なぜ韓国人は、嫌われるのか？

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 27, 2001; Page A21
___ Desde Washington ___

He lost his first run for president in 1995 and, according to international election monitors, had the deck stacked against him in 2000 when he took on the incumbent, Alberto Fujimori, as Fujimori sought a legally dubious third term. Fujimori won the election's decisive second round, which Toledo boycotted in protest.

But soon after, Fujimori abandoned the presidency after his intelligence chief and close associate, Vladimiro Montesinos, was caught on videotape bribing an opposition congressman. Fujimori fled to Japan amid allegations ranging from corruption to murder, while Montesinos awaits trial in prison. In June, meanwhile, Toledo became Peru's first fairly elected president of Indian descent.

Now Toledo, 55, is about to face the difficult transition from political symbol to president. In Chimbote and other provincial communities, Toledo's promises have been carefully catalogued by town officials and residents who expect him to deliver within months of taking office.

"We would need at least eight new schools to handle the students, and one more fully equipped hospital," said Mayor Guzman Aguirre Altamirano. "We have faith he'll have a special proposal just for us."

Sitting against the Pacific Ocean 230 miles north of Lima, Chimbote is a flat sprawl of dun-colored cinder-block houses set against dun-colored dunes. Five decades ago, it was a tourist town with white-sand beaches. Now its bayfront features factories that have pumped pollution into the sea for decades. The city's defining feature is the smell from its fish-processing factories, which smother whole neighborhoods with an intense, abiding stench.

The tiny concrete-block house where Toledo grew up sits at the intersection of two unpaved streets, a block from the Video Pub and Bunker and across from an empty park filled with dry weeds. Now brightly painted and covered in campaign posters, the home has become part campaign headquarters and part shrine, displaying various objects from Toledo's now celebrated childhood.

On one wall hangs a certificate from Colegio Nacional San Pedro, dated Dec. 20, 1964, awarded to Toledo for "good behavior." In what was the kitchen, newspaper clippings capture campaign promises: Toledo pledging to finish a massive irrigation project abandoned by Fujimori; Toledo outlining new spending to improve schools, start microbusinesses and create jobs.

Raul Rospigliosi, a neighbor lingering at the Toledo house on a recent afternoon, said he expected Toledo to open small factories for shoes and textiles in the neighborhood -- the kinds of small-business ventures Toledo pitched as a consultant to the World Bank. Rospigliosi, fired four years ago from the National Police force for what he said were his ties to opposition politicians like Toledo, is supporting his wife and six daughters on a $100-a-month pension.

"The only work we have here right now is temporary: working in laundry places, painting a house, picking crops during the season," he said. "He's promised his help, and we believe him."

Toledo's first jobs were on the bayside Plaza Grau in front of the pink-and-white colonnade of the Tourist Hotel, a tidy square in front of Chimbote's municipal buildings. The plaza is home to the shoeshine boys who gather to catch the lunchtime crowds. They know Toledo was once one of them, but it is his promise of "More Work" emblazoned on campaign posters that impresses them more than his past.

"I don't care what field it's in, I just want a job that pays fairly and for eight hours a day," said David Castaneda, who has shined shoes here for more than half of his 25 years. He is supporting two daughters, 2 and 4 years old, on the $30 he takes home each week. "Others like me might be president one day, but I never finished my studies.