Peruvian politician (1950?2021)
In this
Spanish name
, the first or paternal
surname
is
Higuchi
and the second or maternal family name is
Miyagawa
.
Susana Shizuko Higuchi Miyagawa
(26 April 1950 ? 8 December 2021) was a Peruvian politician and engineer. She served as
First Lady of Peru
from 1990 to 1994 as the wife of President
Alberto Fujimori
. In 1994 she described her husband as a corrupt tyrant and divorced him in 1995.
Higuchi was elected as a member of the
Independent Moralizing Front
(
Frente Independiente Moralizador
, FIM), a reformist political party allied with then president
Alejandro Toledo
, in both the
2000
and
2001
general elections. She served as a member of the
Congress
for two terms from 2000 to 2006,
Early life
[
edit
]
Of Japanese descent, Higuchi was born in
Lima
, Peru.
[1]
She attended
Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria
specializing in
hydraulics
, working for the El Sol tire company and established her family in
La Victoria District, Lima
.
[2]
Higuchi was often viewed as being independent and outspoken, initiating the first steps of her relationship with
Alberto Fujimori
despite the disagreement of her parents.
[2]
The two spent four months dating, with Higuchi noting Fujimori's resemblance to her brother who died in a motorcycle accident and their shared interest in science and statistics.
[2]
Career
[
edit
]
After marrying Fujimori, she opened the company Construcciones Fuji, often directing workers in her daily outfit of a regular shirt, jeans and boots.
[2]
At this time, she was the primary income-earner in the family as Fujimori earned a modest professor salary, creating an unequal and strained relationship.
[2]
First Lady of Peru
[
edit
]
As first lady during her husband's presidency, Higuchi was among the early people in Peru to allege criminal misdoings on the part of her husband. As early as 1992, she denounced several of her Fujimori in-laws for corruption in connection, especially Juana and Rosa Fujimori, alleging Fujimori's sisters sold used clothing donated by Japan for millions of dollars.
[2]
The
Congress of Peru
was beginning to investigate the allegations, though President Fujimori initiated the
1992 Peruvian coup d'etat
and dissolved Congress before any formal inquiries could begin.
[2]
In 1994, she publicly condemned her husband as a tyrant and his government as corrupt. Fujimori reacted by formally stripping her of the title
First Lady
in August 1994, appointing their elder daughter
Keiko
First Lady in her place. Higuchi thereupon established her own political party, the
Harmony 21st century
, and announced her intention to enter politics as a candidate for
mayor of Lima
in the 1995 elections. In December 1994 the Harmony party was ruled ineligible because it failed to muster the required number of signatures to qualify as a legitimate political party.
Because of her outspokenness, Higuchi was subjected to repeated efforts to silence her. Peru's media, which operated in accordance to President Fujimori, also ignored stories regarding the alleged abuses against Higuchi.
[2]
One journalist of Channel 2, Juan Subauste, said that they interviewed Higuchi in 1994 in the
Plaza de Armas of Lima
where she said that she was mistreated and locked in her room, though the interview was never reported in Peru until the 2000s due to the oversight of Channel 2 by the
National Intelligence Service
of
Vladimiro Montesinos
.
[2]
In 2001, she told investigators probing the corruption of the Fujimori years that she had been tortured "five hundred times" by the intelligence services of the
Peruvian Army
.
[3]
Fujimori denied that Higuchi had been tortured. He said the scars on her back and neck were not caused by torture, but were the result of a traditional Chinese and Japanese therapy called
moxibustion
, which Higuchi underwent to help her stop smoking and to relieve back troubles.
[
citation needed
]
In July 2001, she alleged that in 1990, shortly before coming to power, her ex-husband received a donation of US$12.5 million from Japanese citizens destined for poor children in Peru, but he deposited it in a private bank account in Japan.
[4]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Higuchi married
Alberto Fujimori
on 25 July 1974
[2]
and formally divorced him in 1995.
[5]
They have four children:
Keiko Sofia
, Hiro Alberto, Sachi Marcela, and
Kenji Gerardo
.
[
citation needed
]
Higuchi died of cancer in 2021.
References
[
edit
]