The health and environmental crisis in La Oroya, a central highland mining town dubbed “Slow Chernobyl” for the appalling environmental impact of contamination generated by a U.S.-run smelter, reached a new stage last week when record-breaking levels of sulfur dioxide were detected, daily El Comercio reported Tuesday.
In La Oroya, located 180 kilometers, or about 112 […]

President Alan Garcia declared a 30-day state of emergency in three Amazonian provinces and one department after negotiations between Environment Minister Antonio Brack and indigenous rights groups broke down Friday and a violent confrontation left eight police officers and one protester injured on Sunday.
Legislative Decree Nº 058-2008-PCM, which was published Monday in official state daily […]

Hundreds of angry residents carrying pots, pans, whistles and cardboard caskets took to the streets Friday in Pisco, Chincha and Ica, some of the towns hardest hit by the magnitude-8 earthquake that ravaged Peru’s southern coast on August 15 last year, to protest Peru president Alan García’s slow reconstruction efforts.
In Pisco, where some 50 families […]

President Alan García headed this week to Pisco and Chincha — two of the towns hardest hit by the magnitude-8 earthquake that ravaged Peru’s southern coast. He went to assess progress in the reconstruction effort, but also to deflect criticism that a year after the disaster his government has botched the job of rebuilding.
“Of course […]

President Alan Garcia defended his administration Tuesday after a national poll showed frustration with rising food prices and a sense that Peru’s economic boom isn’t reaching the majority of its citizens helped pull his approval rating to 20.3 percent — its lowest point since he took office in July 2006.
“Sometimes the people are unfair with […]

Peru’s highest court, the Constitutional Tribunal, or TC, deemed Puno regional President Hernán Fuentes’ regional ordinance to fully legalize coca — the raw material for cocaine — and to declare it cultural and historical patrimony unconstitutional.
For the past two days, Lima-based legislators and prosecutors opposed to unregulated cultivation of coca have upped the pressure against […]

The Yanacocha gold mine — the largest gold mine in Latin America and the second largest in the world — will inaugurate a new $350 million gold processing plant Aug. 13, setting off alarm bells for environmental NGOs and local farmers who fear that the mine’s expansion will only generate more contamination and health problems […]

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, has made an emergency shipment of 36,800 doses of antiparasitic medicines and antibiotics to save 18,000 alpacas in the district of Pilpichaca in the highland department of Huancavelica, one of Peru’s poorest regions.
“Pastures have been covered in snow which has frozen over, making grazing impossible,” Marc Vandersmissen, […]

Dancer and model Leisy Suárez, who was photographed nude astride a horse saddled with a Peruvian flag, could face up to four years in jail for allegedly desecrating a national emblem, according to Edilberto Bejarano Salas, the Defense Minister’s attorney.Bejarano, who Thursday formally pressed criminal charges against Suárez, said it was “an offense,” according to […]

In 2007, Peruvians living in the United States wired between $1.6 and $1.8 billion to family members in Peru, according to the Peruvian consul in Washington, D.C., Manuel Talavera.
The results of a two-month survey, conducted between November and December 2007 by twelve Peruvian consulates across the United States, were presented this week by Talavera during […]