Just as in my meetings with the government planning committees, my visits to the workshops in cooking, mechanics, sewing, weaving, leather working, and so on, to the classes in reading and writing, nursing, running a business, or family planning, and to the construction projects sponsored by Acción Solidaria were a tonic to me that revived my enthusiasm. Such visits reassured me that I had done the right thing by entering politics.
I have been speaking of the women of Acción Solidaria, because for the most part it was women who took charge of that branch of the Movement, although many men worked hand in hand with them: Dr. José Draxl, for instance, who coordinated the basic courses on health, the engineer Carlos Hara, responsible for the community development projects, and tireless Pedro Guevara, who took over the work in the most remote and depressed areas as though they were a religious apostolate. The Solidarity program changed the life of many of the women members of Libertad, since before joining the Movement very few of them had had the same vocation for social service and the same practical experience in the field that the main leader of this part of the Movement, María Teresa Belaunde, did. The great majority of them were housewives, from families with moderate or high incomes, who up until then had lived a rather empty and even frivolous life, blind and deaf to the seething volcano that is the Peru of underdevelopment and wretched poverty. Beginning to rub elbows every day with people who lived amid ignorance, sickness, and unemployment, people who were the victims of multiple abuses — taking on a commitment that was ethical as well as political and social — transformed them in a short time into individuals who were clearheaded about the Peruvian drama and aroused in many of them the determination to do something concrete. I include my own wife among them. I saw Patricia transformed by working in Acción Solidaria and in what would be its best fruit, the PAS (Programa de Apoyo Sociaclass="underline" Program for Social Aid), an ambitious project intended to counterbalance the sacrifices that the stabilization of the economy would call for among the poorest segments of society. Even though she so thoroughly detested politics, she became passionately devoted to work in the young towns, in which she spent many hours during those years, readying herself to help me in the task of governing our country.
The women of the Solidarity program lacked a political vocation, but I was hoping that at least some of them would assume public responsibilities later on. With individuals like that, the whole nature of Peruvian politics could be changed. Seeing what they were doing, discovering how quickly they became thoroughly familiar with the entire range of problems of marginality and transformed themselves into excellent social promoters of social change — without them the Movement would never have put down roots in the young towns — was a refreshing contrast to the shady dealings of provincial political bosses or the petty intrigues within the Democratic Front. When, at the beginning of 1990, we drew up the lists of congressional candidates, I did my best, using the authority granted me by the first Libertad Congress, to convince two of the most dedicated leaders of Acción Solidaria, Diana de Belmont and Nany Bonazzi, to be our candidates for seats representing Lima. But both refused to abandon their work in the southern districts of the city for a seat in Congress.
From the days of the Plaza San Martín on, the subject of money had come up. Organizing rallies, opening party headquarters, going on tours about the country, setting up a national infrastructure, and keeping a campaign going for three years costs a good deal of money. Traditionally, in Peru, election campaigns provide an opportunity to raise money, under cover of which part of it ends up in the pockets of those on the take, who abound in all parties, and in many cases frequent them with this end in view. There are no laws regulating the financing of parties or of political campaigns and even when there are such laws, they are a dead letter. In Peru, such laws do not even exist as yet. Individuals and companies make discreet contributions to various candidates — it is not unusual for them to give money to several different ones at the same time, according to the candidates’ standing in public opinion polls — as an investment in the future, so as to assure themselves of the ensuing privileges that are the daily bread of mercantilism: import licenses, tax exemptions, concessions, monopolies, commissions, that entire discriminatory framework that keeps an economy that is under government control functioning. The entrepreneur or industrialist who does not collaborate knows that tomorrow the winning party can get even with him by administrative means and that he will be at a disadvantage in comparison with his competitors.
All this, like the shady deals under cover of the power of those who occupy the presidency, the ministries, and important posts in the administration, is something so widespread that public opinion has come to resign itself to it as though it were a decree of fate: is there any sense in protesting against the movement of heavenly bodies or the law of gravitation? Corruption, illegal dealings, using a public post to line one’s pockets, have been congenital to Peruvian politics since time immemorial. And during Alan García’s administration, all this beat every previous record.
I had promised myself to put an end to this epiphenomenon of Peruvian underdevelopment, because without a moralization of power and of politicians democracy would not survive in Peru or would go on being a caricature. And also for a more personal reason: the thieves and the thievery associated with politics make me sick to my stomach. It is a human weakness I am unable to tolerate. Stealing while occupying a government post in a poor country, where democracy is still in diapers, has always struck me as an aggravating circumstance of the crime thus committed. Nothing takes away the prestige of democracy and works so unrelentingly for its downfall as corruption. Something in me rebels, beyond all reason, when I am confronted with this criminal use of power that has been obtained thanks to the votes of naïve and hopeful people, in order to fatten one’s own bank account and those of one’s bosom buddies. It was one of the reasons why my opposition to Alan García was so unrelenting: because under his administration political graft became the general rule in Peru, to extremes that made a person’s head swim.
The subject sometimes woke me up at night, in a fit of anxiety. If I were president, how could I keep thieves from doing as they pleased in my administration? I talked the matter over countless times with Patricia, with Miguel Cruchaga and other friends in Libertad. Doing away with state interventionism in the economy would, naturally, reduce graft. It would no longer be ministers or important officials in ministries who would decide, through decrees, the success or failure of businessmen, but consumers. It would no longer be bureaucrats who would fix the value of foreign currencies, but the market. There would be no more import or export quotas. And the privatization of state enterprises would drastically reduce the possibilities for graft and peculation on the part of bureaucrats and government officials. But until a genuine, functioning market economy existed, there would be any number of chances for underhanded deals. And even later on, power would always give the person who held it a chance to sell something under the table and enable him to reap a profit for himself from the privileged information that any government official possesses. An efficient and incorruptible judiciary is the best check against such excesses. But our system of justice had also been eaten away by venality, particularly in recent years, when the salary of judges had been reduced, in real terms, to a mere pittance. And President García, as a precaution against what the future might bring, had filled the judiciary with people devoted to him. In this field, too, we would have to be prepared, as in the fight to establish a free market economy, to wage a war without quarter. But winning this war would be more difficult than winning the other one, for in this one the enemy was not only on the side of our adversaries. It was crouching among our own followers.