EVERYTHING ABOUT Alan Garcia was big: his bulky frame, his oratory, his political talents, his ambition, his sense of self-importance, his mistakes and moral flaws. In the end he took the biggest, and saddest, decision: to end his life on April 17th after police arrived at his house in Lima to jail him for alleged corruption. A proud man, subject to depression, that was a humiliation he was not prepared to suffer. He was not the first Latin American leader to take that way out. But he may have merely postponed, not averted, condemnation. When first elected as Peru's president in 1985, aged just 36, he fancied himself an anti-imperialist lion like Cuba's Fidel Castro. He declared a partial default on Peru's foreign debt and spent public money like confetti. It ended badly, in hyperinflation, slump and a failed bid to nationalise the banks. Mr Garcia could not curb either the terrorism of the Shining Path Maoist guerrillas or the abuses of the army in repressing it.
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