Poor Peru, a place with electoral politics so messy the voters last election chose a non-politician school teacher as president. Not surprisingly, now he’s been in office for some months it is clear that as a non-politician he has no clue how to make Peru’s government function. He has churned through 3 cabinets in 6 months.
Parts of Peru are relatively cosmopolitan and even marginally 21st century, other parts are almost pre-Colombian. It is home to Machu Picchu and the Nacza lines - world class archeological sites by any standard. In times past it played host to the violent Shining Path Maoist guerrilla movement that was suppressed at quite a cost to civil liberties.
I liked the country when I visited there, but after it being something of an oasis of prosperity for quite a period, it now seems to have sunk back into the political miasma that sadly typifies Latin America. As I've noted before, in the absence of proof I’m inclined to blame lingering elements of Iberian colonialism for many of the region’s problems as well as much of its charm.
