{"id":1313,"date":"2006-02-07T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-07T23:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/07\/my-peru-obsessions\/"},"modified":"2006-02-07T16:13:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-07T23:13:00","slug":"my-peru-obsessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/07\/my-peru-obsessions\/","title":{"rendered":"My Peru Obsessions"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to come clean about my new obsessions. And no, none of them involve Inca Cola<\/a>.
<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Peruvian politics<\/a>, and most especially, the current elections<\/li>\n
  2. The Huacano region<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Delicrepes<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I love talking to folks about the current elections. <\/span>Political parties abound (I love this) and there are a ton of candidates. <\/span>Many (most?) of them have tasty backgrounds of embezzlement, human rights scandals, illegitimate children, and other stories that make interesting reads in the papers. <\/span>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying my best to get my head around the characters<\/s> candidates. <\/span>What is most exciting (to me) is that the forerunner is a woman: Lourdes Flores<\/a>. <\/span>One of my Spanish tutors reasons that she is the best candidate because she is the most prepared in terms of education and experience, and her single, childless, personal life assures the country that her life is truly for service to the people. <\/span>I find it fascinating that a country with one of the highest rates of interpersonal violence in the world is set to possibly elect a woman to it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s top office \u00e2\u20ac\u201c apparently machismo is not enough to keep a woman from being president of Peru! <\/span>Other candidates include current president Toledo<\/a>, who came into office with more than half of the country behind him and quickly whittled this away until he earned the distinction of having the lowest approval ratings of any South American President. <\/span>He seems to have an endless sea of siblings that keep the papers full of Toledo-related scandal. <\/span>Former president Garcia<\/a>, an excellent orator whose presidency saw incredible inflation, human rights violations, and all sorts of ugly financial messes for the country, is back in the running and considered a top three candidate. <\/span>Even persona-non-grata<\/i> Fujimori<\/a> put his hat back in the ring for this election \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or, rather, his daughter did it for him since he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exiled in Japan to escape the trial which awaits him here \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and was actually in the running for a few days in January until he was officially disqualified. <\/span>It is all very fascinating and I love asking everyone who cares to talk about it about their opinions on the elections.<\/p>\n

    A combination of novels, history articles, data, and personal stories are creating an obsession within me of the altiplano region of Peru, particularly the Huanuco region<\/a>. <\/span>A physician I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve befriended extended an invitation for me to travel with him to Huanuco<\/a> to visit the maternity clinic there (run by a friend of his) where maternal mortality is the highest in all of Peru and one of the highest in all of Latin America (his claim). <\/span>I am looking forward to doing this when we return. One of my Spanish tutors tells me stories of witchcraft from the region (her mother grew up there) where women can be cursed by evil mother-in-laws to give birth to snakes and mountains must be appeased into stillness by sacrifices of human blood. <\/span>This area is also the birthplace of Shining Path<\/a> and suffered at the hands of both terrucos and government-backed militias. <\/span>If I had my druthers, this area would be my dissertation focus. <\/span><\/p>\n

    My final obsession? <\/span>Crepes! <\/span>Paul and I finally made a point to try the local crepe restaurant and after three incredible crepes for lunch (vegetables with cheese, mushroom, and nutella) with awesome drinks for less than $20, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re feeling like we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve hit pretty close to heaven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to come clean about my new obsessions. And no, none of them involve Inca Cola. Peruvian politics, and most especially, the current elections The Huacano region Delicrepes I love talking to folks about the current elections. Political parties abound (I love this) and there are a ton of candidates. Many (most?) of them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}