Culture of Peru

Food and drink

  • Ceviche and Peruvian cuisine — Raw fish cooked by lime juice, eaten at midday and never at night, and the kitchen behind it: four thousand potatoes, three chillies, Chinese woks, Japanese knives and a chef who made a country proud of its markets.

Festivals and celebrations

  • La Candelaria de Puno — Two weeks of February at 3,800 metres: tens of thousands of dancers in devil masks with light bulbs for eyes, brass bands on every street, costumes that cost more than a car, and a promise to the Virgin that lasts years.

Identity and society

  • Quechua today — A family of languages with some eight million speakers, official on paper, lost in three generations through shame rather than law, and now on television news, phone keyboards and trap records.

Places and landscapes

History

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