PERU: ONE COUNTRY, TWO STATES
PERU: ONE COUNTRY, TWO STATES The Two Countries That Fit Inside Peru Two countries coexist within Peru, and they rarely look each other in the eye. They are not the Coast and the Highlands, nor Lima and the regions—although those fractures exist. Rather, they are two profoundly different ways of being in the world. In Peru, two countries live side by side without recognizing one another. One places its trust in the State and in legality; the other relies on direct appropriation and the immediate resolution of conflicts. Two rationalities that intersect every day without acknowledging each other as parts of the same national project. For one of these countries—the minority—law is the framework for action. Here, the State exists: there are labor contracts, licenses, invoices, judges who arbitrate disputes, offices that register property, institutions that mediate. Slightly more than 30% of the population lives under this umbrella, yet from within the formal urban world, it ofte...