I was born in Peru in 1992, the same year President Alberto Fujimori announced he was dissolving Congress and suspended the Constitution, performing what was later called a “self-coup.” He sent tanks through the streets and arrested journalists and his political opponents, while assuming full legislative and judicial powers. He turned a democratically elected government into a dictatorship that came to define modern Peru. As long as I can remember, I’ve only known my country under the shadow of Mr. Fujimori and his political movement: Fujimorismo.

My own identity became defined, in large part, by opposition to Mr. Fujimori. The first political event I attended during my freshman year of college was a celebration of the conviction for violating human rights that sent him to prison. The first presidential campaign I volunteered in was to prevent his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, from becoming president. And I joined protests against the pardon Mr. Fujimori received from President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on Christmas Eve in 2017. That night, Christmas arrived in Lima while the police choked us with tear gas.

When I found out that Mr. Fujimori died on Sept. 11, I was left questioning both his legacy and the future of my country. Today, the most important division in Peruvian politics is still between Fujimorismo and antifujimorismo. Followers of Fujimorismo see the former leader as the savior of Peru for ending the hyperinflation and terrorism of the 1980s. Followers of antifujimorismo — including me — believe the crimes committed during his regime are unforgivable. But the true inheritance of the controversial leader’s legacy is the belief that the ends justify the means — that anything goes in politics. And today that approach to politics, the idea that democratic procedures can be disregarded for allegedly higher goals, has been embraced by most Peruvian politicians, even many who have made a career positioning themselves against Mr. Fujimori’s ideals.

Before Mr. Fujimori, Peru’s liberal democracy was still young. In 1980, after 12 years of military dictatorship, a progressive constitution was enacted that established robust union rights and guaranteed universal suffrage. Freedom of the press returned. Yet the 1980s were also a disaster in Peru. Tens of thousands of Peruvians were killed by Shining Path, a terrorist organization that sought to impose radical Maoist ideologies and started a war with the Peruvian state. Thousands of people were “disappeared,” extrajudicially executed and tortured by members of the Peruvian armed forces — who could detain anyone they suspected of subversive activity — and the police. In the 1980s, poverty increased dramatically, with Peru reaching hyperinflation. The government reported that consumer prices rose 1,722 percent in 1988. Those who could fled the country. We continued to have a formal democracy, but what good was such a democracy to Peruvians who were dying either by hunger or by bullets?

When Mr. Fujimori was elected in 1990, he promised to take action. Not long after, he was convinced that democratic procedures impeded him from addressing both terrorism and the economic crisis, arguing that the separation of powers, human rights and political pluralism were luxuries we could no longer afford. When he met some resistance from Congress, the judiciary and social organizations, he effectively overthrew his own democratically elected government and imposed a new constitution — still in place today — that was tailor-made to concentrate power into one leader’s hands.

Under his rule, everything was fair game: arbitrary detentions, death squads, buying off political opponents, censoring the media, firing inconvenient judges. And yet he still had public support. Many Peruvians, weary of a system that couldn’t protect them, trapped between terrorism and hyperinflation, were willing to sacrifice democracy at the altar of authoritarianism in exchange for some stability. And Mr. Fujimori delivered it — at a terrible price that we will continue to pay, even after his death.