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Mario Vargas Llosa Wins Nobel Lit Prize
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Academy in Stockholm announced early today. Vargas Llosa has written more than 30 novels, essays and plays, including Conversation in the Cathedral, Feast of the Goat and Death in the Andes. He’s racked up scores of literary honors, including Spain’s highest, the Cervantes Prize, in 1995, but the Nobel eluded him for decades, probably, many believe, because of his right-leaning political identity. (See article from Christian Science Monitor here.) A former leftist, Vargas Llosa gradually embraced economic liberalism and was an outspoken critic of Peru’s two-term president Alberto Fujimori, who shut down Congress and the judiciary…
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Trattoria Napoli: There’s No Place Like Home
Nearly every large city in South America has at least one or two very good, if not excellent, Italian restaurants. What every city does not have is an authentic Italian trattoria — a mid-priced, family-run restaurant that serves delicious, regional dishes in a casual, home-like setting. Lima’s Trattoria Napoli does just that, serving up first-rate southern Italian fare in a sliver of a building tucked in no-frills Surquillo. The trattoria is truly a family business: The owner’s from Calabria (the toe of the boot), his wife keeps the tiramisu in the fridge next-door, and the ponytailed son-in-law can often be found munching on gnocchi with the grandkids at a nearby…
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Photo of the Day: Lavanderia San Antonio
I took this photo a few days ago when I was walking Lola. It was 8:30 a.m., and I figured that the dry cleaners would be open at that hour but it wasn’t. One of the women who works at the front counter was sitting outside the locked metal doors, waiting for the manager to open. Come back at 9, she said. I use the Lavanderia San Antonio because they do a good job and they’re cheap and the workers are nice. Sometimes dry cleaning people can be unhelpful or sullen, even ornery. I noticed this in the United States, and it’s true in Peru too. Maybe it’s all those toxic chemicals…
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Vote for Best Just Posts of 2009!
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 Collecting Tokens, who wade through the blogosphere each month to find personal posts that “speak to the same thing — the lifting up of our planet and all that inhabit it.” The typical Just Post is candid and compassionate and outspoken, and reads like a real person speaking his/her own mind. I like that. I’m…
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“All Hail the Glacier Gods”: El Fotografo’s MSNBC Pix of Qoyllur Rit’i
Back in December, msnbc.com published a photo story on Qoyllur Rit’i and global warming, with photos by El Fotógrafo and captions by yours truly. I neglected to provide the link to that slide show, which includes some of EF’s strongest images of the dangerous (and endangered) glacier pilgrimage, so here it is, belatedly: “Peru’s Disappearing Holy Glacier.” This photo, above, of a veteran ukuku is one of my favorites. The guy must be about 40 years old, but exposure to the harsh Andean elements has made his face a craggy moraine field. Most of the ukukus at QR are in their late teens and early 20s; you don’t see a lot of…
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How to Prepare for an Earthquake in a Third World Country
The devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake that ravaged Chile on Saturday could easily have happened here in Lima or anywhere else along the Pacific coast. Sooner or later another big one will hit Peru, as one did in July 2007, and there are only a few ways to increase your odds that you won’t get killed when it happens. Living in a well-constructed, “earthquake-proof” home is the best way to protect yourself. I put quotation marks around that phrase because no structure is guaranteed to withstand the most violent earthquakes. Still, as engineer Andy Johnson notes, a well engineered building should hold up long enough for the people inside to escape before it…
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Writing on Bullfighting for HuffPo
I’ve been away from An American in Lima for a little while (understatement) but thanks to my friend Levi Novey, aka Mr Green HuffPost, I’m getting a bigtime nudge to return to blogging. Which I do love doing, by the way. Levi let me hijack his column today to guest rant about bullfighting (The Twisted Temptations of Bullfighting in Peru). It’s a confession about the thing I experienced at Acho that I never wrote about before. Call it my testosterone moment in the bullring. The column includes nice photos by El Fotografo, by the way. I only went to the bullfights twice in Lima but I still think about what…
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Peru’s Panettone Is Fake, Says Italy
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 their cakes “panettone,” reports Reuters: Keep Christmas cake Italian, panettone makers say Dec 12, 2007 ROME (Reuters) – Italy already has strict rules governing the origin and quality of its wine, while Parmigiano parmesan cheese can only be made in Parma and regulations on “Italian” olive oil are being tightened. Now Christmas cake has become the latest product that the government and manufacturers want to protect from foreign imitations. Italian bakers produce…
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Video: “Peru’s future depends on mountains”
[Note: This MSNBC video is no longer available as of August 2020] 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: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
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Video: In Peru, melting glaciers lead to water wars
Here is the link: In Peru, melting glaciers lead to water wars Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy The video aired on NBC Nightly News on December 8. I was the field producer for the NBC news team.
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Happy Non-insemination of the Virgin Mary’s Mother Day!
Happy Immaculate Conception Day! Did you think that this was the day that Mary did (not) get shtuped by Joseph and Jesus was immaculately conceived? I did. I even tweeted about it, erroneously. Thank god for Wikipedia and the efforts of reporters on the religion beat. Because it turns out that December 8 is the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose birthday is celebrated September 8 and whose own conception is said to fall nine months earlier, on today’s date. As one Wikipedia contributor ponderously points, the Virgin Mary’s “immaculate conception in the womb of her mother, through sexual intercourse, should not be confused with the…
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Peru’s Melting Glaciers on NBC News Tonight, 6:30 p.m.
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.) Tune in to see footage of dying Pastoruri Glacier and to hear correspondent Anne Thompson talk with experts on how Peru is struggling to adapt to a world without glaciers, a scenario that may be realized within the next quarter century. Kudos to the NBC environmental news team for bringing this important story to the attention of U.S. viewers during Copenhagen 15. What happening in Peru is dramatic evidence of the catastrophic effects of global warming and rapid climate change. And although people in North America…
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NBC Nightly News to Report on Peru’s Melting Glaciers and Water Crisis Next Week
A heads-up to viewers in the United States: My sources at NBC Nightly News tell me that an investigative report on Peru’s pending water crisis will air on the show next Tuesday, Dec. 8, at 6:30 p.m. EST in many states. (Click here for state-by-state air times.) NBC Nightly News crew films Anne Thompson’s interview with community leaders near Huaraz who are fighting to retain water rights (Oct. 2009) Environmental news correspondent Anne Thompson explores the accelerating retreat of tropical glaciers in Peru and the downstream effects of dwindling melt-water on agriculture, hydroelectricity and drinking water supplies for highlanders and coastal dwellers. Peru is among the three countries in the world most…
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Confessions of a Redhead in the Callejón: What I Learned at the Bullfights
November 29’s corrida marked the penultimate bullfight of the Señor de los Milagros festival, held in Lima’s historic Plaza de Acho bullring. The last day to see bullfighting in Peru’s capital is December 6, next Sunday. (Ticket information here.) My husband, El Fotografo, and I haven’t gone to any of the corridas this year, and we don’t plan to. EF is grossed out by bullfighting, even though he admits the sport makes for great picture-taking, especially when you have permission to stand inside the callejón, as we did last November. (The callejón is the low-walled alley surrounding the bullring where the toreros enter and exit the sand circle or ruedo. Occasionally a bull will leap or knock over the wooden wall, injuring…
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Writing on Bullfighting for HuffPo
