Peru

From Caral and the great Andean civilisations to the Inca empire of Tawantinsuyu, the Spanish conquest and the silver of the Viceroyalty, independence secured at Ayacucho in 1824, the War of the Pacific, the internal armed conflict with the Shining Path, and a turbulent modern republic.

Peru carries one of the deepest human pasts in the Americas, reaching back roughly five thousand years to the Sacred City of Caral-Supe and through the Chavin, Moche, Nazca and Wari cultures to the Inca empire of Tawantinsuyu, centred on Cusco and crowned by Machu Picchu. In 1532 Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca Atahualpa at Cajamarca and within two years had seized Cusco, and in 1535 he founded Lima as the capital of what became the Viceroyalty of Peru, the richest of Spain's American realms, sustained by the silver of Potosi. Independence was proclaimed by Jose de San Martin in 1821 and secured at the Battle of Ayacucho in December 1824, after which the young republic endured the disastrous War of the Pacific against Chile and a century of instability. Between 1980 and 2000 Peru was torn by an internal armed conflict launched by the Maoist Shining Path, in which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission later estimated that around 69,000 people died or disappeared, and in recent years the country has passed through repeated presidential crises while remaining a constitutional democracy.