For those who don't know, Peru was host to a horrible clash between El Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) and the legal government that lasted from 1980 to 2000. The Shining Path was (and in a few remote places still is) a violent Moaist group that terrorized government workers and ordinary citizens. They didn't limit themselves to the bourgeois, either; they even attacked poor farmers. They were unpopular (only about 15% of Peru ever supported them) and tortured or assassinated many many people. About 70,000 died as a result of their guerrilla war.
The effects of their campaign carry beyond the death-toll, though. For the work of only a few people, Peru as a whole suffered quite a lot economically. Foreign direct investment was basically nil in the 1980s and didn't pick up until most of the fighting had subsided.
Peru has since stablized and growth has been robust---with a real growth rate of about 8%. Unfortuantely, "los pobres"--the ones the Shining Path was supposedly fighting for--are often left out of the expansion, and there's widespread unemployment/underemployment around the countryside since there's a dearth of financial resources.
This is where microfinance comes in! Microfinance institutions--and there are several ones doing good work in Peru, such as Agrobanco and MiBanco--bring capital (and capitalism) to the poorest of the poor and give them opportunities for development that were taken away by the Maoists. Peru has a really wonderful future ahead, and I hope that this summer I can help a few people in the country make it even better.
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