LIMA, July 29 — We are offering the following story that has been selected by AFP’s chief editors for re-publication as among the best of the week.

For fervent Keiko Fujimori supporters living in neighbourhoods that bear the Peruvian president’s name, the tough-talking leader cannot start fighting crime soon enough.

Conservative Fujimori won the presidential run-off by a mere 50,000 votes and has sworn to get a grip on the crime wave sweeping the Andean nation.

Extortion is a primary concern among many Peruvians, with recorded cases ballooning in recent years. Peru is facing its worst security crisis in decades, fueled by the spread of both local and foreign criminal gangs that oversee contract killings and extortion.

Roxana Quispe, a baker living in the port city of Callao near Lima, has received multiple threats from extortionists via phone calls.

The 42-year-old has fixed her hopes on Fujimori to resolve the issue.

“I hope she comes here and sees our needs,” she told AFP. “I have a lot of faith in her.”

Namesakes

Quispe lives in a section of the Ventanilla neighbourhood named after the president, who served as first lady in her father Alberto Fujimori’s government in the 1990s.

The disgraced ex-leader was eventually jailed for corruption and crimes against humanity committed in the name of fighting what he considered terrorism.

But this legacy does not perturb his loyal followers in Quispe’s neighbourhood, where the pharmacy, soccer pitch and community kitchen also serve as namesakes.

The area has a peculiar past: it began as an illegal settlement in 1996, but the 100 or so settler families gained legitimacy when then-president Fujimori granted them property titles.

They named it for Fujimori as “a way of showing gratitude,” said original settler and staunch supporter Cesar Garcia, 52.

Most locals openly endorse the new president, but there are some skeptics too.

“I don’t think she will fulfil 100 per cent of her promises,” said 36-year-old food vendor Luzmari Anaya.

‘We lived in darkness’

Over in Carabayllo, a hilltop Lima community some 20km away, a neighbourhood with the same name shares similar origins — and sentiments — with Ventanilla’s Fujimori district.

“We used to live on rocks, on abandoned land,” community kitchen coordinator Elsa Lorena, 48, told AFP.

“We lived in darkness because there was no electricity and we bought water from tank trucks,” she said.

“Now we have streets thanks to Alberto Fujimori.”

Arturo Maldonado, a political scientist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, said these “urban-marginal sectors” will support the Fujimori name as long as “land titles, public works and infrastructure” remain a possibility.

“It is likely that (Keiko Fujimori) has an attitude very similar to her father’s, making gestures — let’s not call them populist, but definitely for the ‘audience,’” Maldonado told AFP.

Fears, hopes

Her surname is toxic to other parts of Peruvian society, however, and her father’s reputation contributed to three former electoral losses.

But on her fourth attempt, she has parachuted into power by drawing on widespread fears of rising crime rates.

Last year saw the number of homicides rise to 2,600 compared to 1,000 in 2018.

Reports of extortion meanwhile jumped from 3,200 to 26,500 over the same period.

Fujimori proposes fighting crime by expelling undocumented people, setting up courts with anonymous judges and making prisoners work for their food.

“What they are asking for is order and security, and that is the first thing we are going to do,” she told reporters last week.

The 51-year-old will take office on July 28, making her the country’s ninth leader in a decade.

“I hope that after so many governments that have disappointed us, she keeps the promises she’s making,” says Herbert Pagan, 63, a security guard from Ventanilla. — AFP