Turmoil risks financial stability Peru long took for granted

CUSCO, Peru (AP) — Marco Gonzales ventured to the Andean city of Cusco from his home in the Peruvian Amazon in 2007 with little more than $20, a smidgeon of English and a change of clothes poorly suited for the icy mountain air.

He started offering walking tours of the former Incan Empire capital in exchange for tips. Along the way he fell in love with a British backpacker, Nathalie Zulauf, and together the couple built a travel business and family.

But now it's all at risk of collapsing along with so much of Peru’s once-enviable economic stability.

The couple’s company, Bloody Bueno Peru, which caters to mostly foreign tourists from Britain and elsewhere, hasn’t seen a customer since December, when protesters demanding the resignation of interim President Dina Boluarte all but cut off access to the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu. Groups have canceled reservations months in advance, forcing the couple to dip into savings already depleted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’re waiting until March to see if the situation improves,” said Gonzales, 38, staring at a calendar he no longer bothers to update. “If it doesn't we’ll have to explore other options, like shutting down the business and emigrating. At least in England we have Nathalie’s family.”

Others in Cusco have far less to fall back on.

The city of 450,000, normally a polyglot mecca of foreign travelers, is a ghost town these days. The Plaza de Armas, where women dressed in colorful Andean textiles used to pose for snapshots, now attracts demonstrators playing cat-and-mouse with heavily armored riot police.

Political turmoil is nothing new in Peru, which has seen six presidents in the last five years. In 1969, with a military dictatorship in power, Nobel Prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa posed this now iconic...