PERU-Emerging from Crisis

Emerging from Crisis Nigel Harris The reform government of Alberto Fujimori has succeeded in radically restoring domestic security and economic growth of Peru. Nevertheless, this has been at the cost of an inert civil society and over-concentration of power in the person of the president FOR up to 10,000 years roughly as long as anywhere else in the world cultures of great diversity and sophistication have flourished on the three strips of territory, north to south coastal desert (with oases), the mountains (the sierra) and the jungle (the selva) the bulk of which came to form modern Peru. The most famous material employed in the more modern of those cultures was gold, and gold is a symbol of an immense wealth of raw materials in the country. Some have called them 'gifts of the devil' because they have allowed, they say, growth without development, or a development for the mass of the population well below those countries with nothing but intelligence and aptitude as a resource.