Alberto Fujimori was the first Peruvian president to fly to Beijing in the 1990s. He was looking for money and international backing, and ended up turning Peru toward China.
Now his daughter inherits that legacy just as Donald Trump seeks to reassert US influence in Latin America as part of his drive to dominate the western hemisphere.
President-elect Keiko Fujimori won Peru’s election last month on a pro-business, tough-on-crime agenda. US-educated and with strong personal ties to the country, she’d seem like a natural ally for the Trump White House.
Except she doesn’t want to commit.
No automatic alignment, her platform says. Just pragmatism and a strategically balanced position between China and the US.
It’s a reminder of the limits of Trump’s effort to push China out of the region, especially south of Colombia, where Beijing’s economic pull is stronger.
China is Peru’s biggest trading partner and a heavyweight investor in mining, energy and infrastructure. Exhibit A is the $1.3 billion Chancay megaport inaugurated by President Xi Jinping.
Built to help turn Peru into a Pacific logistics hub, the port has also become a flashpoint in US-China rivalry, fueling security concerns in Washington.
As tensions mounted, Trump sent a new ambassador to Lima in February: Bernie Navarro, who quickly found himself dealing with an outgoing Peruvian president embroiled in a scandal over secret meetings with Chinese businessmen at a Chinese-Peruvian restaurant.
The ambassador responded with some culinary diplomacy of his own, posting a photo of the pair eating hamburgers with the caption: “Changing the menu.”
Fujimori appears willing to let the US play catch-up, but likely not at the expense of turning Peru’s back on Beijing.
The nation’s investment “restaurant” will be APEC, she said, where the US sits alongside Asia.
“Peruvian cuisine is fusion,” she asserted. — Carla Samon Ros