LIMA, Peru (CNN) -- Promising to fight to improve the lot of the
                 nation's poor and to root out corruption, Alejandro Toledo was
                 sworn in Saturday, becoming Peru's first elected president of Indian
                 descent and returning the country to democracy after 10 years of
                 autocratic rule by Alberto Fujimori.

                 In the war against poverty, "I'll dedicate all my efforts," he said. "From
                 this objective, no one will move me."

                 Toledo, 55, has his work cut out for him. More than half of the country's
                 26 million people live in poverty -- 4.5 million of them below the line of
                 extreme poverty, he said.

                 One in four children younger than 5 is chronically malnourished, and the infant
                 mortality rate is five times that of Peru's neighbors, he said.

                 "In a world ever more globalized and competitive, Peruvians find themselves
                 marginalized inside their own country," he said.

                 Toledo said he would set up programs to build housing for the poor, to improve
                 the unemployment rate by investing in small businesses, to more than double the
                 resources allocated for educating the poor, to make access to health care available
                 to all Peruvians, to care for the young and the old and the indigenous peoples of the
                 country.

                 Toledo said he would get the resources to help the poor by increasing tourism,
                 rooting out corruption and reallocating money from other projects. He proposed
                 to the presidents of other South American countries who were in attendance "an
                 immediate freeze on the buying of offensive weapons in the region" as a way of
                 saving money so that it could be redirected toward the poor.

                 "If all the countries of the subcontinent were to declare their pacifist will, there
                 would be no sense in developing and spending money on arms that we've
                 promised not to use," said Toledo.

                 In addition to presidents of other Latin American countries, the dignitaries at
                 Saturday's swearing-in included U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.

                 Describing himself as "a rebel with a cause against centralism," Toledo
                 announced the creation of a national commission of decentralization, and set
                 November 2, 2002 for local elections.

                 Eight months after Fujimori left the country in disgrace, his term of office cut
                 short by corruption scandals involving his top security officer, Toledo promised
                 to investigate claims of human rights abuses and to be "implacable in fighting
                 against corruption."

                 To a standing ovation, he also announced he was restructuring the armed forces
                 and the police with the participation of their respective leaders.

                 "The armed forces and the police should be subordinated to the authority elected
                 by the popular sovereignty," Toledo said.

                 Before the ceremonies began, Toledo traveled to a Lima shantytown where he
                 had campaigned and helped serve breakfast to poor children, handing out milk
                 cartons and sandwiches.

                 The former shoeshine boy is a political neophyte. He lost a presidential bid in
                 1995 and pulled out of a presidential runoff against Fujimori in May 2000, after
                 accusing him of election fraud.

                 Last year at this time, Fujimori was sworn into office amid fraud accusations
                 and street protests in which six people died and many others were wounded.

                 In November, Fujimori traveled to Japan, where his parents were born, after his
                 intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, became embroiled in corruption
                 scandals. Japan has granted Fujimori citizenship.

                 Toledo won a scholarship to attend the University of San Francisco and went
                 on to earn a master's degree in economics there and a doctorate in education
                 from Stanford, though he has said many times he has a Ph.D. in poverty.

                 -- Journalist Claudia Cisneros contributed to this report.