Lima

/lee"meuh/ or, Sp., /lee"mah/ for 1; /luy"meuh/ for 2, n.

1. a city in and the capital of Peru, near the Pacific coast. 3,317,648.

2. a city in NW Ohio. 47,381.

/lee"meuh/, n.

a word used in communications to represent the letter L.

[1950-55]

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City (pop., 1996 est.: city, 316,332; 1998 est.: metro area, 7,060,600), capital of Peru.

It is located inland from the Pacific Ocean port of Callao and near the Andes Mountains. Its nickname, El Pulpo ("The Octopus"), refers to its sprawling metropolitan area. It was founded by Francisco Pizarro in 1535 on the feast of the Epiphany, prompting the name Ciudad de los Reyes ("City of Kings"), but the name never took. Lima later became the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The city was destroyed by an earthquake in 1746 but was rebuilt. It grew rapidly during the 20th century and now accounts for nearly one-third of Peru's total population. It is the country's economic and cultural centre. Historic sites include the cathedral (begun in the 16th century) and the National University of San Marcos (1551).

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▪ Ohio, United States

      city, seat (1831) of Allen county, northwestern Ohio, U.S. The city is situated on the Ottawa River, about 90 miles (145 km) northwest of Columbus. Laid out in 1831, its name (from Lima, Peru) was chosen by being drawn from a hat. Oil (petroleum) was discovered nearby in 1885, and by the turn of the 20th century Lima was the centre of oil fields (which are now, for the most part, exhausted); the city remains, however, an important pipeline and refining centre. Lima's industrial production is now highly diversified and includes the manufacture of truck and automobile parts and engines, battle tanks, metal fixtures and coatings, and chemicals. The Lima campus of Ohio State University, east of the city, is also the site of James A. Rhodes State College (1966; known until 2002 as Lima Technical College). Lima has a number of performing arts organizations, including a symphony orchestra; Square Fair (August) is the city's annual arts fair. Inc. town, 1842; city, 1922. Pop. (2000) city, 40,081; Lima MSA, 108,473; (2005 est.) city, 38,608; Lima MSA, 106,234.

▪ Peru

Introduction

  city, capital of Peru. It is the country's commercial and industrial centre. Central Lima is located at an elevation of 512 feet (156 metres) on the south bank of the Rímac River, about 8 miles (13 km) inland from the Pacific Ocean port of Callao, and has an area of 27 square miles (70 square km). Its name is a corruption of the Quechua name Rímac, meaning “Talker.” The city forms a modern oasis, surrounded by the Peruvian coastal desert a short distance west of the Andes Mountains. Area 1,506 square miles (3,900 square km). Pop. (2005) 7,186,000.

Physical and human geography

The character of the city

      Perhaps the best clue to the significance of Lima to the country of Peru can be found in its most popular nickname: El Pulpo (“The Octopus”). Metropolitan Lima's huge size—it accounts for about one-fourth of the total population of Peru—has both resulted from and stimulated the concentration of people, capital, political influence, and social innovations. Lima's unique status is but one of the more important consequences of a highly centralized, unitary state that from its inception in the early 19th century solved interregional conflicts by focusing power and prestige on the city. With its port of Callao and its location at the centre of Peru's Pacific coast, Lima was long the only point of contact between the country and the outside world.

      As with many sprawling and rapidly growing metropolitan centres, Lima has its detractors as well as its promoters. Those who remember the more tranquil, traditional days, before the arrival of millions of migrants and before the many buses and automobiles brought pollution and congestion, are prone to use another nickname for the capital: Lima la Horrible. This is the noisy, dirty, gloomy, damp, and depressing Lima, perceptions shared by both short-term visitors and longtime residents. Even though sunshine does break through the dense coastal fog in the summer, Lima then becomes unbearably hot as well as humid, and the sunshine seems to emphasize even more clearly the grimy buildings and lack of greenery in the central city.

The landscape

The city site

      Lima sprawls well beyond its original Spanish site at a bridgeable point on the Rímac River. Disgorging precipitously from the high Andes, the Rímac has formed a flat-topped alluvial cone, on which the early Spanish colonists established their settlement. Since almost the entire coastal plain in central Peru consists of unconsolidated fluvioglacial deposits, cliff erosion and earthquakes are continual threats. In expanding from its original site, the city has incorporated within its fabric various hills and valleys that are also prone to earth tremors and flash floods. One of the most notable characteristics of Lima is the barren, unvegetated desert that surrounds it on all sides; the grayish-yellow sands support almost no plant or animal life, save where water has been artificially provided.

Climate

      Though Lima is located at a tropical latitude, the cool offshore Peru (also called Humboldt) Current helps produce a year-round temperate climate. Average temperature ranges 60–64 °F (16–18 °C) in the winter months of May to November and 70–80 °F (21–27 °C) in the summer months of December to April. The cooling of the coastal air mass produces thick cloud cover throughout the winter, and the garúa (dense sea mist) often rolls in to blanket areas of the city. Precipitation, which rarely exceeds 2 inches (50 mm) per annum, usually results from the condensation of the garúa. Lima is perhaps best described as cold and damp in winter and hot and humid in summer.

      Because clouds tend to trap airborne pollutants, Limeños (residents of Lima) can often taste the air. A permanent problem resulting from the high humidity is oxidation, rust being a common sight. Many of the wealthier citizens established winter homes on the coast north or south of the city proper or in such localities as La Molina, a short distance to the east of Lima, where the climate is free of fog and cloud.

The city layout

      Lima contains a series of townscapes well defined by its long history. The core of old Lima, delineated by Spanish colonists in the 16th century and partly enclosed by defensive walls in the 17th, retains its checkerboard street pattern. Bounded on the north by the Rímac and on the east, south, and west by broad avenues, old Lima contains a few restored colonial buildings (Torre Tagle Palace, the cathedral, and the Archbishop's Palace) interspersed among buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries, many of which were built upon the sites of former colonial residences that had collapsed during the major earthquakes that have struck the city. The old walls, however, were demolished in the mid-19th century. The two principal squares (Plaza de Armas and Plaza Bolívar) still provide the foci of architectural interest within central Lima, and the enclosed wooden balconies so typical of the colonial city have now become features to be preserved or restored. The Presidential Palace (built on the site of Pizarro's house) and many other buildings reflect the past popularity of the French Empire style. On the north side of the Rímac, the old colonial suburb of the same name conserves relics of its past in its curved, narrow streets, tightly packed with single-story houses, and its Alameda de los Descalzos (“Boulevard of the Barefoot Monks”).

      The former residential zone of central Lima has undergone several radical modifications, especially since the 1930s. Most of the old spacious mansions have been subdivided so that they now accommodate as many as 50 families. These inner-city slums (variously called tugurios, corralones, and callejones) have been occupied by immigrants from the countryside striving to gain a foothold in the urban economy and society. Sanitary conditions in such zones are often very poor.

      Other parts of old Lima have experienced demolition and reconstruction. Housing has given way to banks, insurance offices, law firms, and government offices. There have been repeated attempts to stimulate pride in El Cercado (the formerly walled enclosure), although some Limeños regard it as a place to pass through rather than to preserve and enhance. One finds little evidence of gentrification in Lima; unlike other Latin American capitals and even other cities within Peru, central Lima contains relatively few outstanding architectural features.

      Lima did not expand much beyond the walls of the old city until railways and tramlines were constructed in the mid-19th century. For the next 75 years growth was steady, the axes of urban development from old Lima assuming distinctive characters: the area west to Callao became the industrial corridor; the sweeping bay frontage to the south from Barranco to Magdalena was transformed into the choice residential zone; and eastward, toward Vitarte, a mix of industrial and lower-class suburbs emerged. As the pace of urban expansion increased in the 1930s, small communities formed in the open country between Lima and the coast. These gradually coalesced into such urban districts as La Victoria, Lince, San Isidro, and Breña. The numerous farms and small tracts of cultivated land between suburbs and barren, dry land also became urbanized as immigrants from the interior occupied these areas. In the 1950s Lima became noted for these barriadas (squatter camps of shanties), which as they became more permanently established were renamed pueblos jóvenes (“young towns”). These communities have come to contain one-third of the population of metropolitan Lima. The older pueblos jóvenes, such as Comas, are now difficult to distinguish from the “established” sections of the city, since the early constructions of cardboard, tin cans, and wicker matting have long since given way to bricks, cement blocks, and neat gardens.

      Lima's contemporary townscapes provide such contrasts that it is easy to forget that the rich and the poor belong to the same society. Within a few blocks one can move from luxury to abject poverty. With downtown Lima often heavily congested with traffic, suburban locations were chosen for many new businesses, factories, and shopping centres. In some areas, classic corner stores run by Chinese and Japanese immigrants and their descendants are fighting a losing battle against the competition of large, hygienic supermarkets. Elsewhere, however, open-air markets and crowds of ambulantes (street vendors) are the rule.

The people

      Just as the physical fabric of Lima has been transformed since the 1930s, so too has its population. It is now difficult to identify what might be called a true Limeño, for in a very real sense Lima has become the most Peruvian of cities; everywhere one can hear different accents, reflecting the myriad origins of the provincianos who have made the city a microcosm of the country. Before the arrival of the highland migrants (commonly called serranos or, if demonstrating what are perceived to be Indian characteristics, cholos), it was relatively easy to mark the difference between the European elite and other ethnic mixtures. Ethnicity and class in modern-day Lima, however, present a complexity that defies easy classification. The greatest difference that persists, and perhaps even increases, is that which divides the rich and influential from the poor and powerless. One has only to compare the elegance of those who stroll through Kennedy Park in Miraflores on a Saturday night with the squalor of those who beg in central Lima to realize that, in growing, the city has not developed. For the great majority of people, access to piped water, sewage systems, inexpensive food, and steady employment are still dreams for the future.

      The vast majority of Limeños are Roman Catholics, which gives the city a traditional, conservative atmosphere; this is evidenced by the enormous crowds of people who gather for such annual religious processions as El Señor de los Milagros (“the Lord of Miracles”), Santa Rosa de Lima, and San Martín de Porres. Many residents from the slums and poor suburbs, however, have questioned the church's positions on social and political issues.

The economy

      Whatever indicator is used to measure economic performance, Lima maintains a dominant position within Peru, accounting for the great majority of the country's industrial output and nearly all of the volume of its financial transactions. The size of Lima's population makes it the premier market for all domestic and imported goods; Limeños make some four-fifths of the country's consumer purchases each year.

Industry and commerce

      Industry in Lima is located primarily in the old Callao–Lima–Vitarte corridor, with more recent additions in zones fringing the Pan-American Highway north and south of the city. Industrial activity is diverse, ranging from shipbuilding and oil refining to food processing and the manufacture of cement, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, textiles and clothing, and furniture. Much of this capital-intensive, heavily unionized industrial base, however, operates well below capacity, in most part because of the dire economic situation of Peru.

      There has thus been a gradual de-emphasis of the more established industries, and since about 1970 a new type of informal, artisan-based industrial structure has developed. These small-scale, labour-intensive enterprises, which often are family controlled, have been better able to meet the demands of consumers by having goods more readily available (in part by avoiding bureaucratic red tape) and by offering goods for lower prices.

      Many industries have located within metropolitan Lima because of its pool of skilled labour, personal access to government officials, and the benefits of well-established networks of marketing and services such as banking. Manufacturing has not provided an adequate solution to the demands of the vast numbers who seek employment. One result has been the rapid rise in service jobs, the majority of which are informal in character. This type of employment has been estimated to account for at least two-fifths of total economic activity in the metropolitan area. The thousands of street vendors have become a visual reminder of the lack of steady employment in the formal sector. One of the largest employers in Lima—directly and indirectly—is the national government. Its ministries, institutes, and other agencies provide jobs not only for an extensive bureaucracy but also for the hundreds of thousands of people who in various ways serve the needs of those fully employed.

Transportation

      The railway line from Callao to Lima is the oldest in South America, while the line that climbs east past Vitarte and into the Andes reaches the highest point of any standard-gauge railway in the world. The growth of automobile transportation has given rise to the heavily congested traffic conditions that exist in contemporary Lima. Although there is now a well-developed highway system in the metropolitan area, including an expressway between central Lima and Miraflores, the vast majority of Limeños must cope with an outdated street network and rely on three basic modes of transport: minibuses (vans) that can hold up to a dozen passengers; small buses that can carry about two dozen people; and larger municipal buses, many of which operate in bad repair.

      Because transport in Lima is at best highly inefficient and at worst chaotic, hundreds of amateur taxi drivers, unlicensed and often ignorant of all but the most obvious locations within the city, offer their services to the harried or unwary pedestrian at peak traffic hours. Heavy trucks, private cars, and motorcycles and bicycles of all shapes and sizes complete the traffic mix. Several plans for a subway or elevated rail system have been proposed for Lima, in part to overcome the obvious problems of the heavily congested and polluted centre but also to interconnect the peripheral suburbs more effectively and thus divert much traffic from the central city. The construction of an elevated rail system was suspended in the early 1990s.

Administration and social conditions

Government

      The problems of controlling Lima's growth have proved difficult, but those of municipal administration have become almost insoluble. Metropolitan Lima consists of the department of Lima and the province of Callao, which are further divided into dozens of political districts. Each province and each district is administratively autonomous, so that citywide planning and development can be undertaken only by means of negotiated decisions. The capital district of Lima, with its long-established expertise in urban administration, has repeatedly called for the creation of a metropolitan authority that could more efficiently confront the many issues facing the region. Local district autonomy, however, which was won only after great political effort, has become a major obstacle to any unified approach, although a municipal law enacted in 1984 created a Metropolitan Council for Greater Lima (an assembly of district mayors) as well as agencies for improving cooperation between district councils and sharing technical assistance.

      The system of generating and spending revenues in metropolitan Lima provides an example of the problems of interdistrict coordination. Since 1983 each district has been able both to generate its own revenues and to utilize them as it sees fit. Thus, there has been a growing disparity in the quality of services between the wealthy districts, which can generate adequate revenues for their needs, and the poor districts, which not only generate inadequate revenues but also are in most need of such services as water, sewers, electricity, and paved streets.

      The differences in income and expenditures between rich and poor districts are, to some extent, paralleled by distinctive party affiliations and voting behaviour. The poorer districts have generally supported candidates from left-wing parties, while the more affluent suburbs have supported centre-right candidates. This interparty rivalry has hampered efforts at improving cooperation between districts as well as between the municipal and national government.

Services

      The rapidity and scale of Lima's growth have placed great strains upon the provision of public services. Potable water, which in the past was obtained from the Rímac and from shallow local wells, now must be brought in via lakes and diverted rivers from the high Andes. Equally difficult has been the provision of electricity. Only with the completion in the early 1970s of the expensive hydroelectric project on the Mantaro River has affordable power been available for Lima's industry and residential population. These sources of water and power, however, have been at the expense of the impoverished Andean departments that have provided them.

      Within the capital itself the problems of providing services have been legion. Most municipalities have had barely enough income to finance their routine operations, with nothing left over to finance new projects. In addition, municipalities that have been able to allocate money for improved services often have been unable to adequately plan and execute what usually have been complex and highly technical projects. Finally, even when these projects have been built it has seldom been possible, given the penurious state of the majority of the population, to require payment for the actual cost of the services.

      Caught between the need for inner-city renewal and suburban expansion, most municipalities have turned to the national government and such international agencies as the World Bank for assistance. Their argument has been that Lima's problems have become national problems and, as such, require national solutions.

Cultural life

      In spite of the many and complex problems that confront those who live in Lima, it is still the dominant and most vibrant cultural centre of Peru. Lima contains the most distinguished universities in the country—including the oldest university in South America, the National University of San Marcos (San Marcos of Lima, Main National University of) (1551), and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (1917)—as well as numerous other schools. Nearly all of the major academies, learned societies, and research institutes are located in metropolitan Lima, as are the national cultural institutions.

      The numerous museums in the metropolitan area display the richness of Peru's pre-Columbian and colonial past. Within Lima itself are the well-restored burial sites (huacas) of the pre-Inca coastal cultures, and south of the city stand the remains of Pachacamac, one of Peru's largest pre-Hispanic religious centres. Dozens of other prehistoric sites await funds for excavation and investigation, but almost all are threatened by urban construction.

      Lima has several daily newspapers—El Comercio (“Commerce”), founded in 1839, is the country's oldest—and numerous weekly periodicals, among which the magazine Caretas has become established as the newsweekly of Peru. There are several television and radio stations, and Internet cafés have sprung up throughout the city. Bookstores and book readers, however, are in the minority: the electronic media and a continual shortage of paper have combined to limit the circulation of the printed word. For many lower-class Limeños, the most popular reading materials are the comic books and dime novels that can be rented from street-corner stalls.

      Recreation in Lima takes many forms, but perhaps no sports are more important than football (soccer) for men and volleyball for women. Local football clubs have large and devoted followings. Other popular sports include horse racing, cockfighting, bullfighting, swimming, and tennis. Golf and polo are enjoyed by some of the more affluent residents. Dozens of cinemas, theatre clubs, and discotheques provide nightlife, and there are scores of peñas, nightclubs featuring folk music. The music of Lima, as symbolized in the works of Chabuca Granda and Alicia Maguiña Málaga, is always popular, and it has enjoyed a renewed interest on the part of the public at large.

      A delicious variety of food can be found in the fashionable international-quality restaurants of central Lima and the bay area and in the hundreds of lesser cafés, chifas (Chinese restaurants), picanterías (serving traditional dishes), and cevicherías (seafood restaurants specializing in seviche, or cebiche, a typical coastal dish of marinated fish). Fortunately for Lima, the migrants from other areas of Peru carried with them their highly flavoured regional dishes, making the city a gastronome's delight. Added to these foods are excellent local beers, grape brandy (pisco), wines, and other drinks.

      One of the consequences of the massive migration to Lima has been the reinforcement of cultural ties between the capital's new urban communities and their localities of origin. Provincial and district clubs and associations celebrate weekly with songs, dances, and foods typical of the distinctive regions. Much of Peru's folklore can be learned in the heart of Lima itself.

History

Pre-Columbian and colonial periods

      The area around Lima has been inhabited for thousands of years. Urban communities of significant size date from the pre-Inca Early Intermediate Period (c. 200 BCE–600 CE), the most important being Pachacamac, which was an important religious site in both pre-Inca and Inca times. Much of the ransom demanded by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro (Pizarro, Francisco) for the Inca chief Atahuallpa (Atahualpa) was obtained from Pachacamac.

      The Spanish city of Lima was founded by Pizarro on Jan. 6, 1535, which, being Epiphany, prompted the name Ciudad de los Reyes (“City of Kings”). Although the name never stuck, Lima soon became the capital of the new Viceroyalty of Peru (Peru, Viceroyalty of), chosen over the old Inca capital of Cuzco to the southeast because the coastal location facilitated communication with Spain.

      Lima developed into the centre of wealth and power for the entire viceroyalty: as the seat of the audiencia (high court), it administered royal justice; and, being the headquarters in the viceroyalty of the inquisition, it pronounced on religious and moral matters. It also became the site of Peru's most prestigious associations and centres of learning, including the University of San Marcos (San Marcos of Lima, Main National University of) (1551), the Peruvian Academy of Letters (1887), the National University of Engineering (1896), and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (1917). José Hipólito Unnúe founded a medical school there in 1808.

      From the late 17th to the mid-19th century, however, Lima grew extremely slowly in both area and population. The city was devastated by a powerful earthquake in 1746. Although it was rebuilt in grandiose fashion, influenced heavily by the European Enlightenment, it remained politically conservative and socially stratified. Lima maintained its loyalty during the struggles for Latin American independence in the early 19th century, with Peru becoming the last mainland colony to declare its independence from Spain (July 1821).

David J. Robinson

The modern city

 Lima's development into a modern city began after the completion of the Lima- Callao railroad in 1851. Interurban railway links to Miraflores, Ancón, and Chosica followed in the next 20 years and provided the opportunity for suburban growth. The small, compact, pedestrian city gradually lost its wealthier residents, who physically distanced themselves from the lower classes by building mansions in and around Miraflores. Also during that period, Lima and Callao benefited from a boom in exports of nitrate-rich guano deposits, which were collected from islands off the Peruvian coast and shipped to Europe. However, Lima's prosperity subsequently declined as political turmoil swept the country, and, as a result of the disastrous War of the Pacific (Pacific, War of the), the Chilean military looted and occupied the city (1881–83), burning the National Library in the process.

      Despite the loss of the library, the city's literary scene experienced a rebirth with Ricardo Palma (Palma, Ricardo)'s series of colonial legends and stories called Tradiciones Peruanas (“Peruvian Traditions”), which appeared between 1872 and 1910. Influential literary figures of the early 20th century included the leftist political leader and essayist José Carlos Mariátegui (Mariátegui, José Carlos) and the poets César Vallejo (Vallejo, César), José María Eguren (Eguren, José María), and José Santos Chocano (Chocano, José Santos); although many of their works focused on events outside of Lima (e.g., the plight of rural Indians), they exerted a profound influence on the intelligentsia of the city and, by extension, the country.

      A new wave of urban expansion in the 1920s and '30s was set off by the automobile and the subsequent road-building program that improved transportation not only within the capital but also between Lima and other parts of the country. For the first time, migrants could reach Lima relatively easily, and this rich, powerful, and modernizing centre became a national magnet. The consequences for Lima were drastic. From 1940 to 1980 some 2,000,000 people moved to the city. Hundreds of thousands of shanties were constructed on the bare, unoccupied slopes that rose above the red-tiled roofs of the inner suburbs and on the flat desert benches that encircled Lima. Individual acts of occupying unused and unclaimed pieces of land gave way to well-planned “invasions” involving many hundreds of new city residents. So enormous became the numbers of the self-help housing units that the government finally yielded to the residents' initiatives, awarding titles to the land and trying to provide basic services. Roughly one-third of metropolitan residents lived in pueblos jóvenes by 1990. A system of multilane expressways was built in the late 20th century to serve the city's expanding population, which had surpassed 7,000,000 by the early 21st century.

David J. Robinson Ed.

      Lima continues to influence nearly every facet of Peruvian national life—economic, political, and cultural. Since the mid-20th century, some of the more renowned works of novelist Mario Vargas Llosa (Vargas Llosa, Mario) have been set in Lima, including La ciudad y los perros (1963; “The City and the Dogs”; Eng. trans. The Time of the Hero) and La tía Julia y el escribidor (1977; “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”). Among the more recent works focusing on Lima are Julio Ramón Ribeyro's tragicomic stories and Jaime Bayly's Yo amo a mi mami (1999; “I Love My Mom”), relating the experiences of a suburban child raised by household servants.

      The city's historic centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988; in 1991 the site was redefined to include the former convent of San Francisco. However, Lima's historic buildings are threatened by elevated levels of air pollution from automobiles and buses and by earthquakes (the largest to ravage Lima occurred in 1746, killing 5,000 people) and other hazards (such as a fire that destroyed the ornate municipal theatre in 1998). In the 1990s many of Lima's antique wooden balconies were repaired and restored.

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