La Esquina del Movimiento

Washington Post Remember Huaycan: "Huaycan, which I got to know a few years ago when I was a correspondent in South America, is a vast shantytown on the outskirts of Lima, Peru -- a sprawling settlement that spills down a bleak, treeless, utterly barren hillside toward the polluted trickle that Peruvians still grandly call the Rimac River.... Tens of thousands of people lived there -- no one knew exactly how many. Most were internal refugees who had fled political violence and economic devastation in the high Andes. They had come to the big city, or at least as far as its bleakest fringe, to scrape out a living. You could tell the newest arrivals because their homes were built entirely of woven reed mats. Those who lived in two or more rooms, enclosed with cinderblocks, were the affluent of Huaycan." Eugene Robinson writes about Paul Wolfowitz's appointment to be president of the World Bank and recalls his days covering Latin America. I was the Post stringer back then. For some reason I did not notice this article when it came out a couple of months ago. It reminded me to remember Huaycan and its sister towns around Peru and the rest of the world. I get so wrapped up in other things that I don't get around to posting much here or on the rest of the web site. Hopefully, I can put up some new material soon.