Less than a week after a wildfire destroyed 700 hectares of underbrush in a protected area surrounding Machu Picchu, Peru launched an emergency surveillance plan to prevent any additional fires in the vicinity of Peru’s sacred Inca citadel and top tourist attraction.
“The (surveillance) will be carried out by Peru’s National Natural Resources Institute, or Irena, […]

Once merely known as “mules” for Colombia’s indomitable cocaine cartels, Mexican groups such as the Juarez, Sinaloa, Tijuana and Gulf cartels have become significant players internationally, now bypassing the Colombians to buy cocaine directly from producers in countries like Peru.
Though the Andean region remains the “production heartland” of cocaine, for several years there have been […]

A framework agreement to promote the development of sustainable tourism in Peru was signed Sunday on World Tourism Day by Environment Minister Antonio Brack Egg, Commerce and Tourism Minister Mercedes Aráoz and several of the country’s regional presidents.
“Today’s world faces two great challenges: extreme poverty and climate change,” said Aráoz in press release issued by […]

Peru’s National Fund for the Protection of Natural Areas, or Profonanpe, has set up a forest conservation and management program in Peru’s northern coastal department of Piura with the financial support of the German government.
Piura’s regional government will invest more than $1 million toward the conservation of the region’s forests, Natural Resources and Environment manager […]

Cuzco, the historic capital of the Inca Empire, is now the new “hot spot” for human trafficking in Peru, as child labor and sexual tourism are increasing at an alarming rate, a state prosecutor told the nation’s leading newspaper.
“Cuzco has became a place where minors, and especially adolescents, are being recruited to be taken to […]

Lady Bardales, the ex-police lieutenant and bodyguard to former President Alejandro Toledo, was released Thursday from the Santa Monica Women’s Prison in Chorrillos  after a state prosecutor dropped the charges of illegal enrichment against her.
“I thank God because he has opened the jail’s doors after almost three months,” said Bardales when she left the penitentiary […]

A jailed Canadian ex-cop facing charges for allegedly trafficking tons of cocaine into Mexico and California tricked some lackadaisical police guards this week, knocking one of them out cold, and escaping to the anger and dismay of drug enforcement officials in the U.S. Embassy who were in the process of arranging his extradition.
Jerry Enson Aines […]

Five hundred protesters ended their three-day occupation of the Electroandes Upamayo dam Thursday after a delegation sent by the Council of Ministers agreed to set up talks to address the local campesinos’ demands.
An agreement was signed, said Junín mayor Percy Chagua Huaranga in comments to daily El Comercio, and as of Friday September 26 negotiations […]

More than 3,000 gallons of oil and gasoline spilled into the Itaya River in Peru’s northernmost Amazonian region of Loreto, contaminating the water supply of hundreds of people.
Mystery still surrounds the exact cause of the accident that led to the spill after a floating filling station tipped over Sunday afternoon, near the port of Vergara in […]

A wildfire that destroyed 700 hectares of underbrush in a protected area surrounding Machu Picchu — Peru’s sacred Inca citadel and top tourist attraction — was brought under control Wednesday by more than 700 firefighters.
“The fire has not affected nor compromised any of the archaeological monuments and the flow of tourists to the Inca citadel […]