Category Archives: Peru

A dollar for sex: Venezuela’s women tricked and trafficked

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Women attempting to flee the country’s economic collapse are in desperate straits, stranded at borders and forced into sex work, say NGOs

The family had nothing at home, says mother of six Luisa Hernández, 30, from Zulia state, Venezuela. “To see your children grow up without food, without anything, is unbearable.

“Eating from rubbish bins to survive was no life, so we left. But, now with the pandemic, we are in limbo, we are stuck in Colombia, and hungry again. We have gone from one crisis to another.”

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Tsunami of fake news hurts Latin America’s effort to fight coronavirus

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More than 160,000 people have died but from Mexico to Brazil, social networks are awash with quack cures and conspiracies

For months Gustavo Andrade has been battling to convince his parishioners to take Covid-19 seriously.

Related: Desperate Bolivians seek out toxic bleach falsely touted as Covid-19 cure

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‘They killed him’: widow confronts Peru’s president over Covid-19 deaths

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Martín Vizcarra announced emergency decree putting health ministry in charge of system after Celia Capira chased his truck

As the presidential motorcade pulled away from the main hospital in Peru’s second city – fleeing an angry protest by medical staff and relatives of Covid-19 patients – one woman broke away from the crowd.

Celia Capira ran sobbing after the truck carrying the president, Martín Vizcarra, yelling for him to go and see for himself the grim conditions at the hospital, where her husband was fighting for his life.

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Alarm as Covid-19 reaches recently contacted Amazon tribe

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  • Activists fear devastation as virus arrives at indigenous reserve
  • At least six coronavirus cases among isolated Nahua people

The Covid-19 virus has reached a remote reserve for recently contacted indigenous people in the Peruvian Amazon, despite efforts to shield the extremely vulnerable population from the pandemic.

Related: 'Coronavirus could wipe us out': indigenous South Americans blockade villages

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Poverty, not just populists, to blame for Covid-19’s impact on Latin America

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Mexico and Brazil have been hit hard by the pandemic, but so too have countries that were quicker to respond

Coronavirus arrived in Latin America later than in Europe, but it has taken firm hold. A quarter of global confirmed cases are in the region, and researchers have warned the death toll is likely to triple by October to nearly 400,000.

The two countries with the deadliest outbreaks share populist leaders, Brazil’s rightwing Jair Bolsonaro and Mexico’s leftwing Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

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Herbal cures and no sanitation: the Lima residents battling Covid alone – in pictures

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Over 70% of the indigenous Peruvian community of Cantagallo Island have tested positive for coronavirus. This is how they are surviving lockdown

• All photographs by Florence Goupil, who received a grant from the Covid-19 National Geographic emergency fund for journalists

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Peru: at least 20 journalists died from Covid-19 as they covered pandemic

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Country is Latin America’s second worst-hit with more than 164,000 coronavirus cases and 4,500 deaths

At least 20 journalists have died from Covid-19 in Peru as reporters, photographers and camera operators raced to cover the pandemic’s spread through the country, often without protective equipment.

The number throws into sharp relief the risks and precarious work conditions which face journalists covering the global pandemic in the Andean country, which, after Brazil is Latin America’s worst-hit with more than 164,000 Covid-19 cases and 4,500 deaths.

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‘Now we sleep peacefully’: life in Peru transformed by warm houses

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Thermal houses in the Andes are helping combat respiratory illnesses in villages that struggle with freezing temperatures

On a windswept plain more than 4km above sea level, families gather; a throng of colourful, intricately patterned hats, skirts and ponchos. They are gazing curiously at their revamped homes, which now glint in the sun.

Cladding the mud brick homes and absorbing the perpendicular rays of the sun are polycarbonate panels fitted at a slanted angle to the outer walls. In Hanchipacha, a poor village in the highlands of Cusco, in Peru’s southeastern Andes, these panels are a point of pride.

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Peru’s coronavirus response was ‘right on time’ – so why isn’t it working?

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Peru was one of the first Latin America countries to go into lockdown – but the jump in new cases is undeniable, and experts say it’s due to people’s behaviour

Peru seemed to be doing everything right.

Its president, Martín Vizcarra, announced one of the earliest coronavirus lockdowns in Latin America on 16 March.

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‘Hubs of infection’: how Covid-19 spread through Latin America’s markets

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Authorities have struggled to enforce social distancing at the trading centres. At one Lima market, 79% of vendors had coronavirus

Four out of five merchants at a major fruit market in Peru have tested positive for coronavirus, revealing shocking levels of infection – and prompting fears that Latin America’s traditional trading centres may have helped spread Covid-19 across the region.

Seventy-nine per cent of stall-holders in Lima’s wholesale fruit market tested positive for Covid-19, while spot tests at five other large fresh food markets in the city revealed at least half were carrying the virus.

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‘We are living in a catastrophe’: Peru’s jungle capital choking for breath as Covid-19 hits

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Iquitos, still reeling from a dengue fever outbreak and plagued by poverty, relies on air deliveries for medicine, equipment and oxygen

In the final hours before Covid-19 claimed her life, Cecilio Sangama watched helplessly as his eldest sister Edith gasped for breath.

Hospitals across Peru’s largest Amazon city had run out of oxygen, and the shortage had pushed the black market price of a cylinder well above $1,000 (£810).

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Qantas staff ‘incredibly fearful’ about flights to rescue Australians trapped overseas

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Airline turns to New Zealand after failing to get sufficient volunteers from Australia amid coronavirus fears

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    • Qantas is moving to recruit cabin staff from its New Zealand subsidiary to operate scheduled flights to rescue Australians trapped overseas, after it failed to get sufficient volunteers from its Australian cabin staff to operate planned flights.

    Amid news that 50 Qantas and Jetstar staff have contracted coronavirus there has been growing anxiety among Qantas staff about plans to resume flights to Los Angeles, London, Auckland and Hong Kong later this week.

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    The village still suffering from Peru mercury spill fallout – after 20 years

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    When the people of Choropampa saw a bright, silvery liquid on the road, they imagined it was valuable. Two decades on, the toxic truth is all too apparent

    When a truck spilled mercury from a gold mine on the dirt road outside her house, Francisca Guarniz Imelda scooped it up with her bare hands, thinking it had healing powers.

    She took it home to her mud-brick house in Choropampa, in Peru’s northern Cajamarca region. The heat of the day vaporised some of the mercury, contaminating the walls and ceiling with the toxic metal.

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    Coronavirus: Briton returns to UK on repatriation flight from Peru – video

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    John McNamee, 32, returned to the UK on Tuesday after two weeks in an Airbnb in Lima while the whole of Peru has been under strict lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. More than 1,000 Britons had registered with the UK embassy in Peru for assistance in returning home due to a near total absence of commercial flights and McNamee was one of about 200 on the first repatriation flight out of the country

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    Australians trapped in India’s coronavirus lockdown fear running out of food and water

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    Thousands of Australians caught up in India’s sweeping lockdown are pleading for government help to get home

    Thousands of Australians caught by India’s dramatic nationwide shutdown say they face running out of food and water or being evicted from accommodation, as 1.3 billion people across world’s second-most populous nation are ordered to stay indoors.

    One state leader, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, warned if the lockdown was not obeyed, he would order police to shoot-on-sight those who went outside.

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    Britons stranded in Peru could be flown home early next week

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    South American country closed borders a week ago in attempt to stop spread of coronavirus, stranding 400 British citizens

    Hundreds of Britons stranded in Peru due to the coronavirus pandemic could be flown home early next week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has said.

    More than 400 British and Irish citizens are believed to be in the Andean nation and have been unable to leave following a 15-day government lockdown imposed since Monday.

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    Anger grows among Britons on holiday as lockdowns block returns

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    Stranded British travellers decry Foreign Office assistance and ‘exorbitant’ replacement flights

    Thousands of British holidaymakers could find themselves stranded abroad, as flight cancellations, travel restrictions and lockdowns due to the global coronavirus pandemic complicate their journeys home.

    As many as 100,000 tourists may still be in Spain, despite a near-total lockdown and government orders that all hotels be shut down within the week. Recent days have seen the epidemic in Spain spiral into one of Europe’s worst, claiming more than 1,000 lives.

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    Australians stuck in Peru amid Covid-19 outbreak advised to book charter flight home

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    Thousands of travellers frantically trying to fly back to Australia after government warning over coronavirus pandemic
    • Australia coronavirus live: NSW now has 307 confirmed cases, up 40 since yesterday

    More than 170 Australians trapped in locked-down Peru have been advised by the government to find a commercial charter flight to get out of the country.

    Some passengers have been able to get on chartered flights to the US, while others have been offered a dedicated charter flight from Lima to Sydney, but at a cost of more than $5,000.

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    Roasted, curried, sweetened … guinea pig meat returns to the plates of Peru

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    Growing demand for cuy meat, which has long been a national delicacy in Peru, is providing rural women with livelihoods

    The growing popularity of guinea pig meat in high-end restaurants in Peru is helping to usher in the return of a traditional, and environmentally friendly, industry led by women.

    Top chefs in Peru, Ecuador and Colombia have brought traditional cuy meat back in popularity with roasted, curried and even sweetened versions appearing on menus.

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    Peruvian leader appeals to watchdog over ‘terrible harm’ caused by oil firm

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    Chief representative of Quechua communities in north Peru urges OECD to support battle against ‘the tainting of land and rivers’

    An Amazonian leader has travelled from Peru to the Netherlands to lodge a complaint with the global trade watchdog about an Amsterdam-based oil firm, demanding that the company clean up decades of pollution from his people’s lands. .

    Aurelio Chino has accused Pluspetrol of using “letterbox” holding companies in tax havens like the Netherlands to avoid paying taxes in developing countries such as Peru.

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