Political party of Los Israelitas wins second largest share in new congress, and prompts concern over their fundamentalist views
In a country that takes pride in its colourful folklore, Los Israelitas – a religious sect whose members dress in flowing biblical robes – were regarded as just one more strand in Peru’s cultural tapestry.
That was until their political party became an unexpected winner in parliamentary elections on Sunday.
Continue reading...Allegations of domestic violence and marital infidelity have bogged down one of the most diverse parties
Scandals involving domestic violence and marital infidelity have overshadowed the campaign to elect a new congress in Peru, in which gender equality and women’s rights have been key issues.
Peruvians will elect 130 new lawmakers on Sunday after the previous chamber was dissolved by President Martín Vizcarra in a controversial but popular move in September.
Continue reading...Families tell how advances in healthcare and nutrition are helping to cut infant mortality rates
Continue reading...Wave of protests and violence against austerity measures and political corruption swept Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and other Latin American countries
Continue reading...Chain to close all its restaurants for two days of mourning after deaths lead to protests over workplace safety
The death by electrocution of two young employees at a McDonald’s restaurant in Lima has spurred protests and stoked anger over working conditions in the wider economy, which are viewed as exploitative and sometimes dangerous.
Peru’s public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the deaths of Alexandra Porras, 19, and her former boyfriend Gabriel Campos, 18, who were reported to have died in the early hours of Sunday while cleaning the kitchen at the fast-food outlet.
Continue reading...Rightwing leader imprisoned for more than a year pending corruption trial says release corrects a ‘process full of abuse and arbitrariness’
The Peruvian opposition leader Keiko Fujimori has walked free after being jailed for more than a year pending a trial over allegations she accepted illegal campaign contributions from the Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht.
Fujimori, leader of the powerful rightwing Popular Force party, left prison in the Chorrillos district of the capital, Lima, according to a Reuters witness at the scene, where hundreds of supporters gathered outside in anticipation of her release.
Continue reading...Former president says it hurts to leave ‘for political reasons’ as foreign minister confirms he has left for Mexico
Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales has boarded a plane bound for Mexico where he has been granted asylum, the Mexican foreign minister has announced.
Earlier on Monday evening Morales tweeted a farewell after his resignation in the wake of a disputed election, saying that he would be take up the offer of asylum in Mexico but would soon “return with greater strength and energy”.
Continue reading...A team of doctors and volunteers are travelling by boat to treat and educate indigenous communities at higher risk of Aids
As the serpentine Amazon river meanders through a sea of jungle, a little red boat speeds across its muddy brown waters. Powered by two outboard motors, the vessel carries a cargo of volunteers, medics and nurses, an awning, and dozens of HIV screening tests.
The first stop is Nueva Vida Yahua, an indigenous village 40 minutes down the Nanay river from Iquitos. The women are dressed in red skirts and grass tops worn draped over their shoulders, the men in long grass skirts and headdresses made from blue macaw feathers.
Continue reading...Alarmed by the impact of logging, indigenous Peruvians are using satellite mapping to manage their land
The first thing Ramón heard about the deal was the televisions. A number of families from the Asháninka indigenous group had received them from outsiders, in exchange for land. Loggers were interested in the mahogany, oak and tornillo trees that grow to impressive heights in this part of the rainforest around Cutivireni in central Peru.
The loggers had other means of persuasion, besides bribery. They might offer to build a school or a meeting house in exchange for timber. When the work ran over budget, they would demand money – and since the Asháninka had none, they would take more trees to service the debt, according to Adelaida Bustamante, the community treasurer. And if that failed, they used violence. In 2014, four forest defenders from the Asháninka were murdered for their campaign to keep loggers off their land (Ramón asked me not to use his real name).
Continue reading...In an area of the Amazon vulnerable to illegal loggers, Cool Earth, a UK-based charity, is working with the Asháninka people to reduce deforestation. Photographer Alicia Canter travelled to Cutivireni in central Peru
Continue reading...Two timber executives and three loggers charged in shooting deaths of activists who battled illegal logging in Peruvian Amazon
Prosecutors in Peru have charged five men in the timber industry with the 2014 murders of four indigenous activists who had battled illegal logging in the Amazon jungle.
Two timber executives and three loggers have been charged with the shooting deaths of the activists, the prosecutor Otoniel Jara, who works in Peru’s remote Ucayali region, told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Continue reading...A doctoral student in Peru has made history by becoming the first person to write and defend a thesis in Quechua – the language of the Incas, which is still spoken by millions of people in the Andes.
Roxana Quispe Collantes received top marks from Lima’s San Marcos university, the oldest in the Americas, for her study on Peruvian and Latin American literature, which focused on poetry written in Quechua.
Continue reading...Letter says groups are in danger amid Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to overturn existing policies to protect indigenous people
Brazil’s last uncontacted tribes face “genocide” thanks to Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to overturn existing policies to protect the country’s indigenous people, a group of leading experts have warned in an open letter to the far-right president.
The alert came after one of the country’s leading experts on isolated and recently-contacted indigenous people was abruptly dismissed from Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency, with no reason given.
Continue reading...Experts believe the children were sacrificed by the Chimú culture to appease the El Niño phenomenon
Archaeologists excavating what is thought to be the world’s largest child sacrifice site have unearthed the skeletons of 227 young victims in the coastal desert of northern Peru.
Teams have been digging since last year at the sacrificial site in Huanchaco, a beachside tourist town close to Trujillo, Peru’s third largest city.
Continue reading...Bolton claimed Trump’s measures will help end Maduro’s reign, but some fear they will make Venezuela’s economic meltdown worse
US national security adviser, John Bolton, has insisted Venezuela’s “tired dictator” was at “the end of his rope”, as he opened another front in the White House’s economic blitz on Nicolás Maduro by freezing all Venezuelan government assets in the United States.
Addressing a summit on Venezuela’s crisis in Peru’s capital, Lima, Bolton pronounced Maduro’s “dying regime” doomed – even though a seven-month US-backed campaign has so far failed to topple Hugo Chávez’s authoritarian successor.
Continue reading...Peruvian archaeologists decry new airport that would carry tourists directly to already fragile Inca citadel
Among the Inca archeological sites that abound in Peru, none draw nearly as many tourists as the famed citadel of Machu Picchu. There were more than 1.5 million visitors in 2017, almost double the limit recommended by Unesco, putting a huge strain on the fragile ruins and local ecology.
Now, in a move that has drawn a mixture of horror and outrage from archaeologists, historians and locals, work has begun on clearing ground for a multibillion-dollar international airport, intended to jet tourists much closer to Machu Picchu .
Continue reading...Alan García, who has taken his own life aged 69, was a dominant, if divisive, figure in Peruvian politics for more than 30 years, during which he was twice democratically elected as president. His first stint in office, during which parts of the economy threatened to run out of control, was from 1985 to 1989. He then spent a decade out of power, for the most part in foreign exile, before re-election in 2006. During his second presidency García oversaw a more economically stable era until departing in 2011, but later was dogged by allegations that he had taken bribes while in office.
Born in the Peruvian capital, Lima, to Carlos García Ronceros, an accountant, and Nytha Pérez Rojas, a teacher, García was politically active from an early age, when he and his father were involved in the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), a leftwing nationalist grouping founded in the 1920s. After studying law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, the National University of San Marcos and for a period in Spain, he rose to become the party’s general secretary from 1983 until 1985.
Continue reading...Jaundice affects 60% of babies. Left untreated it can be life-threatening. But treatment has always been difficult to access in rural Peru
Health workers in a remote province high in the Peruvian Andes are trialling a revolutionary method to treat babies with jaundice – with nothing more than a colour-coded ruler, blood reader and carrycots.
Their goal is to screen, diagnose and treat jaundice in 12,000 newborns over the next two years in a country where 90% of the public health facilities lack the capability to adequately diagnose or treat it in newborns.
Continue reading...Students found the body of Paul McAuley Tuesday in a hostel he set up for indigenous schoolchildren in Iquitos
A forensic expert in Peru has confirmed that the British Catholic missionary and activist Paul McAuley was dead before his body was burned at a hostel he founded in the jungle city of Iquitos.
The head forensic doctor in Peru’s Loreto region, Francisco Moreno, told the Guardian that no traces of carbon dioxide were found in McAuley’s blood indicating he had not inhaled smoke, thus ruling out burning as a possible cause of death.
Continue reading...Paul McAuley, 71, had helped Amazon tribes fight against the onslaught of oil and gas companies
Authorities in Peru have launched an investigation after the body of a British environmental activist and Catholic missionary was found in the Amazon city of Iquitos.
Students found the body of Paul McAuley, 71, on Tuesday in a hostel he founded for indigenous students in the Amazon city. Local media reported that his body had been burned.
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