PERU: Alejandro Toledo

The magazine Stanford (March-April 01) features an informative article on Alejandro Toledi entitled "The Contender", by Tyler Bridges, a Stanford graduate, now a reporter for the Miami Herald, which sent him to Peru to interview Toledo. It tells how Toledo, born in poverty, came to the US with the help of two Peace Corps workers, and parlayed a soccer scholarship at the (Jesuit) University of San Francisco into an undergraduate education. He then came to Stanford, where he won three graduate degrees. It is commonly said that he got his Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford, but this is incorrect; it was in Education.He studied with Education Professor Martin Carnoy, who had obtained from the Ford Foundation a grant to train Latin American education students He married Elaine Karp, a Jewish graduate student, over the objections of her family. The article says she was born in Paris, educated at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and was a graduate student in French at Stanford. It is commonly said that she was Dutch and majored in Anthropology.

After leaving Stanford, he traveled widely (Buenos Aires, Washington, Tokyo, the World Bank. the UN, Harvard). He has more international experience than any other candidate for the Peruvian presidency. At the time, the President was Alberto Fujimori, whom I had met when he was president of a small agricultural school near Lima. Fujimori had won great popularity by restoring the economy, and destroying two terrorist groups, Shining Path and Tupac Amaru, which had seized the Japanese Embassy and held 71 party guests hostage.

Toledo returned to Peru in 1994 to take part in the 1995 presidential elections with his own party, Peru Posible, but he won only 4% of the votes. As the 2000 elections approached, Fujimori had lost his popularity, opening the way for a new campaign by Toldedo. The Fujimori propaganda machine began a vicious campaign against him and his wife. There were rumors that she and Toledo were contemplating divorce and that he had an illegitimate child. A girl claiming falsely to be his daughter was interviewed on TV. Clearly politics are just as nasty in Peru as in the Unired States. Fujimori "stole" the election which Toledo claimed he had won.

Now a brutal campaign against Fujimori began, in which films taped secretly played an important role. They showed his intelligence chief Vladimir Montesinos bribing various people on his behalf. (I would like to know more about his parents who named him Vladimir!). They included an opposition congressman being bribed to change sides. Fujimori went on a tour of Southeast Asia, and then in Tokyo he announced that he was stepping down as president and would not return to Peru. His nationality had always been questioned. Now he formally took Japanese citizenship.

This incensed Peruvians. He was formally denounced as a criminal and his extradition from Japan was demanded unsuccessfully. The capture of the Japanese Embassy and the relief of the hostages had been a great victory for Fujimori, but now there were changes that his men had killed in cold blood two of the terrorists after they had surrendered. As the April 8 elections approached, Toledo's chances looked good, althoughone poll showed a white conservative woman as slightly ahead.

Toledo has a double personality. He toured Europe wooing investors, and in Lima Bridges accompanied him on a campaign tour of Lima's slums, but they ended up at the home of one of a wealthy supporter. At the same time, he operates as the worst kind of demagog; a photograph shows him on the roof of a car exhorting a crowd of poor people. Since he grew up in poverty as a cholo (Westernized Indian), his rise to prominence has a great appeal for the masses hoping for a better life. The question remains. If he wins, will he be able to ride both horses? It is doubtful; he may have to chose between his promises to foreign investors and those to the Peruvian poor. In any case, he will seek good relations with the United States, which made his rise possible. He is especially indebted to the Peace Corps couple who started his upward journey.

Ronald Hilton - 3/31/01