A Fish in the Water by Mario Vargas Llosa — Read

The Freedom Movement was organized in a painter's studio. At the end of September 1987, those of us who had planned the Meetings for Freedom were summoned to Fernando de Szyszlo's by Freddy Cooper. There, amid half-finished paintings and masks and pre-Hispanic feather cloaks, we exchanged ideas about the future. The success of the fight against Alan García's attempt to nationalize the banks had filled us with enthusiasm and hope. Peru was changing, then. Should we return to our usual occupations, telling ourselves that our task was fulfilled, or was it worth our while to make this nascent organization a permanent one, with an eye to the coming elections?

The dozen friends gathered together there agreed to continue our political activity. We would create something of broader scope and more flexible than a political party, a movement, to be known as the Movimiento Libertad, that would bring together those independents who had mobilized against state control and put down roots in the popular sectors, in particular among the tradesmen and small businessmen working within the so-called informal or parallel economy, a form of popular black market capitalism. They were an example of the fact that, despite the triumph of the ideology of state control among the elite of the country, an instinct for free enterprise existed among the Peruvian people. At the same time that it was attempting to organize these sectors, Libertad would draw up a thoroughgoing reform program and modernize Peru's political culture, opposing both socialist collectivism and mercantilist capitalism by putting forward a liberal policy.