Absalón Vásquez
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Absalón Vásquez
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| Member of Congress | |
| In office 26 July 2000 – 26 July 2001 | |
| Constituency | National |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Absalón Vásquez Villanueva (1950-03-02) 2 March 1950 (age 74) Jesús, Cajamarca, Cajamarca, Peru |
| Political party | Podemos Perú |
| Other political affiliations | Popular Force Cambio 90 Peru 2000 |
| Alma mater | National Agrarian University - La Molina |
| Occupation | Politician |
| Profession | Engineer |
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Absalón Vásquez Villanueva (born March 2, 1950) is a Peruvian agricultural engineer, university professor and Fujimorist politician. He has served as Vice-Minister of Natural Resources and Rural Development and as Vice Minister of Agriculture. Additionally, he was Minister of Agriculture from 1992 to 1996, the longest term in Peru’s history, during the government of Alberto Fujimori. Later he was elected as a Congressman in 2000 under the Peru 2000 ticket. In 2014, he ran for the Governorship of the Department of Cajamarca under the Cajamarca Siempre Verde movement, coming in third place with 12.6% of the votes.
He was born in Jesús District, Cajamarca, Cajamarca Province, Cajamarca Department. He studied agricultural engineering in the National Agrarian University, where he later completed a master’s degree in Water and Land Resources Engineering. In 2012 he finished a doctorate in Water Resources with the highest grade in the entire university.[1]
Vásquez began his political career in 1988, when he was named a vice-minister in the first government of Alan García, a role from which he resigned in 1989. He was again appointed Vice-Minister in the first government of Alberto Fujimori and fulfilled this role from 1991 to 1992. At that time, he was elected Minister of Agriculture and occupied this position until 1996. After 1996, he served as a presidential advisor in agricultural issues until 2000. In 2000, he was then elected to Congress under the Peru 2000 ticket with more than 700,000 votes.[2]
Absalón Vásquez has been accused of various crimes of corruption rooted in his involvement with the Fujimorist government of the 1990s. In 2008, he was sentenced to seven years in prison when he was found responsible for massive forgery of signatures for the Vamos Vecino party, a group that supported the reelection of Alberto Fujimori, for which he would later receive a habeas corpus. Nevertheless, after a short time he was acquitted by the Supreme Court with a favorable opinion from the Supreme Attorney.[3] In 2013, he was absolved in a courtroom presided by judge Villa Stein for the case of the “Vladipoles”, in which he was accused of misusing funds for the purchase of propaganda materials supporting Fujimori’s reelection[4]
