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Peru
The Andean Highlands
The Sierra is the commanding feature of Peru's territory, reaching
heights up to 6,768 meters. Hundreds of permanently glaciated and
snowcapped peaks tower over the valleys. The steep, desiccated Pacific
flank of the Andes supports only a sparse population in villages
located at infrequent springs and seepages. In contrast, tropical
forests blanket the eastern side of the Andes as high as 2,100 meters.
Between these extremes, in the shadows of the great snowpeaks, lie
the most populous highland ecological zones: the intermontane valleys
(kichwa) and the higher uplands and grassy puna or Altiplano
plateaus. Approximately 36 percent of the population lives in thousands
of small villages and hamlets that constitute the rural hinterland
for the regional capitals and trading centers. Over 15 percent of
Peruvians live at altitudes between 2,000 and 3,000 meters, 20 percent
live between 3,000 and 4,000 meters, and 1 percent regularly reside
at altitudes over 4,000 meters.
Although rich in mineral resources, such as copper, lead, silver,
iron, and zinc, which are mined at altitudes as high as 5,152 meters,
the Andes are endowed with limited usable land. The highlands encompass
34 percent of the national territory, or 437,000 square kilometers,
but only 4.5 percent of the highlands, or 19,665 square kilometers,
is arable and cultivated. Nevertheless, this area constitutes more
than half the nation's productive land. About 93,120 square kilometers
of the Sierra is natural pasture over 4,000 meters in altitude,
too high for agriculture. The 4.5 percent of arable land, therefore,
has fairly dense populations, particularly in Puno, Cajamarca, and
in valleys such as the Mantaro in Junín Department and Callejón
de Huaylas in Ancash Department. The highland provinces have a population
density of 460 persons per square kilometer of habitable, arable
land.
The best areas for cultivation are the valleys, which range from
2,000 to 3,500 meters in altitude. Although many valleys have limited
water supplies, others, due to glacial runoffs, enjoy abundant water
for irrigation. In the protected valleys, the dry climate is temperate,
with no frost or great heat. In the high plateau or puna regions
above 3,939 meters, the climate is cold and severe, often going
below freezing at night and seldom rising above 16° C by day.
A myriad of native tubers thrives at altitudes from 2,800 meters
to almost 4,000 meters, including over 4,000 known varieties of
the potato, oca, and olluco, as well as grains such as
quinoa. The hardy native llamas and alpacas thrive on the tough
ichu grass of the punas; European sheep and cattle, when
adapted, do well at lesser altitudes.
For the Peruvians, there are two basic Andean seasons, the rainy
winter from October through April and the dry summer in the remaining
months. Crops are harvested according to type throughout the year,
with potatoes and other native tubers brought in during the middle
to late winter and grains during the dry season. The torrential
rains of the winter months frequently cause severe landslides and
avalanches, called huaycos, throughout the Andean region,
damaging irrigation canals, roads, and even destroying villages
and cities. In the valley of Callejón de Huaylas, the city of Huaraz
(Huarás) was partially destroyed in 1941 by just such a catastrophe,
an event repeated a few kilometers away in 1962, when the town of
Ranrahirca was annihilated by a huayco that killed about
3,000 people.
The formidable terrain of the Andes, where the land may fall away
from 4,848 meters to 545 meters and then rise to 6,666 meters in
a space of 48 kilometers as the condor flies, poses a ubiquitous
challenge to any modern means of transport. Thus, the Andean region
was not penetrated by wheeled vehicles until railroads were built
in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, most of
the nation did not see wheels until the dirt road system was under
construction in the 1920s. To do this, President Augusto B. Leguía
y Salcedo (1908-12, 1919-30) revived a national system of draft
labor harkening back to the Inca's conscripted labor force, or mita
(see Glossary), used for road and bridge building in ancient times.
Data as of September 1992
Peru
High-Altitude Adaptations
As with the Himalayan mountains, the Andes impose severe conditions
and many limitations on life. Consequently, Andean people are physically
adapted to the heights in special ways. In contrast to persons born
and raised at sea level, those living at Andean altitudes 2,500
meters or more above sea level have as much as 25 percent more blood
that is more viscous and richer in red cells, a heart that is proportionately
larger, and specially adapted, larger lungs, with an enhanced capacity
to take in oxygen from the rare atmosphere. Biological adaptations
have permitted the native highlanders to work efficiently and survive
successfully in the Andean altitudes for 20,000 years.
The first important scientific research on high-altitude biology
was undertaken by the Peruvian physician-scientist Carlos Monge
Medrano in the 1920s. He showed that coca-leaf chewing played a
role in aiding the metabolism in high-altitude populations. More
recent studies have shown that coca chewing significantly aids in
metabolizing high carbohydrate foods like potatoes, yucca, and corn,
which are traditional staples in the Andean region, thus providing
the chewer with more rapid energy input from his meals. Supposed
narcotic effects of coca-leaf chewing are nil because enzymes in
the mouth convert coca into atropine-like substances, unlike those
involved in cocaine. Anthropologists Catherine Allen and Enrique
Mayer have also demonstrated the central role traditional coca use
plays in Andean communities as a medicine, ritual substance, and
an element in economic and social affairs.
Data as of September 1992
Peru
The Amazonian Tropics
The Selva, which includes the humid tropics of the Amazon jungle
and rivers, covers about 63 percent of Peru but contains only about
11 percent of the country's population. The region begins high in
the eastern Andean cloud forests, called the ceja de montaña
(eyebrow of the jungle), or Montãna or Selva Alta, and descends
with the rush of silt-laden Andean rivers--such as the Marañon,
Huallaga, Apurímac, and Urubamba--to the relatively flat, densely
forested, Amazonian plain. These torrential rivers unite as they
flow, forming the Amazon before reaching the burgeoning city of
Iquitos. Regarded as an exotic land of mystery and promise throughout
much of the twentieth century, the Selva has been seen in Peru as
the great hope for future development, wealth, and the fulfillment
of national destiny. As such, it became President Fernando Belaúnde
Terry's "Holy Grail" as he devoted the energies of his two administrations
(1963-68, 1980-85) to promoting colonization, development schemes,
and highway construction across the Montaña and into the tropical
domain.
Human settlements in the Amazonian region are invariably riverine,
clustering at the edges of the hundreds of rivers and oxbow lakes
that in natural conditions are virtual fish farms in terms of their
productivity. The streams and rivers constitute a serpentine network
of pathways plied by boats and canoes that provide the basic transport
through the forest. Here, the Shipibo, Asháninka (Campa), Aguaruna,
and other tribes lived in relative independence from the Peruvian
state until the midtwentieth century . Although the native people
have cleverly exploited the extraordinary riverine environment for
at least 5,000 years, both they and the natural system have been
under relentless pressures of population, extractive industries,
and the conversion of forest into farm and pasture. Amazonian forest
resources are enormous but not inexhaustible. Amazonian timber is
prized worldwide, but when the great cedar, rosewood, and mahogany
reserves are cut, they are rarely replaced.
Peru's tropics are also a fabled source for traditional medicinal
plants, such as the four types of domesticated coca, which are prized
through the entire Andean and upper Amazonian sphere, having been
widely traded and bartered for 4,500 years. Unfortunately, coca's
traditional uses as a beneficial drug for dietary, medical, and
ritual purposes, and, during the twentieth century, as a primary
flavoring for cola drinks have given way to illegal plantings on
a large scale for cocaine production. All of the new, illegal plantations
are located in Peru's upper Amazon drainage and have seriously deteriorated
the forests, soils, and general environment where they exist. The
use of chemical sprays and the widespread clearing of vegetation
to eliminate illegal planting has also created unfortunate and extensive
environmental side-effects.
In the early 1990s, the Selva was still considered an important
potential source for new discoveries in the medicinal, fuel, and
mineral fields. Petroleum and gas reserves have been known to exist
in several areas, but remained difficult to exploit. And, in Peru's
southern Amazonian department of Madre de Dios, a gold rush has
been in progress since the 1970s, producing a frontier boom effect
with various negative repercussions. The new population attracted
to the region has placed numerous pressures on the native tribal
communities and their lands.
All of these intrusions into the fragile Amazon tropics were fraught
with environmental questions and human dilemmas of major scale.
In this poorly understood environment, hopes and development programs
have often gone awry at enormous cost. In their wake, serious problems
of deforestation, population displacement, challenge to the tribal
rights of the native "keepers of the forest," endless infrastructural
costs, and the explosive expansion of cocaine capitalism have emerged.
In the 1963-90 period, Peru looked to the tropics as the solution
for socioeconomic problems that it did not want to confront in the
highlands. In the early 1990s, it was faced with paradox and quandary
in both areas.
Data as of September 1992
Peru
The Maritime Region
A maritime region constitutes a fourth significant environment
within the Peruvian domain. The waters off the Peruvian coast are
swept by the Humboldt (or Peruvian) Current that rises in the frigid
Antarctic and runs strongly northward, cooling the arid South American
coastline before curving into the central Pacific near the Peru-Ecuador
border. Vast shoals of anchovy, tuna, and several varieties of other
valued fish are carried in this stream, making it one of the world's
richest commercial fisheries . The importance of guano has diminished
since the rise of the anchovy fishing industry. The billions of
anchovy trapped by modern flotillas of purse seiners guided by spotter
planes and electronic sounding devices are turned into fish meal
for fertilizer and numerous other industrial uses. Exports of fish
meal and fish products are of critical importance for Peru's economy.
For this reason, changes in the environmental patterns on the coast
or in the adjacent ocean have devastating consequences for employment
and, therefore, national stability. The periodic advent of a warm
current flowing south, known as El Niño (The Christ-child), and
intensive fishing that has temporarily depleted the seemingly boundless
stocks of anchovy have caused major difficulties for Peru.
Data as of September 1992
Peru
Natural Disasters and Their Impact
Severely affecting conditions on both land and sea, El Niño is
yet another peculiarity of the Peruvian environment. This stream
of equatorial water periodically forces its way southward against
the shoreline, pushing the cold Humboldt Current and its vast fishery
deeper and westward into the ocean, while bringing in exotic equatorial
species. El Niño is not benign, even though named after the Christ-child
because it has often appeared in December. Instead, over cycles
of fifteen to twenty-five years, El Niño disrupts the normally rainless
coastal climate and produces heavy rainfalls, floods, and consequent
damages. The reverse occurs in the highlands, where drought-like
conditions occur, often over two-to-five-year periods, reducing
agricultural production. The impact of this phenomenon came to be
more fully understood only in the 1980s, and it has been shown to
influence Atlantic hurricane patterns as well. Moreover, archaeological
research by Michael Edward Moseley has demonstrated that El Niño
turbulence probably led to the heretofore unexplained collapses
of apparently prosperous ancient Andean societies. From 1981 to
1984, Peruvians experienced severe destruction from this perturbation;
the destruction clearly contributed to the rapidly deteriorating
socioeconomic conditions in the country.
Another major environmental variable is the activity of the Nazca
plate, which abuts Peru along the Pacific shore and constantly forces
the continental land mass upward. Although volcanism created numerous
thermal springs throughout the coastal and highland region and created
such striking volcanic cones as El Misti, which overlooks the city
of Arequipa, it also poses the constant threat of severe earthquakes.
In the Sierra, much farmland rests at the foot of great, unstable
mountains, such as those overlooking the spectacular valley of Callejón
de Huaylas, which is replete with the evidence of past avalanches
and seismic upheaval. It is also one of the most productive agricultural
areas in the highlands. On May 31, 1970, an earthquake measuring
7.7 on the Richter scale staggered the department of Ancash and
adjacent areas. A block of glacial ice split from the top of El
Huascarán, Peru's tallest mountain (6,768 meters), and buried the
provincial capital of Yungay under a blanket of mud and rock, killing
about 5,000 people. In the affected region, 70,000 persons were
killed, 140,000 injured, and over 500,000 left homeless. It was
the most destructive disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere
and had major negative effects on the national economy and government
reform programs at a critical moment during the administration of
Juan Velasco Alvarado (1968-75).
In precolonial times, the Incas and their ancestors had long grappled
with the seismic problem. Many archaeologists have attributed the
special trapezoidal character of Inca architecture to precautions
against earthquakes. The first name of the founder of the Inca empire,
Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, means "cataclysm." The Incas understood
their terrain. Since 1568 there have been over 70 significant earthquakes
in Peru, or one every six years, although each year the country
registers as many as 200 lesser quakes. As an expression of their
own powerlessness in the face of such events, many Peruvians pray
for protection to a series of earthquake saints. Among such saints
are Cusco's Señor de los Temblores (Lord of the Tremors), revered
since a disaster in 1650, and the Señor de los Milagros (Lord of
Miracles), worshipped in Lima and nationwide since a quake in 1655.
Data as of September 1992
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