Toledo, Alejandro

▪ 2002

      On July 28, 2001, nearly five centuries after Europeans conquered the Incas—and after two years of campaigning—Alejandro Toledo was sworn in as Peru's first democratically elected president of Quechua ethnicity. Although easily half of Peruvians were Amerindians, the white and mestizo minorities had held the key to economic, scholastic, and political power since colonial times. Excepting the dictatorship of “El Indio” (“the Indian”), Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968–75), Peru's first president to break the colour barrier was Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000), who quickly became known as “El Chino” (“the Chinaman”), although he was of Japanese ancestry. Toledo accepted the moniker “El Cholo” (also “the Indian”) with pride. He spent his last campaign day in Cuzco, the former Inca capital, and, a day after taking office, the shoeshine-boy-turned-economist paid homage to his ancestors and the Andean mountain apus (gods, or spirits) at the ruins of Machu Picchu.

      Alejandro Toledo Manrique, the son of peasant farmers, was born on March 28, 1946, in Cabana, Ancash department, and grew up on the northern coast at Chimbote. An academic scholarship took him to the United States and the University of San Francisco (B.S., 1970). After earning a Ph.D. (1976) in economics of human resources from Stanford University, he worked in international economics at the United Nations (1976–78, 1989), the World Bank (1979–81), and Harvard's Institute for International Development (1991–94). In 1998 he became director of international affairs at the Graduate School of Business Administration (ESAN) in Lima.

      The smear tactics used by the Fujimori camp against the other candidates unwittingly paved the way for Toledo, who led the centrist Perú Posible party in the 2000 presidential race. Toledo withdrew from the runoff in protest and launched a series of popular demonstrations against Fujimori's victory. After a bribery scandal toppled Fujimori's government, Toledo led the pack of new candidates for the April 2001 elections and won 36.5% of the vote in the first round.

      Toledo's image was marred somewhat by allegations of infidelity, immoral behaviour, and cocaine use. He also had a falling out with campaign chief Álvaro Vargas Llosa (son of the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who lost the 1990 presidential race to Fujimori), who began to advocate blank ballots to protest the candidacies of both Toledo and former president Alan García Pérez. On the positive side, Toledo was aided by his daughter and his wife, the anthropologist Eliane Karp, who gave campaign speeches in Quechua. In the second round of voting, on June 3, Toledo took 53.1% of the ballots. Fewer than 3% of votes were blank. In his inaugural speech, Toledo promised to create new jobs, partly by increasing tourism, and to fight corruption, narcotraffic, and human rights abuses—in short, “to be the president of all Peruvians and of all races.”

Stephen P. Davis

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