Peru – education
The school system, which is public and free except at university level, is determined by the country’s cultural, linguistic and geographical diversity. The private schools are sought by just over 10%. Language of instruction in primary school is Quechua and Spanish and then only Spanish. Adult illiteracy has fallen from 38% in 1963 to 11% in 1995.
The school system includes a pre-school for 3-5-year-olds, which is followed by 36% (1994). The 11-year compulsory schooling is fulfilled in the six-year primary school for 6-11-year-olds, which is followed by more than 90%. This is followed by a two-year, general course followed by a three-year course with university preparatory and vocational courses; this part is carried out by approximately half of a vintage.
Admission to the university is subject to a special entrance exam arranged by the universities. There are 25 state and 10 private universities (1997).
OFFICIAL NAME: Republic of Peru
CAPITAL CITY: Lima
POPULATION: 28,200,000 (Source: COUNTRYaah)
AREA: 1,200,000 km²
OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (S): Spanish, quechua, aymará and approximately 50 other Native American languages
RELIGION: Catholics 89%, Protestants 7%, other Christians 2%, others 2%
COIN: new sun
CURRENCY CODE: PEN
ENGLISH NAME: Peru
INDEPENDENCE: 1821
POPULATION COMPOSITION: quechua 47%, mestizer 32%, white 12%, aymará 5%, others 4%
GDP PER residents: 6895 $ (2014)
LIFE EXPECTANCY: men 67 years, women 72 years (2005)
INDEX OF LIVING CONDITIONS, HDI: 0.741
INDEX OF LIVING CONDITIONS, POSITION: 77
INTERNET DOMAIN NAME: .pe
Peru is a republic of northwestern South America. Peru, the continent’s third largest country, stretches from the arid coastal plain of the Pacific Ocean over the central parts of the Andes Mountains to large rainforest areas in the Amazon Basin and contains an immensely varied nature.
- AbbreviationFinder.org: Find two-letter abbreviation for each independent country and territory, such as PE which stands for Peru.
The Peruvian area was one of two Native American civilization centers in pre-Columbian America, just as Peru was for a long time the center of colonial-era Spanish South America. Like other Latin American countries, Peru is characterized by great social and economic differences, which due to the skewed land distribution that is a legacy of colonial times. For a number of years after 1980, the political climate was marked by war on terrorism and guerrilla movements. Success with the fight against the Luminous Path in particular created more peaceful conditions in Peru in the first half of the 1990’s.
Peru – Constitution
The Constitution of the Republic of Peru dates from 1993. The legislative power lies with a unicameral parliament, the Congress, with 120 members. They are chosen by general election. The whole country constitutes one constituency. Executive power is vested in the President, who is elected for a five-year term by direct universal suffrage. He can be re-elected and in 1996 got the approval of the Congress to run for a third time. The president is assisted by a prime minister and a council of ministers and can dissolve parliament.
Peru – economy
In the early 1980’s, a hesitant liberalization of the economy began, which by the end of the 1960’s had been subject to significant state regulation by the then military government. However, reform policy only really took off when Alberto Fujimori took over the presidency in 1990 at a time when the economy was plagued by debt crisis, hyperinflation and violent devaluations of the currency. The Fujimori government thus liberalized foreign trade and capital movements, abolished a large number of state subsidies, privatized state-owned enterprises, and made the labor market, which is characterized by significant underemployment, more flexible. Liberalization was followed by a tight economic policy due to demands from the country’s creditors, including International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The reform program limited inflation and provided economic growth, but also increased indebtedness until 1998, when the country was hit by weather disruptions (El Niño). Since 2002, foreign investment in the raw materials and energy sector has contributed to new growth, to a lesser extent for the country’s many poor; Peru, like most countries in Latin America, has a large income inequality that to some extent follows the ethnic divides. Subsistence economy and black economy, accompanied by drug and other crime, are prevalent in Peruvian society, which is also shaken by a series of corruption scandals.
Peru’s main trading partners are the United States, China and Chile. The country participates in the regional trade organization ALADI (Asociasión Latinoamericana de Integración) and establishes free trade agreements for several sides, including with the USA in 2006. Denmark’s exports to Peru in 2005 amounted to DKK 131 million. DKK, while imports from there were 316 mill. kr.
Peru – social conditions
Peru is one of Latin America’s most ethnically and culturally divided communities with large regional differences. The economic crisis of the 1980’s and the drastic cuts and privatizations under Fujimori’s authoritarian and corrupt government in the 1990’s meant a decline in real income for the majority, while the income distribution became more skewed. Under President Toledo (2001-06) succeeded in reversing the trend, with the number of Peruvians below the poverty line falling from 54% in 2001 to 51% of the population in 2004, and the number of Peruvians living in extreme poverty (ie an income of less than one dollar per day) fell from 24% in 2001 to 19% in 2004. However, the income distribution is still skewed, with only 3% of total income for the poorest 20% of the population against 53% for the most affluent 20%.
There is a limited system for social security based on the insurance principle, which covers public employees and private employees covered by collective agreements as well as a number of self-employed persons. After the social reforms of 1993, only employees contribute. There are limited options for maternity leave. Unemployment benefits do not exist and pension schemes are employee-financed.
Drug trafficking, smuggling, arms trafficking and the centralization of the administration are some of the main sources of widespread corruption. Check youremailverifier for Peru social condition facts.
Peru – health conditions
Life expectancy was estimated in 2006 at 68 years for men and 72 years for women. Infant mortality is reported to have dropped from 81 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 31 in 2006. Each woman gives birth to an average of 2.5 children, but in rural areas and among women without schooling far more. The annual population growth is 1.3%.
Morbidity and mortality in children is dominated by infectious diseases as well as during – and malnutrition. In total, 16% of the population is stated to suffer from malnutrition. In adolescents, the most common mode of death is violent death. In other age groups, mortality from cardiovascular disease is reported to be increasing. For women of childbearing age, the leading causes of death are tuberculosis, lung infections and complications associated with pregnancy and childbirth. The overall mortality rate in Peru is reported at 6.2 per capita. 1000 with a variation going from under 5 in Lima to almost 14.1 in a rural province. The country had outbreaks of both plague and cholera in the 1990’s, which have claimed many lives.
Peru used around 1990 approximately 5.7% of public spending on health care. In the same period, approximately 3% of GDP for the health care system, of which approximately 40% was direct patient payment. In 1993, the country had 1 doctor per. 940 people; a survey in 1992 showed that 60% of doctors were employed in Lima.
Peru – military
The Armed Forces is (2006) 80,000. The Army (Ejército del Perú) is 40,000, the Navy (Marina de Guerra del Perú) 25,000 and the Air Force (Fuerza Aérea del Perú) 15,000. The reserve included in the army is 188,000. The guards are equipped with an uneven mix of old American and Soviet produced as well as newer European and almost modern Russian produced material. The army is relatively lightly equipped, suitable for internal security operations, here supplemented by light naval units and light aircraft. The navy’s larger units and the air force’s mixed collection of more modern fighter jets only have a role in connection with any threat images in relation to neighboring countries on the Pacific coast. The security forces are between 77,000 and 100,000.
In 1995, Ecuador and Peru fought the Cenepa War over the Cenepa River Valley which ended in a draw. The two countries were at war over the same area in 1941 and in 1981.
Peru – mass media
The Peruvian press is one of the oldest in Latin America. In 1839, the independent and respected daily newspaper El Comercio began to be published, and it is, together with Expreso (grdl. 1961) and Gestión (grdl. 1990), among the most important newspapers. All three with circulations of between 100,000 and 150,000 in 2005. The press was nationalized in 1974-80, but was then again predominantly privately owned. With the new constitution in 1993, freedom of the press was again curtailed, and censorship, imprisonment, and the killing of journalists followed.
The media industry is concentrated in Lima. Television is the most important source of information for the population, but radio also plays an important role. In total, there are about 300 radio stations spread across the country, most of them small and local. Radio Nacional del Perú (Grdl. 1937) is the state radio network. In addition to the state television, Televisión Nacional del Perú, there are a number of private channels that broadcast via cable or satellite.
Peru – literature
In colonial literature, Poma de Ayala and “El Inca” Garcilaso de la Vega in particular are notable as early reactions to colonization. With his Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1585-1615, The First New Chronicle and the Good Government), Poma de Ayala, an Indian, expresses the Native American people’s experience of oppression under colonial rule. At the same time, “El Inca” is Garcilaso de la Vega, who was the son of an Inca princess and an officer of ancient Spanish nobility. His work Comentarios reales (1609 and 1617, Royal Commentaries) testifies to a cultural division, soon defending the defeated Inca, soon Catholicism and Spanish colonial power.
After the independence of Spain in 1821, when a national identity was under construction, through literature, Ricardo Palma (1833-1919) was a prominent figure. His tales Tradiciones peruanas (Peruvian Traditions), which he published in 1872-83, reproduce in the form of fiction Peruvian customs, traditions and events, although often with a romanticization of the colonial era that became the subject of criticism in his time.
The confrontation between the overall structure of society and Native American values and forms of organization was to become an essential theme in the Peruvian literature that developed in the 1900’s. in line with the literature of other Latin American countries with a large Native American population, e.g., Mexico. José Carlos Mariátegui, best known as a sociological-political essayist, gives in the Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana (1928, Seven Essays on the Interpretation of Peruvian Reality) a committed post for a rehabilitation of the Native American population from a realistic recognition of the Peruvian ambivalence between cultural values.
In fiction, this effort comes expressed in a number of novels in which the Native American problem is the main theme, as in Ciro Alegría’s El mundo es ancho y ajeno (1941, da. The world is the others, 1943), José María Arguedas ‘ Los ríos profundos (1958, da. De dybe rivers, 1983) and Manuel Scorza’s novel cycle in five volumes La guerra silenciosa (1970-79, da. A drum roll over Rancas, 1975, Garabombo, the Invisible, 1976, The Sleepless Rider, 1978, Agapito Roble’s song, 1980, The Tomb of Lightning, 1981).
The most prominent Peruvian prose writer of the century is Mario Vargas Llosa. Already with his debut novel La ciudad y los perros (1962, da. The City and the Dogs, 1967) he attracted international attention and admiration and has greatly helped to sharpen his interest in Latin American literature. In his thematically and formally varied authorship, the Native American theme is not in focus as with the above authors, but is inscribed in a more comprehensive, political and existentialist search of the individual in relation to the surrounding power structures as in the novel La casa verde (1966, then. The green house, 1987). Among other recent prose writers is Sebastián Salazar Bondy (1924-65), who in short stories and essays, for example in Lima la horrible (1964, Terrible Lima), makes the city of Lima the subject of sharp cultural-historical criticism.
Within 1900’s Peruvian poetry, César Vallejo occupies a special place with the collections of poems Los heraldos negros (1918, The Black Heralds), Trilce (1922), España, aparta de mí esta cáliz (1938, Spain, take this lime from me) and the posthumous Poemas humanos (1939, Human Poems). In his poems (Danish selection: Den sorte herold, 1989) a fundamental humanism is combined with radical renewals of the lyrical expression.
