Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE 21ST CENTURY
The new millennium has, thus far, been pretty good to Peru. In 2001, shoeshine-boy-
turned-Stanford-economist Alejandro Toledo became the first person of Quechua ethnicity
to ever be elected to the presidency. (Until then, Peru had had
mestizo
presidents, but never
a full-blooded
indígena
.) Unfortunately, Toledo inherited a political and economic mess.
This was amplified by the fact that he lacked a majority in congress, hampering his effect-
iveness in the midst of an economic recession.
Toledo was followed in office by - of all people - the APRA's Alan García, who was re-
elected in 2006. His second term was infinitely more stable than the first. The economy
performed well and the government invested money in upgrading infrastructure such as
ports, highways and the electrical grid. But it wasn't without problems. For one, there was
the issue of corruption (García's entire cabinet was forced to resign in 2008 after wide-
spread allegations of bribery) and there has been the touchy issue of how to manage the
country's mineral wealth. In 2008, García signed a law that allowed foreign companies to
exploit natural resources in the Amazon. The legislation generated a backlash among vari-
ous Amazon tribes and led to a fatal standoff in the northern city of Bagua in 2009.
The Peruvian congress quickly revoked the law, but this issue remains a challenge for
the new president, Ollanta Humala. Elected in 2011, the former army officer was initially
thought to be a populist in the Hugo Chávez vein (the Lima stock exchange dropped pre-
cipitously when he was first elected). But his administration has been quite friendly to busi-
ness. Though the economy has functioned well under his governance, civil unrest over a
proposed gold mine in the north, as well as a botched raid on a Sendero Luminoso encamp-
ment in the highlands, sent his approval rating into a tailspin by the middle of 2012.
TIMELINE
8000 BC
Hunting scenes are painted in caves by hunter-gatherers near Huánuco in the central
highlands and in Toquepala in the south - early evidence of humans in Peru.
c 3000 BC
Settlement of Peru's coastal oases begins; some of the first structures are built at the ce-
remonial center of Caral, north of present-day Lima.
