Eliane Karp

Eliane Karp (born 1955), a French-born anthropologist and economist, is the wife of the former president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, with whom she has a daughter, Chantal.

Early life

Eliane Chantal Karp Fernenbug was born in Belgium to Jewish parents; her father was born in Poland and her mother in Belgium. As a teen, she was a member of the left-wing Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, and lived briefly on a kibbutz in Israel.

She studied economics at the Lycee Francais in Brussels, and in 1971 moved to Israel and specialized in Latin American Studies and earned her B.A. in anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She subsequently traveled to the United States to do her Master's and Ph.D. in anthropology at Stanford University, with a minor in Finance and "Economy of Development". At Stanford, she met Toledo and married him in 1979. Karp first came to Peru in the late 1970s to study Indian (indigenous) communities while working on her Ph.D.

She worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC, and in 1988 she returned to Israel, and for six years she worked at Bank Leumi in Tel Aviv, Israel, and was in charge of developing relationships with foreign banks. At the World Bank she specialized in loans for economic aid programs for developing countries. In Peru, before becoming first lady, she worked for USAID. [http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:_c--YbhBStoJ:www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3318035,00.html+%22eliane+karp%22+peru+%22hebrew+university%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=7]

For a number of years, Toledo and Karp lived apart, although without divorcing.

Karp speaks 7 languages: French, Spanish, English, Hebrew, Dutch, Portuguese, and Quechua, a native Peruvian language. Before her husband was elected president, she gave several campaign speeches in Quechua, which helped her husband's election campaign. At one rally in the Andean city of Huaraz, Karp declared that the "apus" (mountain gods of Peru's ancient Indian cultures) had spoken and that Toledo's election would break a "curse of 500 years" of oppression. Karp likes to dress in bold-colored suits with earrings and oversized necklaces bearing pre-Columbian motifs.

Karp serves on the board of several organizations. She is the Honorary President and Founder of the Fund for Development of Indigenous Communities of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the Honorary President of the National Commission on Andean, Amazon and Afro-Peruvian Communities (CONAPA) of Peru. She is also the founder and Honorary President of the Pacha Foundation, a philanthropic organization that designs and implements projects aimed at poverty relief of both rural and urban indigenous populations and increasing participation in Peruvian economic and social activities. [http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:GZoPI3mTw80J:www.gwu.edu/~clai/recent_events/2005/Karp%2520bio.pdf+%22eliane+karp%22+peru+%22hebrew+university%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=5]

She published an extensive list of books, papers and articles.

First Lady

Karp accompanied Toledo into office with ambitious plans to address social inequality and the needs of Peru's poor. When she became Peru's first lady, she promised to shake up the capital's elite and avoid the socialite duties customary to presidential wives. She insulted the Lima elite, calling them "snobs". Toledo later appointed her head of a commission to address multicultural issues, but her work was hampered by the very low approval ratings of her husband's administration. She was severely criticized when it was revealed she had a consultancy position with Wiese Sudameris Bank for which she was paid $10,000 a month. She resigned from the position on August 15, 2002.

In a speech given on February 21, 2005 at George Washington University, Karp defended the coca policy of her husband's administration. She pointed out its long traditional use in indigenous culture, and explained that coca can never be completely eradicated because of high prices for the leaf paid by drug traffickers.

In 2004 Karp was accused of misappropriating more than $2 million dollars in World Bank money earmarked for work with indigenous Peruvians as political rewards. This led to a congressional investigation. [http://www.americaeconomica.com/numeros4/275/noticias/maperuju.htm] While Karp became a U.S. citizen at one point, she took Peruvian nationality in 2002.