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(12/02/09 5:10am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>CUSCO, Peru - Chilean jokes are common in Peru and vice versa; relations between the two countries have been strained for a while now. But things have taken a bad turn since Peru accused Chile of espionage. Now, Peruvian President Alan Garcia has suspended meetings with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and broken off most diplomatic relations.In Cusco, people are starting to discuss the outcome of a possible war with Chile.Chilean Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez appears on the news frequently, denying that Chile is involved in any sort of espionage. He is met with boos and groans every time he comes on the radio or television in a public place. Chilean officials have suggested that the “spy” was only an excuse for Garcia to leave early and dramatically from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Singapore and deal a blow to Chile’s reputation.The spy, Peruvian Ariza Mendoza, was allegedly receiving between $5,000 and $8,000 per month to report national secrets and launder money from the Peruvian government. Mendoza, petty officer in the Peruvian Air Force and intelligence expert, has unleashed a flurry of discontent in Peru. Mendoza also, incidentally, served in the Peruvian embassy in Santiago, Chile.But why are things so bitter between the two countries? The animosity traces back to a border dispute also involving Bolivia after the War of the Pacific in the late 1800s. Bolivia would still like its beach back from Chile, and Peru and Chile can’t seem to decide where their border should be. Just last year, the Peruvian government asked the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands to rule on maritime borders.To make things worse, Chile staged a military exercise in the disputed border area in October, and things still haven’t had a chance to cool down.But the higher political level is trumped by the unrest on the streets of the average citizen. With the media playing footage of the alleged spy again and again, it’s difficult to see someone circled in white and labeled a traitor while in an Air Force uniform. Calls for execution have been common, and the media is hungry for interviews with anyone connected to Mendoza. His crying wife’s first interview was prime-time news.Whatever the actual chances are for an armed conflict between the two countries, the people of Cusco seem ready for it.
(11/18/09 6:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The sleepy island of Amantani sits in the middle of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. Most of the time, the sun is surrounded by a circular rainbow and the water in the mountains is frigid – the average temperature is about 46 degrees.The ferry to the island leaves at 8 a.m. and takes about three hours to arrive.Red tiled roofs mark out which houses might have tourists. The island receives a boatload of tourists daily, and staying with a family is incredibly easy. Many native families wait in the port city of Puno to offer their homes, especially in the low tourist season, like the Northern Hemisphere’s winter.The island is too remote for the state to offer electricity or even running water most of the time. When asked about the water, they say they are perfectly happy with water that comes from 7 to 8 a.m. most mornings. Although the island’s income comes mostly from tourism, inhabitants also grow crops native to the Andes, such as the wheat-like quinoa. But most of the meals are still incredibly simple and cooked on stoves that trap all of the smoke in the house.Interestingly enough, the nearby islands of Taquile and the Uros don’t suffer from the same level of neglect. The Uros – floating islands constructed entirely of grass and reeds – have been outfitted by the government with solar panels and even the occasional television. They are anchored to the bottom of the lake in an effort to keep them from floating to Bolivia. The island of Taquile also has plenty of running water and electricity.So why not Amantani?The truth is that it’s not the most famous island on the lake. The floating islands are the tourist icon of the area, and each island has been streamlined into a complete tourist presentation, including miniatures of the island’s pieces and an additional “traditional boat ride” for a couple of dollars more. And the island of Taquile, which has restaurants with a mixture of English, Spanish and the native Aymara names, charges admission and asks most of its people to stay in traditional dress for the tourists.So with a humble offering of three meals, a bed for about $8 a day and the occasional tourist dance in borrowed traditional dress, Amantani continues to be not only the cheapest place to stay on Lake Titicaca but also the most neglected.
(11/13/09 3:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Peru’s most famous landmark, one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World,” is the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu. There are two ways to reach it: by trail or by the ancient four-day path known as the Inca trail.Twenty years ago, it was possible to take the Inca trail with nothing more than a backpack and a lot of determination. Today, there are passport checks along the way, and it’s highly illegal to enter without a personal guide. But many people go without having any idea what they’re getting into. Most travel books don’t give much information other than to say the trail is home to an impressive array of orchids. Here’s what one should know:1. The Incas loved stairs.There’s nothing like turning the corner on a mountain and seeing another 100 stone steps. It doesn’t help that the local porters, wearing sandals and carrying packs in excess of 100 pounds full of food and tents, are jogging up past you as they take the ancient StairMaster. Climbing down the stairs can be difficult, too – plenty of sprained ankles and knee problems start here. We pass one woman, ankle twisted, being carried down the mountain by a porter like another piece of luggage. The porters work harder than anyone else on the trail. There are all sorts of rumors about the fastest time any porter has made the 27-mile trek, starting at about four and a half hours. Many porters are paid far below what one might consider a fair wage and work at the mercy of tourist tips. 2. Thin air = more breathing.At altitudes up to 13,800 feet above sea level, the air tends to be much thinner. Even for those in good shape, it only takes about 10 steps to run out of breath, and many tourists don’t take the time to acclimate to the altitude in the nearby city of Cusco. This can easily turn from uncomfortable to dangerous. Altitude sickness can cause all sorts of symptoms from severe headaches to vomiting. All guides carry oxygen, and five minutes of breathing through the mask can fix most of your hiking woes – at least for a little while. Even the experienced hikers on the trail find their lungs insufficient, and for the casual walker like me, it’s easy to wonder if your lungs work at all.3. The mosquitoes are tough.Many hikers don’t realize that they need to bring insect repellent on the Inca trail. In fact, there are enough to quickly turn one’s legs into what appears to be two giant hamburgers. Smaller than their North American cousins, these bugs leave blood when they attack, and their bites often swell up. 4. The hike is worth it.It’s easy to forget in the haze of sore muscles, but after waking up on the last day before 4 a.m. and making the last descent to the ancient city, it’s worth the pain to see the stone walls rising through the clouds and the mist blowing over and off of it every few minutes. Although Peru is still fighting to recover many of the lost city’s treasures from a Yale University museum, the buildings seem almost untouched in their splendor. The temples, not razed like those discovered by the Spanish conquistadors, stand tall and mysterious, and the terraces are still covered in roving llama and alpaca.Still, it’s a relief to go home.
(11/06/09 6:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Day of the Dead, the twin holiday of the Day of the Living, is often associated with Mexico, but the holiday is by no means limited to one country. In fact, the roots of the holiday in Peru stretch much deeper. Every Nov. 2, the graveyards of Peru fill with people.I spend the day in Calca, a smaller town in Cusco province, where my host family takes me to the “Jardines de la Paz,” or the “Gardens of Peace.” It’s easy to find the graveyard – for several blocks, the whole area is full of music, dancing and Catholic paraphernalia. The drinking starts in the early morning and continues all day.The graveyards are overrun with families and vendors; you can buy flowers, holy water or votive candles everywhere. The shouts of the venders mix with the sounds of children playing ball among the tombstones and of the men with pickaxes removing weeds from the graves of loved ones. My host mother and I spend a few minutes looking for her brother’s grave, which is one of the more expensive ones. It’s easy to tell – if it’s not stacked upon other graves, it’s probably very expensive. In fact, if someone no longer pays the graveyard fees for a loved one, the remains are removed from the site. So you have to watch over the dead in a very real sense.But that hardly enters into the day of celebration.What separates the Day of the Dead in Peru from the same holiday in Mexico is the communication with the dead. In the times of the Incas, important people were mummified; they were then consulted on business matters and retained their property rights. This persists today in the way the people feel they are communicating with the dead.While in both countries they leave the food that the dead preferred in their lifetime and celebrate around their graves. In Peru there is a sense that the dead are literally listening from their graves and not just visiting spirits.The dead join in the celebration by drinking the holy water and fermented corn beer, or chicha, that is poured over their graves. Watching the people lean over the graves and talk in low voices is almost enough to convince me that the dead really will talk back.My host nephew, 5-year-old Marcello, puts his feet on a family grave and is immediately scolded by his 6-year-old cousin, Valeria.“He’s dead, he doesn’t care,” Marcello insists.Wagging a finger, Valeria says, “Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he can’t hurt.”
(10/29/09 3:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>CUSCO, Peru - A dried human lung is perhaps not the first thing that one would associate with a grand theft. Nonetheless, it’s been the cause of a great scandal in Peru during the last month. Admittedly, a lung doesn’t have a lot of commercial value, but lungs don’t come around every day.The lung is part of the internationally known “Bodies: The Exhibition.” After going missing, the left lung garnered a $2,000 no-questions-asked reward before being found in a car park in a plastic bag. Because of the chemical processes preserving the lung, sitting around in a plastic bag didn’t really do it much harm. The bodies go through a process that replaces the water in them with synthetic polymers, so the lung could take a little bashing around. The anonymous caller whose tip led to the reclamation turned down the reward.Here’s where things get juicy.Not long after the lung’s prodigal return, the Peruvian press began to get curious about Susan Hoefken, the manager of the company handling the exhibit. After all, the exhibit became noticeably more popular in the wake of the Great Lung Scandal.Then, in a dramatic gesture, Peru’s Prensa Libre accused Hoefken of stealing the lung as a publicity stunt. The Peruvian media has latched onto this idea, dubbing Hoefken “la robapulmon,” or “The Lung Thief.” They claim that Katherine Seymour, who works as public relations director at the company that owns the exhibition sent an e-mail to her lawyer that allegedly confirmed that Hoefken had the lung in her possession the entire time and that she had said as much in a telephone call.If that’s true, the Peruvians want some answers. “She’s using us for publicity, making all Peruvians look bad,” lamented a man to a friend while drinking coffee. Although the proof is shaky, the circumstances are suspicious enough that most of Peru is full of an angry buzz against Hoefken, who appears on the news to state her innocence and note that she has switched homes and receives continual death threats. In fact, her appearances on the news are an opportunity to add to my repertoire of insults in Spanish. “She makes everyone think that Peruvians are nothing but liars,” my host brother explained to me. “I just can’t believe that she’s a Peruvian.”And with a society that built a pre-Columbian empire based solely on the idea of mutual reciprocity, robbery is a serious accusation that the people are taking personally. And of course the question remains – who else would want a dried human lung?
(10/19/09 4:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>We arrived with doctors from Cusco, the biggest city in the area, at a small rural community to provide free medicine and medical care, courtesy of ProPeru.Many of the people who come to the health campaign have never been to a doctor before. There is much work to be done – the dentist has to pull teeth from the children (sometimes three or four per child). Many people have intestinal parasites and a variety of maladies, from the common to the severe, seem to be everywhere. We brought a dentist, doctors, a gynecologist and three nurses.Two of the nurses are completing health internships in rural hospitals. I was scared enough when they used a syringe in my ear to treat an ear infection. One of the interns told me that the rural hospitals are barely clean; there is often urine and blood on the floor. But we use what the community has. The rooms are cleaned thoroughly, but the ragged beds and concrete floors reflect the area’s poverty. The pharmacy has to be set up outside.Even though I have no medical training, it’s easy enough to put on scrubs and talk women through their first visit to a gynecologist. While taking notes for the doctor and preparing supplies, I can distract them by joking in Spanish or speaking a few words in Quechua. I translate the consultation quietly for the nurse who doesn’t speak Spanish. One woman going through menopause was incredibly worried until the doctor surprised her by telling her that it happens to all women. A woman five months pregnant became teary-eyed when we offered to let her listen to the heartbeat of her unborn child. Some of them brought their children along in colorful shawls they tied around their backs. Some are just stopping by from working in the fields.Other volunteers do everything from explaining prescriptions to taking blood tests. This is our first visit to this community, and at first people are slow to come for help. But it becomes apparent as the day wears on that these people need a doctor. One man needs to be tested for tuberculosis; one girl has teeth so rotted that it hurts to open her mouth. It’s not just the difficulty of obtaining health care, either – many people are distrustful of going to the doctor. A woman refuses to submit to a pap smear, despite the gynecologist’s best attempts at persuasion. People come who have aches and pains for years but have never trusted the clinics enough to visit.One woman tells the gynecologist that she is afraid to take medicine. “You need to be here to take care of your children,” she is told. “If you don’t get better, who will take care of them?”
(10/15/09 4:27am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>LAKE SANDOVAL, Peru - Gold miners dump mercury into the Madre de Dios River five kilometers from some of the most intensely protected rainforests in Peru. The area, which is home to hundreds of thousands of species including the Giant River Otter, the caiman and several species of monkeys, is one of the most biologically diverse areas of the world.“If you come back in 10 years,” our guide said, “everything will look completely different.” A transoceanic highway is in the works that will enable faster tourist travel. According to studies, such as one by the Building Informed Civic Engagement for Conservation in the Andes-Amazon, the project will cause all sorts of problems – deforestation, destruction of protected areas, more exploitation by gold miners and increased production of coca, the plant from which we derive chocolate and cocaine.But for now the gold miners on the river are merely an uneasy reminder of troubles before one enters into some of the most breathtaking natural wonders in the world. “Everything you see on the Discovery Channel, or in National Geographic, it really is here,” promised our guide. We slept with mosquito nets, a caiman (a sort of giant alligator) swims near our boat and we check our beds for tarantulas (only one). There is no electricity, and we help row our own canoe through the Sandoval Lake and the tiny jungle canals.The party city of Cusco is a stark contrast to the jungle culture where people mostly rise and fall with the sun. Staying up until 9 p.m. feels decadent, and staying up until 10 p.m. is indecent.At night you can see the Milky Way and lots of species of insects, as well as the caimans. It’s nearly impossible to believe the grime spewing from the gold mining boat on the nearby river. The things to do are endless. We take a hike through shaky bridges that run through the canopy. We take a swim in the lake that could have been cut short by vampire fish or stingrays. No one can swim after nightfall because of the caimans.As we depart, passing by the gold boats, the reserve seems to get smaller and smaller; the noisy city moves closer every year; and the new highway will make the complete transition from tiny port to tourist metropolis.
(10/01/09 5:15am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Every picture will cost you, but the cultural peacocks are difficult for any tourist to resist. Women in colorful Quechua clothing bearing alpaca and llama walk for hours from their rural communities just so you can take a picture for one sole (currently equivalent to about 35 cents).It’s strange at first to see cities covered in livestock, but easy enough to become accustomed to it. Animals roam the plazas and linger around all of the ruins and even the places on the road where tour buses might pull over to admire the views of the Andes. Some put earrings on their alpaca.It’s not just them, either; small children will hide in the ruins only to emerge and sing folk songs for money. Men dressed like traditional shamans will play the pan flute for a price. One woman tells me that she and her alpaca walk two hours every day to reach the ruins of Ollantaytambo. Another tells me it takes him an hour and a half to reach the top of the ruins of Pisac. A little girl boasts how easy it is to run from the guards in the winding Incan farming terraces.And they do all this so that tourists – mostly from the U.S., Europe, or Argentina – can take their picture. Of course every tourist has his or her camera up and at the ready. They’re hoping for a glimpse of the “real Peru.” Five snaps of a camera are more than a meal in a rural community. It’s a country where tourism is one of the most common fields of study, where blonde hair might mean haggling for a taxi and where vacation money is a stronghold of the economy. Peruvian culture is trumpeted for tourists; there is a famous parade and concert called “Day of the Tourists.” It’s set up for everyone’s Travel Channel dreams to come true.Don’t get me wrong – Peru’s economy is in great shape. The sole is rapidly improving against the dollar, and the bars and discotheques are bursting with Peruvians. But there are still hundreds of people whose only English is, “photo, one sole.”
(09/24/09 4:21am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Alien visitation, religious ceremonies and potato fields have all been postulated as reasons for the grand Incan ruins of Moray. Of course, none of them are exactly correct. The world’s disbelief is perhaps one of the last holdovers of colonialism.Its series of terraces, which can be easily scaled with the use of built-in stairs, are one of the greatest agricultural wonders of the ancient world. But for years insufficient research and hasty conclusions have clouded the site with misconceptions.Moray is an experimental Incan seedbed of staggering complexity. It features three sets of circular terraces, each calibrated to a different temperature, many of which contain rocks and soils specifically transported to the site so the Incans could study how the seeds were affected by these minute changes. There are even built-in irrigation channels that feed on natural water sources. So why did it take more than seven decades to figure this out, given the overwhelming archeological evidence?A tour guide at the site put it most simply when she said, “People thought the Inca were too stupid.”The study of Incan culture has been plagued for years by people who consider their famous stonework and mountaintop ruins too advanced for a Pre-Columbian culture. The books of Erich von Daniken, for example, insist that such advanced technology can only be a result of contact with aliens. Anyone who has seen the fourth Indiana Jones movie can tell just how popular this idea is with conspiracy theorists. Even now, tourists delight in the idea that they are standing in a sacred religious site. They gather in the center of the circles to pray, meditate and feed of off the “energy” they say exists there. Even now the occasional guide will peddle tales of Incan religious symbols and customs designed to make the terraces more mysterious.It’s difficult to explain to someone who has never been to Peru, but the Incan culture isn’t really gone. It’s still here, existing as the pride of the people and waiting impatiently for the world to remember it. Right now, the terraces are undergoing massive facelifts. “The stairs aren’t as nice as the Incan ones,” a guide laments. “I miss them.”
(09/16/09 4:08am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>CUSCO, Peru - Stale smoke chokes me as I lay down the bricks for a stove intended to change the life of a Peruvian family. It’s immediately clear that this is not uncommon; I’ll need to chip several inches of black soot from the walls to place the chimney that will take the smoke outside. In two minutes, I have a sore throat and can only imagine breathing this air for hours at a time. In the last six years, the organization ProPeru has installed more than 4,500 cleaner-burning stoves in rural Peru. So far, I’ve installed three.Traditional wood-burning stoves, often located inside a family’s one-room home, lack chimneys, so the smoke is trapped in the kitchen, deteriorating the health of the women and children who spend much of their day working there. The stoves installed by ProPeru expel the smoke into the air and use less firewood, therefore reducing pollution both in the home and in the area of Peru known as the Sacred Valley.ProPeru has utilized several different models, but the current one is ceramic and constructed entirely of local materials. The bricks are manufactured in Cusco, Peru, and barro is provided by the families. Barro is a traditional building material made by mixing a special type of dirt with water and hair from people and cuy (guinea pig, a traditional delicacy). As strange as it sounds, it works well and apparently has for several centuries. The women getting stoves today are excited – they welcome us into their homes with a kiss on the cheek and offers of chicha, beer made from corn. The communities request the installations, and they’ve been looking forward to this day for quite some time.The stoves have been installed in seven of Peru’s 195 provinces so far. Many of these communities only speak Quechua. Luckily, I’ve been in places where my Spanish gets me pretty far. For our work, people serve us food and teach us phrases in Quechua.The stove materials cost 55 soles (roughly $20), and the families pay 10 soles of that (about the cost of a bottle of shampoo here in Cusco). As a group of 14, we can install 13 to 18 stoves in a day. At the end of the day, as I cough out old air and rinse barro from my fingernails, I understand a little about how palpable that impact is.