Category Archives: Peru

Glacial lakes threaten millions with flooding as planet heats up

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More than 12,000 deaths have already been attributed to glacial lake outburst floods worldwide

An increasing number of people are being threatened by flooding caused by glacial lakes bursting, scientists have warned.

As the planet warms and glaciers recede, meltwater accumulates and forms lakes, often as a result of ice or moraine acting as a dam. Since 1990, the volume, area and number of these glacial lakes has increased by 50% globally. When these lakes become too full there is a risk that they may breach or overflow, releasing huge volumes of water and causing catastrophic flooding.

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‘If not hope, then what?’: the musicians finding optimism in dark times

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Against a backdrop of Covid, a striking number of musicians, from hard rock to jazz, made music rich with positivity. In the first of a two-part series, they tell their stories

I had really given up on music after my mom passed away [in 2014], and then of course the record that I saw as my death rattle [2017’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet] got picked up in a big way. It was a very bittersweet moment where all these great things were happening in the wake of loss. I didn’t allow myself to feel that for a long time. Now I feel ready to embrace feeling.

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Yemen, Myanmar and George Floyd: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru

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Brazil’s ‘rapid and violent’ Covid variant devastates Latin America

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Expert says global leaders must not ignore Brazil, which is ‘brewing variants left, right and centre’

As a coronavirus variant traced to the Brazilian Amazon marauded through Peru’s coastal capital last month, Rommel Heredia raced to his local hospital to seek help for his brother, mother and father.

“I said goodbye and promised I’d come back to take them home,” said the 47-year-old PE teacher, his voice muffled by two black masks pulled tightly over his face.

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Keiko Fujimori would be ‘lesser of two evils’ as Peru president, says Nobel prize author

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Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa says Fujimori’s opponent Pedro Castillo would undermine democracy

The Nobel prize-winning Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa has called on his compatriots to support Keiko Fujimori’s bid to become president, despite once running against her now jailed and disgraced father, Alberto, and spending years savaging the dynasty for its corrosive effects on Peru and its politics.

Vargas Llosa said the rightwing Fujimori – who faces Pedro Castillo, a far-left but socially conservative union leader and teacher in June’s presidential runoff – was “the lesser of two evils”. Castillo won 19.1% of the vote in last week’s first round, while Fujimori took 13.4%.

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Peru faces polarizing presidential runoff as teacher takes voters by surprise

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Pedro Castillo will face Keiko Fujimori, the far-right heiress to one of the country’s enduring and controversial political dynasties

Peru faces a polarizing presidential runoff vote, in which a hard-left schoolteacher – who caught a wave of popular discontent over the coronavirus and a cratering economy – will face the far-right heiress to one of the country’s most enduring and controversial political dynasties.

Pedro Castillo, a veteran teachers’ union leader, took pollsters and voters by surprise in Sunday’s first-round vote winning 18.47%, with 84% of the official vote counted. In second place, Keiko Fujimori – daughter of the jailed former leader Alberto Fujimori – polled 13.12%, closely followed by two more far-right candidates.

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Ecuador election: former banker Lasso in lead with 93% of vote counted

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Voters in presidential race appear to have rejected leftist movement, favouring conservative over Andrés Arauz

A conservative businessman looks likely to become Ecuador’s president, with voters rejecting the leftist movement started by the former president Rafael Correa more than a decade ago.

The electoral council in Ecuador did not declare a winner in the contest to replace Lenín Moreno as president next month, but results released by the agency showed the former banker Guillermo Lasso with about 53% of votes and the leftist Andrés Arauz with 47%, with more than 93% of votes counted. Arauz conceded the election.

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‘People don’t want any of them’: Peru election sees unpredictable contest

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About 28% of Peruvians wouldn’t choose any of the candidates, poll shows ahead of Sunday’s vote

An ultra-conservative millionaire who admits to scourging himself daily to repress sexual desire is just one of an assortment of low-polling candidates who all have a shot at becoming Peru’s next president.

Rafael López Aliaga is technically tied with five other contenders in an unpredictable contest to make a runoff vote in June, including a former goalkeeper, a Sorbonne-educated socialist and the daughter of the country’s jailed former leader Alberto Fujimori.

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‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China

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‘Narcos are looking for me’: deadly threats to Peru’s indigenous leaders

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Communities call for protection after string of killings linked to rush for land to grow coca, under cover of the pandemic

“We’re looking for you, dead or alive,” is one of the daily threats that Herlín Odicio receives on his mobile phone.

The leader of the indigenous Cacataibo people in Peru’s central Amazon has been forced into hiding for standing up to drug traffickers trying to steal his land. “We’ve reported coca plantations on our land so many times and nothing has been done,” Odicio said.

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‘The heart of darkness’: neighbors shun Brazil over Covid response

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Latin American countries scramble to protect themselves from a country where nearly 60,000 people are expected to die in March alone

It has long been regarded as a soft power superpower, the sun-kissed, culturally blessed land of Bossa Nova, Capoeira and Pelé.

But Brazil’s shambolic response to coronavirus under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has cast Latin America’s largest country in an unfamiliar and unpleasant role: that of a Covid-riddled, science-shunning, politically-unstable outcast on whom many regional neighbors are now shutting the door.

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‘Judith never came home’: deadly fate of ‘disappeared’ women in Peru

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Policeman accused of sex trafficking, while 12,000 women and girls vanish in ‘shadow pandemic’

Judith Machaca was last seen on her way home from work in her home town of Tacna in southern Peru. The environmental engineering student had been working part-time at a mobile phone shop and would always send a message if she was going to be late.

The last text message from her phone was sent at 11pm on 28 November and the next day her distraught father reported the 20-year-old’s disappearance to the police. They sent him away, saying that she was probably with a boyfriend and would show up soon enough.

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Special brew: eco-friendly Peruvian coffee leaves others in the shade

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The Mayni people are harvesting shade-grown coffee from under the canopy of mature trees, with huge benefits for wildlife and the community

Deep within the Peruvian cloud forests, a six-hour drive from the town of Satipo, the remote Mayni community is busy growing organic coffee beneath the canopy of the native forest in order to preserve the rich mosaic of life there.

Most of the forest is kept intact, with just a little undergrowth cleared to plant Coffea arabica trees. Dahlia Casancho, who is leading the Mayni in their eco-friendly coffee-growing endeavours, sees shade-grown coffee farming as a positive development for the community, who traditionally believe in a forest god and river god. “Nature is our home. Nature gives us water, feeds us and also allows us to grow our coffee,” she says. “That’s why we take great care of our forest and we want it to be sustainable so that our children can also enjoy it.

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Indigenous peoples face rise in rights abuses during pandemic, report finds

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Increasing land grabs endangering forest communities and wildlife as governments expand mining and agriculture to combat economic impact of Covid

Indigenous communities in some of the world’s most forested tropical countries have faced a wave of human rights abuses during the Covid-19 pandemic as governments prioritise extractive industries in economic recovery plans, according to a new report.

New mines, infrastructure projects and agricultural plantations in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia and Peru are driving land grabs and violence against indigenous peoples as governments seek to revive economies hit by the pandemic, research by the NGO Forest Peoples Programme has found.

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Peru’s foreign minister resigns in scandal over early vaccination of officials

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Health minister had already quit after it emerged ministers received jabs before health workers

Peru’s foreign minister has resigned amid uproar over government officials being secretly vaccinated against coronavirus before the country recently received 1m doses for health workers facing a resurgence in the pandemic.

The president, Francisco Sagasti, confirmed that Elizabeth Astete had stepped down and told a local television channel that Peruvians should feel “outraged and angry about this situation that jeopardises the enormous effort of many Peruvians working on the frontline against Covid”.

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Class cancelled: how Covid school closures blocked routes out of poverty

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Oxford University project reveals devastating impact on prospects for world’s poorest students, especially girls

In the coffee-farming communities of the Peruvian Amazon, the classroom is a route out of poverty. Gabriela was studying civil engineering in a city an hour and a half from home when the Covid-19 pandemic struck.

The 18-year-old, who is one of thousands of young people tracked since 2002 as part of the Young Lives project led by the University of Oxford, has been forced to postpone her education, in a country where 16% of 19-year-olds have dropped out of education because of the crisis.

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Squatters issue death threats to archaeologist who discovered oldest city in the Americas

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Squatters reportedly belonging to one family claim site of 5,000 year-old ruins was given to them in the 1970s

Illegal squatters have invaded the ruins of the oldest city in the Americas, and made death threats against Ruth Shady, the celebrated Peruvian archaeologist who discovered the 5,000 year-old civilization.

The threats came via telephone calls and messages to various workers at the archeological site at the height of Peru’s Covid-19 pandemic. They followed reports to the police and prosecutors about the invasions of the ancient ruins of Caral.

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China’s Sinopharm vaccine: how effective is it and where will it be rolled out?

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Trials have claimed 86% efficacy, but Peru has suspended tests because of ‘an adverse event’ and there is concern about lack of transparency

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Trials in the United Arab Emirates have shown that China’s Sinopharm vaccine has 86% efficacy. So what is the Chinese treatment, where is it being trialled and will it challenge the vaccines being developed in western countries?

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‘The people are not afraid any more’: young Peruvians rise up to demand change

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After a tumultuous week, Peru’s burgeoning grassroots movement says it will not accept a return to business as usual

After a tumultuous week in which Peru saw three presidents – and a brutal police backlash against massive pro-democracy protests – a nascent youth movement has emerged with a clear message to the country’s politicians.

Under the rallying cry “They messed with the wrong generation”, the non-partisan group is warning Peru’s elected representatives that they will not tolerate a return to the business-as-usual world of dirty tricks and backroom deals.

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