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Nightmares and Blighted Dreams in Little Boxes: Retablos of Nicario Jimenez Quispe
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 the decidedly peaceful town of Naples, Florida. His work is notable for its application of the traditional Andean retablo form — essentially, a portable prayer box with handmade figurines depicting a narrative — to contemporary socio-political themes in Peruvian, U.S. and Mexican societies. Among the stories that Jimenez illustrates are the April 1997 rescue of hostages from the Japanese embassy…
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The Milk of Sorrow Joins Growing List of Works about Peru’s Shining Path Years
A scene from the Spanish-Peruvian movie “The Milk Of Sorrow” by director Claudia Llosa in this photo released by the Berlinale film festival. (Berlinale via Associated Press) Congratulations to Peruvian-born director Claudia Llosa, whose drama The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada) captured the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlin film festival last week. I am eager to see the film, which to my knowledge is not presently showing in Lima. If you’re curious about it, here’s a recent review from Variety: With her sophomore effort “The Milk of Sorrow,” Peruvian director Claudia Llosa (“Madeinusa”) bolsters her reputation as one of the most interesting femme helmers working in the Americas…
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Encounters on the Miraflores Malecon
Lola had an eventful morning. El Fotografo and I took her for a long stroll along the Malecón in Miraflores, overlooking the ocean, and in the course of one and a half hours she met: her longlost mother her longlost father author Mario Vargas Llosa. We had been walking for an hour when we ran into Pepa. The eerie thing about Lola’s mother is she looks exactly like Lola — a slim, low-slung black European Lab with a delicately shaped head. EF has spotted Pepa several times by the Malecón lighthouse in the last year, but this was my first time meeting maman since we adopted Lola in late 2007. Pepa was carrying a tennis ball…
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Vegan Antitaurino Activist, Plaza San Martin, Lima, Peru
Animal-rights protestor Jessica Santilla, demonstration at Plaza San Martin, Lima, Peru, Nov. 2008 / photo c. Jorge Vera El Fotografo and I met this protestor at an antitaurino (anti-bullfighting) rally held on the opening day of the Plaza de Acho bullfights, last November. Jessica Santillan is 20 years old, a student and an ardent vegan. Unlike many of the antitaurinos I met in Lima that day, Santillan believes that slaughtering animals for food is as morally reprehensible as killing bulls in the bullring. She and her boyfriend were holding up a sign that said “Neither bulls in the Plaza nor cattle in the slaughterhouse.” They were wearing matching toro outfits and chained together. Some of the demonstrators…
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Bicycle-powered Washing Machine Debuts at Lima Orphanage
MIT students and residents of Ventanilla, Peru work on the bicilavadora, a novel, inexpensive bike/washing machine. Photo / Gwyndaf Jones Forward-thinking inventors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a “green” washing machine that runs on pedal power, mountain-bike gears and no electricity, making it ideal for rural and impoverished communities. Last month, MIT students took the newest prototype of the “bicilavadora” machine to an orphanage in the slums of Ventanilla, Lima, where volunteers put it through its paces, announced MIT News: In many developing countries, electricity is unreliable or unavailable and water must be carried by hand, so conventional modern washing machines are not an option. Washing clothes can take…
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The Vizcacha: “Little-known Small Animal with a Promising Economic Future”
photo © Joseph Tobias Okay. I didn’t invent that headline. I swiped it from a book about small and miniature animals titled Microlivestock: Little-known Small Animals with Promising Economic Futures (1991), published by the U.S. Office of International Affairs and the National Research Council. The mountain vizcacha, a furry rabbit-like rodent that lives in Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, is featured in chapter 24 of Microlivestock, which also has a lot to say about small animals you already know about (turkey, rabbit, quail), small animals you may never had heard of (agouti, coypu, hutia) and small animals that sound like the products of dubious genetic experiments (the Giant Rat, micro-cattle, the micro-goat and the micro-pig). I don’t think the northern vizcacha,…
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Like Your Ice Cream Spicy Hot? Peruvian Flavors Challenge Taste Buds
The odd blend of flavors exploded on my tongue: Sweet strawberry and hot jalapeno. Yikes! Welcome to ice cream in the Land of the Inca, where jaded taste buds are courted by unusual and sometimes explosive flavor combinations. The ice cream that sent me running for ice water a few days ago was a neon-orange product called Sin Parar Hot (“Non Stop Hot”). It’s a cup of highly sweetened strawberry ice cream spiked with spicy flavor bombs — a weird combination that Nestle/D’Onofrio dreamed up to appeal to kids and teens. El Híjo was introduced to it by his 24-year-old cousin, who has a weak spot for Dunkin Donuts and trendy…
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California to Die of Thirst Like Coastal Peru?
image courtesy L.A. Times blog Word has been out for a while that dwindling meltwater from Peru’s tropical glaciers will lead to dire water shortages in 40 years unless radical measures are taken to find and conserve new sources. Most of the water used along Peru’s coastal region, including Lima, originates in the glaciers of the Andes, which are receding due to rapid climate change. Climate patterns in the southern hemisphere, however, don’t worry most U.S. citizens, who mistakenly believe that their own lives will be minimally impacted by climate change. Changes are coming sooner than they think. In his first interview, the U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu is predicting the end of California agriculture and…
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Still Time to Vote for Your 7 Favorite Peruvian Dishes
Picante de cuy, one of 100 dishes vying for the title of “Gastronomic Wonder of Peru” The official website states that the first round of voting ended February 15, but evidently you can still cast your vote online for the Seven Gastronomical Wonders of Peru. There are serious choices to be made among the 100 contenders. This weekend I learned that my 26-year-old nephew had voted for, among other dishes, picante de cuy. I hadn’t pegged him as a cuy guy, but he assured me that spicy roasted guinea pig really is one of his favorites. Now that I’ve read the description on the 7 Maravillas site, I’m rather speechless: The palate…
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Help Save Peru’s Yellow-Tailed Woolly Monkey from Extinction
A baby monkey (related to the yellow-tailed) riding on his adopted father’s back in the tropical forests of northern Peru; monkey protection program run by IKAMA Peru (photo courtesy IKAMA Peru) I could devote this entire blog to news about wildlife in Peru, where new species are discovered weekly and, conversely, where threats to native habitats have eradicated hundreds of existing species in the time that it takes to build a shopping mall. Because I focus on daily life in Lima and climate change in the Andes, however, I have to pass up many newsworthy stories about animals in Peru. The one, however, caught my eye since it concerns one of the world’s rarest (and…
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High-tech Super Tree Combats Air Pollution in Surquillo
The Urban Air Cleaner UAC-20, a.k.a. “Super Tree,” is busy sucking up fumes in lovely downtown Surquillo What is it with Surquillo, lately? The working-class Lima district is making headlines for advocating innovative, sometimes radical solutions to urban problems. First Surquillo’s mayor Gustavo Sierra raised eyebrows around the world when he suggested that Peru solve its drug problem by legalizing illicit drugs and handling them through the national health ministry. (Sierra later claimed that he was misquoted and that he does not want to legalize drugs, but, rather, he wants the Peruvian government to fund programs to treat drug addicts. Read his refutation in Spanish here.) Now Surquillo is tackling the less-controversial problem of air pollution by installing a state-of-the-art air purifier nicknamed…
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Maids Still Banned from Swimming at Peru Beaches? Sadly, Yes
Artist’s depiction of discriminatory laws at some Peruvian beaches that prohibit maids from swimming during daylight hours (until 7 p.m. at Asia beach) It sounds like a scene straight out of the Jim Crow era in the American South, but it’s happening today in coastal Peru: discriminatory laws in some exclusive seaside resorts prohibit maids (nearly all of whom are poor Andean and black women) from swimming on the beach during daylight hours. As Juan Arellano described in Global Voices Online in 2007, the beaches where this discrimination is practiced are located south of Lima, among them the fashionable resort town of Asia. Wealthy Limeños flock to beach houses in Asia during the brief summer months,…
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Pituco Summer
Bring on the inflatable breasts! It’s summertime in Lima It’s summer in Lima. It’s hot, there’s no air-conditioning, all the pitucos are at the beach, and the city street-sweepers are roasting in their masks and full-body jumpsuits. I haven’t mentioned the pitucos before. I was going to get around to it. The word roughly means “snob,” but that doesn’t begin to cover it. In Peru a pituco (or pituca, if female) usually refers to a white person with money (some or a lot) who flaunts his or her status. I don’t categorize all financially stable/rich Limenos as pitucos. My criteria are stricter: You have to be a conspicuous status-seeker,…
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Calientito! Peruvian Food Trend Heats Up in 2009
Innovative octopus causa from Andina Restaurant, in Portland, Oregon Looks like Epicurious was spot on in predicting that Peruvian would become the hot food trend of 2009. Bon Appétit magazine named Lima the Next Great Food City in its January ’09 issue. Writer Daniel Duane hangs out with Gaston Acurio for a day, eating his way through some of Lima’s top restaurants, including Malabar, Toshiro’s Sushi Bar and La Mar Cebicheria Peruana, and concludes that Peruvian food ranks with the best: Want a new fusion cuisine sourced from the world’s best ingredients? Star chefs with personalities as big as their palates? A good exchange rate for the dollar? Welcome to Peru’s capital city, the next…
