Word: peru
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...inaugural address delivered last week by Alan García Pérez, Peru's new President, was more than an impassioned speech to his people. It was a blunt message to the foreign banks and governments that have loaned Peru money. Determined and defiant, García vowed to renegotiate Peru's $13.7 billion debt during the next twelve months, and said that while doing so he would devote no more than 10% of his country's export earnings to making interest payments...
...Since Peru's exports may bring in only $3 billion this year, 10% of that total would cover less than one-third of the $ 1.1 billion in interest that the country owes for 1985. But at a time of extreme economic hardship and social unrest in Peru, García declared, the demands of foreign creditors would have to come second to the needs of his countrymen. Said he: "Let the peoples of the world hear me. President Alan García knows that Peru has a great and first creditor: its own people...
García's action will cause no immediate distress for creditors. Peru's debt is relatively small, and the country is already far behind on its payments. Indeed, the U.S. Government last week suspended new aid to Peru because of a law requiring a cutoff of funds to countries that are more than a year in arrears. But his policy might set a dangerous precedent: if such debtors as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, which together owe more than $200 billion, were to limit payments to a fraction of export earnings, many large U.S. banks might face a squeeze on profits...
...immersed himself in the curricular review and his thesis and applied for the Rockefeller Fellowship so he could travel to Peru after graduation. Mahan, one of only five seniors to receive the grant, says he hopes to “find [himself],†most likely working in agriculture and reading in his spare time...
Today, the liberated Matt Mahan revels in his newly uncertain future. After he gets home from Peru, he plans work for Teach For America, a program which places recent graduates in under-funded urban-area classrooms. After that, the slate is blank...