From 1994 until 2009, I traveled regularly to Peru and for seven of those years essentially lived in its capital city, Lima. In his entertaining book Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend, Patrick Symmes provides a description of Lima circa 1996 and dubbed it “Scorch”.
It certainly matched my 1994 experience. During 25 years of anarchy, those Peruvians who could, shipped their kids and cash overseas and allowed their homes to become covered in graffiti. The municipal governments stopped maintaining parks and there was an explosion in the rat community in every empty lot in the city.
