title: The Joshua Tree

text: On the night before the 15 January 1987 deadline set by Island Records to complete the record, the band and the crew completed mixing. As they worked at Melbeach, Lillywhite's wife, singer Kirsty MacColl, volunteered to set the running order for the album. The band told her to put "Where the Streets Have No Name" first and "Mothers of the Disappeared" last, with the rest sequenced according to her preference. Bono said of MacColl's contribution, "Your hope for your album is that it will always be greater than the sum of its parts. It wasn't happening for "The Joshua Tree" and she came in and she organized it and it worked as an old-fashioned album: a beginning, middle and end." Around 2am, just seven hours before the album was due to Island for mastering, the Edge tried to convince Lillywhite to allow him to add backing vocals to "Where the Streets Have No Name", but he was denied. In the morning, Meegan and Lillywhite flew with the album's tapes to Island's offices in Hammersmith, London.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Following the completion of the album proper, U2 returned to the studio with Meegan and McCarthy to complete the new material they had shelved in October. These tracks, which included "Walk to the Water", "Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)", and "Spanish Eyes", were completed as B-sides for the planned singles. The Edge said that with no producers around and "without the sense of significance that imbued the album sessions", the group worked quickly and productively, preventing the songs from, in his opinion, sounding overworked. The song "Sweetest Thing" was left off the album and released as a B-side, as the band felt it was incomplete and did not fit with the other songs. They later expressed regret that it had not been completed for "The Joshua Tree". The track was re-recorded as a single for the group's 1998 compilation "The Best of 1980–1990". U2 agreed that one track, "Birdland", was too strong for a B-side and they withheld it for a future album release. In 2007, a re-recorded version of the song, retitled "Wave of Sorrow (Birdland)", was included with the 20th anniversary edition of the album.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: After completing "The Joshua Tree", Bono said that he was "as pleased with the record as I can ever be pleased with a record", calling "The Joshua Tree" their most complete album since their debut. Clayton bought Danesmoate House in 1987 and made it his home.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: U2 is credited with composing all of "The Joshua Tree"s music. The album's sound draws from American and Irish roots music more than the group's previous albums, following the counsel and influence of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Keith Richards. "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" has strong gospel influences, with Bono singing of spiritual doubt in an upper register and Eno, Lanois, and the Edge providing choir-like backing vocals. The slow piano-based ballad "Running to Stand Still" exhibits traits of folk music and acoustic blues in the track's slide acoustic guitar and harmonica. "Trip Through Your Wires", another song on which Bono plays harmonica, was described by Niall Stokes as a "bluesy romp". Summarising the stylistic direction, "Chicago Tribune" journalist Joshua Klein writes that the album "showed how U2's obsession with American roots flavored its art-rock".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The Edge's guitar playing on "The Joshua Tree" is characteristic of what came to be his trademark sound. His minimalist style sharply contrasted with the emphasis placed on virtuosity and speed by heavy metal in the 1980s. The Edge views musical notes as "expensive", preferring to play as few of them as possible and to instead focus on simpler parts that serve the moods of the songs. Much of this was achieved with a delay effect, contributing to a chiming, echo-laden sound. For example, the riff in the introduction of the opening track "Where the Streets Have No Name" is a repeated six-note arpeggio, with delay used to repeat notes. The riffs to "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "With or Without You" also prominently use delay, with Bono likening the guitar hook from the former track to "chrome bells".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The Edge continued to employ the ambient techniques of guitar playing that he used on "The Unforgettable Fire"; for "With or Without You", he used a prototype of the Infinite Guitar to add layers of sustained notes, an approach he first took on his 1986 solo album, the "Captive" soundtrack. On other songs, his guitar playing is more aggressive; "Exit" was described by Colin Hogg as a "decidedly scary... guitar-driven barrage", while Andrew Mueller said the guitar sounds from "Bullet the Blue Sky" evoke images of fighter planes. The Edge developed the harsh, feedback-charged guitar part for the latter song at Bono's instruction to "put El Salvador through an amplifier", after Bono returned angry from a visit to the war-torn country. Bono also contributed to songwriting on guitar; the Spanish guitar melody in "Mothers of the Disappeared" originated from a song that he wrote in Ethiopia to teach children about basic hygiene.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Much like on , Bono exhibits an expressive, open-throated vocal delivery, which many critics described as "passionate". "Spin" found that the group's exploration of roots music resulted in Bono's style expanding, saying that he "commands the full whisper-to-shout range of blues mannerisms". Bono attributes this maturation to "loosening up", "discover[ing] other voices", and employing more restraint in his singing. His vocals became, in the words of Thom Duffy, more "dynamic" than they had been on previous records. On "Where the Streets Have No Name", his voice varies greatly in its timbre (as writer Mark Butler describes, "he sighs; he moans; he grunts; he exhales audibly; he allows his voice to crack") and its timing by his usage of rubato to slightly offset the sung notes from the beat. For author Susan Fast, "With or Without You" marks the first track on which he "extended his vocal range downward in an appreciable way".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Bono is credited as the album's sole lyricist. Thematically, the album juxtaposes antipathy towards the United States against the band's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedoms, and ideals. Anger is directed particularly at the perceived greed of the Ronald Reagan administration and its foreign policy in Central America. Bono said, "I started to see two Americas, the mythic America and the real America", hence the album's working title, "The Two Americas". Having toured the US extensively in the past, the group were inspired by the country's geography. As such, the desert, rain, dust, and water appear as lyrical motifs throughout the record. In many cases, the desert is used as a metaphor for "spiritual drought". One track that chiefly represents these themes is "In God's Country", which critic Barbara Jaeger interpreted as addressing America's role as the "promised land". Clayton explained the impact of the desert imagery: "The desert was immensely inspirational to us as a mental image for this record. Most people would take the desert on face value and think it's some kind of barren place, which of course is true. But in the right frame of mind, it's also a very positive image, because you can actually do something with blank canvas, which is effectively what the desert is."


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Political and social concerns were the basis for several tracks. Bono wrote the lyrics for "Bullet the Blue Sky" after visiting El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War and witnessing how the conflict between rebels and the US-backed government affected local civilians. During the mid-song spoken passage, he talks of a man with a "face red like a rose on a thorn bush", a reference to Reagan. Bono's trip also inspired "Mothers of the Disappeared", after he met members of COMADRES—the Mothers of the Disappeared—a group of women whose children were killed or "disappeared" during the civil war at the hands of the local government. The 1984 UK mining strike inspired the lyrics for "Red Hill Mining Town", which Bono wrote from the perspective of a couple affected by the strike. The story of a heroin-addicted couple was the basis for "Running to Stand Still", which Bono set in the Ballymun Flats residential towers in Dublin near which he was raised. The buildings are referenced in the lyric "I see seven towers / But I only see one way out". For "Where the Streets Have No Name", he wrote the lyrics in response to the idea that, in Belfast, a person's religion and income can be deduced based on the street they live on. "Exit" portrays the thoughts of a psychotic killer, although Clayton suggested that the line "He saw the hands that build could also pull down" is also a jab at the US government's conflicting roles in international relations.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Bono described 1986 as "an incredibly bad year" for him, which was reflected in the lyrics. His marriage was under strain, in part due to the album's long gestation period, the band were criticised by the Irish media for their involvement in Self Aid, and his personal assistant Greg Carroll was killed in a motorcycle accident. Bono said, "That's why the desert attracted me as an image. That year was really a desert for us." "With or Without You" was written while he was struggling to reconcile his wanderlust as a musician with his domestic responsibilities. "One Tree Hill", named after a volcanic peak in Carroll's native New Zealand, describes how Bono felt at Carroll's funeral. The album is dedicated to his memory.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The group's religious faith was a source of inspiration for many lyrics. On "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", Bono affirms this faith but sings of spiritual doubt ("I believe in Kingdom Come"... "But I still haven't found what I'm looking for"). Some critics surmised that the place Bono is referring to on "Where the Streets Have No Name" is Heaven. These two songs were singled out by some critics as demonstrating that the band was on a "spiritual quest". "Hot Press" editor Niall Stokes and Richard Harrington of "The Washington Post" interpreted "With or Without You" in both romantic and spiritual manners. Biblical references are made on other songs like "Bullet the Blue Sky" ("Jacob wrestled the angel", images of fire and brimstone) and "In God's Country" ("I stand with the sons of Cain"). Thom Duffy interpreted the album as an exploration of the "uncertainty and pain of a spiritual pilgrimage through a bleak and harsh world".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Designed by Steve Averill, the album sleeve was based on U2's request to depict the record's "imagery, and cinematic location" in the desert. Since the album's provisional titles were "The Desert Songs" and "The Two Americas", the initial concept for the sleeve was to represent where the desert met civilisation. The group decided early in the creative process to photograph in the US, contrasting with all of their previous albums, which had been shot in Ireland. They asked their photographer Anton Corbijn to search for locations in the US that would capture their ideas. A week prior to the photo shoot, he travelled to the US to compile a list of locations.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Over several days in December 1986, U2 travelled with Corbijn and Averill on a bus around the Mojave Desert for a photo shoot. The group stayed in small hotels and shot in the desert landscape, beginning at Reno, Nevada, before moving to locations in California such as the ghost town of Bodie, the Harmony Hotel in Twentynine Palms, Zabriskie Point, Death Valley Junction, and other sites in Death Valley. Corbijn rented a panoramic camera to capture more of the desert landscapes, but having no prior experience with the camera, he was unfamiliar with how to focus it. This led to him focusing on the background and leaving the band slightly out of focus. Corbijn said, "Fortunately there was a lot of light." Averill filmed portions of the trip with an 8 mm film camera. The photo shoots took place in the mornings and evenings, with mid-days spent travelling and on preparation. Corbijn later recounted that the main idea of the shoot was to juxtapose "man and environment, the Irish in America". Averill said of their photographic approach, "What I was trying to do with the way we shot the pictures and framed the cover was to suggest the landscape vision and cinematic approach that was taken to the recording."


title: The Joshua Tree

text: On the evening after the first day's shooting, Corbijn told the band about Joshua trees ("Yucca brevifolia"), hardy and twisted plants in the deserts of the American Southwest, and he suggested their use on the sleeve. Bono was pleased to discover the religious significance of the plant's etymology; according to Mormon legend, early settlers named the plant after the Old Testament prophet Joshua, as the tree's stretching branches reminded them of Joshua raising his hands in prayer. The following day, Bono declared that the album should be titled "The Joshua Tree". That morning, while driving on Route 190 near Darwin, they spotted a lone-standing tree in the desert. Corbijn had been hoping to find a single tree, as he thought it would result in better photographs than if he shot the band amongst a group of trees. They stopped the bus and photographed with the lone plant for about 20 minutes, something the Edge called "fairly spontaneous". Despite shooting in the desert, the group dealt with cold weather during parts of the trip. Bono explained, "it was freezing and we had to take our coats off so it would at least "look" like a desert. That's one of the reasons we look so grim." Regarding the serious tone of the images, Corbijn said, "I guess people felt they took themselves too seriously. It was definitely the most serious, I think, that you can photograph a band. You couldn't go any further down that line unless you start photographing graves."


title: The Joshua Tree

text: For the vinyl record release, Corbijn originally wanted to have a shot of the Joshua tree on the front of the sleeve, with U2 in a continuation of the photograph on the back. Averill tried out a concept with just the landscape on the front that he said resembled a "jazz ECM record". Ultimately, separate photographs were used for each side of the sleeve; an image of the group at Zabriskie Point was placed on the front, while an image of them with the tree appears on the back cover. For the front cover, Averill said that the framing of the band in the left half of the photo was meant to evoke the cinematography of film directors John Ford and Sergio Leone. The centre gatefold showed an image of U2 with the Joshua tree in the middle; a mirror used by them to check their appearance was mistakenly left in frame. Since the compact disc was a relatively new format at the time, the creative team decided to experiment with the album cover, selecting different cover images for each format on which the album was released; the original compact disc release used a blurry, distorted photo of the band, while the cassette used a clear, but alternate photo. Later CD reissues used the LP photo. "Rolling Stone" said that the album's title and the images of the tree befit a record concerned with "resilience in the face of utter social and political desolation, a record steeped in religious imagery". In 1991, the magazine ranked "The Joshua Tree" at number 97 on its list of the "100 Greatest Album Covers of All Time".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The tree photographed for the sleeve fell around 2000, yet the site remains a popular tourist attraction for U2 fans. One person inserted a plaque into the ground reading, "Have you found what you're looking for?", in reference to the album's track "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". It is a common misconception that the site is within Joshua Tree National Park, when in fact it is over away from the park.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Just prior to the release of "The Joshua Tree", Bono was stricken with a sudden panic about the quality of the completed album. He said that he contemplated calling the production plants to order a halt of the record's pressing, but he ultimately held off. Island Records spent over $100,000 on store displays advertising the album; president Lou Maglia called it "the most complete merchandising effort ever assembled". "The Joshua Tree" was released on 9 March 1987, with an initial shipment of 300,000 copies in the US. It was the first new release to be made available on the compact disc, vinyl record, and cassette tape formats on the same date. Record stores in Britain and Ireland opened at midnight to accommodate the large number of fans who had queued outside to buy the album.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: "The Joshua Tree" debuted on the UK Albums Chart on 21 March 1987 at number one with 235,000 copies sold in its opening week, making it the fastest-selling album in UK history to that point. It received a platinum certification in the UK within 48 hours of being released. The album spent two weeks atop the UK Albums Chart and spent its first 28 weeks within the top ten. In total, it charted in the UK for 201 weeks, ranking it among the longest-charting albums in the nation's history. On the US "Billboard" Top Pop Albums chart, the album debuted on 4 April 1987 at number seven, the highest debut for a studio album in the US in almost seven years. Three weeks later, it reached number one, becoming the group's first album to top the charts in the US. It remained at that position for nine consecutive weeks, the band's longest number-one reign on the chart and the second-longest reign in the US that year. The album spent a total of 120 weeks on the "Billboard" Top Pop Albums, 35 of them in the top ten. On 13 May 1987, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album double-platinum. All of the group's previous albums re-entered the "Billboard" Top Pop Albums chart in 1987. In Canada, the album debuted at number 51 on the "RPM" Top 100 Albums chart on 21 March 1987, and climbed to number one just two weeks later. Within 14 days of release, it sold 300,000 units in Canada and was certified triple-platinum. "The Joshua Tree" also topped the charts in Austria, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Sweden. In total, the album reached number one in over 20 countries. "Rolling Stone" said that the album increased the band's stature "from heroes to superstars". It was the first album by any artist to sell one million copies on CD in the US. U2 were featured on the cover of the 27 April 1987 issue of "Time", which declared them "Rock's Hottest Ticket"; they were just the fourth rock band to appear on the magazine's cover, following the Beatles, the Band, and the Who.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: "With or Without You" was released as the lead single on 21 March 1987, with the B-sides "Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)" and "Walk to the Water". The single quickly topped the "Billboard" Hot 100, becoming the band's first number-one hit in America. The song topped the singles chart in Canada, while reaching number four in the UK and number two in the Netherlands. The group originally planned to use "Red Hill Mining Town" as the second single. However, the group were unhappy with the music video filmed by Neil Jordan, and Bono had difficulty singing the song. Ultimately, the group canceled the single. Instead, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was chosen as the second single, and it was released in May 1987 with the tracks "Spanish Eyes" and "Deep in the Heart" as B-sides. Like its predecessor, it topped the Hot 100, giving U2 consecutive number-one singles in the US. The single peaked at number six in the UK, Canada, and the Netherlands. By May, sales of the album surpassed 7 million copies worldwide.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: "Where the Streets Have No Name" was released in August 1987 as the third single, with "Sweetest Thing", "Silver and Gold", and "Race Against Time" as B-sides. The single reached number seven in the Netherlands, number four on the UK Singles Chart, and number 13 in the US. The album's first three singles all topped the Irish Singles Charts, while charting within the top 20 of the singles charts in the UK, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. "In God's Country" was released as a fourth single exclusively in North America in November 1987, peaking at number 44 on the Hot 100 and number 48 as an import single in the UK. "One Tree Hill" was released as a fourth single in Australia and New Zealand in March 1988, and having been written for the New Zealand-native Carroll, it reached number one in his home country. By the end of 1988, "The Joshua Tree" had sold more than 14 million copies worldwide. It was the ninth-best-selling album in the UK during the 1980s.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: In 1996, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remastered the album and released it as a special gold CD. This edition rectified the incorrect track splitting between "One Tree Hill" and "Exit" that affected some CD releases; the quiet coda that concludes "One Tree Hill" had previously been included in the same track as "Exit".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Following its 30th anniversary reissue, "The Joshua Tree" re-entered the "Billboard" 200 chart the week of 8 June 2017, climbing to number 16—its highest position on the chart since 13 February 1988. That week, it shifted 27,000 album-equivalent units, 23,000 of which were sales, making it the album's highest-selling week in the US since 3 January 1993.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: "The Joshua Tree" received critical acclaim, and the best reviews of U2's career to that point. Steve Pond of "Rolling Stone" wrote, "For a band that's always specialized in inspirational, larger-than-life gestures—a band utterly determined to be Important—"The Joshua Tree" could be the big one, and that's precisely what it sounds like." The review described the album's sound as "wed[ding] the diverse textures of "The Unforgettable Fire" to fully formed songs, many of them as aggressive as the hits on "War"". Steve Morse of "The Boston Globe" echoed these sentiments in his review, stating, "It's another spiritual progress report, enwrapped in music that strikes a healthy balance between the lushness of their last album, 1984's "The Unforgettable Fire", and the more volcanic rock of their early years." Morse called it "their most challenging work to date" and the "most rewarding rock record of the new year". John McCready of "NME" praised the album as "a better and braver record than anything else that's likely to appear in 1987... It's the sound of people still trying, still looking..." Thom Duffy of the "Orlando Sentinel" said the songs have "exultant power" that, "like the Joshua Tree's branches, stretch upward in stark contrast to their barren musical surroundings on rock radio". He praised the musicianship of the group members, calling Bono's vocals "wrenching", the rhythm section of Mullen and Clayton "razor-sharp", and the Edge's guitar playing "never... better". Colin Hogg of "The New Zealand Herald" called "The Joshua Tree" "the most compelling collection of music yet from a band that has cut its career with passionate, exciting slashes". It judged that the record's "power lies in its restraint" and that there is an "urgency underlying virtually all of the 11 songs". Robin Denselow of "The Guardian" called the album "epic", saying "what U2 have achieved is an exhilarating and varied blend of controlled power and subtelty". The review praised U2 for maturing and expanding their musical range, yet "retain[ing] their sense of power" and the "brave passion and emotion" of Bono's vocals.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: "Q"s Paul Du Noyer said that the source of "The Joshua Tree"s "potency lies in a kind of spiritual frustration – a sense of hunger and tension which roams its every track in search of some climactic moment of release, of fulfilment, that never arrives." He concluded his review by writing that the music "has the one thing vital to worthwhile rock, a thing so often absent: the urge to exist". "Spin" hailed the record as U2's "first wholly successful album because it finally breaks free from the seductive but limiting chant-and-drone approach of earlier material". The review stated, "There isn't a bad song on the record" and that "every one has a hook". The magazine praised U2 for eschewing ambient experimentation in favour of uncomplicated but layered arrangements. Robert Hilburn of the "Los Angeles Times" said the album "confirms on record what this band has been slowly asserting for three years now on stage: U2 is what the Rolling Stones ceased being years ago—the greatest rock and roll band in the world". Hilburn noted that the band showed "sometimes breathtaking signs of growth" and played more "tailored and assured" music. "Hot Press" editor and longtime U2 supporter Bill Graham said that ""The Joshua Tree" rescues rock from its decay, bravely and unashamedly basing itself in the mainstream before very cleverly lifting off into several higher dimensions," and that U2 "must be taken very seriously indeed after this revaluation of rock". John Rockwell of "The New York Times" was complimentary of the band for expanding its musical range but said Bono's vocals were "marred throughout by sobbing affectation" and sounded too much like other singers, resulting in a "curious loss of individuality". The "Houston Chronicle"s Marty Racine felt it has "music that both soothes and inspires, music that is anthemic, music with style". Racine, however, believed the group took itself too seriously, resulting in a record that is "not a whole lot of fun, bordering on the pretentious", which caused him to lose interest by the second side. Robert Christgau from "The Village Voice" found the lyrics tasteful and the music "mournful and passionate, stately and involved", but lamented what he felt was pompous singing by Bono, calling it "one of the worst cases of significance ever to afflict a deserving candidate for superstardom".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: In a retrospective review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic said "their focus has never been clearer, nor has their music been catchier". His review concluded, "Never before have U2's big messages sounded so direct and personal." "Entertainment Weekly"s Bill Wyman wrote that the album combined "easy-to-grasp themes – alienation and an outsider’s ambivalent view of America – with an extremely focused musical attack". A 2008 retrospective by "Q" said "their reinvention of stadium rock sounds as impassioned as ever" and that the album strikes "a finely balanced mix of intimacy and power". Anthony DeCurtis of "Rolling Stone" compared the album to Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.", stating that both records "lifted a populist artist to mega-stardom", and that the musicians' uplifting live shows and the "sheer aural pleasure" of the two records obscured their foreboding nature. DeCurtis summarized "The Joshua Tree"s examination of America both lyrically and musically as such:


title: The Joshua Tree

text: In voting for "Rolling Stone"s 1987 end-of-year readers' polls, U2 won in the categories "Best Album", "Artist of the Year", "Best Band", "Best Single ("With or Without You)", and "Best Male Singer" (Bono). The album placed fourth on the "Best Albums" list from "The Village Voice"s 1987 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, and sixth on "NME"s list. In 1988, U2 received four Grammy Award nominations for the album and its songs, winning honours for Album of the Year (to beat artists such as Michael Jackson, Prince, and Whitney Houston) and Best Rock Performance By a Duo or Group With Vocal for "The Joshua Tree". "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year, but lost in both categories. U2 were the only act that year to be nominated in each of the "Big Three" categories (Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Album of the Year).


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Following the album's release, U2 embarked on a worldwide concert tour, the Joshua Tree Tour. Lasting from April to December 1987, it comprised 109 shows over three legs. The first and third legs visited the US, while the second leg toured Europe. "The Joshua Tree" elevated the group to a new level of popularity; the tour sold-out arenas and stadiums around the world—the first time they consistently performed at venues of that size. Songs from the album became staples of the tour's set lists, as the group regularly performed eight of the record's eleven tracks, and the only song not to be played was "Red Hill Mining Town".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: Like their previous tours, the Joshua Tree Tour was a minimalistic, austere production, and U2 used this outlet for addressing political and social concerns. One such issue was Arizona Governor Evan Mecham's canceling the state's observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Throughout the tour, the group continued to explore American roots music: they collaborated with folk artist Bob Dylan, blues musician B. B. King, and Harlem's New Voices of Freedom gospel choir; U2 also visited Graceland and Sun Studio in Memphis, where they recorded new material. These new songs and the band's experiences on tour were documented for the 1988 "Rattle and Hum" album and Phil Joanou-directed motion picture.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The tour grossed $40 million and drew 3 million attendees, but despite its commercial success and positive reviews, U2 were dissatisfied creatively, and Bono believed they were musically unprepared for their success. Mullen said, "We were the biggest, but we weren't the best", and for Bono the tour was "one of the worst times of [their] musical life". On the road, the group dealt with death threats, along with injuries that Bono sustained from performing. The band hinted that the stresses of touring led them to enjoy the "rock and roll lifestyle" they previously avoided.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: "The Joshua Tree" is the band's best-selling album, and with 25 million copies sold worldwide, it is among the best-selling albums of all time. It ranks as one of the best-selling albums in the US; in 1995, the RIAA certified it 10× platinum for shipping 10 million units. Similarly, the Canadian Recording Industry Association certified the album diamond in Canada. In the UK, "The Joshua Tree" ranks in the top 40 of the best-selling records with 2.88 million copies sold, having been certified 9× platinum, with an additional gold certification for the 20th anniversary edition. In the Pacific, it is certified 5× platinum and 14× platinum in Australia and New Zealand, respectively.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: "The Joshua Tree" has been acclaimed by writers and music critics as one of the greatest albums of all time; according to Acclaimed Music, it is the 40th most acclaimed record based on critics' lists. In 1997, "The Guardian" collated worldwide data from a range of renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, who placed the record at number 57 on the list of the "100 Best Albums Ever". It was ranked 25th in Colin Larkin's 2000 book "All Time Top 1000 Albums". In a poll of VH1 viewers the following year, "The Joshua Tree" was voted the greatest pop album of all time, based on responses from over 250,000 people. "Rolling Stone" ranked the album at number 26 on their 2003 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Subsequent updates to the list re-ranked the album; the 2012 version ranked it 27th, writing that the album "turn[ed] spiritual quests and political struggles into uplifting stadium singalongs", and the 2020 version of the list ranked it 135th. In 2006, "Time" named "The Joshua Tree" one of the magazine's 100 best albums, while "Hot Press" ranked it 11th on a similar list. "Q" named it the best record of the 1980s, while "Entertainment Weekly" included the album on its list of the 100 best records released between 1983 and 2008.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: In 2010, the album appeared at number 62 on "Spin"s list of the 125 most influential albums in the 25 years since the magazine launched. The publication said, "The band's fifth album spit out hits like crazy, and they were unusually searching hits, each with a pointed political edge." The same year, "Consequence of Sound" ranked "The Joshua Tree" 34th on its list of "The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time", calling it "Arguably the biggest album of the 1980s" and "proof that lightning can be captured in a bottle". In 2012, "Slant Magazine" ranked it 24th on its list of the "Best Albums of the 1980s", saying that "The Joshua Tree"s opening trio of songs helped "the band became lords and emperors of anthemic '80s rock" and that "U2 no longer belonged to Dublin, but the world." In 2018, "Pitchfork" ranked the record 47th on its list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s", writing that the album's "brilliant tension" and continued resonance was the result of Eno and Lanois "steer[ing] U2 toward a moody impressionism where slide guitars and three chord progressions sound cavernous, even ominous". "The Buffalo News" said the record "made [U2] the first mainstream band since the Beatles to capture the spirit of the age in a manner that was both populist and artistically, politically and socially incisive", while humanities scholar Henry Vyverberg considered it among the minority of attempts at "serious art" during a decade in which the rock genre largely "remained musical junk-food". From Josh Tyrangiel's perspective, "The Joshua Tree" began a "towering period" of U2's history lasting through 1993's "Zooropa" when they "made stadium-size art rock with huge melodies that allowed Bono to throw his arms around the world while bending its ear about social justice". WYMS journalist Mitchell Kreitzman credited it with exposing "alternative music to the masses", and Kevin J. H. Dettmar cited it as the most commercially and critically successful album "yet to emerge from alternative or college rock". In 2014, "The Joshua Tree" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for becoming "part of our musical, social, and cultural history". That same year, the album was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the US Library of Congress for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is the only Irish work to be so honoured.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The band's penchant for addressing political and social issues, as well as their staid depiction in Corbijn's black-and-white sleeve photographs, contributed to the group's earnest and serious image as "stone-faced pilgrim[s]". This image became a target for derision after the band's critically maligned "Rattle and Hum" project in 1988. Various critics called them "po-faced", "pompous bores", and "humourless". The group's continued exploration of American music for the project was labelled "pretentious" and "misguided and bombastic". After Bono told fans on the 1989 Lovetown Tour that U2 would "dream it all up again", the band reinvented themselves in the 1990s. They incorporated alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial music into their sound, and adopted a more ironic, flippant image by which they embraced the "rock star" identity they struggled with in the 1980s. Bono referred to their 1991 album "Achtung Baby" as "the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua Tree". Author Bill Flanagan summarised the impact of "The Joshua Tree" on the group's career in his liner notes for the album's 20th anniversary release: ""The Joshua Tree" made U2 into international rock stars and established both a standard they would always have to live up to and an image they would forever try to live down."


title: The Joshua Tree

text: On 20 November 2007, a 20th anniversary edition of "The Joshua Tree" was released. The album was remastered from the original analogue recordings under the direction of the Edge, with the original vinyl album artwork restored. The release was made available in four formats: a single CD; a two-disc deluxe edition with a bonus audio CD of B-sides, rarities, and demos; a three-disc box set with the bonus audio CD and DVD, photograph prints, and hardcover book; and a double vinyl edition. All editions included liner notes by author Bill Flanagan and previously unseen photographs by Anton Corbijn. Manager Paul McGuinness explained, "There has been continuous demand from U2 fans to have "The Joshua Tree" properly re-mastered. As always, the band had to make sure it was right, and now it is." Some formats include expanded liner notes from the band members, the production team, and Anton Corbijn. In an otherwise favourable review of the remastered album, Andrew Mueller of "Uncut" said that "any casual listener who can perceive a meaningful difference between this and the original has i) ears like a bat and/or ii) needs to get out more".


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The bonus audio CD contains 14 additional tracks, including the B-sides "Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)", "Walk to the Water", "Spanish Eyes", "Deep in the Heart", "Silver and Gold", "Sweetest Thing", and "Race Against Time". Two versions of "Silver and Gold" are included—U2's version, and the original recording from the "Sun City" album by Bono, Keith Richards, and others. The edited single version of "Where the Streets Have No Name" appears on the bonus CD. "Beautiful Ghost/Introduction to Songs of Experience" contains lyrics from the introduction of William Blake's "Songs of Experience", while "Drunk Chicken/America" contains an excerpt of Allen Ginsberg's recitation of his poem, "America". "Wave of Sorrow (Birdland)", "Desert of Our Love", "Rise Up", and "Drunk Chicken/America" are all previously unreleased recordings from "The Joshua Tree" sessions.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: The bonus DVD includes live concert footage, a documentary, and two music videos. The disc includes "Live from Paris", an 85-minute concert from 4 July 1987 that was originally broadcast on British television in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Island Records. The documentary, titled "Outside It's America", was a 1987 MTV production about The Joshua Tree Tour. The two music videos are an alternate version "With or Without You" and the previously unreleased video for "Red Hill Mining Town". Footage of U2's alter ego country band, the Dalton Brothers, is included on the disc as an Easter egg.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: For the 30th anniversary of "The Joshua Tree", U2 staged a 2017 concert tour in North America, Europe, and Latin America, on which they played the album in its entirety at each show. It was the first time the group toured in promotion of an album from their back catalogue, rather than a new release. As part of the tour, U2 headlined the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, in June. In rationalising the tour, the Edge cited the 2016 US presidential election and other world events for what he judged to be renewed resonance of "The Joshua Tree"s subject matter: "That record was written in the mid-Eighties, during the Reagan–Thatcher era of British and U.S. politics. It was a period when there was a lot of unrest. Thatcher was in the throes of trying to put down the miners' strike; there was all kinds of shenanigans going on in Central America. It feels like we're right back there in a way... It just felt like, 'Wow, these songs have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn't have three years ago, four years ago.'" The 2017 tour grossed more than $316 million from over 2.7 million tickets sold, making it the highest-grossing tour of the year. Additional tour dates were added for Oceania and Asia in 2019, which included the band's first ever performances in South Korea, Singapore, India, and the Philippines. The 2019 shows grossed $73.8 million and sold 567,000 tickets, bringing the cumulative totals for the group's "Joshua Tree" anniversary tours to $390.8 million grossed and 3.3 million tickets sold.


title: The Joshua Tree

text: On 2 June 2017, the album was reissued in several formats in commemoration of its 30th anniversary. Standard editions of the album were released on CD, vinyl record, and via digital download. Deluxe editions, available on CD and digitally, include a concert recording of a 1987 show at Madison Square Garden from the Joshua Tree Tour. In addition to the concert, the super deluxe editions, available on CD, vinyl record, and digitally, include: B-sides and rarities; and remixes of the album's songs made in 2017 by Daniel Lanois, St Francis Hotel, Jacknife Lee, Steve Lillywhite, and Flood. The physical copies of the super deluxe edition include eight folio prints and an 84-page book of photography shot by the Edge during the album cover's 1986 photoshoot in the Mojave Desert. The 2017 remix of "Red Hill Mining Town" was released as a single on vinyl picture disc for Record Store Day in April 2017.


title: Oncology

text: Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an "oncologist". The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος ("ónkos"), meaning "tumor", "volume" or "mass". Oncology is concerned with:


title: Oncology

text: Medical histories remain an important screening tool: the character of the complaints and nonspecific symptoms (such as fatigue, weight loss, unexplained anemia, fever of unknown origin, paraneoplastic phenomena and other signs) may warrant further investigation for malignancy. Occasionally, a physical examination may find the location of a malignancy.


title: Oncology

text: Apart from diagnoses, these modalities (especially imaging by CT scanning) are often used to determine operability, i.e. whether it is surgically possible to remove a tumor in its entirety.


title: Oncology

text: Currently, a tissue diagnosis (from a biopsy) by a pathologist is essential for the proper classification of cancer and to guide the next step of treatment. On extremely rare instances when this is not possible, "empirical therapy" (without an exact diagnosis) may be considered, based on the available evidence (e.g. history, x-rays and scans.)


title: Oncology

text: On very rare occasions, a metastatic lump or pathological lymph node is found (typically in the neck) for which a primary tumor cannot be found. However, immunohistochemical markers often give a strong indication of the primary malignancy. This situation is referred to as "malignacy of unknown primary", and again, treatment is empirical based on past experience of the most likely origin.


title: Oncology

text: Depending upon the cancer identified, followup and palliative care will be administered at that time. Certain disorders (such as ALL or AML) will require immediate admission and chemotherapy, while others will be followed up with regular physical examination and blood tests.


title: Oncology

text: Often, surgery is attempted to remove a tumor entirely. This is only feasible when there is some degree of certainty that the tumor can in fact be removed. When it is certain that parts will remain, curative surgery is often impossible, e.g. when there are metastases elsewhere, or when the tumor has invaded a structure that cannot be operated upon without risking the patient's life. Occasionally surgery can improve survival even if not all tumour tissue has been removed; the procedure is referred to as "debulking" (i.e. reducing the overall amount of tumour tissue). Surgery is also used for the palliative treatment of some of cancers, e.g. to relieve biliary obstruction, or to relieve the problems associated with some cerebral tumors. The risks of surgery must be weighed against the benefits.


title: Oncology

text: Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are used as a first-line radical therapy in a number of malignancies. They are also used for adjuvant therapy, i.e. when the macroscopic tumor has already been completely removed surgically but there is a reasonable statistical risk that it will recur. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are commonly used for palliation, where disease is clearly incurable: in this situation the aim is to improve the quality of life and to prolong it


title: Oncology

text: Hormone manipulation is well established, particularly in the treatment of breast and prostate cancer.


title: Oncology

text: There is currently a rapid expansion in the use of monoclonal antibody treatments, notably for lymphoma (Rituximab) and breast cancer (Trastuzumab).


title: Oncology

text: Approximately 50% of all cancer cases in the Western world can be treated to remission with radical treatment. For pediatric patients, that number is much higher. A large number of cancer patients will die from the disease, and a significant proportion of patients with incurable cancer will die of other causes. There may be ongoing issues with symptom control associated with progressive cancer, and also with the treatment of the disease. These problems may include pain, nausea, anorexia, fatigue, immobility, and depression. Not all issues are strictly physical: personal dignity may be affected. Moral and spiritual issues are also important.


title: Oncology

text: While many of these problems fall within the remit of the oncologist, palliative care has matured into a separate, closely allied speciality to address the problems associated with advanced disease. Palliative care is an essential part of the multidisciplinary cancer care team. Palliative care services may be less hospital-based than oncology, with nurses and doctors who are able to visit the patient at home.


title: Oncology

text: There are a number of recurring ethical questions and dilemmas in oncological practice. These include:


title: Oncology

text: These issues are closely related to the patients' personality, religion, culture, and family life. Though these issues are complex and emotional, the answers are often achieved by the patient seeking counsel from trusted personal friends and advisors. It requires a degree of sensitivity and very good communication on the part of the oncology team to address these problems properly.


title: Oncology

text: There is a tremendous amount of research being conducted on all frontiers of oncology, ranging from cancer cell biology, radiation therapy to chemotherapy treatment regimens and optimal palliative care and pain relief. In the past decade, the advent of next-generation sequencing and whole-genome sequencing has completely changed our understanding of cancers. Identification of novel genetic/molecular markers will dramatically change how we diagnose and treat cancer, which will pave the way for personalized medicine.


title: Oncology

text: Therapeutic trials often involve patients from many different hospitals in a particular region. In the UK, patients are often enrolled in large studies coordinated by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), Medical Research Council (MRC), the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC) or the National Cancer Research Network (NCRN).


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Alberto Kenya Fujimori Inomoto ( born 28 July 1938) is a Peruvian politician, professor and former engineer who was President of Peru from 28 July 1990 until 22 November 2000. Frequently described as a dictator, he remains a controversial figure in Peruvian politics; his government is credited with the creation of Fujimorism, defeating the Shining Path insurgency and restoring Peru's macroeconomic stability, though Fujimori ended his presidency by fleeing Peru for Japan amid a major scandal involving corruption and human rights abuses. Even amid his prosecution in 2008 for crimes against humanity relating to his presidency, two-thirds of Peruvians polled voiced approval for his leadership in that period.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: A Peruvian of Japanese descent, Fujimori took refuge in Japan when faced with charges of corruption in 2000. On arriving in Japan, he attempted to resign his presidency via fax, but his resignation was rejected by Congress, which preferred to remove him from office by the process of impeachment by a 62–9 vote. Wanted in Peru on charges of corruption and human rights abuses, Fujimori maintained a self-imposed exile until his arrest while visiting Chile in November 2005. He was extradited to face criminal charges in Peru on 22 September 2007. In December 2007, Fujimori was convicted of ordering an illegal search and seizure and was sentenced to six years imprisonment. The Supreme Court upheld the decision upon his appeal. In April 2009, Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for his role in kidnappings and murders by the Grupo Colina death squad during his government's battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. The verdict, delivered by a three-judge panel, marked the first time that an elected head of state has been extradited to his home country, tried, and convicted of human rights violations. Fujimori was specifically found guilty of murder, bodily harm and two cases of kidnapping.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In July 2009, Fujimori was sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment for embezzlement after he admitted to giving $15 million from the Peruvian treasury to his intelligence service chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Two months later, he pleaded guilty in a fourth trial to bribery and received an additional six-year term. Transparency International determined the money embezzled by Fujimori to be the seventh-most for a head of government active within 1984–2004. Under Peruvian law, all the resultant sentences must run concurrently; thus, the maximum length of imprisonment remained 25 years.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In December 2017, Fujimori was pardoned by President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski shortly after Fujimori's son congressman Kenji Fujimori helped President Kuczynski survive an impeachment vote. The pardon was overturned by Peru's Supreme Court on 3 October 2018, and Fujimori was ordered back to prison. On 23 January 2019, Fujimori was sent back to prison to complete his sentence with his pardon formally being annulled three weeks later on 13 February 2019. The Constitutional Court of Peru in a 4–3 ruling approved the release of Fujimori on 17 March 2022, though it is not clear if or when he may be released. The ruling was made ignoring the recommendation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which criticized the controversial pardon of Fujimori.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: According to government records, Fujimori was born on 28 July 1938, in Miraflores, a district of Lima. His parents, Naoichi Fujimori (original surname "Minami", adopted by a childless relative; 1897–1971) and Mutsue Inomoto Fujimori (1913–2009), were natives of Kumamoto, Japan, who migrated to Peru in 1934.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In July 1997, the news magazine "Caretas" alleged that Fujimori was born in Japan, in his father's hometown of Kawachi, Kumamoto Prefecture. Because Peru's constitution requires the president to have been born in Peru, this would have made Fujimori ineligible to be president. The magazine, which had been sued for libel by Vladimiro Montesinos seven years earlier, reported that Fujimori's birth and baptismal certificates might have been altered. "Caretas" also alleged that Fujimori's mother declared having two children when she entered Peru; Fujimori is the second of four children. "Caretas" contentions were hotly contested in the Peruvian media; the magazine "Sí" described the allegations as "pathetic" and "a dark page for [Peruvian] journalism". Latin American scholars Cynthia McClintock and Fabián Vallas note that the issue appeared to have died down among Peruvians after the Japanese government announced in 2000 that "Fujimori's parents had registered his birth in the Japanese consulate in Lima". The Japanese government determined that he was also a Japanese citizen because of his parents' registration in the koseki.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori obtained his early education at the Colegio Nuestra Señora de la Merced and La Rectora School. Fujimori's parents were Buddhists, but he was baptized and raised Roman Catholic. While he spoke mainly Japanese at home, Fujimori also learned to become a proficient Spanish speaker during his years at school. In 1956, Fujimori graduated from La Gran Unidad Escolar Alfonso Ugarte in Lima.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: He went on to undergraduate studies at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina in 1957, graduating in 1961 first in his class as an agricultural engineer. The following year he lectured on mathematics at the university. In 1964 he went to study physics at the University of Strasbourg in France. On a Ford scholarship, Fujimori also attended the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the United States, where he obtained his master's degree in mathematics in 1969.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In 1974, he married Susana Higuchi, also Japanese-Peruvian. They had four children, including a daughter, Keiko, and a son, Kenji, who would later follow their father into politics.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In recognition of his academic achievements, the sciences faculty of the National Agrarian University offered Fujimori the deanship and in 1984 appointed him to the rectorship of the university, which he held until 1989. In 1987, Fujimori also became president of the National Commission of Peruvian University Rectors (Asamblea Nacional de Rectores), a position which he has held twice. He also hosted a TV show called ""Concertando"" from 1988 to 1989, on Peru's state-owned network, Channel 7.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori won the 1990 presidential election as a dark horse candidate under the banner of Cambio 90 ("cambio" means "change") defeating world-renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa in a surprising upset. He capitalized on profound disenchantment with outgoing president Alan García and the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party (APRA). He exploited popular distrust of Vargas Llosa's identification with the existing Peruvian political establishment, and uncertainty about his plans for neoliberal economic reforms.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: During the campaign, Fujimori was nicknamed "El Chino", which roughly translates to "Chinaman"; it is common for people of any East Asian descent to be called "chino" in Peru, as elsewhere in Spanish Latin America, both derogatively and affectionately. Although he is of Japanese heritage, Fujimori has suggested that he was always gladdened by the term, which he perceived as a term of affection. With his election victory, he became just the second person of East Asian descent to become leader of a Latin American nation, after Fulgencio Batista (varied descent) of Cuba and the third of East Asian descent to govern a South American state, after Arthur Chung of Guyana and Henk Chin A Sen of Suriname.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: During his first term in office, Fujimori enacted wide-ranging neoliberal reforms, known as Fujishock. During the presidency of Alan García, the economy had entered a period of hyperinflation and the political system was in crisis due to the country's internal conflict, leaving Peru in "economic and political chaos". It was Fujimori's stated objective to pacify the nation and restore economic balance. This program bore little resemblance to his campaign platform and was in fact more drastic than anything Vargas Llosa had proposed. Nonetheless, the "Fujishock" succeeded in restoring Peru to the global economy, though not without immediate social cost.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori's initiative relaxed private sector price controls, drastically reduced government subsidies and government employment, eliminated all exchange controls, and also reduced restrictions on investment, imports, and capital. Tariffs were radically simplified, the minimum wage was immediately quadrupled, and the government established a $400 million poverty relief fund. The latter seemed to anticipate the economic agony to come: the price of electricity quintupled, water prices rose eightfold, and gasoline prices 3,000%.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: However, many do not attribute the Fujishock to Fujimori. In the 1980s, the IMF created a plan for South American economies called the Washington Consensus. The document, written by John Williamson in 1990, consists of ten measures that would lead to a healthy economic policy. Under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Peruvian government was to follow the guidelines set by the international finance community. The ten points were fiscal discipline, the reordering of public expenditure, tax reform (broadening), the liberalization of interest rates, the establishment of a competitive exchange rate, trade liberalization, liberalization of foreign direct investment, privatization, deregulation of barrier entry, exit, safety regulations, governed prices, and the establishment of property rights for the informal sector.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The IMF was content with Peru's measures, and guaranteed loan funding for Peru. Inflation rapidly began to fall and foreign investment capital flooded in. The privatization campaign involved selling off of hundreds of state-owned enterprises, and replacing the country's troubled currency, the inti, with the Nuevo Sol. The "Fujishock" restored macroeconomic stability to the economy and triggered a considerable long-term economic upturn in the mid-1990s. In 1994, the Peruvian economy grew at a rate of 13%, faster than any other economy in the world.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: During Fujimori's first term in office, APRA and Vargas Llosa's party, the FREDEMO, remained in control of both chambers of Congress, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, hampering the enactment of economic reform. Fujimori also had difficulty combatting the Maoist Shining Path () guerrilla organization due largely to what he perceived as intransigence and obstructionism in Congress. By March 1992, the Congress met with the approval of only 17% of the electorate, according to one poll; in the same poll, the president's approval stood at 42%.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In response to the political deadlock, Fujimori, with the support of the military, on 5 April 1992, carried out a self-coup, also known as the "autogolpe" (auto-coup) or "Fujigolpe" (Fuji-coup) in Peru. He shut down Congress, suspended the constitution, and purged the judiciary.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: According to numerous polls, the coup was welcomed by the public as evidenced by favorable public opinion in several independent polls; in fact, public approval of the Fujimori administration jumped significantly in the wake of the coup. Fujimori often cited this public support in defending the coup, which he characterized as "not a negation of real democracy, but on the contrary... a search for an authentic transformation to assure a legitimate and effective democracy." Fujimori believed that Peruvian democracy had been nothing more than "a deceptive formality – a façade". He claimed the coup was necessary in order to break with the deeply entrenched special interests that were hindering him from rescuing Peru from the chaotic state in which García had left it.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori's coup was immediately met with near-unanimous condemnation from the international community. The Organization of American States denounced the coup and demanded a return to "representative democracy", despite Fujimori's claim that the coup represented a "popular uprising". Foreign ministers of OAS member states reiterated this condemnation of the "autogolpe". They proposed an urgent effort to promote the reestablishment of "the democratic institutional order" in Peru. Negotiations between the OAS, the government, and opposition groups initially led Alberto Fujimori to propose a referendum to ratify the auto-coup, but the OAS rejected this. Fujimori then proposed scheduling elections for a Democratic Constituent Congress (CCD), which would draft a new constitution to be ratified by a national referendum. Despite a lack of consensus among political forces in Peru regarding this proposal, an "ad hoc" OAS meeting of ministers nevertheless endorsed this scenario in mid-May. Elections for the Democratic Constituent Congress were held on 22 November 1992.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Various states individually condemned the coup. Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations, and Argentina withdrew its ambassador. Chile joined Argentina in requesting Peru's suspension from the Organization of American States. International lenders delayed planned or projected loans, and the United States, Germany and Spain suspended all non-humanitarian aid to Peru. The coup appeared to threaten the reinsertion strategy for economic recovery, and complicated the process of clearing Peru's arrears with the International Monetary Fund.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori, in turn, would later receive most of the participants of the Venezuelan coup attempt of November 1992 as political asylees, who had fled to Peru after its failure.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Peruvian–U.S. relations earlier in Fujimori's presidency had been dominated by questions of coca eradication and Fujimori's initial reluctance to sign an accord to increase his military's eradication efforts in the lowlands. Fujimori's "autogolpe" became a major obstacle to relations, as the United States immediately suspended all military and economic aid, with exceptions for counter-narcotic and humanitarian funds. Two weeks after the self-coup, however, the George H.W. Bush administration changed its position and officially recognized Fujimori as the legitimate leader of Peru, partly because he was willing to implement economic austerity measures, but also because of his adamant opposition to the Shining Path.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: With FREDEMO dissolved and APRA leader Alan García exiled to Colombia, Fujimori sought to legitimize his position. He called elections for a Democratic Constitutional Congress, to serve as a legislature and as a constituent assembly. The APRA and Popular Action attempted a boycott of this election, but the Christian People's Party (PPC, not to be confused with PCP, Partido Comunista del Peru, or "Peruvian Communist Party") and many left-leaning parties participated in this election. Fujimori supporters won a majority of the seats in this body and drafted a new constitution in 1993. In a referendum, the coup and the Constitution of 1993 were approved by a margin of less than five percent.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: On 13 November 1993, General Jaime Salinas led a failed military coup. Salinas asserted that his intentions were to turn Fujimori over to be tried for violating the Peruvian constitution.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In 1994, Fujimori separated from his wife Susana Higuchi in a noisy, public divorce. He formally stripped her of the title First Lady in August 1994, appointing their eldest daughter as First Lady in her stead. Higuchi publicly denounced Fujimori as a "tyrant" and claimed that his administration was corrupt. They formally divorced in 1995.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The 1993 Constitution allowed Fujimori to run for a second term, and in April 1995, at the height of his popularity, Fujimori easily won reelection with almost two-thirds of the vote. His major opponent, former UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, won only 21 percent of the vote. Fujimori's supporters won comfortable majority in the newly unicameral Congress. One of the first acts of the new congress was to declare an amnesty for all members of the Peruvian military or police accused or convicted of human rights abuses between 1980 and 1995.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: During his second term, Fujimori along with Ecuadorian President Sixto Durán Ballén, signed a peace agreement with Ecuador over a border dispute that had simmered for more than a century. The treaty allowed the two countries to obtain international funds for developing the border region. Fujimori also settled some issues with Chile, Peru's southern neighbor, which had been unresolved since the 1929 Treaty of Lima.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The 1995 election was the turning point in Fujimori's career. Peruvians began to be more concerned about freedom of speech and the press. However, before he was sworn in for a second term, Fujimori stripped two universities of their autonomy and reshuffled the national electoral board. This led his opponents to call him "Chinochet," a reference to his previous nickname and to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Modeling his rule after Pinochet, Fujimori reportedly enjoyed this nickname.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: According to a poll by the Peruvian Research and Marketing Company conducted in 1997, 40.6% of Lima residents considered President Fujimori an authoritarian.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In addition to the fate of democracy under Fujimori, Peruvians were becoming increasingly interested in the myriad allegations of criminality that involved Fujimori and his chief of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), Vladimiro Montesinos. Using SIN, Fujimori gained control of the majority of the armed forces, with "Financial Times" stating that "[i]n no other country in Latin America did a president have so much control over the armed forces".


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: A 2002 report by Health Minister Fernando Carbone later suggested that Fujimori was involved in the forced sterilizations of up to 300,000 indigenous women between 1996 and 2000, as part of a population control program. A 2004 World Bank publication said that in this period Montesinos' abuse of the power Fujimori granted him "led to a steady and systematic undermining of the rule of law".


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The 1993 constitution limited a presidency to two terms. Shortly after Fujimori began his second term, his supporters in Congress passed a law of "authentic interpretation" which effectively allowed him to run for another term in 2000. A 1998 effort to repeal this law by referendum failed. In late 1999, Fujimori announced that he would run for a third term. Peruvian electoral bodies, which were politically sympathetic to Fujimori, accepted his argument that the two-term restriction did not apply to him, as it was enacted while he was already in office.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Exit polls showed Fujimori fell short of the 50% required to avoid an electoral runoff, but the first official results showed him with 49.6% of the vote, just short of outright victory. Eventually, Fujimori was credited with 49.89%—20,000 votes short of avoiding a runoff. Despite reports of numerous irregularities, the international observers recognized an adjusted victory of Fujimori. His primary opponent, Alejandro Toledo, called for his supporters to spoil their ballots in the runoff by writing "No to fraud!" on them (voting is mandatory in Peru). International observers pulled out of the country after Fujimori refused to delay the runoff.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In the runoff, Fujimori won with 51.1% of the total votes. While votes for Toledo declined from 37.0% of the total votes cast in the first round to 17.7% of the votes in the second round, invalid votes jumped from 8.1% of the total votes cast in the first round to 31.1% of total votes in the second round. The large percentage of invalid votes in this election suggests that many Peruvians took Toledo's advice and spoiled their ballots.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Although Fujimori won the runoff with only a bare majority (but 3/4 valid votes), rumors of irregularities led most of the international community to shun his third swearing-in on 28 July. For the next seven weeks, there were daily demonstrations in front of the presidential palace. As a conciliatory gesture, Fujimori appointed former opposition candidate Federico Salas as prime minister. However, opposition parties in Congress refused to support this move, and Toledo campaigned vigorously to have the election annulled. At this point, a corruption scandal involving Vladimiro Montesinos broke out, and exploded into full force on the evening of 14 September 2000, when the cable television station Canal N broadcast footage of Montesinos apparently bribing opposition congressman Alberto Kouri for defecting to Fujimori's Peru 2000 party. The video was presented by Fernando Olivera, leader of the FIM (Independent Moralizing Front), who purchased it from one of Montesinos's closest allies (nicknamed by the Peruvian press "El Patriota").


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori's support virtually collapsed, and a few days later he announced in a nationwide address that he would shut down the SIN and call new elections, in which he would not be a candidate. On 10 November, Fujimori won approval from Congress to hold elections on 8 April 2001. On 13 November, Fujimori left Peru for a visit to Brunei to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. On 16 November, Valentín Paniagua took over as president of Congress after the pro-Fujimori leadership lost a vote of confidence. On 17 November, Fujimori traveled from Brunei to Tokyo, where he submitted his presidential resignation via fax. Congress refused to accept his resignation, instead voting 62–9 to remove Fujimori from office on the grounds that he was "permanently morally disabled."


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: On 19 November, government ministers presented their resignations en bloc. Because Fujimori's first vice president, Francisco Tudela, who had broken with Fujimori and resigned a few days earlier, his successor, second vice president Ricardo Márquez Flores came to claim the presidency. Congress, however, refused to recognize him, as he was an ardent Fujimori loyalist; Márquez resigned two days later. Paniagua was next in line, and became interim president to oversee the April 2001 elections.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: When Fujimori came to power, much of Peru was dominated by the Maoist insurgent group Sendero Luminoso ("Shining Path"), and the Marxist–Leninist group Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). In 1989, 25% of Peru's district and provincial councils opted not to hold elections, owing to a persistent campaign of assassination, over the course of which over 100 officials had been killed by the Shining Path in that year alone. That same year, more than one-third of Peru's courts lacked a justice of the peace due to Shining Path intimidation. Labor union leaders and military officials were also assassinated throughout the 1980s.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: By the early 1990s, some parts of the country were under the control of the insurgents, in territories known as "zonas liberadas" ("liberated zones"), where inhabitants lived under the rule of these groups and paid them taxes. When the Shining Path arrived in Lima, it organized "paros armados" ("armed strikes"), which were enforced by killings and other forms of violence. The leadership of the Shining Path largely consisted of university students and teachers. Two previous governments, those of Fernando Belaúnde Terry and Alan García, at first neglected the threat posed by the Shining Path, then launched an unsuccessful military campaign to eradicate it, undermining public faith in the state and precipitating an exodus of elites.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: By 1992, Shining Path guerrilla attacks had claimed an estimated 20,000 lives over preceding 12 years. On 16 July 1992, the Tarata Bombing, in which several car bombs exploded in Lima's wealthiest district, killed over 40 people; the bombings were characterized by one commentator as an "offensive to challenge President Alberto Fujimori." The bombing at Tarata was followed up with a "weeklong wave of car bombings ... Bombs hit banks, hotels, schools, restaurants, police stations and shops ... [G]uerrillas bombed two rail bridges from the Andes, cutting off some of Peru's largest copper mines from coastal ports."


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori has been credited by many Peruvians with ending the fifteen-year insurgency of the Shining Path. As part of his anti-insurgency efforts, Fujimori granted the military broad powers to arrest suspected insurgents and try them in secret military courts with few legal rights. This measure has often been criticized for compromising the fundamental democratic and human right to an open trial wherein the accused faces the accuser. Fujimori contended that these measures were both justified and also necessary. Members of the judiciary were too afraid to charge the alleged insurgents, and judges and prosecutors had very legitimate fears of reprisals against them or their families. At the same time, Fujimori's government armed rural Peruvians, organizing them into groups known as "rondas campesinas" ("peasant patrols").


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Insurgent activity was in decline by the end of 1992, and Fujimori took credit for this abatement, claiming that his campaign had largely eliminated the insurgent threat. After the 1992 auto-coup, the intelligence work of the DINCOTE (National Counter-Terrorism Directorate) led to the capture of the leaders from MRTA and the Shining Path, including notorious Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán. Guzmán's capture was a political coup for Fujimori, who used it to great effect in the press; in an interview with documentarian Ellen Perry, Fujimori even notes that he specially ordered Guzmán's prison jumpsuit to be white with black stripes, to enhance the image of his capture in the media.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Critics charge that to achieve the defeat of the Shining Path, the Peruvian military engaged in widespread human rights abuses, and that the majority of the victims were poor highland countryside inhabitants caught in a crossfire between the military and insurgents. The final report of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, published on 28 August 2003, brought out that Peruvian armed forces were also guilty of destroying villages and murdering countryside inhabitants whom they suspected of supporting insurgents.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The Japanese embassy hostage crisis began on 17 December 1996, when fourteen MRTA militants seized the residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima during a party, taking hostage some four hundred diplomats, government officials, and other dignitaries. The action was partly in protest of prison conditions in Peru. During the four-month standoff, the "Emerretistas" gradually freed all but 72 of their hostages. The government rejected the militants' demand to release imprisoned MRTA members and secretly prepared an elaborate plan to storm the residence, while stalling by negotiating with the hostage-takers.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: On 22 April 1997, a team of military commandos, codenamed "Chavín de Huantar", raided the building. One hostage, two military commandos, and all 14 MRTA insurgents were killed in the operation. Images of President Fujimori at the ambassador's residence during and after the military operation, surrounded by soldiers and liberated dignitaries, and walking among the corpses of the insurgents, were widely televised. The conclusion of the four-month-long standoff was used by Fujimori and his supporters to bolster his image as tough on terrorism.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Several organizations criticized Fujimori's methods against the Shining Path and the MRTA. Amnesty International said "the widespread and systematic nature of human rights violations committed during the government of former head of state Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) in Peru constitute crimes against humanity under international law." Fujimori's alleged association with death squads is currently being studied by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, after the court accepted the case of "Cantuta vs Perú".


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The 1991 Barrios Altos massacre by members of the death squad "Grupo Colina", made up solely of members of the Peruvian armed forces, was one of the crimes that Peru cited in its request to Japan for his extradition in 2003.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Reportedly following socioeconomic objectives calling for the "total extermination" of "culturally backward and economically impoverished groups" determined by the Peruvian military in Plan Verde, from 1996 to 2000, the Fujimori government oversaw a massive forced sterilization campaign known as the National Program for Reproductive Health and Family Planning (PNSRPF). According to Back and Zavala, the plan was an example of ethnic cleansing as it targeted indigenous and rural women. The United Nations and other international aid agencies supported this campaign. USAID provided funding and training until it was exposed by objections by churches and human rights groups. The Nippon Foundation, headed by Ayako Sono, a Japanese novelist and personal friend of Fujimori, supported as well. In the four-year Plan Verde period, over 215,000 people, mostly women, entirely indigenous, were forced or threatened into sterilization and 16,547 men were forced to undergo vasectomies during these years, most of them without a proper anesthetist, in contrast to 80,385 sterilizations and 2,795 vasectomies over the previous three years.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The success of the military operation in the Japanese embassy hostage crisis was tainted by subsequent allegations that at least three and possibly eight of the insurgents were summarily executed by the commandos after surrendering. In 2002, the case was taken up by public prosecutors, but the Peruvian Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunals had jurisdiction. A military court later absolved them of guilt, and the "Chavín de Huantar" soldiers led the 2004 military parade. In response, in 2003 MRTA family members lodged a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) accusing the Peruvian state of human rights violations, namely that the MRTA insurgents had been denied the "right to life, the right to judicial guarantees and the right to judicial protection". The IACHR accepted the case and is currently studying it. Peruvian Minister of Justice Maria Zavala has stated that this verdict by the IACHR supports the Peruvian government's extradition of Fujimori from Chile. Though the IACHR verdict does not directly implicate Fujimori, it does fault the Peruvian government for its complicity in the 1992 Cantuta University killings.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Alberto Fujimori left Peru in November 2000 to attend a regional summit in Brunei. He then traveled on to Japan. Once there, he announced plans to remain in the country and faxed his resignation letter to Congress.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: After Congress rejected Fujimori's faxed resignation, they relieved Fujimori of his duties as president and banned him from Peruvian politics for a decade. He remained in self-imposed exile in Japan, where he resided with his friend, the famous Catholic novelist Ayako Sono. Several senior Japanese politicians have supported Fujimori, partly because of his decisive action in ending the 1996–97 Japanese embassy crisis.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Alejandro Toledo, who assumed the Peruvian presidency in 2001, spearheaded the criminal case against Fujimori. He arranged meetings with the Supreme Court, tax authorities, and other powers in Peru to "coordinate the joint efforts to bring the criminal Fujimori from Japan." His vehemence in this matter at times compromised Peruvian law: forcing the judiciary and legislative system to keep guilty sentences without hearing Fujimori's defense; not providing Fujimori with representation when Fujimori was tried "in absentia"; and expelling pro-Fujimori congressmen from the parliament without proof of the accusations against those congressmen. These expulsions were later reversed by the judiciary.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The Peruvian Congress authorized charges against Fujimori in August 2001. Fujimori was alleged to be a coauthor, along with Vladimiro Montesinos, of the death-squad killings at Barrios Altos in 1991 and La Cantuta in 1992, respectively. At the behest of Peruvian authorities, Interpol issued an arrest order for Fujimori on charges that included murder, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Meanwhile, the Peruvian government found that Japan was not amenable to the extradition of Fujimori; a protracted diplomatic debate ensued, when Japan showed itself unwilling to accede to the extradition request. Fujimori had been granted Japanese citizenship after his arrival in the country, and the Japanese government maintained that Japanese citizens would not be extradited.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In September 2003, Congressman Dora Dávila, joined by Minister of Health Luis Soari, denounced Fujimori and several of his ministers for crimes against humanity, for allegedly having overseen forced sterilizations during his regime. In November, Congress approved an investigation of Fujimori's involvement in the airdrop of Kalashnikov rifles into the Colombian jungle in 1999 and 2000 for guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Fujimori maintained he had no knowledge of the arms-trading, and blamed Montesinos. By approving the charges, Congress lifted the immunity granted to Fujimori as a former president, so that he could be criminally charged and prosecuted.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Congress also voted to support charges against Fujimori for the detention and disappearance of 67 students from the central Andean city of Huancayo and the disappearance of several residents from the northern coastal town of Chimbote during the 1990s. It also approved charges that Fujimori mismanaged millions of dollars from Japanese charities, suggesting that the millions of dollars in his bank account were far too much to have been accumulated legally.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In 2004, the Special Prosecutor established to investigate Fujimori released a report alleging that the Fujimori administration had obtained US$2 billion though graft. Most of this money came from Vladimiro Montesinos' web of corruption. The Special Prosecutor's figure of two billion dollars is considerably higher than the one arrived at by Transparency International, an NGO that studies corruption. Transparency International listed Fujimori as having embezzled an estimated US$600 million, which would rank seventh in the list of money embezzled by heads of government active within 1984–2004.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori dismissed the judicial proceedings underway against him as "politically motivated", citing Toledo's involvement. Fujimori established a new political party in Peru, "Sí Cumple", working from Japan. He hoped to participate in the 2006 presidential elections, but in February 2004, the Constitutional Court dismissed this possibility, because the ex-president was specifically barred by Congress from holding any office for ten years. Fujimori saw the decision as unconstitutional, as did his supporters such as ex-congressmembers Luz Salgado, Martha Chávez and Fernán Altuve, who argued it was a "political" maneuver and that the only body with the authority to determine the matter was the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE). Valentín Paniagua disagreed, suggesting that the Constitutional Court finding was binding and that "no further debate is possible".


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori's "Sí Cumple" (roughly translated, "He Keeps His Word") received more than 10% in many country-level polls, contending with APRA for the second place slot, but did not participate in the 2006 elections after its participation in the Alliance for the Future (initially thought as "Alliance Sí Cumple") had not been allowed.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: By March 2005, it appeared that Peru had all but abandoned its efforts to extradite Fujimori from Japan. In September of that year, Fujimori obtained a new Peruvian passport in Tokyo and announced his intention to run in the upcoming 2006 national election. He arrived in Chile in November 2005, but hours after his arrival there he was arrested. Peru then requested his extradition.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: While under house arrest in Chile, Fujimori announced plans to run in Japan's Upper House elections in July 2007 for the far-right People's New Party. Fujimori was extradited from Chile to Peru in September 2007.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: On 7 April 2009, a three-judge panel convicted Fujimori on charges of human rights abuses, declaring that the "charges against him have been proven beyond all reasonable doubt". The panel found him guilty of ordering the Grupo Colina death squad to commit the November 1991 Barrios Altos massacre and the July 1992 La Cantuta Massacre, which resulted in the deaths of 25 people, as well as for taking part in the kidnappings of Peruvian opposition journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer. As of 2009 Fujimori's conviction is the only instance of a democratically elected head of state being tried and convicted of human rights abuses in his own country. Later on 7 April, the court sentenced Fujimori to 25 years in prison. Likewise, the Court found him guilty of aggravated kidnapping, under the aggravating circumstance of cruel treatment, to the detriment of journalist Gustavo Gorriti and businessman Samuel Dyer Ampudia. The Special Criminal Chamber determined that the sentence had expired on February 10, 2032. On January 2, 2010, the sentence to 25 years in prison for human rights violations was confirmed.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: He faced a third trial in July 2009 over allegations that he illegally gave $15 million in state funds to Vladimiro Montesinos, former head of the National Intelligence Service, during the two months prior to his fall from power. Fujimori admitted paying the money to Montesinos but claimed that he had later paid back the money to the state. On 20 July, the court found him guilty of embezzlement and sentenced him to a further seven and a half years in prison.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: A fourth trial took place in September 2009 in Lima. Fujimori was accused of using Montesinos to bribe and tap the phones of journalists, businessmen and opposition politicians – evidence of which led to the collapse of his government in 2000. Fujimori admitted the charges but claimed that the charges were made to damage his daughter's presidential election campaign. The prosecution asked the court to sentence Fujimori to eight years imprisonment with a fine of $1.6 million plus $1 million in compensation to ten people whose phones were bugged. Fujimori pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment on 30 September 2009. Under Peruvian law, all prison sentences run concurrently.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: On May 3, 2016, the Constitutional Court of Peru rejected the nullity of Alberto Fujimori's conviction. Alberto Fujimori will continue to be sentenced for 25 years, which was imposed on him for responsibility in the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta massacres.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Press reports in late 2012 indicated that Fujimori was suffering from tongue cancer and other medical problems. His family asked President Ollanta Humala for a pardon. President Humala rejected a pardon in 2013, saying that Fujimori's condition was not serious enough to warrant it. In July 2016, with three days left in his term, President Humala said that there was insufficient time to evaluate a second request to pardon Fujimori, leaving the decision to his successor Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. On 24 December 2017, President Kuczynski pardoned him on health grounds. Kuczynski's office stated that the hospitalized 79-year-old Fujimori had a "progressive, degenerative and incurable disease". The pardon kicked off at least two days of protests and led at least three congressmen to resign from Kuczynski's party. A spokesman for Popular Force alleged there was a pact that, in exchange for the pardon, Popular Force members helped Kuczynski fight ongoing impeachment proceedings.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: On February 20, 2018, the National Criminal Chamber ruled that it did not apply the resolution that granted Fujimori the right of grace for humanitarian reasons. Therefore, the former president had to face the process for the Pativilca Case with a simple appearance. On 3 October 2018, the Peruvian Supreme Court reversed Fujimori's pardon and ordered his return to prison. He was rushed to a hospital and returned to prison on 23 January 2019. His pardon was formally annulled on 13 February 2019. The Constitutional Court of Peru in a 4–3 ruling approved the release of Fujimori on 17 March 2022, though it is not clear if or when he may be released. Those ruling in approval of Fujimori's release argued that a pardon, no matter how unconstitutional it may be, can be issued by the President of Peru and that previous rulings annulling the pardon were "subjective". Constitutional Court judges ruling in favor of releasing Fujimori ignored the Inter-American Court of Human Rights' jurisprudence that criticized Kuczynski's reported pardon pact with Fujimori's son and that the disease cited in the pardon was possibly diagnosed by Fujimori's personal doctor, not an independent physician.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori is credited by many Peruvians for bringing stability to the country after the violence and hyperinflation of the García years. While it is generally agreed that the "Fujishock" brought short/middle-term macroeconomic stability, the long-term social impact of Fujimori's free market economic policies is still hotly debated.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Neoliberal reforms under Fujimori took place in three distinct phases: an initial "orthodox" phase (1990–92) in which technocrats dominated the reform agenda; a "pragmatic" phase (1993–98) that saw the growing influence of business elites over government priorities; and a final "watered-down" phase (1999–2000) dominated by a clique of personal loyalists and their clientelist policies that aimed to secure Fujimori a third term as president. Business was a big winner of the reforms, with its influence increasing significantly within both the state and society.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: High growth during Fujimori's first term petered out during his second term. "El Niño" phenomena had a tremendous impact on the Peruvian economy during the late 1990s. Nevertheless, total GDP growth between 1992 and 2001, inclusive, was 44.60%, that is, 3.76% per annum; total GDP per capita growth between 1991 and 2001, inclusive, was 30.78%, that is, 2.47% per annum. Also, studies by INEI, the national statistics bureau show that the number of Peruvians living in poverty increased dramatically (from 41.6% to more than 70%) during Alan García's term, but decreased greatly (from more than 70% to 54%) during Fujimori's term. Furthermore, FAO reported Peru reduced undernourishment by about 29% from 1990–92 to 1997–99.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Peru was reintegrated into the global economic system, and began to attract foreign investment. The mass selloff of state-owned enterprises led to improvements in some service industries, notably local telephone, mobile telephone, and internet services, respectively. For example, before privatization, a consumer or business had to wait up to 10 years to get a local telephone line installed by the state-run telephone company at a cost of $607 for a residential line. A couple of years after privatization, the wait was reduced to just a few days. Peru's Physical land based telephone network had a dramatic increase in telephone penetration from 2.9% in 1993 to 5.9% in 1996 and 6.2% in 2000, and a dramatic decrease in the wait for a telephone line. Average wait went from 70 months in 1993 (before privatization) to two months in 1996 (after privatization). Privatization also generated foreign investment in export-oriented activities such as mining and energy extraction, notably the Camisea gas project and the copper and zinc extraction projects at Antamina.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori has been described as a "dictator". His government was permeated by a network of corruption organized by his associate Montesinos. Fujimori's style of government has also been described as "populist authoritarianism". Numerous governments and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, welcomed the extradition of Fujimori to face human rights charges. As early as 1991, Fujimori had himself vocally denounced what he called "pseudo-human rights organizations" such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch, for allegedly failing to criticize the insurgencies targeting civilian populations throughout Peru against which his government was struggling.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Some analysts state that some of the GDP growth during the Fujimori years actually reflects a greater rate of extraction of nonrenewable resources by transnational companies; these companies were attracted by Fujimori by means of near-zero royalties, and, by the same fact, little of the extracted wealth has stayed in the country. Peru's mining legislation, they claim, has served as a role model for other countries that wish to become more mining-friendly.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori's privatization program also remains shrouded in controversy and opposed by many Peruvians. A congressional investigation in 2002, led by socialist opposition congressman Javier Diez Canseco, stated that of the US$9 billion raised through the privatizations of hundreds of state-owned enterprises, only a small fraction of this income ever benefited the Peruvian people.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The sole instance of organized labor's success in impeding reforms, namely the teacher's union resistance to education reform, was based on traditional methods of organization and resistance: strikes and street demonstrations.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In the 2004 "Global Corruption Report", Fujimori made into the list of the World's Most Corrupt Leaders. He was listed seventh and he was said to have amassed $600 million, but despite years of incarceration and investigation, none of these supposed stolen funds have ever been located in any bank account anywhere in the world.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: Fujimori did have support within Peru. The Universidad de Lima March 2003 poll, taken while he was in Japan, found a 41% approval rating for his administration. A poll conducted in March 2005 by the Instituto de Desarrollo e Investigación de Ciencias Económicas (IDICE) indicated that 12.1% of the respondents intended to vote for Fujimori in the 2006 presidential election. A poll conducted on 25 November 2005, by the Universidad de Lima indicated a high approval (45.6%) rating of the Fujimori period between 1990 and 2000, attributed to his counterinsurgency efforts (53%). An article from "La Razon", a Peruvian newspaper, stated in 2003 that: "Fujimori is only guilty of one big crime and it is that of having been successful in a country of failed politicians, creators of debt, builders of mirages, and the downright opportunistic."


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: According to a more recent Universidad de Lima survey, Fujimori still retains public support, ranking fifth in personal popularity among other political figures. Popular approval for his decade-long presidency (1990–2000) has reportedly grown (from 31.5% in 2002 to 49.5% in May 2007). Despite accusations of corruption and human rights violations, nearly half of the individuals interviewed in the survey approved of Fujimori's presidential regime. In a 2007 Universidad de Lima survey of 600 Peruvians in Lima and the port of Callao, 82.6% agreed that the former president should be extradited from Chile to stand trial in Peru.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: The Lima-based newspaper "Perú 21" ran an editorial noting that even though the Universidad de Lima poll results indicate that four out of every five interviewees believe that Fujimori is guilty of some of the charges against him, he still enjoys at least 30% of popular support and enough approval to restart a political career.


title: Alberto Fujimori

text: In the 2006 congressional elections, his daughter Keiko was elected to the congress with the highest vote count. She came in second place in the 2011 Peruvian presidential election with 23.2% of the vote, and lost the June runoff against Ollanta Humala. She again ran for President in the 2016 election, narrowly losing the runoff to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, and again in the 2021 election, losing the runoff to Pedro Castillo.


title: Vulgar Latin

text: Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpart was a form of either Classical Latin or Late Latin, depending on the time period.


title: Vulgar Latin

text: During the Classical period, Roman authors referred to the informal, everyday variety of their own language as "sermo plebeius" or "sermo vulgaris", meaning "common speech".


title: Vulgar Latin

text: The modern usage of the term Vulgar Latin dates to the Renaissance, when Italian thinkers began to theorize that their own language originated in a sort of "corrupted" Latin that they assumed formed an entity distinct from the literary Classical variety, though opinions differed greatly on the nature of this "vulgar" dialect.


title: Vulgar Latin

text: The early 19th-century French linguist Raynouard is often regarded as the father of modern Romance philology. Observing that the Romance languages have many features in common that are not found in Latin, at least not in "proper" or Classical Latin, he concluded that the former must have all had some common ancestor (which he believed most closely resembled Old Occitan) that replaced Latin some time before the year 1000. This he dubbed "la langue romane" or "the Roman language".


title: Vulgar Latin

text: The first truly modern treatise on Romance linguistics, however, and the first to apply the comparative method, was Friedrich Christian Diez's seminal "Grammar of the Romance Languages".