Thousands lined up outside the Museo de la Nación on Thursday, September 12 and Friday, September 13 to pay their last respects to Alberto Fujimori, the autocrat who ruled over Peru from 1990 to 2000 and who died on Wednesday at the age of 86. Around the coffin, which was on public display in the Nazca room in the immense brutalist-style concrete building, his son Kenji, in tears, leaned on his sister Keiko. "Chino! Chino!" – the former president's nickname, despite his Japanese origins – chanted the crowd.

The current president of Peru, Dina Boluarte (right), declared three days of national mourning. Flags were flown at half-mast on public buildings. "May God keep him in his glory and may he rest in peace!" posted Boluarte on her official account before attending the wake in a white jacket and black skirt.

The decision to declare national mourning has outraged some Peruvians. In 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for corruption and for his responsibility in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres, which left 25 civilians dead in the early 1990s. The court had ruled that these events constituted "crimes against humanity."

Released in 2023 by a controversial decision from the Constitutional Court on "humanitarian" grounds (for many years, he said that he was so ill that his last moments were near), despite opposition from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Fujimori has now been given honors fitting for a sitting president.

The former president continues to create deep divides in Peruvian society, resulting in two irreconcilable camps. For some, he is the man who fought terrorism and dismantled the Shining Path, a Maoist organization that plunged Peru into terror during the 1980s and 1990s, and delivered the country from economic disaster, with inflation rates in the region of 5,000% annually by the time he came to power.

For others, he is the autocrat who staged a coup d'état in 1992, dissolving Parliament and ruling by decree for months on end, who committed serious human rights violations in his fight against terrorism and who wiped out public services and exploded poverty with his neoliberal austerity plan, the "Fujishock."

Although voices in the street were unanimous in their praise of "El Chino" after his death, there was criticism on social media. Many accounts were quick to repost the "Vladi-videos," which show the then head of intelligence, Vladimiro Montesinos, bribing political leaders, business leaders, media executives and governors. These videos led to the fall of Fujimori's government in 2000 and his flight to Japan.

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