From Cabana to Harvard

By 1995 he made his first electoral introduction aiming at the presidency. Alejandro Toledo sought to gain the electorate’s acceptance making people remember his humble origins. He told all the journalists who wanted to interview him the following : “When I was a little shepherd, I spent my lifetime between sheep and the sky, my only company was my dog Limón”.

Some got impressed with Alejandro Toledo Manrique’s story and it was said that he could be a copy of the Fujimori myth, a man who only wanted to be a congressman three months before the elections but who became President of the Republic.

The past
By then Toledo was away from his wife, the beautiful red-headed Eliane Karp and lived as a single parent with her daughter Shantal. In his conversation with the journalists, more than talking about politics, he spent his time talking about past memories. He told a journalist: “I’m the son of a vulture in the highlands, a migrant in Cora Cora, Ayacucho, who grew up in Nasca, Ica. He was a bricklayer and his name was Anatolio,”remembered Alejandro the candidate. Anatolio Toledo and Margarita Manrique met in Lima, they fell in love and from their union 16 brothers were born, but only 9 survived. Among them, Alejandro. Margarita and Anatolio got married and she insisted on moving to Cabana, her homeland, a small town where all the children were born.

The potato, the olluco
In the small land she inherited, the couple grew potato, olluco and corn while the elder brothers were devoted to the pasturage. There lies the origin of the little sheep that Toledo would always remember, even in Lima or in San Francisco University where he studied from 1966 to 1970 studying a bachelor’s degree in Economy. The growing of potato and olluco barely allowed to nourriture half of the numerous family. Most of the time Anatolio should get incomes running errands outside Cabana, even in a mine or in Ancash, the capital.

To Chimbote
But they were fed up with poverty and one day the family moved with the things they had, which were not many, to Chimbote, a port where legends said that people enriched from one day to another. The project of the anchoveta was in operation, a small fish, captured in high sea, was taken to the storage of hundreds of huge boats. It was cooked, packed and dispatched as fish flour to European and Asian markets. The Toledo-Manrique family had to confirm so much beauty, so they went to Chimbote.

About everything
At the beginning, things were difficult, nothing they have heard was true. Anatolio found a job pulling the fishers’ boats. Up in the fishing boats, there was no space or it was very limited and the “ criollos” gave the “serranos” the worst and bad-paid posts. Alejandro stayed at Chimbote, sometimes polishing shoes, sometimes carrying bags in the food markets. Although, he did not leave his studies. He coped as he could and in this way he finished his primary and secondary education. One day, his father arrived to the humble house he owned and over-excited he told that he had been part of a land invasion , now they already had a place to build their house, the place was called San Pedro, a sandy area outside the port.

Profession: invader
The problem was that, as time went by, Anatolio became an expert in invasions and he usually ended up in jail. Alejandro counted the times he had to take the food to his father who was in prison. And the activity became a job, a major field. Meanwhile, the young Alejandro studied hard. But he only pretended to finish primary school.He thought that this will fulfill his expectations, studying high school was too much, he thought about something that would allow him to put an end to his poverty.