Worldcrunch
LIMA — Sometimes it seems the popular smartphone gaming app Pokémon Go knows no bounds. But Lima-based daily El Comercio reports that the capital’s seafront district of La Punta recently banned the game in most areas, restricting players to a limited zone. The district council moved ahead with the ban this week after receiving numerous […]
I bought a nice bedspread from one of these Uru women, sitting in the sun on a islet in Lake Titicaca. They sure get enough practice: The Uru people wove the islets themselves, using dried reeds.
These two Peruvian women in traditional clothes were taking a break from a nearby festival, watching me watching them.
LIMA — The Sheraton hotel chain is being accused of threatening Peru’s cultural patrimony by building a new hotel in protected parts of Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Accusing Sheraton of violating the conditions of an earlier municipal permit, Peru’s culture ministry has decided to appeal […]
LIMA — The Peruvian capital has no shortage of vultures flying overhead. For the past year they have also been enlisted to help find, and perhaps eventually clear, some of Lima’s worst illegal trash heaps. How is it done? The city and scientists have been using 10 vultures strapped with GPS and GoPro cameras to […]
El Comercio, June 6, 2016 “Vote by vote” reads the front page of Peruvian daily El Comercio Monday, as ballots are still being counted after Sunday’s presidential election, the second-round vote being too close to call last night. The front page features a painting of the two main candidates, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski from the center-right […]
Maxima Acuna, an illiterate farmer in the northern Peruvian region of Cajamarca, faced years of litigation — and police beatings — to protect her property from the bulldozing and toxic dumping of a US-based mining firm.
VIZCATÁN DEL ENE — Deep in the Peruvian Andes, a valley dominated by the drug trade now finds itself at the heart of a resurgent Marxist insurgency. The valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, known as the Vraem, was the scene of an April 11 attack by the Shining Path that left eight […]
Keiko Fujimori has overcome, at least paritally, her imprisoned father’s past to become the frontrunner to be Peru’s next president. But the runoff will measure fears of a return to the authoritarian right?
Working the day shift at the Machu Picchu police station looked like a pretty quiet job. No troubles even from the neighborhood llamas.
CHIRIACO — A devastating oil spill in the Peruvian Amazon is spreading weeks after it began on January 25th. Lima-based daily El Comercio reports that the spill has affected two Peruvian provinces in the Amazon region, polluting farmland, rivers and forests. Some 3,000 barrels of oil burst from a pipeline began running through protection barriers […]
As it loses territory in Iraq and Syria, ISIS may pursue the *distant enemy* that Osama bin Laden put at the heart of his own longer-term pursuit of a caliphate.
The sturdy dry-stone walls of the Incan site have been standing there since the 13th century. And they still look good on a group picture.
CERRO DE PASCO — More than 2,000 children in Peru’s Pasco region have blood lead levels far higher than what the World Health Organization says is a safe range for children, and at least 70 of them are suffering from resulting physical illnesses and disabilities, Lima-based daily El Comercio reports. The culprit is mining, and […]
Amid the seeming complacency or incompetence of the government, drug-related violence and criminals acting with impunity are creating an all-too-familiar atmosphere of fear.
On our way from Lima to the world’s highest navigable body of water, Lake Titicaca in the Andes, we stopped in Arequipa and enjoyed walking in the arcade beneath the Municipalidad, near the Plaza de Armas. We were advised to spend a day or two in the city before heading higher into the mountains so […]
Enjoy the view.
BEIJING — China’s Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, completed a tour last week of four South American countries — Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile — that marks a turning point between the Asian power and the Latin American region. With his arrival in Brazil on the second day, May 19, Li unveiled a major achievement: a […]
This monkey, which looks like it was scrawled on a cave wall, is actually a 300-foot-long geoglyph of unknown origin, seen from a plane in Peru’s Nazca Desert.
Like with the 18th century Andean silver route for Spain, Argentina has become a short cut for sending Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine to Europe. It’s also a customer.
Andean towns like Pariacaca, in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, are keeping a cautious eye on rapidly melting glaciers, from which giant blocks of ice can break off into lakes, creating huge and potentially deadly waves.
I’ve already told you about the knitting abilities of Peruvian men and women. But the Uru people living on Lake Titicaca take it to a whole other lever: Not only do they use bundles of dried reeds to make boats like the one on this slide — but they weave the artificial islets themselves!
As the 20th UN Climate Summit begins in Peru, one faster way to fight global warming is to steer investors away from oil and gas, and bet instead in clean energy. The planet depends on it.
With the region still divided into different trading blocs, Chile is leading efforts to bring Latin American nations together for a joint policy to expand global trade.
Seeing these two girls with their spindles and balls of yarn, going their merry way on a steep path of Lake Titicaca’s Taquile Island, you might think they are among the Peruvian girls and women who create the kind of high-quality handicraft I’ve already told you about. But on Taquile, women are only allowed to […]
LIMA — When Dolores Guzman was contacted by investigators, it became clear to her that all of her efforts over the past 30 years to overcome the deaths of her family and fellow townspeople had been futile. She agreed to leave the Lima street stand where she sells hard-boiled eggs and return to Paccha — […]
In Peru, for example, keep your eye on the *Chopers.
As evangelical hostility to proposed same-sex civil unions demonstrates, Peruvian society has yet to embrace its own government’s rhetoric of tolerance and social inclusion.
Gossip columns and scurrilous TV shows peer into people’s private lives more every day. Not about freedom of information, they perpetuate the social complexes of the Colonial era.
Strong foreground, nice depth of field, striking colors, llamas … What more could you ask for in a picture?
Just before last week’s death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El Espectador spoke with arguably the only other Latin American author in his league, 2010 Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.
Travelling the world for more than 50 years as we did, you are bound to see some incredible sights. The Nazca Lines, in southern Peru’s Nazca Desert, rank high among these unbelievable wonders. No one really knows why and how the geoglyphs — some of which are over 200 meters across — were made … […]
The refusal to give up amid dire political and financial conditions – call it old fashioned Optimism – helped Peruvians turn into a growing economic force.
Proud of its more than 4,000-year history and heritage, Peru is starting to take exception to certain tourist pranks at venerable sites — most notably, the new fad of posing nude atop Machu Picchu, and sharing the photos online. The cases of in-the-buff visitors at the 15th Century Inca citadel, a UNESCO World Heritage site, […]
There are llamas and alpacas everywhere in Peru. Contrary to what people may think, they are very docile creatures and their infamous bouts of spitting are apparently quite rare. More to the point, both animals produce high-quality wool, which I can attest to: The bedspread I bought in Peru on this trip is still as […]
Though reports say Peru has surpassed Colombia as world’s top source of cocaine, it has not faced the same kind of violence. Is Lima turning a blind eye toward drug trafficking?