Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Ecuador also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) west of the mainland. The capital city is Quito and the largest city as well.
Quechua, usually called Runasimi in Quechuan languages, is an indigenous language family spoken by the Quechua peoples, primarily living in the Peruvian Andes and highlands of South America. Derived from a common ancestral language, it is the most widely spoken language family of indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably some 8–10 million speakers. Approximately 25% of Peruvians speak a Quechuan language. It is perhaps most widely known for being the main language of a family of the Inca Empire. The Spanish colonisers initially encouraged its use, but from the middle of their reign they suppressed it. However, Quechua ultimately survived, and variants are still widely spoken today.
South America is a continent in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It may also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas, which is how it is viewed in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions of the Americas. The reference to South America instead of other regions has increased in the last decades due to changing geopolitical dynamics.
The Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path, more commonly known as the Shining Path, is a communist revolutionary organization in Peru, espousing Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. When it first launched the internal conflict in Peru in 1980, its goal was to overthrow the state by guerrilla warfare and replace it with a "New Democracy". The Shining Path believed that by establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducing a cultural revolution, and eventually sparking a world revolution, they could arrive at full communism. Their representatives stated that existing socialist countries were revisionist, and the Shining Path was the vanguard of the world communist movement. The Shining Path's ideology and tactics have been influential among other Maoist insurgent groups, notably the Communist Party of Nepal and other Revolutionary Internationalist Movement-affiliated organizations.
Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel, located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, on a mountain ridge 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level. It is located in the Cusco Region, Urubamba Province, Machupicchu District in Peru, above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows, which cuts through the Cordillera and originates a canyon with a tropical mountain climate.
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central coastal part of the country, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima Metropolitan Area. With a population of more than 9 million, Lima is the most populous metropolitan area of Peru and the third-largest city in the Americas, behind São Paulo and Mexico City.
Peru is a city in LaSalle County, Illinois, United States. The population was 10,295 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Ottawa–Peru, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area. Peru and its twin city, LaSalle, make up the core of Illinois Valley.
Alberto Fujimori Fujimori is a Peruvian former politician who served as the President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 22 November 2000. His government is credited with the creation of Fujimorism, defeating the Shining Path insurgency and restoring Peru's macroeconomic stability. Fujimori ended his presidency by fleeing Peru for Japan amid a major scandal involving corruption and human rights violations. Even amid his prosecution in 2008 for crimes against humanity relating to his presidency, two-thirds of Peruvians polled voiced approval for his leadership in that period.
The War of the Pacific, also known as the Saltpeter War and by multiple other names was a war between Chile and a Bolivian-Peruvian alliance. It lasted from 1879 to 1884, and was fought over Chilean claims on coastal Bolivian territory in the Atacama Desert. The war ended with victory for Chile, which gained a significant amount of resource-rich territory from Peru and Bolivia. Chile's army took Bolivia's nitrate rich coastal region and Peru was defeated by Chile's navy.
The President of Peru officially called the President of the Republic of Peru is the head of state and head of government of Peru and represents the republic in official international matters. Presidents de facto who assumed power through political coups are also included in this list.
The Viceroyalty of Peru was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima. The Viceroyalty of Peru was one of the two Spanish Viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
The Peruvian Navy is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with surveillance, patrol and defense on lakes, rivers and the Pacific Ocean up to 200 nautical miles from the Peruvian littoral. Additional missions include assistance in safeguarding internal security, conducting disaster relief operations and participating in international peacekeeping operations.
The Peru national football team is organised, since 1927, by the Peruvian Football Federation (FPF) to represent Peru in international association football. The FPF constitutes one of the 10 members of FIFA's South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL). Peru has won the Copa América twice and qualified for FIFA World Cup finals five times ; it also participated in the 1936 Olympic football competition and has reached the semifinals of the CONCACAF Gold Cup. The team plays most of its home matches at the Estadio Nacional in Lima, the country's capital.
The National University of San Marcos is a public research university in Lima, capital of Peru. Also known as the "Dean university of the Americas", it is the first officially established and the longest continuously operating university in the Americas.
The provinces of Peru are the second-level administrative subdivisions of the country. They are divided into districts. There are 196 provinces in Peru, grouped into 25 regions except for the Lima Province which does not belong to any region. This makes an average of seven provinces per region. The region with the fewest provinces is Callao (one) and the region with the most is Ancash (twenty).
Peruvian cuisine reflects local practices and ingredients—including influences from the indigenous population including the Inca and cuisines brought in with colonizers and immigrants from Europe, Asia and West Africa. Without the familiar ingredients from their home countries, immigrants modified their traditional cuisines by using ingredients available in Peru. The four traditional staples of Peruvian cuisine are corn, potatoes and other tubers, Amaranthaceaes and legumes. Staples brought by the Spanish include rice, wheat and meats. Many traditional foods—such as quinoa, kiwicha, chili peppers, and several roots and tubers have increased in popularity in recent decades, reflecting a revival of interest in native Peruvian foods and culinary techniques. Chef Gaston Acurio has become well known for raising awareness of local ingredients. The US food critic Eric Asimov has described it as one of the world's most important cuisines and as an exemplar of fusion cuisine, due to its long multicultural history.
Peruvians are the citizens of the Republic of Peru or their descendants abroad. Peru is a multiethnic country formed by the combination of different groups over five centuries, so people in Peru usually treat their nationality as a citizenship rather than an ethnicity. Amerindians inhabited Peruvian territory for several millennia before Spanish Conquest in the 16th century; according to historian David N. Cook their population decreased from an estimated 5–9 million in the 1520s to around 600,000 in 1620 mainly because of infectious diseases. Spaniards and Africans arrived in large numbers under colonial rule, mixing widely with each other and with indigenous peoples. During the Republic, there has been a gradual immigration of European people. Japanese and Chinese arrived in large numbers at the end of nineteenth century.
The internal conflict in Peru is an ongoing armed conflict between the Government of Peru, the Communist Party of Peru, and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. The conflict began on May 17, 1980. It is estimated that there have been nearly 70,000 deaths, making it the bloodiest war in Peruvian history since the European colonization of the country.
