Peru

It has been estimated that nearly 70,000 people died in the internal conflict in Peru that started in 1980 and, although still ongoing, had greatly... wound down by 2000. The principal actors in the war were the Shining Path , the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement and the government of Peru. A great many of the victims of the conflict were ordinary civilians. All of the armed actors in the war deliberately targeted and killed civilians, making the conflict more bloody than any other war in Peruvian history since the European colonization of the country. It was the second longest civil war in Latin America after the Guatemalan Civil War. Notwithstanding its long historical stability, Peru has had a succession of authoritarian and democratic governments. General Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a military coup in 1968 and led a left-leaning government until 1975. Francisco Morales Bermúdez was installed as the new President of Peru in 1975, and allowed elections to be held in 1980. During the governments of Velasco and Morales, Shining Path had organized as a Maoist political group based at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in the Ayacucho Region.
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Operation Chavín de Huántar was a military operation in which a team of one hundred and forty-two commandos of the Peruvian Armed Forces... ended the 1997 Japanese embassy hostage crisis by raiding the Japanese ambassador's residence and freeing the hostages held there by the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement . It is said that President Alberto Fujimori himself came up with the name Chavín de Huántar for the operation because to make the incursion possible tunnels were to be dug under the ambassador's residence from adjacent buildings. Chavín de Huántar is an archeological site in the central highlands of Peru which is famous for its underground passageways. The rescue operation was prepared and exercised in a embassy exact replica located in a military base; there the comandos practiced every detail of the operation, including the weight of the explosion to be used to open the floor of the embassy. During the course of the assault on 22 April 1997, two commandos, one hostage, and all fourteen of the rebels died.
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The Cenepa War , also known as the Alto Cenepa War, was a brief and localized military conflict between Ecuador and Peru, fought over control of a... disputed area on the border between the two countries. The two nations had signed a border treaty following the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War of 1941, but Ecuador later disagreed with the treaty as it applied to the Cenepa and Paquisha areas, and in 1960 Ecuador declared the treaty null and void. The indecisive outcome of the Cenepa War — both sides claim victory — along with the mediation efforts of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the United States, paved the way for the opening of diplomatic negotiations that ultimately led to the signing of a definitive peace agreement in 1998, putting an end to one of the longest territorial disputes in the Western Hemisphere. The Cenepa War was the most recent military clash between Ecuador and Peru over a long standing territorial dispute that dated back to the first decades of the 19th century, when both countries came into being after the Wars of Independence of the Spanish colonies in South America.
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The Paquisha War was a brief military clash that took place between January and February 1981 between Ecuador and Peru over the control of three... watchposts. While Peru felt that the matter was already decided in the Ecuadorian-Peruvian War of 1941, Ecuador did not agree with the Rio de Janeiro Protocol. Later in 1998 the Guarantors of the Rio Protocol ruled that the border of the undelimited zone was indeed the line of the Cordillera del Cóndor, as Peru had been claiming since the 1940s. In 1980 the Ecuadorian Army had set up in the Comaina valley, to the east of the Condor mountain range, inside the disputed border zone, which was claimed by Peru. The clash ended with a ceasefire, with three Ecuadorian bases destroyed and the Peruvian Army in control of most of the area. In the aftermath of the incident, both sides increased their military presence along the Cordillera del Cóndor area and Cenepa Valley, starting an escalating spiral of tension and provocation that finally resulted in another military confrontation in 1995, the Cenepa War.
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The Andean Community is a customs union comprising the South American countries of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. The trade bloc was called... the Andean Pact until 1996 and came into existence with the signing of the Cartagena Agreement in 1969. Its headquarters are located in Lima, Peru. The Andean Community has 98 million inhabitants living in an area of 4,700,000 square kilometers, whose Gross Domestic Product amounted to US$745.3 billion in 2005, including Venezuela, . It's estimated GDP PPP for 2011 amounts to US$902.86 billion, excluding Venezuela. The original Andean Pact was founded in 1969 by Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. In 1973, the pact gained its sixth member, Venezuela. In 1976, however, its membership was again reduced to five when Chile withdrew. Venezuela announced its withdrawal in 2006, reducing the Andean Community to four member states. Recently, with the new cooperation agreement with Mercosur, the Andean Community gained four new associate members: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.
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The United Nations Stabilisation Mission In Haiti , also known as MINUSTAH, an acronym of the French translation, is a United Nations peacekeeping... mission in Haiti that has been in operation since 2004. The mission's military component is led by the Brazilian Army and the force commander is Brazilian. MINUSTAH's mandate was most recently extended by United Nations Security Council Resolution 1944 past its October 15, 2010 deadline amid fears of instability. The mission's current mandate runs through October 15th, 2011 with the intention of further renewal. The force is composed of 8,940 military personnel and 3,711 police, supported by an international civilian personnel, a local civilian staff and United Nations Volunteers. Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the United Nations reported that the headquarters of the mission in Port-au-Prince had collapsed and that the mission's chief, Hédi Annabi of Tunisia, his deputy Luiz Carlos da Costa of Brazil, and the acting police commissioner, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Doug Coates of Canada, were confirmed dead.
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The Union of South American Nations - UZAN, Portuguese: União de Nações Sul-Americanas - UNASUL, Spanish: Unión de Naciones... Suramericanas - UNASUR is an intergovernmental union integrating two existing customs unions: Mercosur and the Andean Community of Nations , as part of a continuing process of South American integration. It is modeled on the European Union. The UNASUR Constitutive Treaty was signed on May 23, 2008, at the Third Summit of Heads of State, held in Brasília, Brazil. According to the Constitutive Treaty, the Union's headquarters will be located in Quito, Ecuador. The South American Parliament will be located in Cochabamba, Bolivia, while the headquarters of its bank, the Bank of the South are located in Caracas, Venezuela. The combined population of the 12-member Union as at 1 July 2010 was estimated at 396,391,032. On 4 May 2010, at an extraordinary heads of state summit held in Campana, 75 km north of Buenos Aires, former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner was unanimously elected the first Secretary-General of UNASUR for a two-year term.
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The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes. The World Bank's... official goal is the reduction of poverty. By law, all of its decisions must be guided by a commitment to promote foreign investment, international trade and facilitate capital investment. The World Bank differs from the World Bank Group, in that the World Bank comprises only two institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Development Association , whereas the latter incorporates these two in addition to three more: International Finance Corporation , Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency , and International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes . The World Bank is one of five institutions created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. The International Monetary Fund, a related institution, is the second. Delegates from many countries attended the Bretton Woods Conference. The most powerful countries in attendance were the United States and United Kingdom, which dominated negotiations. Although both are based in Washington, D.C.
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Eva Ayllón , a composer and singer, is one of Peru's foremost Afro-Peruvian musicians, and one of the country's most enduring stars. Ayllón... adopted the stage "Eva" from her maternal grandmother, Eva, who began teaching the young María music at an early age. As a child and teen, Eva Ayllón sang in school competitions and later on television and radio. Throughout the early 1970s, Eva appeared in many música criolla musical groups such as Rinconcito Monsefuano, La peña de los Ugarte, Los Mundialistas o Callejón and Los Kipus. By 1975, Eva began to pursue a solo singing career, touring internationally by 1979. In 1989, Eva formed Los Hijos del Sol , a supergroup made up of Peruvian musical stars in an effort to promote Peruvian music through performance and recording. Eva Ayllón was born María Angélica Ayllón Urbina on February 7, 1956, adopting the name "Eva" after her maternal grandmother who initiated her in vocalization at the age of three. Within a few years, she was singing at school, youth competitions and later, on television and radio.
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Cecilia Montiel is a production designer of feature films. Montiel studied architecture and moved to Los Angeles in 1978, where she was a... contemporary of Lorenzo O'Brien and Alex Cox. She worked as an art director on a variety of films including Cox's Walker. Her first film as a designer was his film El Patrullero . She has since worked with a variety of directors including Cox, Robert Rodriguez , Pancho Lombardi , Antonio Banderas , The Mexican and Martin Campbell . Cox calls her, "the most creative individual I have ever worked with.
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Luis Ernesto Alva y Talledo, better known as Luigi Alva is a Peruvian operatic tenor, active in the third quarter of the 20th century. He was... admired for his purity of tone, the elegance of his phrasing and the clarity of his diction. A Mozart and Rossini specialist, Alva excelled in roles such as Don Ottavio , Count Almaviva and Fenton . Born in Lima, Peru, where he studied under Rosa Mercedes Ayarza de Morales, he made his debut in Federico Moreno Torroba's zarzuela Luisa Fernanda. He went to Milan in 1953 and studied under Emilio Ghirardini. Later he would be called by Giulio Comfallonieri to became a "cadet" at the Scuola di Canto at La Scala. He made his European debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Milan as Alfredo in Verdi's La traviata, following that as Paolino in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto. His debut at the Teatro alla Scala was in 1956 as Count Almaviva in Rossini's The Barber of Seville. He was soon invited to sing at the most important European festivals and opera houses. At Glyndebourne he made his debut as Nemorino in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore.
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Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created... multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records. Meredith Monk is primarily known for her vocal innovations, including a wide range of extended techniques, which she first developed in her solo performances prior to forming her own ensemble. In December 1961, she appeared at the "Actor's Playhouse" in Greenwich Village as a solo dancer in an Off Broadway children's musical theater adaptation of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," entitled "Scrooge" . In 1964, Monk graduated from Sarah Lawrence College after studying with Beverly Schmidt Blossom, and in 1968 she founded The House, a company dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to performance. Monk's performances have influenced many artists, including Bruce Nauman, whom she met in San Francisco in 1968.
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Ecuador /ˈɛkwədɔr/, officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by... Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border with Brazil. The country also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres west of the mainland. The main spoken language in Ecuador is Spanish. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 272,046 km . Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic centre in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic centre of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas.
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Chile /ˈtʃɪliː/ or ˈtʃɪleɪ, officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a... long, narrow strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far south. Along with Ecuador, it is one of two countries in South America that do not border Brazil. The Pacific coastline of Chile is 78,563.2 kilometres. Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas and Easter Island. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres of Antarctica, although all claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty. The shape of Chile is a distinctive ribbon of land 4,300 kilometres long and on average 175 kilometres wide. Its climate varies, ranging from the world's driest desert – the Atacama – in the north, through a Mediterranean climate in the centre, to a rainy temperate climate in the south. The northern desert contains great mineral wealth, principally copper.
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Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South... America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay and Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. Prior to European colonization, the Andean region of Bolivia was a part of the Inca Empire – the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century. During most of the Spanish colonial period, this territory was called Upper Peru and was under the administration of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which included most of Spain's South American colonies. After declaring independence in 1809, 16 years of war followed before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar, on 6 August 1825. Bolivia has struggled through periods of political instability, dictatorships and economic woes. Bolivia is a democratic republic that is divided into nine departments.
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Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in... northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the northwest by Panama; and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. Colombia has maritime borders with Venezuela, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Colombia is the 26th largest country by area and the 27th largest by population, and the third largest in South America after Brazil and Argentina. With over 46 million people, Colombia has the second largest population of any Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico. It is also the only country in South America having coasts in the Pacific Ocean and in the Atlantic Ocean. Colombia is a middle power, with the fourth largest economy in Latin America, and the third largest in South America. The territory of what is now Colombia was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples including the Muisca, Quimbaya, and Tairona.
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