Peruvians, Shocked by Scandal, Turn to Female Candidate

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service

JAUJA, Peru -- Thousands of residents poured into the streets of this poor Andean city to shower multicolored good luck confetti on the campaign truck of Lourdes
Flores Nano, who has suddenly found herself within striking distance of becoming Peru's first female president.

One awe-struck young man raced up the cobblestone streets to ask for an autograph on a sketch he had made of Flores, a portly lawyer dubbed "Auntie" by her
supporters. Flores signed the sketch, then leaned back and grinned. "What Peru needs now," she whispered, "is a woman -- and even the men know it."

Five weeks before presidential elections in a country where machismo has always helped dictate who wears the presidential sash, Flores, 41, has made a dramatic
surge in opinion polls. Backed by about 8 percent of voters in January, she has jumped to over 26 percent for the April 8 election, putting her second behind
Alejandro Toledo, whose support stands at about 33 percent. And Flores -- who wears a short, no-nonsense haircut, shuns makeup and likes practical shoes --
owes the leap in popularity, at least in part, to her gender.

Since Alberto Fujimori fled to Japan in November to escape charges of corruption, thousands of blackmail videotapes made by his notorious intelligence chief,
Vladimiro Montesinos, have been released as part of a probe into Fujimori's 10-year rule. Stunned Peruvians have watched a variety of politicians from all parties,
Supreme Court justices, cabinet ministers and titans of industry and media accept bulging envelopes of cash to support Fujimori. Those caught on tape have one thing
in common: They are, almost exclusively, men.

Flores' last-minute surge -- her popularity more than doubled as the videos poured out in February -- illustrates one way women are perceived in Latin America,
particularly in Peru. Although they remain far from the social and economic equals of men, there is a widespread belief that women are less corruptible. For example,
in an effort to root out corruption among Lima's traffic police in 1998, authorities replaced many of the men with women in the belief that they would be less likely to
take bribes.

"We're sick of all these dirty, corrupt men!" said Rebecca Saenz, a farmer from the outskirts of Jauja.

She and a group of women cloaked Flores' shoulders with an embroidered black shawl used in a traditional local dance in which a woman gets the better of her man.
The shawl was given to Flores as a sort of talisman to prevent her, like this city, from becoming an also-ran in Peru's history books. Five hundred years ago, Jauja
lost the title of Peruvian capital to the coastal city of Lima, 100 miles to the west.

"What we need is a clean, honest, God-fearing woman," Saenz said. "Lourdes is going to save us from the corruption of all these pathetic and weak-minded men!"

Although still in second place, Flores is climbing in the polls as the elections approach. The winner needs more than half the vote in the first round for outright victory.
In a nation where victorious candidates often have emerged only in the final months before a vote, many political analysts believe Flores is poised to at least force a
runoff in May between herself and Toledo, who challenged Fujimori in flawed presidential elections last year and seeks to become the first Amerindian president of
modern Peru.

Even if she does not win the presidency, Flores may emerge as the leading opposition voice by becoming president of the second-largest bloc in Congress. In the
process, Flores, a conservative two-term congresswoman and a longtime critic of Fujimori, has already inflamed passions because she marks a departure from the
stereotype of female politicians in Latin America.

Unlike the vast majority of Latin America's past and present female presidents -- Argentina's Isabel Peron, Nicaragua's Violeta Chamorro or Panama's Mireya
Moscoso, whose husbands were involved in politics and then died -- Flores is single and has ridden no man's coattails to power.

But at the same time, sociologists say, she is being embraced in Peru in part because of a lingering stereotype in largely Catholic Latin America: that women are either
good, unstained incorruptibles -- the "Virgin Mary syndrome," some sociologists call it -- or lascivious, dishonest "bad girls." For a large segment of the population,
women are saints or sinners, with little room between.

Flores, a religious woman who has never been married and who has close links to the conservative Opus Dei Catholic organization, is going for the saint. In fact,
many Peruvians openly wonder whether she remains a virgin, a question Flores has never felt obliged to answer when asked by reporters.

"But she doesn't have to answer," said Mariano Querol, a psychologist in Lima. "The fact that some people see her as virginal has given her an incorruptible aura that
resonates with this corruption-weary society."

Flores seems to work that image deliberately. On her campaign tour in Jauja, she allowed news crews to follow her into the magnificent colonial-era Catholic church.
There, in front of a gilded shrine of the Virgin Mary cloaked in glorious powder-blue robes, she knelt with a serene face to offer a prayer as delighted photographers
snapped pictures and TV crews rolled their tapes.

Flores was raised in middle-class Lima society and showed her strong will at an early age, according to her father, Cesar Flores. "She prevented me from ever
becoming a chauvinist," he recalled. "I remember one day when she was 5, she came home from school upset because she couldn't beat the other girls in jacks. She
spent every minute practicing, and from then on, she always won. Lourdes is a winner, but it's because she is the most driven, determined person I have ever known."

She did well as a basketball player in a Peruvian women's league and identifies with and respects female figures as politically diverse as New York Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Marta Suplicy, the Brazilian left-wing sexologist who is mayor of Sao Paulo.

But, she says, "I am not a feminist. I do not think of myself as a feminist, and I will never be a feminist. I don't like the sound of the word. It sounds like a woman who
is against men."

Those words make women such as Maria Esther Mogollon, a founder of Peru's Broad Women's Movement, cringe. "She is against a woman's right to choose and
she is against the idea of feminism as an equalizer in society," Mogollon said. "This is someone whose view of the role of women is overly defined by her religious
beliefs."

Flores says such criticism is unfair, arguing that she has a track record on women's rights and has pushed legislation through Congress that gives women the right to
require men to take DNA tests to determine paternity of their children.

Flores' conservatism has also drawn criticism from another flank. During the Fujimori years, and even after his flight to Japan, among his most staunch supporters
have been a group of congresswomen who now are largely his last defenders. Although these congresswomen are attacked by news commentators as "corrupt
witches," they also satisfy the public's belief that a woman should always be faithful to her man. And Flores nods at their allegiance.

"I completely disagree with their politics and find their morals offensive, but you have to give them this: They are not cowards," she said. "I challenge you to find one
male politician in all Peru who is now willing to admit that he supported Fujimori. These women may have made the wrong choice, but at least they have the guts to
be honest about it."

Flores complains that her competitors, Toledo and the candidate now in third place, former president Alan Garcia, are trying to link her with Fujimori through the
left-wing press because her politics, like Fujimori's, are conservative. "They are growing desperate because they did not think they would face a challenger like me,"
she said. "They did not think they would be up against a woman.

"Well," she added, "they're going to find that I'm tougher to beat than any man."

                                               © 2001