A post based on The Big Picture blog at Boston.com.
Note: I have recently revised the blog to update various design dilemmas. This post — one of my favorites — has been made into a static page at the following URL:
http://www.davidcflood.com/static/bigpictureperu.html
I have recently been engrossed in Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Report, which was published in 2003. The report is an exhaustive, frank, and sometimes horrifying confession-of-sorts about the country’s civil war from 1980 to 2000. The paragraphs below are my translation of the final section of the report’s preface. (No translation appears to be available [...]
This past weekend, Nora and I took a trip to Huánuco, which is the name of both a city and departamento (like a U.S. state) in central Peru. At the recommendation of our friend Roger, we visited a rural area called Shismay and stayed at a spectacular hacienda-turned-hotel, the Casa Hacienda Shismay.
The pueblo of Shismay [...]
The famous Pisco Sour cocktail (photo from El Comercio)
Robin Kirk has written that “it takes a stubbornness, perhaps arrogance, and a certain faith in the face of long odds to write about someone else’s country.” I could hardly agree more. And Kirk’s maxim is perhaps most true when it comes to writing about food, where [...]
Robin Kirk is a human rights activist and Latin American scholar. She reported from Peru during the guerra interna during the 1980s. Later, in 1997, she published a personal narrative of her time in Peru, The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru. The following passage comes from that book.
I’ve chosen to share this passage here [...]