Eliane Karp

The museum pieces were excavated from Machu Picchu around 1915 and sent to Yale on a twelve-month loan.

On this matter, Peru had the support of the National Geographic Society and Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

Negotiations stalled when the university refused to acknowledge Peru as the sole owner of the artifacts, but resumed under the García presidency.

Eliane Chantal Karp Fernenbug de Toledo (born 24 September 1953) is a Peruvian anthropologist.

Karp first came to Peru in the late 1970s to study its indigenous communities.

At Stanford, she met Alejandro Toledo, whom she married in 1972.

In 1980, she began working for international organizations such as OAS, UNICEF and UNDP where she conducted impact measurement studies for development projects on indigenous populations.

In 1982 she served at the Agency for International Development (USAID) based in Lima, where she was a consultant until 1987.

Since November 1987 she started working at the World Bank in Washington D.C. as a project officer for Latin America and Africa until 1992.

Karp also served as an officer for Middle East in European Investment Bank.

Karp returned to Israel, and worked at Bank Leumi, where she was in charge of developing relationships with foreign banks.

Karp recently served as an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University.

She is also a former Visiting Professor and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University department of Anthropology.

Karp was a distinguished fellow in residence at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and has also been a visiting professor at Salamanca University - Instituto de Iberoamérica.

In 1992 Karp and Toledo divorced and she returned to Israel with their daughter.

The couple remarried and returned to Peru before her husband's 1995 campaign.

She was the First Lady of Peru from 2001 to 2006, as the wife of the erstwhile Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo.

She specializes in the study of Andean indigenous cultures.

Karp was born in Paris, France, to a family of Ashkenazi Jews (maternally Belgian-Jewish and paternally Polish-Jewish).

During World War II, her father Charles Karp was persecuted by the Gestapo and later joined the French Resistance.

She completed her baccalaureate at the Lycée Français in Brussels, Belgium, and later earned a BA in anthropology in Israel, studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a specialization in Latin American studies.

She also holds a Master of Arts in anthropology from Stanford University.

Karp also completed a PhD in anthropology at Stanford University in the United States.

Karp has taken courses on indigenous communities at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and has done graduate work on anthropology and economic development at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

During her husband's 2001 presidential bid, Karp contributed to a campaign which drew deeply on Toledo's indigenous heritage.

She donned traditional Andean costume, rallied voters in Quechua, and demonstrated the couple's commitment to indigenous issues.

According to The New York Times, "her flaming red hair and fiery speeches made her a popular and controversial fixture at campaign rallies."

In 2001, Karp became the first lady of the Republic of Peru when Toledo was elected president, a position she held until 2006.

While in office, Karp became the honorary president of the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Communities of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Shortly after Toledo's inauguration, his administration created the National Commission on Andean, Amazon and Afro-Peruvian Communities (CONAPA) of Peru, of which Karp served as president.

The agency was meant to establish a development agenda for indigenous communities, provide representation of indigenous interests within the government, and lead the way to constitutional reforms that benefit indigenous peoples.

Others lamented the commission's ineffectiveness.

Noting its lack of funding and of implementing powers, Diana Vindling called it "no more than a space for dialogue."

On the other hand, Oxfam's Martin Scurrah points out that the agency did good work.

Noting that in addition to promoting a chapter on indigenous rights in the new constitution, Eliane Karp "intervened on numerous occasions in support of or in defense of indigenous initiatives."

Some critics viewed the very creation of the commission as a step backwards for indigenous Peruvians, noting its leadership by a person with no official government position rather than a ministry head.

The commission also absorbed the former SETAI (office of indigenous affairs), which reportedly led to a loss of autonomy and dynamism for that agency.

Others complained that Karp's leadership of the commission represented a conflict of interest, given her involvement in her own private NGO, Fundación Pacha.

In 2003, partly in response to these criticisms, Karp resigned from CONAPA, which was subsequently restructured as a national institute rather than a commission.

Throughout Toledo's presidency, Karp participated in negotiations with Yale University for the return to Peru of over 350 indigenous artifacts.