbishop’s decision to bring out for the procession, along with the Lord of Miracles, an image brought to Perú by the conquistadors: the Virgin of Evangelization. (Other “progressives” would wonder whether this meant that Monsignor Vargas Alzamora wanted to bring the Inquisition back to life.) While many personalities and institutions of the sector of the Church regarded as being “conservative,” such as Catholic Action, the CCEC (Consorcio de Centros Educativos Católicos: Association of Catholic Educational Centers), Opus Dei, Sodalitium, the Legion of Mary, closed ranks around the primate of the Peruvian Church, in the media controlled by the government and those of the left criticisms of the hierarchy by well-known “progressive” Catholics proliferated, such as the one by Senator Rolando Ames (in La República, May 30, 1990), protesting against the political pressure the episcopate was trying to bring to bear in my favor and against the conspiracy on the part of “certain bishops who are opposed to one of the presidential candidacies.” In Página Libre there appeared daily lists of “progressive Catholics” urging voters to cast their ballots for Fujimori, and announcements that thousands of humble women who were members of clubs for mothers, “belonging to the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church,” had sent to the Pope a protest — with 120 pages of signatures! — against those Church authorities who were inducing the faithful to vote against Fujimori, “the candidate of the people” (June 1, 1990).
Going himself one better in this clown act, President García announced that he would attend the procession to amend the insult to the Virgin Mary, because for ten years he had been a member of the “Ninth Company of the Brotherhood of the Christ Clad in Purple,” and that “those who believe that it is an act in bad taste and proclaim themselves to be agnostics” did not have the right to attend. Comparable to the unwitting humor of these declarations was a proposal, put forward in all seriousness, which I received at a meeting of the Democratic Front’s campaign command, for me to give my permission for a miracle to take place in the course of that procession. Through clever electronic devices, the mouth of the Lord of Miracles could be made to open at a peak moment of the procession and utter my name. “If the Christ Clad in Purple speaks we win,” Pipo Thorndike stammered excitedly.
Naturally, neither Patricia nor Álvaro nor I had planned to attend the procession (though my mother went to join it, sincerely alarmed that evangelical demons were about to take over Peru), but neither did the most militant of the Catholics among the leaders of the Freedom Movement attend, heeding Monsignor Vargas Alzamora’s request that political leaders refrain from “altering the nature” of the ceremony. A great multitude covered the Plaza de Armas that day, just as the crowd that escorted the Virgin of Chapi, in Arequipa, had been huge.
Ever since the beginning of this campaign, Fujimori handled the religious question deftly, thanking the archbishop and the bishops for their good offices, proclaiming himself a convinced and avowed Catholic — his children were studying with the Augustinian Fathers — and promising that during his administration the relations between the Catholic Church and the state would not be modified one iota and expressing his pleasure at the appearance of “our highly venerated Lord of Miracles…something that an agnostic would not be able to say,”* on the streets out of season — for this procession is traditionally held in October. From then on, he never missed an opportunity to be photographed and filmed in churches or proudly showing the photograph of his son Kenji on the occasion of his first communion. He did not appear to have the slightest memory of the efforts made in his behalf by his allies, the evangelicals, whom, moreover, he hastened to dump the moment he assumed office.†
In the midst of this religious imbroglio, in which I felt completely lost, not knowing how to act so as not to make a faux pas, not to appear to be an opportunist and a cynic, and not to retract what I had said I believed and did not believe, I received a discreet request from the apostolic nuncio for us to have a talk together. We met in Alfredo Barnechea’s apartment, and there the purple-clad prelate (as my longago staff writer Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui would have put it), a refined Italian diplomat, informed me, without spelling it out word by word, of the concern on the part of the Church because of the rise to political power of evangelical sects in a traditionally Catholic country such as Peru. Couldn’t something be done? I told him jokingly that I was doing everything possible to prevent it, but that winning the second round did not depend on me alone. A few days later, Freddy Cooper came out to my house to announce to me that Pope John Paul II would receive me at a special private audience in Rome in three days’ time. I could go, meet with the Pope, and be back in just over forty-eight hours, so that the timetable of the campaign wouldn’t be affected. Such an interview would banish the last scruples that certain Peruvian Catholics of the old school might still have, despite what was happening, about voting for an agnostic. This opinion was also shared by several members of the campaign commando team and of the “kitchen cabinet.” But even though there was a moment when I was tempted — more out of curiosity about the person of the Pope than because I placed any confidence in the beneficial effect of the meeting on the election — I decided not to make the trip. It would have been a move so obviously opportunistic that it would have made us all feel ashamed.
And along with religion, another equally unexpected, and more sinister, subject suddenly made its appearance: racism, ethnic prejudice, social resentment. All that has existed in Perú since before the arrival of Europeans, when the civilized Quechuas of the mountain regions had had the most profound contempt for the small and primitive cultures of the Yungas on the coast, and it has been a factor making for violence and an important obstacle to the integration of Peruvian society throughout the entire history of the Republic. But in no previous election campaign has it appeared as openly as in the second round of voting, placing in full public view one of the worst of our national flaws.