Peru's general elections are coming up this April. The leading candidate for President of Peru is named Alejandro Toledo.
Alejandro Toledo was born as the 8th of 16 children in a poor Andean family. Seven of his brothers and sisters died before the age of 1 year old. From the age of 6 onwards, he worked as a shoeshine and newspaper boy in Chimbote, the coastal town to which his family migrated. Here in 1964, two volunteers in the brand new Peace Corps program were assigned. Nancy Deeds needed a place to stay, and in a shantytown, met a teenager. While his family's home already had 9 people living in 3 rooms, he convinced his mother to allow the volunteer to live (paying rent) in the front room of the house, where produce was sold. The two volunteers, Nancy and Joel, began assisting Alejandro with a youth group that he headed. By kerosene lamp in her tiny room, Alejandro and Nancy also had long talks about politics and society. "There's no doubt that I woke up and said, 'Maybe I can go somewhere,'" Toledo remembers.
A few years later, Alejandro won a small scholarship to study in the United States. He turned to the then-married couple, Nancy and Joel Meister, for help. They agreed after he promised that he would return to Peru some day. They helped him enroll at the University of San Francisco, lent him money and housed him until he could find his own place to live. In 1970, they attended his graduation. Toledo went on to Stanford, where he ended up getting two master's degrees and a Ph.D. in Economics. It was at Stanford that he met his wife, Eliane Karp, a Belgian linguistics student.
Toledo first appeared on the international political scene in 1996 when he formed and led a broad democratic coalition in the streets of Peru to bring down the autocratic regime of Alberto Fujimori. In the 2000 presidential election, Fujimori narrowly defeated Toledo amidst allegations of electoral fraud and widespread upset over the unconstitutionality of Fujimori's candidacy. After the fall of Fujimori and a short interim presidency, Toledo was elected president in 2001. In the land of the Incas, he became the first person of indigenous descent to rule this land in 500 years.
To bring it all full circle, Toledo was the president who in 2001, invited the Peace Corps to return to Peru. Peace Corps had left the country in 1975, due to political and economic instability.
And now, in the year of the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps and my entrance as a Peace Corps Volunteer, this man may again be elected president.
Below are some fantastic videos that show the diversity of Peru, and the tour guide is then-president Toledo. It is extremely cheesy at some points, but I loved every minute of this. The first one is the best, I think.
