things just got interesting

So I have been informed that American news isnt covering what is going on in Peru...which is sad cause the rest the world is watching. So here is the low-down...

Last week, there was a huge march in the jungle for indiginious people's rights. The police decided to open fire on the crowd. 47 people have been reported dead. The protesters decided to fight back, 17 police officers have gone missing since then. There is evidence of burned bodies along roads, and people claim to have witnessed bodies being dropped from helicopters into rivers from the military. There were two huge protests in Lima with tens of thousands of people, they were mostly peaceful. However, the government is denying everything. Alan Garcia (the idiot president of Peru) is claiming no wrongdoing, which he really should be doing.

The entire country is in a state of emergency which was last declared in 1992 during the internal conflict. I probably will not get to Cajamarca considering that is in the North where most the trouble is. Cusco-Puno-Bolivia is still safe right now. It is amazing how in such a short time, a conflict can go from nothing to something huge.

I have spent a lot of time studying the social problems of peru and needless to say cannot sum up a semester in my blog, but would love to talk about them when I get home. But here is the digest on that...from 1980-2000 nearly 70,000 people died in a communist terrorism struggle in peru that ended with a dictator taking power in 1990 by creating a state of fear with military control. The dictatorship fell apart in 2000 and democracy is very young here. The problem lies in that the same issues from 1980 still exist today and the president from 1985-1990 was Alan Garcia (ring a bell).

Peru might very well be on the edge of something big. In any case, I feel very safe. The nation is not falling apart, they just have some huge complications to deal with. They have mastered how to keep people not involved safe. My host mom spent the last week in the heart of it all and returned today, she said that she was fine, the police really know what they are doing (even if they show no mercy for human rights against the minority here).

So nothing to be worried about if American news decides to get on the global bandwagon, but I do ask that you keep the people of Peru in your prayers as they figure out how to reconcile the problems of the past with the realities of now.