Peru 1990: Hurtado Miller and the Paquetazo

Paquetazo is an Spanish expression for a group of laws or regulations to correct, especially the economic Status Quo, with the finality to redirect, or reorder, the economy of a country. This order by Alberto Fujimori in August 1990, after he promised he would not do it, gave him the golden key to win the presidential election against the writer and later Nobel prize Mario Vargas Llosa; in my consideration it was one of the most inhuman actions against most of the Peruvian citizens that were suffering of a severe economic crisis already.

All the state help was used to keep the basic food products and fuel reduced and affordable and to pay the pensions to the elderly people; it all disappeared the next day after the speech of Hurtado Miller, Minister of Economics of the  new government. Little and Medium businesses needed to close, the countries industries where dismantling, and who still had some money went to another country (no matter where), but Peru became a country of unhappiness where long friendships needed to get separated forever, even parents, that in some cases will no longer see their kids. Life turned into a misery in name of the inflation regulation and the possibility to get foreign credits. 

After these 35 years almost all the former presidents alive are in jail, or waiting to be convicted, and with almost no national industries, a country that still lives of basic miners and extracting activities and just with shops to sell Chinese products, with an economy that is stable, but with a state that is highly in debt, as the majority of citizens who are suffering of the American nightmare can’t pay their credit cards, with a network of infrastructure that is in most of the cases old and far away of the new transportation needs, and what is new is falling because it was made between corrupt contractors and authorities; where 85% of the citizens are victims of all kinds of criminality during the last years.  These criminals, that were kids 35 years ago, walking at night alone on the streets, serving as glass cleaners to cars during the traffic light stops, and the car drivers just closed the window to them, as if the problems didn’t exist or will not affect you in the near future, some of these street children were already addicted to Terokal, a glue for leather and shoe repair, a very used product in this critical economic time where everything needed to be fixed. After 35 years, that a government decided to play G-D, and denay the rights for an essential life for their citizens, but the main difference is that G-D will never damage his sons.