STANFORD -- Former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo has been named a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
The appointment was announced by John Raisian, Hoover director, who added that “it is an honor and privilege to welcome former President Toledo to the Hoover Institution as a distinguished visiting fellow. He is a remarkable person, having risen from a situation of poverty to the leader of Peru. Education was key in his development, including advanced degrees from Stanford. He has accomplished much, both professionally and personally. We will all benefit from his experience, and look forward to many interactions with him as he joins the Stanford community.”
Toledo served as constitutional president of Peru from July 2001 to July 2006. In addition to his Hoover fellowship, he also is a distinguished fellow in residency at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.
Toledo earned his bachelor’s degree in economics and business administration at the University of San Francisco in San Francisco, California. He later attended Stanford University, where he obtained two masters’ degrees and a P.Q. in the economics of human resources in the School of Education. During his years in academe, Toledo was a visiting scholar at Harvard University and at Waseda University in Tokyo. He has been a full professor at the Graduate School of Business and Administration in Peru.
Before becoming president of Peru, Toledo worked for the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank in Washington, the United Nations in New York, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris.
Toledo came on the international political scene when he led a wide democratic coalition in the streets of Peru, the “Coalicion de Todas las Sangres,” to bring down the regime of then-president Alberto Fujimori in the period 1998- 2001.
During the five years of Toledo’s presidency, the Peruvian economy grew at an average rate of 6 percent, making it one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America. Inflation reached an average of 1.5 percent and the fiscal deficit went as low as 0.2 percent. Markets in China and Thailand were opened, and free trade agreement negotiations with the United States, Chile, and Mexico are about to conclude. These markets are generating new investments and jobs for the most needy Peruvians.
In the social area, as a result of economic growth and deliberate social policies directed to the neediest, extreme poverty was reduced by 25 percent in five years. At the same time, employment grew by 6 percent in 2005.
Alejandro Toledo was born in a small and remote village of the Peruvian Andes 12,000 feet above sea level. He is one of 16 brothers and sisters from an extremely poor family.
Thanks to an unexpected access to education, he moved from poverty to study at some of the most prestigious academic centers of the world and later became one of the most prominent democratic leaders of Latin America. Toledo was the first Peruvian president from indigenous descent to be democratically elected in that nation’s 500-year history.
His work now focuses on opening access to quality education for the large restricted indigenous populations in Latin America so that men and women in those regions can also become presidents of their countries, he said.
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