Peru, South America
Frontpage
Featured Story
Teaching the world to love Peruvian cuisine
By Naomi Mapstone / Financial Times
Peruvians queue for no one. Queuing is for patsies, pushovers, foreigners who don't know any better. In Lima, the brash, chaotic capital, shoppers form scrums in front of hard-eyed assistants, drivers invent lanes between techni-coloured minivans stuffed with commuters, surfers steal waves like baseball players sneaking third, and the wealthy opt out entirely, sending maids in their stead or greasing a few palms.
It was odd, then, last September, to see a queue of World Cup proportions gather on the outskirts of Miraflores, a wealthy suburb of Lima. For three days, the line snaked its way around a convention centre, where the country's first international gastronomic fair was taking place. Limeños paid 20 soles for tickets, the cost of several three-course meals in a local restaurant, and the mood in line was one of delight. "How delicious," said Luis Diaz, rubbing his paunch in glee at the thought of a full day's eating. Diaz and his friends Lourdes Ospina and Diego Carrera were unfazed by their two-hour wait, whiling away the time with food fantasies. "Ceviche, mmm, my favourite, duck with rice, prawn chowder," he said, ticking off his mental wish list. "I heard there is lucuma [a jungle fruit with flesh the texture of hard-boiled egg yolk] ice cream," Ospina enthused. "And picarones [doughnut-shaped pumpkin fritters with spiced molasses]".
Nor was their enthusiasm dampened by their being unable to afford $200 seminars with chefs such as Albert Adriá from Catalonia's legendary El Bulli restaurant, or Manuel Tejedor of Galicia's Casa Marcelo. To them, as to many in the crowd, the real star of this show was homegrown: Gastón Acurio, the mop-haired messiah of Peruvian cuisine. The owner of more than 20 restaurants in Peru and abroad, author of more than a dozen cookbooks and host of a popular cable television show, 41-year-old Acurio is a household name in this nation of 28 million. And he's also the seemingly unstoppable force behind the growing popularity of Peruvian food around the world. If ceviche doesn't become the next sushi — going from exotic to popular to ubiquitous in the space of a few decades — it won't be for lack of trying on his part.
In the Andes, a Toxic Site Also Provides a Livelihood
By SIMON ROMERO / The New York Times
La Oroya has been called one of the world's 10 most polluted places by the Blacksmith Institute, a nonprofit group that studies toxic sites. But for several months, the Peruvian smelting company in Mr. Rennert’s empire has claimed that low metals prices prevented it from completing a timely cleanup to lower the emissions that have given this town such an ignoble distinction.
The tensions here over the lead emissions and the smelter's financial meltdown is precisely the kind of dire mix of foreign investment and environmental contamination feared by indigenous groups elsewhere in Peru, particularly in the country's Amazon basin, where protests over similar issues left dozens dead this month.
Residents of La Oroya, with a population of 35,000, talk about the lead in their blood like people elsewhere discuss the weather. Ninety-seven percent of children under the age of 6 had lead levels that would be considered toxic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, according to a 2005 study by scientists from Saint Louis University. But while some here seethe against Mr. Rennert and the company, Doe Run Peru, others defend them for providing work, making for a sharply divided town. >>> Go to Full Story >>>