tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13313312008-01-16T05:41:46.890-05:00MichaelBlogger2071125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-421520129848138012007-09-20T11:54:00.001-04:002007-09-20T11:54:19.870-04:00

New York TimesIn Peru, a Crater and Questions - The Lede - Breaking News On Saturday night, a fiery object fell from the sky. Stunned residents said they tracked it to a fresh hole in the earth that was more than 60 feet wide, 15 feet deep, filled with boiling water and steaming with noxious fumes, according to a statement from the Health Ministry.This blog news item has a lot of links to news

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-81265094464942374432007-08-17T12:39:00.001-04:002007-08-17T12:45:48.949-04:00

For anyone wanting to make a donation to assist in the relief of victims of the August 15 earthquake, I suggest that you go to Oxfam America. I know several people in the organization and that they do good work in Peru. There are other good organizations for relief work, like Catholic Relief. Cash is always the best option because contributions in used clothing and other items are just not

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-50305268839089934022007-06-25T11:01:00.001-04:002007-06-25T11:03:24.141-04:00

MSNBC.com/AP Cameron Diaz says sorry for Mao bag The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated ?Shrek? films visited the Incan city of Machu Picchu in Peru?s Andes on Friday carrying an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words ?Serve the People? printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong?s most famous political slogan. The bags are marketed as fashion

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-72819135517513911572007-06-20T12:39:00.000-04:002007-06-20T12:47:51.620-04:00

New York Times Earliest Gunshot Victim in New World Is Reported Digging in an Inca cemetery in the suburbs of Lima, they came on well-preserved remains of an individual with holes less than an inch in diameter in the back and front of the skull. Forensic scientists in Connecticut said the position of the round holes and some minuscule iron particles showed that the person most likely was shot

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-58415149187676708932007-06-07T17:02:00.000-04:002007-06-07T17:05:29.746-04:00

Living in Peru Peru's Fujimori one step closer to extradition -- it's not the final verdict, but the first clue as to which direction the Chilean judicial system is leaning: Chilean Supreme Court Prosecutor Monica Maldonado has officially recommended the extradition of Peru's former president, Alberto Fujimori, citing 10 different charges of corruption and human rights violations. The charges

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-44252482255670703032007-06-03T16:23:00.000-04:002007-06-03T16:32:17.677-04:00

New York Times: The Other Machu Picchu is a story about a place that is not Machu Picchu, called Choquequirao, but nearby in the Cusco region.In Cuzco before the trip, Pedro Tacca, the director of patrimony for the National Cultural Institute, had spoken to me about the importance of preserving communities like Cachora and the other towns near Choquequirao as tourism to the site grows. He said

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-14446999822558554012007-05-08T12:14:00.000-04:002007-05-08T12:19:25.644-04:00

New York Times: How the Inca Leapt Canyons The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has students do research on ancient technologies: In the case of the Peruvian bridges, the builders relied on a technology well suited to the problem and their resources. The Spanish themselves demonstrated how appropriate the Peruvian technique was. Dr. Ochsendorf, a specialist in early architecture and

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1174932727263607252007-03-26T15:12:00.000-04:002007-03-26T16:05:49.523-04:00

Environmental News Service Polluting U.S. Owned Smelter in Peru Brought Before OAS: The La Oroya metallurgical complex has been around for almost a century and little has been done to keep it from poisoning the environment both in the area and downstream, either when it was run by the state or private enterprise. The environmental and human rights groups point out that recent monitoring of air

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1173134977287961642007-03-05T17:48:00.000-05:002007-03-05T17:49:37.293-05:00

Wired 15.01: Untangling the Mystery of the Inca Yet, if centuries of scholarship are to be believed, the Inca, whose rule began 2,000 years after Homer, never figured out how to write. It's an enigma known as the Inca paradox, and for nearly 500 years it has stood as one of the great historical puzzles of the Americas. But now a Harvard anthropologist named Gary Urton may be close to untangling

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1167937352616383832007-01-04T14:02:00.000-05:002007-01-04T14:02:32.850-05:00

Christian Science Montior In Peru, a move to get farmers to trade in fish rather than coca: A new initiative to convince coca growers that there are better things to do with their time, like saving endangered species: A throwback to prehistoric times, with armored scales and a flat head, the paiches must come to the surface to breathe, making them easy targets for harpoon fishermen. But

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1155332537719464692006-08-11T17:42:00.000-04:002006-08-11T17:42:18.253-04:00

Living in Peru : your everyday companion is a relatively recent web site. It comes news items, features, a directory, classified ads, and a lot of other stuff about Peru, in other words, a?Guide for foreigners living in Peru.? I will be adding it to La Lista. It's all in English. Maybe, I should just shut down this site now -- just kidding.

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1154668091502659402006-08-04T01:08:00.000-04:002006-08-04T01:08:11.600-04:00

Index for Free Expression Peru: Abimael Guzmán, once more on trial for crimes against humanity: "If there is one thing that is remarkable about the senderista uprising, it is the huge disparity between the paucity of their means and their ambitious aims; between the rude and remote scenes of their battles and their objective of global conquest. For a long time it seemed like a demented rebellion

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1148850033505751942006-05-28T16:48:00.000-04:002006-06-10T22:31:17.270-04:00

Last weekend, my family and I went up to New York City to attend the wedding of a niece, Ana Lucia Torres, so it was a big family affair. She married Paul Dunkle, a guy that she met shortly after graduating from Hofstra University. Their wedding was at Riverside Church, which proved to be a striking stage for their ceremony, reception and dinner. The occassion brought together relatives and

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1147108702681396072006-05-08T13:04:00.000-04:002006-05-08T13:19:35.286-04:00

In the first opinion polls of the presidential run-off race, Alan Garcia has 57 percent and Ollanta Humala has 43 percent, according to the Apoyo polling agency. Humala is much stronger in provinces than in Lima. In a telling sidelight, 14 percent of those interviewed said that they would vote black or invalid, while 7 percent did not express a preference. Those votes may hide additional votes

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1146941430622710762006-05-06T14:39:00.000-04:002006-05-06T14:50:30.713-04:00

We will now have a presidential run-off elections between Ollanta Humala and Alan Garcia. Both have a tainted personal history -- the first as a military frontline commander in the Huallaga valley who in all likelihood commited or condoned human rights abuses, and the second as a young politician who wasted a historial opportunity to consolidate democracy in the country. Pick the lesser of two

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1146534072646738382006-05-01T21:41:00.000-04:002006-05-01T21:41:12.736-04:00

Mitch Teplitsky's Soy Andina: "Soy Andina is an exuberant cross-cultural road trip, bursting with traditional music and dance rarely seen outside the country. But the core story is intimate and universal: a yearning for roots and connection in turbulent times." Mitch has been working on this documentary for years, a real labor of love for Peru and its people. I can't even remember when I first

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1145637000460197202006-04-21T12:30:00.000-04:002006-04-21T12:30:00.566-04:00

Washington Post Gas From the Rain Forest: "Backers of a multibillion-dollar proposal to ship vast stores of liquid natural gas from Peru's Amazonian rain forest to the United States are seeking Bush administration support for international financing, but environmental questions are complicating the bid." Recently leaks in the pipeline from the Camisea natural gas fields have raised questions

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1145305552497594812006-04-17T16:23:00.000-04:002006-04-19T07:08:14.560-04:00

I have been remise in covering the Peruvian elections. Good things (tons of paying work) and bad things (a crashed hard disk) have stolen my free time and energy for thinking about the complexities in Peru. In case you don't already know, the best blog for following political events is Peru Election 2006 hosted by the University of British Columbia. It's a team effort, with lost of comments and

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1140559613070971512006-02-21T17:06:00.000-05:002006-02-21T17:06:53.156-05:00

Lori Through the Looking Glass by Dr. Nicholas Birns of New School University (New York) for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs takes a US left-wing look at the Lori Berensen case and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision to not reverse her conviction. Birns subscribes this reversal to pressure put on the court by the Peruvian government:"Through the middle to later part of November (

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1140023962029045512006-02-21T14:24:00.000-05:002006-02-21T14:24:27.796-05:00

I have started an experiment with a wiki on Peru. I don't know if I will be able to sustain it, but that's the point of a wiki -- it's open to other people contributing. The PBWiki is a freeby and they seem to be actively upgrading and improving the product.Correction: I have since changed the wiki from private to public so that anyone can now see it. Just be forewarned that there is not a lot

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1139941737831763502006-02-14T13:28:00.000-05:002006-02-14T13:28:57.916-05:00

SFGate PERUVIAN SOUL: "[Ronny] Campos say the give-and-take between the dancers and percussionists is the essence of Afro-Peruvian music. 'The symbiotic relationship between dancers and percussionists is clear when you see a performance. There is melody, but the dancers and percussionists lead each other. The dancers set the tempo and the percussion follows." This article picks up a San Francisco

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1139803799465246432006-02-12T22:57:00.000-05:002006-02-12T23:10:02.576-05:00

Sorry that I have not posted any entries here for the past month. I had not even realized that it had been such along time. As a consolation, here is an interview that Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo gave the the Council on Foreign Affairs when he was up in the States in September, last year: A Conversation. Toledo gave some opening remarks and then fielded questions from the audience. Today

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1135353517050578652005-12-23T10:58:00.000-05:002005-12-23T10:58:37.140-05:00

Human Rights Watch Peru/Chile: Fujimori Implicated in Serious Crimes (Human Rights Watch, 21-12-2005): "Human Rights Watch?s 22-page report, ?Peru/Chile: Fujimori Implicated in Serious Crimes,? focuses specifically on information implicating Fujimori in five criminal cases currently pending in Peru, including human rights violations as well as acts of corruption that undermined Peru?s democratic

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1134415188479294082005-12-12T13:55:00.000-05:002005-12-12T14:19:48.566-05:00

Once in a while, I'll get an e-mail from a writer or journalist thinking about going off to South America for the adventure of becoming a freelance journalist, as if my experience from 25 years ago in Peru could still be relevant. I would recommend that anyone looking at that prospect check out Life as a Foreign Journalist on Cliff's blog. Cliff has been working out of Peru for the past year or

Michaeltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1331331.post-1134282619680489432005-12-11T01:25:00.000-05:002005-12-12T12:04:43.270-05:00

I just found Karl Grobl's photography site with some stunning pictures of Cusco and Machu Picchu taken in 1998 and 2001. Karl is a photojournalist who has gone round the world more than a few times.

Michael