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 [...]
Look, I’m not a big fan of Wall Street either. I think the money they make—and the bonuses they dole out—are way out of line with their true value to our nation’s economy. To turn a Street-speak expression on its head: Where’s the “value-added”? Here is what I wrote in December in my post “Solely [...]
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 [...]
An article about Socios En Salud and drug-resistant tuberculosis from the Washington Post. The saddest part:
Ángel Serrubio, who lived in the jungle town of Iquitos, said his condition was made far worse by inexperienced doctors, who gave him potent but erroneous medications that had painful side effects. He grew so sick that he told his [...]
This beautiful video comes from Washington Post digital reporter Francine Uenuma, who over the course of three days visited many of the project sites of Socios En Salud in Lima, Peru. I was able to accompany Francine for much of her visit, and I’m impressed with how well she explained the overall problem of MDR-TB [...]
I recently read John Hemmings’s book The Conquest of the Incas (1970), a weighty tome considered probably the best account of the Spanish Conquest in Peru. I’d like to share a passage I found very illuminating and also like to highlight a few important points about the Conquest.
First, the Incas were fighting Spanish warriors whose [...]
On Sunday, October 18th, I attended la procesión del Señor de los Milagros with a co-worker, twelve of the co-worker’s friends, my two roommates, and approximately 1-2 million other Peruvians. La procesión del Señor de los Milagros, or “the parade of the Lord of the Miracles,” is a massive religious (specifically, Catholic) event that takes [...]