Chapitre 12:
In order to discover more about this country and cover the most amount of ground, we traveled for 3 weeks with an organised tour from Lima to the bolivian capital La Paz. During the 3 weeks, we discovered and admired the Inca culture which was full of mystery. From the nazca lines that have been dicovered in 1925 and which we still don’t know the purpose (gods or aliens?), to the religious place of Macchu Pichu. Peru is full of historic sites and beautiful landscapes.
Peru today:
Peru is a bicutural society with the indigenous people and the european-influenced society.
It is hard to see a common national identity because 15% of the population is pure spanish, 37% is half spanish half indigenous, and 45% are pure indigenous. The majority of the indigenous population live in the rural areas in the Andes and work in agriculture.
Today 75% of the peruvians live in the cities; a significant change from the 1960s when more than half of the population lived in the countryside.
The country has suffered since the independance from the spanish in 1821, of multiple dictatures and corruptions, it is only through the mandat of the actual president, army officer Oumantah Ullah, that the development of the economy is growing.
Tourism is one of the main economic sources of revenue and a huge increase in visitors has occurred since 2003. In this time the number of tourists has doubled from 1.2 to 2.6 million people per year.
However despite a large amount of development associated with tourism, the average rate of poverty has stayed really high at ~23% of the population.
The minimum monthly wage is less than 200$ and 1/3 people live under the poverty line while 1/10 live with less than a 1$ per day.
The unemployment rate is said to be 7.9% in the entire country but 42.5% of the people living in Lima are unemployed.
One of the problems comes from the production of cocaine and the terrorist group, Maoiste, that its financed through drugs. Peru is the second biggest productor of cocaine after Bolivia (and not Colombia!).
In terms of the environment, 2 main issues have been revealed: the mine project in the cajamarca region pollutes the water supply and the amazon road project between peru and brazil is causing huge deforestation.
As a latino culture, 81% of the population is roman Catholic.
The role women remains unpregressive, due to a the macho culture. 16% of woman are illiterate and earn 56 cent of a dollar won by men.
Peru most important civilization : The Incas
Coming from the southern Andes, the Incas are a Quechua civilisation. From their arrival in the 1100 AD to the spanish invasion in 1532, the Incas were in Peru. They expanded in the 15th century with their ninth emperor. The capital was cusco (meaning belly button). They formed a real and united empire never seen before on the continent, which spanned from Ecuador to Chile, consisting of 10 million inhabitants. They developed the agricultural system with water irrigation and terraces and implemented a united identity with a single Quechua language. The system was regulated by a strict cast: nobles, artisans, merchants and peasants. The population had to pay tribute to their governors by spending 3 months building and repairing temples and other infrastructure. Their communication system depended on a relay runner, running the 1600km in a week between Cusco and Quito. The regime was rough: bloody wars, human sacrifice, but it was also a socialistic regime with a general social health system.
The Incas are primarily famous for their genius architecture skills. Macchu Pichu is only an example of the empire style they could build. Carved pieces of rock pilled without mortars, impossibility to put a niddle between them and trapezoidal angles were built to resist seismic activity. The Spanish destroyed them in order to build their own monuments and to take the upper hand on this civilisation. If the Incas period has finished under the spanish occupation, their great architecture skills have and will overcome the centuries.
The Inca’s believed in many gods but the most importants ones were the sun and pachamama (mother earth). In order to please them (when sun or rain was needed), they used the human sacrifices. It was an honnor for the sacrificed humans to serve the gods.
The 10th empire included Columbia as an Inca territory. Under his commandmant, a civil war was declared and ruined a lot of infrastructure and lives, hence the high number of people collaborating with the spanish 5 months later, thinking this would be the end of conflicts.
Within a century of the spanish occupation, the population as reduced from 10 million to 600,000. This shows how the spanish ruled by terror.
In the 19th century, population create a revolution against the spanish, its violence and high taxes. Helped came from Argentina with San martin and from Venezuela with simon bolivar.
Since then, the country tried to find a stability but each of new dictatorship brought more corruption and high inflation. Conflicts with Chili resulted in bankruptcy in Peru which didn’t help the national finances or psyche, and as a result of the conflict they lost the Atacama desert in 1874, which was occupied until 1892. Since then, the country has been developing thanks primarily to cotton exports, mining and revenue from tourism (Macchu Pichu brings 30% of the national revenue).
In a nutshell: Perou is a beautiful and very interesting country to visit.
Tour Du Monde 