Burning pyres of rubbish and bullet-pocked walls. Troops holed up in the airport with AK-47s and riot shields, waiting for a truce that has no date to come. A mayor holding court behind the broken windows of a vandalised city hall.
“I feel that my city is destroying itself. It is bloodstained. It is wounded,” lamented Oscar Cáceres as angry protesters gathered outside his municipal headquarters to demand political change and justice for the 17 people killed here during the most deadly day of violence in the two-month uprising against the government of Peru.
