At rallies he spoke ahead of me. He always did so briefly, with one or two jokes about the Aprista administration, and addressing me as “President Mario Vargas Llosa,” which usually brought an ovation. The frantic, all-absorbing campaign never allowed me to have what I was often tempted to have with Orrego: a frank conversation, in which I would have perhaps come to learn the profound reasons for what seemed to me to be his irremediable disenchantment with politics, politicians and, perhaps, with Peru.
My other companion on the presidential list, Dr. Ernesto Alayza Grundy, was very different. Quite a bit older than we were — he was going on seventy-seven — Don Ernesto was named by the PPC as the candidate for the second vice presidency as a compromise between Senator Felipe Osterling and Representative Celso Sotomarino, when, at the congress of their party, held between April 28 and the first of May 1989, it looked as though Sotomarino would win the nomination in preference to Osterling, who, up until then, had been thought to be a sure thing. A very independent, combative, bad-tempered man, Sotomarino had been a stubborn opponent of the idea of the Front, had frequently attacked Popular Action and Belaunde, and harshly questioned my candidacy, so that naming him would have been inconsistent. With good judgment, Bedoya proposed to the congress a compromise candidate behind whom all the members of his party closed ranks: the venerable figure of Alayza Grundy.
Many people — including me, since I had a high opinion of him — regretted that Osterling, an attorney and a prestigious university professor with an excellent record in Congress, was not on the ticket, because of what his energy and good image would have contributed to it. But I soon discovered that, despite his advanced age, Don Ernesto Alayza Grundy was a splendid substitute.
We were friends, at a distance. At one time or another we had exchanged private letters, engaging affectionately in controversy on the subject of the state, which, in a lecture, I had characterized, following Karl Popper, as a “necessary evil.” Don Ernesto, an orthodox follower of the social doctrine of the Church, and like the latter, suspicious of liberalism, reprimanded me in polite terms, setting forth to me his views on the matter. I answered him by giving him a detailed account of mine, and it is my opinion that from that interchange it was clear to both of us that despite their differences, a liberal and a follower of the Church’s social doctrine such as he could understand each other, since they shared a broad ideological common denominator. On other occasions, and always with the same exquisite manners, Don Ernesto had sent me the Church encyclicals outlining its position in the social domain, and his own writings. Although the aforementioned texts usually aroused in me more hesitations than enthusiasm — the Christian social theory of “supplementarity,” besides being a tongue twister, always seemed to me to be a door through which a state control of all economic life could secretly slip through — these overtures of Don Ernesto’s made a gratifying impression on me. Here, among Peruvian politicians, was someone interested in ideas and doctrines, who understood politics as a cultural phenomenon.
My not being a believer was a reason for concern, and perhaps for anxiety, to the Catholics who backed me in Libertad and in the Christian Popular Party, in particular those who were not, as were the majority of those I knew, perfunctory, purely social believers out of habit, but sincere members of the Church who took great pains to live according to the dictates of their faith. I know few Catholics of this sort, and Don Ernesto Alayza Grundy is one of them — as is attested by his participation, always in the front ranks, in activities promoted by the Church in the educational or social field, his own exemplary professional and family life (he has eleven children), and his image of integrity and impeccable honesty, which had not suffered the slightest blemish, and that is saying a great deal, in over half a century of public life.
When I began my political activity, anticipating what my adversaries would obviously attempt to exploit to the limit in the coming months and years, I explained in an interview with César Hildebrandt that I was not a believer, nor was I an atheist either, but, rather, an agnostic, and that I would refuse to discuss religion during the campaign — for religious beliefs, like friendships, a person’s sex life, and sentimental ties, belong to the realm of what is private, and this realm must be rigorously respected and never turned into a subject of public debate. I also stated forcefully that, as was evident, whoever governed Peru, whatever his convictions might be, ought to be aware that the great majority of Peruvians were Catholics and act with due respect for their concerns.
Throughout the entire campaign I abided by this rule and never again touched on the subject, nor did I respond when, in the final months, the administration sent its spokesmen to ask the people, their faces distorted by anxiety: “Do you want to have an atheist president? Do you know what an atheist president will mean for Peru?”
(For a fair number of my compatriots, it turned out to be impossible to differentiate atheism from agnosticism, however hard I tried, in that interview, to explain that an atheist is also a type of believer — someone who believes that God does not exist — whereas an agnostic affirms the same uncertainty about the nonexistence of a divine being and life beyond this earthly one as about their existence.)
But despite my refusal to discuss it again the subject pursued me like a shadow. Not only because the APRA and the administration made use of it unrestrictedly — there were innumerable articles in all the Aprista and Neoaprista pamphlets and scandal sheets, radio and television spots, fliers distributed in the streets, et cetera — but also because it tormented many of my supporters. I could write a book of anecdotes on the subject. I have hundreds of affectionate letters, especially from humble people, telling me that they were making novenas and vows and reciting prayers for my conversion, and many others from prying questioners, asking me what sort of religion the one I practiced — agnosticism — was, what its doctrine, its morality, and its principles were, and where one could find its churches and priests. At every rally, popular meeting, and tour of the streets, dozens of hands invariably slipped little holy images, medals, rosaries, talismans, written prayers, crosses, flagons of holy water into my pockets. And there arrived at my house anonymous gifts of religious images, lives of saints, manuals of piety — the most frequent one: Camino (The Path) by Monsignor Escrivá de Balaguer — or very pretty little boxes with Catholic relics, water from Lourdes or Fátima or soil from Jerusalem inside. On the day of the close of the campaign, in Arequipa, on April 5, 1990, after the rally in the Plaza de Armas there was a reception at the convent of Santa Catalina. A lady came over to me and with an air of mystery said to me that the mother superior wanted to see me. Taking me by the arm, she led me through the iron grille that partitions off the area where the cloistered nuns live. A door opened. A little nun in glasses, smiling and charmingly courteous, appeared. It was the mother superior. She invited me to cross the threshold and pointed out to me a little chapel where in the half-shadow I could make out white coifs and dark habits. “We’re praying for you,” she whispered to me. “And I don’t need to tell you why.”