An American in Lima

A few days ago, I received a pleasant surprise:  two of my blog posts have been nominated for the Best of 2009 Just Posts.  Just Posts for a Just World is a highly readable monthly roundtable of blog posts on social-justice issues from around the world.  It’s curated by Holly at Cold Spaghetti and Alejna at [...]

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A tower of Peruvian-made panettone entices shoppers at Wong supermarket, Miraflores (photo c. Barbara Drake 2008) Peruvians and  Brazilians love their locally-made panettone, an Italian-style Christmas cake that’s grown into a multimillion-dollar business for bakers in South America. Now the Italian Cake Industry group wants nonItalian manufacturers to conform to strict baking standards or stop calling [...]

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Pres. Alan García bears the burden of the silver litter, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009; photo courtesy Andina A recent poll by the University of Lima indicated that more than three-quarters of devotees of El Señor de los Milagros say the Peruvian Christ figure has answered their prayers. Nearly 76 percent — 75.8 percent — of [...]

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  A yummy seafood causa featured on a poster for the second annual gastronomic fair, held Sept. 24-27, in Lima BBC Online published an insightful overview yesterday of Peru’s booming food industries (“Food business taking off in Peru,” 9/25/09), to coincide with this weekend’s second annual gastronomic fair in Lima.  Dan Collyns reports on the growth of [...]

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At last count (mid August), 514 Peruvians had died of pneumonia brought on by extreme cold this year, most of them children under five. Most reasonable people would call that an emergency. Not Peru’s Red Cross, however.  In a bulletin issued August 4, 2009, the Peruvian Red Cross (PRC) issued a general statement about the cold deaths [...]

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Enigmatic geoglyphs in the Nasca desert draw tens of thousands of tourists to southern Peru each year (photo c. RPP) Great timing, criminals in southern Peru. First a Peruvian trucking company diverts 100 tons of UN rice for cold-spell victims to the black market in July. SUNAT seizes three truckloads (32 tons) of hijacked rice [...]

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These are the things I think of when I read the news reports on deaths in the highlands — the humble, hard-working people who live at such a remove from the “civilized” world and who can be helped at not that much cost, if only there are willing souls to climb the mountain paths and meet them halfway.

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Ohio State glaciologist Lonnie Thompson gives two good reasons why loss of Peru’s glaciers is “alarming”; July 7 Adapting to a World without Glaciers, Lima (photo by Jorge Vera 2009) By Barbara R. Drake LIMA, PERU: Peru’s Minister of the Environment Antonio Brack Egg told international glacier experts and other climate specialists last week that [...]

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Many thanks to Alenja and Holly of Collecting Tokens for including my rant on the archbishop of Cusco as a June “Just Post for a Just World.” The Just Posts roundtable highlights ”posts about topics of social justice and activism in all shapes and sizes,” writes Alenja. She adds that “Holly and I are pleased to share this wealth of posts [...]

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Screw the locals, screw the poor, screw the backpackers, screw anyone who wants to eat healthy Peruvian food at decent prices.

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A front-page article in Sunday’s El Comercio exposed the criminal indifference of local and state governments to the deaths of children in the Andes. Some Peruvians are outraged at the country’s indifference to the preventable deaths of children in the Andes, as this widely circulated cartoon shows. Others shrug their shoulders and say, “That’s Peru.” This year alone, [...]

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In the last 180 days, the dollar has been gaining in Peru, as this chart shows. Back in September ’08, the dollar was trading at 2.97 Peruvian soles; by March 3, 2009, that rate had spiked to 3.26 soles, leveling at 3.14 by March 17: chart courtesy Exchange-Rates.org Actually, the strengthening of the dollar began before September. In [...]

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The other day in a post about art about the Shining Path years, I included an unidentified photograph of a Peruvian retablo created by, it turns out, master artisan Nicario Jiménez Quispe. Jiménez was born in Ayacucho, the historic center of indigenous struggle in Peru and the locus of Shining Path conflict, and now lives in [...]

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Some interesting recent posts by bloggers who write about Peru and Peruvians abroad. Hard times in the United States are devastating families there and ratcheting up anti-immigrant sentiment. Rachel in Peru looks at the longstanding Peruvian legal tradition that permits renters to stay in a home or property for up to three years without paying rent [...]

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