Lima利馬. lPeru Guards Its Guano as Demand Soars Again赫爾曼·梅爾維爾把利馬稱為最奇怪、最悲傷的城市； Vargas Llosa ( 1936~2025(89歲)霧和毛毛雨

Lima Ciudad de Los Reyes
Capital city
San Isidro skyline Archbishop's Palace and Metropolitan Cathedral Fountain of Plaza Mayor Park of the Reserve San Francisco el Grande Basilica La Marina Lighthouse Miraflores skyline
Flag Coat of arms
Nickname(s):  Ciudad de los Reyes (City of the Kings) La Tres Veces Coronada Villa (The Three Times Crowned Ville) La Perla del Pacífico (The Pearl of the Pacific)
Motto(s):  Hoc Signum Vere Regum Est (Latin) "This is the real sign of the Kings")
Lima Show map of PeruShow map of South AmericaShow all
Coordinates: 12°03′36″S 77°02′15″W
Country	Peru
Province	Lima
Established	18 January 1535
Founded by	Francisco Pizarro
Government
• Type	Municipalidad
• Body	Municipality of Lima
• Mayor	Rafael López Aliaga
Area
• City	2,672.3 km2 (1,031.8 sq mi)
• Urban	800 km2 (300 sq mi)
• Metro	2,819.3 km2 (1,088.5 sq mi)
Elevation [1]	0–1,550 m (0–5,090 ft)
Population  (2023)[3]
• City	10,092,000
• Rank	2nd in South America 1st in Peru
• Urban	9,751,717
• Urban density	12,000/km2 (32,000/sq mi)
• Metro	11,283,787[2]
• Metro density	4,002.3/km2 (10,366/sq mi)
Demonyms	Limeño/a
GDP (PPP, constant 2015 values)
• Year	2023
• Total	$210.4 billion[4]
Time zone	UTC−05:00 (PET)
UBIGEO	15000
Area code	1
Website	www.munlima.gob.pe
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Official name	Historic Center of Lima
Type	Cultural
Criteria	iv
Designated	1988, 1991 (12th, 15th sessions)
Reference no.	500
Region	Latin America and the Caribbean

利馬（西班牙語：Lima）是南美洲國家秘魯的首都，位於秘魯西海岸線的中央，西臨太平洋，與海港卡亞俄組成利馬都會區，是南美洲最大的都市之一，全國約有三分之一的人口居住在此地區。

當代，利馬被認為是該國最重要的政治、文化、金融和商業中心，城市的基礎於1535年1月18日由西班牙殖民者法蘭西斯科·皮薩羅所建，是秘魯的西班牙文化重地，著名的天主教建築還包括了16世紀的利馬主教座堂和國立聖馬爾科斯大學。在1500年代和1600年代，秘魯是西班牙美洲殖民地僅次於波哥大和墨西哥城的經濟中心。

 Vargas Llosa ( 1936~2025(89歲),  2010 年榮獲諾貝爾文學獎。巴爾加斯．尤薩/略薩) ：首部長篇小說《城市與狗》  La ciudad y los perros多層次、多角度、多視野的獨特敘事技巧 《龐達雷昂上尉與勞軍女郎》等......ˋ嚴厲批評中國，直指「病毒來自中國」2020  / Making Meanings, Creating Family

「我被飛翔的獵鷹包圍著，並且可以看到亞伯拉罕·林肯在馬納薩斯戰役前夕向聯邦士兵發表講話的陽台，」巴爾加斯·略薩先生在 “The War of the End of the World” (1981)書的序言中寫道。

儘管他可以優雅地描寫任何地方，但秘魯對他來說卻有著特殊的魅力，他曾寫道，這種魅力混合著“懷疑、激情和憤怒”，甚至還有“充滿溫柔”的仇恨。

「你知道赫爾曼·梅爾維爾把利馬稱為最奇怪、最悲傷的城市，」巴爾加斯·略薩在 1989 年末接受《紐約時報雜誌》採訪時，引用了《白鯨》中的一段話。當時，即使在總統競選如火如荼地進行時，他似乎也無法將自己從文學和內省中抽離出來。

「為什麼？」巴爾加斯·略薩先生說。 “霧和毛毛雨。”

然後他笑著補充道，“我不太確定霧和毛毛雨是不是利馬的大問題。”

“I was enveloped by flying falcons and within viewing distance of the balcony where Abraham Lincoln spoke to his Union soldiers at the brink of the Battle of Manassas,” Mr. Vargas Llosa wrote in the book’s prologue.

Yet while he could write elegantly about anywhere, it was Peru that held for him a special fascination, mixed, he once wrote, with “suspicion, passion and rages” and even a hatred “steeped in tenderness.”

“You know that Herman Melville called Lima the strangest, saddest city,” Mr. Vargas Llosa, referring to a passage in“Moby Dick,” told The New York Times Magazine in late 1989, when he seemed unable to detach himself from literature and introspection even in the heat of his budding presidential campaign.

“Why?” Mr. Vargas Llosa said. “The fog and drizzle.”

Then he added, laughing, “I am not so sure that the fog and the drizzle are Lima’s big problems.”

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Mr. Vargas Llosa in the library of the Académie Française in Paris in 2023, when he became the first writer with no original works in French to join the institution.Credit...Teresa Suarez/EPA, via Shutterstock

Peru Guards Its Guano as Demand Soars Again

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: May 30, 2008

ISLA DE ASIA, Peru — The worldwide boom in commodities has come to this: Even guano, the bird dung that was the focus of an imperialist scramble on the high seas in the 19th century, is in strong demand once again.

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Workers collect guano on Isla Guañape off Peru, which conserves the resource to prevent depletion. Guano's status as an organic fertilizer has increased demand. More Photos »

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Peru's Guano Trade

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Surging prices for synthetic fertilizers and organic foods are shifting attention to guano, an organic fertilizer once found in abundance on this island and more than 20 others off the coast of Peru, where an exceptionally dry climate preserves the droppings of seabirds like the guanay cormorant and the Peruvian booby.

On the same islands where thousands of convicts, army deserters and Chinese indentured servants died collecting guano a century and a half ago, teams of Quechua-speaking laborers from the highlands now scrape the dung off the hard soil and place it on barges destined for the mainland.

“We are recovering some of the last guano remaining in Peru,” said Victor Ropón, 66, a supervisor from Ancash Province whose leathery skin reflects his years working on the guano islands since he was 17.

“There might be 10 years of supplies left, or perhaps 20, and then it will be completely exhausted,” said Mr. Ropón, referring to fears that the seabird population could be poised to fall sharply in the years ahead. It is a minor miracle that any guano at all is available here today, reflecting a century-old effort hailed by biologists as a rare example of sustainable exploitation of a resource once so coveted that the United States authorized its citizens to take possession of islands or keys where guano was found.

As a debate rages over whether global oil output has peaked, a parable may exist in the story of guano, with its seafaring treachery, the development of synthetic alternatives in Europe and a desperate effort here to prevent the deposits from being depleted.

“Before there was oil, there was guano, so of course we fought wars over it,” said Pablo Arriola, director of Proabonos, the state company that controls guano production, referring to conflicts like the Chincha Islands War, in which Peru prevented Spain from reasserting control over the guano islands. “Guano is a highly desirous enterprise.”

Guano is also an undeniably strenuous enterprise from the perspective of the laborers who migrate to the islands to collect the dung each year. In scenes reminiscent of open-pit gold mines on the mainland, the laborers rise before dawn to scrape the hardened guano with shovels and small pickaxes.

Many go barefoot, their feet and lower legs coated with guano by the time their shifts end in the early afternoon. Some wear handkerchiefs over their mouths and nostrils to avoid breathing in guano dust, which, fortunately, is almost odorless aside from a faint smell of ammonia.

“This is not an easy life, but it’s the one I chose,” said Bruno Sulca, 62, who oversees the loading of guano bags on barges at Isla Guañape, off the coast of northern Peru. Mr. Sulca and other workers earn about $600 a month, more than three times what manual laborers earn in the impoverished highlands.

Peru’s guano trade quixotically soldiers on after almost being wiped out by overexploitation. The dung will probably never be the focus of a boom as intense as the one in the 19th century, when deposits were 150 feet high, with export proceeds accounting for most of the national budget.

The guano on most islands, including Isla de Asia, south of the capital, Lima, now reaches less than a foot or so. But the guano that remains here is coveted when viewed in the context of the frenzy in Peru and abroad around synthetic fertilizers like urea, which has doubled in price to more than $600 a ton in the last year.

Guano in Peru sells for about $250 a ton while fetching $500 a ton when exported to France, Israel and the United States. While guano is less efficient than urea at releasing nitrates into the soil, its status as an organic fertilizer has increased demand, transforming it into a niche fertilizer sought around the world.

“Guano has the advantage of being chemical-free,” said Enrique Balmaceda, who cultivates organic mangoes in Piura, a province in northern Peru. “The problem is, there isn’t enough of it to meet demand with new crops like organic bananas competing for what’s available.”

That explains why Peru is so vigilant about preserving the remaining guano, an effort dating back a century to the creation of the Guano Administration Company, when Peru nationalized the islands, some of which were British-controlled, to stave off the industry’s extinction.

Since then, Peru’s government has restricted guano collection to about two islands a year, enabling the droppings to accumulate. Workers smooth slopes and build walls that retain the guano. Scientists even introduced lizards to hunt down ticks that infested the seabirds.

The guano administrators station armed guards at each of the islands to ward off threats to birds, which produce 12,000 to 15,000 tons of guano a year.

“The fishermen instigate the most mischief here,” said Rómulo Ybarra, 40, one of two guards stationed at Isla de Asia, which otherwise has no regular inhabitants. (The island has a tiny cabin called Casa del Chino, a reference to the Asian ancestry of former President Alberto K. Fujimori, who used to come here to unwind in solitude.)

“When the fishermen approach the island, their engines scare away the guanay,” Mr. Ybarra said, referring to the prized guanay cormorant. “And further out at sea, the fishing boats pursue the anchoveta, something we cannot control.”

The anchoveta, a six-inch fish in the anchovy family, is the main food of the seabirds who leave their droppings on these rainless islands. The biggest fear of Peru’s guano collectors is that commercial fishing fleets will deplete their stocks, which are increasingly wanted as fish meal for poultry and other animals as demand for meat products rises in Asia.

While the bird population has climbed to 4 million from 3.2 million in the past two years, that figure still pales in comparison with the 60 million birds at the height of the first guano rush. Faced with a dwindling anchoveta population, officials at Proabonos are considering halting exports of guano to ensure its supply to the domestic market.

Uriel de la Torre, a biologist who specializes in conserving the guanay cormorant and other seabirds, said that unless some measure emerged to prevent overfishing, both the anchovetas and the seabirds here could die off by 2030.

“It would be an inglorious conclusion to something that has survived wars and man’s other follies,” Mr. de la Torre said. “But that is the scenario we are facing: the end of guano.”

Andrea Zarate contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.