An American in Lima

Jorge Recharte, Andes program director for the Mountain Institute, eloquently explains the special bond between Peru’s people and her mountains. This relationship has shaped 5,000 years of culture in both the coast and the sierra and will determine Peru’s future,  says Recharte in this video featured on msnbc.com:

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Here’s the video of the report that aired on NBC Nightly News on December 8.

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Tonight NBC Nightly News airs a special report on Peru’s melting glaciers and their downstream effects. (Click here for times and stations across the United States.)

NBC Nightly News Chief Environmental News Correspondent Anne Thompson interviews glaciologist Marco Zapata at Pastoruri Glacier, Oct. 2009 (photo c. Barbara Drake)

Tune in to see footage of dying Pastoruri Glacier and to [...]

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 Once upon a time, the easiest way for a visitor to touch ice  in Peru was to climb the tourist trail to Pastoruri Glacier, a flat-topped glacier 70 km south of Huaraz. Roads from the highway made the glacier easily accessible to daytrippers, and even though its peak is a staggering 5,200 meters above sea [...]

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Tomorrow morning I fly to Huaraz to help out with a U.S. network shoot about melting glaciers in Peru. I’ll be taking the group to Pastoruri, which I didn’t get to visit the last time I was in Huaraz, and I’m looking forward to seeing the once-mighty glacier up close. And, as it happens, something [...]

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Last week I dropped in on a very cool Finnish design exhibit being hosted at Lima’s ICPNA center. “Northern Stars” showcases more than 100 years of innovative design from Finnish designers and design firms such as Marimekko, Arabia, Nokia and Metso.
El Híjo and I were hoping to catch sight of some Moomintrolls, the eccentric woodland characters invented [...]

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Cynthia Paniagua (R) in Chincha (photo: Florencia Castello)

Peruvian culture will get a major public-awareness boost tonight when New York PBS stations broadcast the awarding-winning documentary Soy Andina. (Sept. 10, 10 p.m.; check local listings. The film airs throughout the country starting Oct. 11.)
Soy Andina is one of eight documentary films selected for the new season of Latin [...]

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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 in Puno, [...]

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These two kids live near Upis in southern Peru, where children are dying of extreme cold brought on by climate change. More deaths are predicted for August, typically the coldest month of the year in the high Andes (photo c. Barbara Drake 2008)

Peru is finally acknowledging that the humanitarian crisis caused by extreme cold in the Andes isn’t [...]

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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 Peru cannot [...]

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El Fotografo took this shot during the drive to Huaraz last week. It’s of the Callejón de Huaylas (”Alley of Huaylas”), a valley in the Ancash Region in the north-central highlands of Peru. Glaciers all along the mountains there are melting due to rapid climate change.

Mt. Caullaraju; photo c. Jorge Vera 2009

Shooting with a Hasselblad enabled EF [...]

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Water Is the Source of Life (Jorge Vera 2009)

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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 that [...]

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