Interviews with Alejandro Toledo

When I concluded public school, when I concluded my elementary school, I went to high school. And apparently, when I was in elementary school, there was a teacher who loved to write poetry. And he found a vein in my writing. Apparently I was writing poetry at a very primitive, not very sophisticated – talking about Mother’s Day or the Independence Day, very naïve, very – loved to write poetry.

And there was a competition among the schools in Chimbote, and the winner of the competition had a prize, and the prize was to be the political correspondent of the major national newspaper, La Prensa. So I won, and so I became at the age of 11 years old a political correspondent of La Prensa in Chimbote. Part of this set of coincidences was that they were Election Day – years. So politicians came through Chimbote, and we interviewed. That’s why I met Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, the founder of the APRA party [American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, a Peruvian political party]. I met Fernando Belaúnde of Acción Popular. [Fernando Belaúnde Terry was President of Peru from 1963-1968 and 1980-1985. Accion Popular was his political party]. But they didn’t pay much attention to me, because nobody believed that one kid of 11 years old was going to be the correspondent. But I understand why they did not believe me, because in addition to be correspondent, I was carrying my box of shoeshine. [As a student, President Toledo supplemented his family’s income by working as a shoeshine boy.]

But then I met them. I interview them. And I couldn’t believe myself when I saw the first article that I wrote. I couldn’t fit in my own skin when I wrote, so my – there was an American guy who came to a tourist hotel where I used to go to shoeshine because they used to give you an additional tip. I was shoeshining, and I had the papers, and I said, do you want to buy a paper? He said, no, no, but you – I can lend you the paper while I shoeshine. I won’t charge you for the paper. I really wanted to show you the – hey, this is Alejandro Toledo. He wasn’t interested. When I finished, he paid me for the shoeshine, and he left. And I said, that’s me. So he told me something not very pronounceable: Who in the hell do you think you are trying to kid, how to lie? So he left and never believed me that I had my first article.

President Alejandro Toledo was the first person of Quechua decent to be elected president of Peru, serving from July 2001 to July 2006. Toledo grew up in a large, poverty-stricken family that struggled to support itself. As a young boy, Toledo saw the value of education and became involved in politics and journalism at the age of eleven.

In 2000, Toledo was a leading figure in the movement that toppled President Alberto Fujimori’s authoritarian regime. Following Fujimori’s controversial re-election, which was surrounded by fraud allegations, Toledo organized mass street protests that ultimately forced the President’s resignation. Toledo emerged victorious in Peru’s subsequent presidential election in April 2001.

As president, Toledo implemented policies to reduce poverty by investing in the country’s health and educational systems. As a result of sustained economic growth and deliberate social policies directed at assisting the poor, extreme poverty was reduced by 25 percent in five years.

Since leaving office, Toledo has continued to be a leading voice in international development. He recently founded the Lima-based Global Center for Development and Democracy; through this organization, Toledo works to promote sustainable democracies and economic self-sufficiency in the developing world.

http://www.cgdd.org/