Introduction
Peru is divided in two by the Andes Cordillera, with an arid fringe
to the west of almost 2,000 km, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
To the east of this are the Andes, and beyond, the Amazon Jungle.
In the 1940s, 60 per cent of the population of the country lived
in the rural Andean regions. Now 73 per cent of the population lives
in the cities, the majority of them on the coast. Even so, not only
the country's climate, but its geographic potential as well, are
determined by the Andes. To travel from the coast to the jungle
it is necessary to cross the Andes, always on difficult roads. Communications
between north and south are always made along the coast. There are
no adequate roadways travelling the length of the country either
in the mountains or in the jungle, where rivers are the main form
of communication.
The products of the agriculturally rich high forest rarely reach
the markets, as they have to cross the Andes to get there, or they
must travel to the Atlantic Coast after a long journey on the Amazon.
The production of minerals in the mountains goes directly to the
coastal ports. The coastal agro-industry was and is oriented towards
export, but it can barely compete with countries closer to the northern
markets.
Before their encounter with
the West, the Incas developed an agrarian ivilisation with a sophisticated
irrigation technology, whose axis was the Andes. With the arrival
of the Spaniards, the country changed to mining. In the 20th century,
Peru was able to enrich itself with the export of minerals and a
wide range of agro-industrial products, cotton and sugar being the
outstanding examples. After the Second World War came the import
substitution development model, the vertiginous growth of the cities,
and the destruction of traditional agricultural production
At the beginning of the 21st century, the enormous city of Lima1
had reached the end of the process of demographic transition. It
is generally held that the city's growth rate today is below 2 per
cent per annum, a tremendous difference from the vertiginous growth
of the 50s and 60s. The 1993 census also notes that natural population
growth is responsible for 70 per cent of the total, and that immigration
has reduced from 70 to 30 per cent in the last 30 years. Despite
its huge size, the city is no longer growing in the explosive fashion
that characterised it in the 50s and 60s.
This summary
has been extracted from:
UN-Habitat (2003) Global Report on Human Settlements 2003, The Challenge
of Slums, Earthscan, London; Part IV: 'Summary of City Case Studies',
pp195-228.
