Peru - Lonely Planet Publications [47]
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NATIONAL PARKS
Peru’s vast wealth of wildlife is protected by a system of national parks and reserves with 60 areas covering almost 15% of the country. The newest is the Sierra del Divisor Reserve Zone, created in 2006 to protect 1.5 million hectares of rainforest on the Brazilian border. All of these protected areas are administered by the Instituto Nacional de Recursos Nacionales (Inrena; www.inrena.gob.pe), a division of the Ministry of Agriculture.
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Natural history buffs may want to pick up The Journals of Hipólito Ruiz, the chronicles of an 18th-century Spanish botanist who kept a detailed diary of his 11-year journey through Peru and Chile.
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The idea of conservation, however, often looks better on paper than it does in practice. Unfortunately, resources are lacking to conserve protected areas, which are subject to illegal hunting, fishing, logging and mining. The government simply doesn’t have the funds to hire enough rangers and provide them with the equipment necessary to patrol the parks. Official infrastructure might consist of little more than a lone ranger overseeing a scanty information center with outdated maps. Nevertheless, the parks do receive some measure of protection, and various international agencies contribute money, staff and resources to help with conservation and education projects.
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THE COCA LEAF: PAST & PRESENT
Cultivation of the coca plant dates back at least 5000 years and its traditional uses have always included the practical and the divine. In pre-Hispanic times, chewing coca was a traditional treatment for everything from a simple toothache to exhaustion. It was used to help patients withstand the practice of cranial trepanation (in which a slice of the skull is removed, usually to relieve pressure on the brain after an injury). Chewing coca has also historically played a vital role in communal life, having been long used in religious rituals as a sacred offering.
It was the Incas who placed the coca leaf at the pinnacle of sacred ritual. As the Inca empire rapidly expanded, the Incas created a monopoly in coca production. They established large plantations at the edge of the Amazon jungle, not only using the abundant harvests for religious rituals (typically in veneration of the sun god Inti), but also to help fuel its armies and make allies through trade.
When the Spaniards arrived in the 15th century, they attempted to outlaw the ‘heathen’ practice of cultivating this ‘diabolical’ plant. However, with coca-chewing an essential part of life for the colony’s indigenous labor pool, the Spanish quickly reversed their policies and ultimately encouraged the coca trade. Viceregal authorities, including the Catholic Church, went as far as accepting taxes paid in coca leaves.
Today, there continues to be a struggle surrounding coca, but it has to do with its derivative product, cocaine (in which a paste derived from coca leaves is treated with kerosene and refined into powder). In an attempt to stem the flow of this narcotic, the US has led eradication programs of coca plants in Peru (as well as in Colombia and Bolivia). These programs appear to have done little to curb coca’s cultivation – Peru’s harvest was up in 2008 – but it has disrupted indigenous communities where the plant continues to be consumed in a time-honored manner. The use of chemical herbicides to eradicate plants has damaged some agricultural lands, and an attempt to encourage traditional agricultural communities to replace coca with other crops has resulted in diminished earnings for those societies.
The traditional way to chew coca is to place a few leaves in the mouth, along with a catalyst, such as wood ash or mineral lime. Some chewers also add a sweet substance (for example, cane sugar or licorice) to alleviate the bitter taste of the