In this context, it is obvious that behind the state of emergency decreed on the very day of the putsch, we are witnessing a growth of military and police operations aimed at decapitating the leadership of the social movements, the trade unions and the political parties opposed to Fujimori. While the Peruvian mass movement has, for several years now, suffered from a crisis of leadership, the exhaustion of its forms of organization and a demobilization of its base because of the mistakes of its leaders, and even if it finds itself on the defensive, it has never ceased to mobilize against the decrees and policies of the government.
Finally, it is necessary to see what will be the real response of imperialism, the Latin American governments and the regime's international financial backers. Until now, with the exception of the Japanese, the other governments have, at least in words, condemned the putsch.
The events of April 6 in Peru, coming after those in Haiti or Venezuela (see article p. 26), discredit the talk about the
"defence of democracy " from the United
States government, which was surely aware of these coups before they happe ned. With this putsch, Fujimori is risking everything. Either he is capable of immediately regaining control of the situation, rebuilding a consensus and recovering his social legitimacy, or he will have signed his own political death warrant, thus opening the door to a complete power vacuum in Peru. *
1. From "Patria Nueva" (1919), in Invitacion a la
Vida Heroica, by José Carlos Mariategui, Institute of Agrarian Support, Lima, 1989.