Barbara
I am an American writer who lived in Lima for seven years (2007-2014), where I covered Andean traditions, melting glaciers and daily life in the capital for Miami Herald, MSNBC and Huffington Post. I now live and work in northern Florida where I champion climate change advocacy and compassionate, affordable eldercare.
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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…
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Artists Envisioning Climate Change: Come Hell or High Water
A 21-meter-tall high tide in Bristol, England? It’s projected to hit the city if the Greenland Ice Cap melts completely and no mitigation is put in motion, as this installation dramatizes Following up on a link to yesterday’s post about climate-change denial among U.S. citizens, I discovered an intriguing blog about the arts and the environment. RSA Arts & Ecology blog reports on an outdoor arts project in England that forces viewers to confront the future impacts of climate change on their own city: Tomorrow evening at dusk Chris Bodle’s Watermarks Project comes to life in Bristol city centre. The artwork takes the conjectures about the effect of global warming on sea…
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Hard Times for Americans and Peruvians in the U.S.
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 before evicting them. Peru’s pro-tenant policy contrasts sharply with eviction laws in the United States, which generally grant a 30-day reprieve, at most, before kicking out tenants on the street. Drawing contrasts between the two legal approaches is timely given the thousands of homeowners in the United States who are being booted out of their homes…
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Hah! An Old Friend Laughes in My Face about Rising Sea Levels
The napkin is my witness: Notes from my Dec. 20 conversation about climate change with reporter Jim DeFede Reporter Jim DeFede and I were office buddies at Miami New Times back in the mid-90s. He sat in his tiny cubicle, digging up dirt on crooked politicians and fending off threats from the angry subjects of his no-holds-barred exposés. I sat a few seats behind DeFede at the copy editing desk, tidying up commas and occasionally contributing a feature story on something offbeat, like full-moon drumming circles on South Beach. We were two very different writers; he was a hard facts, investigative guy who’d risk anything to expose corruption in high places. I was a…
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Quit Spewing Out Greenhouse Gases, America!
That, in short, is my message to the United States. I’m inspired to scream in my headline after watching Al Gore warn the U.S. Senate on Wednesday that the U.S. needs to join the rest of the world in signing a treaty to cut greenhouse emissions. The planet will soon reach a “tipping point” of damage to the climate, Gore told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. (Click here for CNN news brief, Gore Warns of Damage to Climate Change). If the United States — the world’s biggest per-capita producer of greenhouse gases — doesn’t get on board with cutting emissions drastically, the world’s climate will heat up to levels that may not be able…
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Vote for the 7 Gastronomic Wonders of Peru
Peru has discovered the marketing power of the voter-powered “Best of” list. The trend began in 2007 when a global poll of 100 million voters chose Machu Picchu as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. The prestige and tourism revenues generated by that honor inspired Peru to mount its own contest to name the 7 Wonders of Peru. Winning sites include the Inca baths of Cajamarca, Colca Canyon and the Kuelap Fortress in the Amazon. (Given its status as a World Wonder, Machu Picchu was not eligible for nomination.) Now a group called Acidoungusto Comunicaciones is sponsoring an online poll to determine the Seven Gastronomic Wonders of Peru (las 7 maravillas…
