Peru 2016 Country Review http://www.countrywatch.com Table of Contents Chapter 1 1 Country Overview 1 Country Overview 2 Key Data 3 Peru 4 South America 5 Chapter 2 7 Political Overview 7 History 8 Political Conditions 10 Political Risk Index 39 Political Stability 53 Freedom Rankings 68 Human Rights 80 Government Functions 83 Government Structure 84 Principal Government Officials 88 Leader Biography 91 Leader Biography 91 Foreign Relations 93 National Security 98 Defense Forces 101 Chapter 3 103 Economic Overview 103 Economic Overview 104 Nominal GDP and Components 106 Population and GDP Per Capita 108 Real GDP and Inflation 109 Government Spending and Taxation 110 Money Supply, Interest Rates and Unemployment 111 Foreign Trade and the Exchange Rate 112 Data in US Dollars 113 Energy Consumption and Production Standard Units 114 Energy Consumption and Production QUADS 116 World Energy Price Summary 117 CO2 Emissions 118 Agriculture Consumption and Production 119 World Agriculture Pricing Summary 122 Metals Consumption and Production 123 World Metals Pricing Summary 126 Economic Performance Index 127 Chapter 4 139 Investment Overview 139 Foreign Investment Climate 140 Foreign Investment Index 142 Corruption Perceptions Index 155 Competitiveness Ranking 167 Taxation 176 Stock Market 177 Partner Links 177 Chapter 5 178 Social Overview 178 People 179 Human Development Index 181 Life Satisfaction Index 185 Happy Planet Index 196 Status of Women 205 Global Gender Gap Index 208 Culture and Arts 218 Etiquette 219 Travel Information 220 Diseases/Health Data 230 Chapter 6 236 Environmental Overview 236 Environmental Issues 237 Environmental Policy 238 Greenhouse Gas Ranking 239 Global Environmental Snapshot 251 Global Environmental Concepts 262 International Environmental Agreements and Associations 276 Appendices 300 Bibliography 301 Peru Chapter 1 Country Overview Peru Review 2016 Page 1 of 313 pages Peru Country Overview PERU Peru is located in Western South America, bordering the South Pacific Ocean. The country is rich in mineral resources, including copper, silver, lead, zinc, oil and gold. Ancient Peru was the seat of several prominent Andean civilizations, most notably that of the Incas, whose empire was captured by the Spanish in 1533. After being ruled by Spain for nearly three centuries, Peru gained independence in 1821. The military has been prominent in Peruvian history. Coups have repeatedly interrupted civilian constitutional government. The most recent period of military rule (1968-80) began when General Juan Velasco Alvarado overthrew elected President Fernando Belaunde Terry. Elections in 1980 restored democratic leadership in Peru, but economic problems led to political instability and the growth of a violent insurgency. President Alberto Fujimori's election in 1990 ushered in a decade that saw a dramatic turnaround in the economy and significant progress in curtailing guerrilla activity. Nevertheless, the president's increasing reliance on authoritarian measures and an economic slump in the late 1990s generated mounting dissatisfaction with his regime, which led to his ouster in 2000. A caretaker government oversaw new elections in the spring of 2001, and Alejandro Toledo was elected president, Peru's first democratically-elected president of Native American ethnicity. The presidential election of 2006 saw the return of former leader Alan Garcia Perez, who is committed to economic stability and has overseen a robust macroeconomic performance. In 2011, following presidential elections, leftist Ollanta Humala succeeded Alan Garcia as president. He remains in power to date. Peru Review 2016 Page 2 of 313 pages Peru Key Data Key Data Region: South America Population: 30445000 Climate: Varies from tropical in east to dry desert in west Spanish (official) Languages: Quechua (official) Aymara Currency: 1 nuevos sol (S/.$) = 100 centimos Holiday: Independence Day, 28 July (1821) Area Total: 1285220 Area Land: 1280000 Coast Line: 2414 Peru Review 2016 Page 3 of 313 pages Peru Peru Country Map Peru Review 2016 Page 4 of 313 pages Peru South America Regional Map Peru Review 2016 Page 5 of 313 pages Peru Peru Review 2016 Page 6 of 313 pages Peru Chapter 2 Political Overview Peru Review 2016 Page 7 of 313 pages Peru History The first inhabitants of the Andean region arrived around 8,000 before the common era, or B.C.E., and over the next several millennia, hunter-gatherer groups spread throughout the region. By about 2,500 B.C.E., small agricultural and fishing villages had developed in northern coastal Peru. The cultivation of the staple crop of maize around 1300 B.C.E. provided the foundation for the eventual rise and fall of several complex cultures and civilizations in the following 2,000 years, among them the Chavín, Gallinazo, Mochica, Paracas, Nazca, Chimú, Tiahuanaco, Huari, Chupacho and Lupaca cultures. The Inca, originally a small tribe in the southern Andes, underwent a vast and rapid expansion in the 15th century in the common era, or C.E., led by emperor Pachacuti, son of Viracocha. A military leader and civic planner, Pachacuti is said to have designed Cuzco, the capital city of the Inca Empire. Emperors Pachacuti and Topa Inca accomplished most of the Empire's expansion between 1463 and 1493, conquering an area of approximately 380,000 square miles, all the way from the present Colombia-Ecuador border to central Chile. The tribes and kingdoms forcefully incorporated into the Inca Empire included the Aymara, Colla, Lupaca, and the Chimú, among many others. In the 1520s, civil war erupted in the empire between emperor Atahualpa, who resided in Cuzco, and his half-brother Huascar, who was residing with an army of 30,000 in the northern city of Cajamarca. After a series of battles, Atahualpa emerged victorious, but loyalties varied and unrest remained in the empire in relation t o the civil war and the interests of tribes who opposed their subordination by the Inca. Spaniard Francisco Pizarro embarked on his first exploration of the Inca Empire in 1524. He returned with an army of 180 men in 1531, whereupon a miraculous series of events led to his capture of Cuzco in 1533 and the consolidation of Spanish control of the Empire by 1542. The two main factors that enabled the Spaniards to conquer the enormous region, against all odds, were disease and the state of political instability already afflicting the empire. Even before the Pizarro's appearance in the Andes, disease brought to the Americas with the arrival of the Spaniards had spread to the region from Mexico. Illnesses such as smallpox, malaria, measles, typhus, influenza, and the common cold, to which the indigenous people had no immunity, killed around 80 percent of the population between 1530 and 1570. Still, Native Americans remained the overwhelming majority in the region, numbering around 2.7 million to the Spaniards' mere Peru Review 2016 Page 8 of 313 pages Peru thousands. Coupling the devastation by disease was the aforementioned political unrest, of which Pizarro was able to take advantage. Playing upon the already existing rivalries in the Empire, he allied himself with certain groups and enlisted their help in conquering other peoples, eventually gathering enough power to con solidate Spanish control over the entire region. Pizarro founded Lima on a flat coastal plain west of the Andes in 1535, and in 1542, a viceroyalty was established there that had jurisdiction over all of South America except for Portuguese Brazil. Gold and silver from the Andes enriched the conquerors, and Peru became the principal source of Spanish wealth and power in South America. By the time of the wars of independence (1820-24), Lima had become the most distinguished and aristocratic colonial capital and the chief Spanish stronghold in America. The cultural and economic divisions were extreme between the very exclusive elite European minority, consolidated in Lima, and the rural indigenous majority, who resided in the mountainous "altiplano." In the initial decades of colonization, Spain implemented the "encomienda," a much abused system by which Spanish colonizers were granted land and the right to extract labor and tribute from its indigenous inhabitants in exchange for the responsibility to protect and Christianize them. Later, the Spanish colonizers implemented a tribute tax and forced the conversion of the Inca labor system, called mita, from the providing mechanism of public works and military service to the supplier of compulsory labor for silver and mercury mines. It is estimated that eight million indigenous slaves perished in the silver mines of Potosí in Peru Alto (present-day Bolivia). Nevertheless, the mita system became the basis for a long-lasting alliance between the colonial state and the native communities, bolstered over the years by the elaboration of a large body of legislation that protected natives from abuse at the hands of the colonists. All the same, the colonists and their na tive allies found ways of circumventing crown laws and gaining control of Native American lands and labor. Under these circumstances, the colonizers came to monopolize control of the region's best lands, and the land tenure system became polarized between large feudal haciendas worked by native peasants and subsistence-based indigenous communities that endured the conquest. The eighteenth century brought numerous native uprisings whose underlying causes were largely economic and land-related. There were five such uprisings in the 1740s, eleven in the 1750s, twenty in the 1760s, and twenty in the 1770s. Peru's independence movement was led by Jose de San Martin of Argentina and Simon Bolivar of Venezuela. San Martin proclaimed Peruvian independence from Spain on July 28, 1821. Emancipation was completed in December 1824, when General Antonio Jose de Sucre defeated the Spanish troops at Ayacucho, ending Spanish rule in South America. Spain made futile attempts to regain its former colonies, but in 1879 it finally recognized Peru's independence. After independence, Peru and its neighbors engaged in intermittent territorial disputes.