The Mashco-Piro of Peru have turned up repeatedly along river banks in the Madre de Dios region, begging for food from boat travelers. Their brazen appearances with bows and arrows have sown panic in some remote settlements, and they have ransacked others — making off with pans, clothing, machetes, even the occasional rifle, which they do not know how to use.
Three people have died during weeks of protests against the Tía María copper mine in Peru. Local residents say the project will pollute their water and damage agriculture.
Several thousands of years before the Egyptians, the Chinchorro people of South America were mummifying their dead. Lately, Chinchorro mummies have started to degrade.
Relations soured between the two countries late last month after Peru claimed Chile paid three members of the Peruvian navy to spy on their own nation.
As many as 40,000 illegal miners — mostly poor, Quechua-speaking laborers from Peru's Andean highlands — have invaded some of the most pristine and biologically rich sections of ancient forest in the Amazon basin. In just a few years, they have laid waste to more than 120,000 acres, leaving behind Amazonian deserts of pestilent orange craters that bleed into the rivers when it rains.
The end of a decade-long boom driven by cheap money and strong commodity prices has deeply divided Latin America between fast-growth countries along the Pacific coast and stragglers on the Atlantic.
