San Borja is a rather pleasant neighbourhood, with a large park separating San Borja North and South region. Lots of casinos and also Chifas in this area.
There is also a train that runs through here but is not yet open to the public. I subsequently heard that the tracks has been built for many years, but was never in operation (It was recently completed, and is now in the testing phase, with expected opening early next year).
I particularly found one of the floors extremely interesting, showcasing images of Peru’s past, especially during the 60s to the late 90s.
Having not known much of Peru’s history, I was particularly struck by the images shown, depicting lots of destruction, terrorism and fear within the country, with a number of references relating these to “Shining Path” and “MRTA”.
Unfortunately it made me also rather confused as there were only English translation about the images, but no proper translation on timeline and history of Peru.
However, one thing for sure was that while looking at the images, the thoughts that went through my head was that the pace of development and growth in Peru (or particularly Lima) has been incredible in the last 15 years!
When I met up with Marco, I asked him about the “Shining Path” and “MRTA”, and apparently Peru went through a period of terrorism and destruction during the 60s to late 90s by 2 different radical groups.
Shining Path was much more radical and adopted the Mao-ism concept that everything should be split equally and belong to the people, while MRTA was mainly terrorist approach, targeting the rich and famous.
Both groups caused much destruction to the streets and buildings, and people were just afraid of going out as they never know if they may come back safely or be killed in a bomb attack.
It was only through the appointment of a Prime Minister Fujimori and his usage and appointment of a team of stealth Intelligence, did they manage to bring down these 2 radical groups, and instil peace back into the people’s life.
(The last I heard, Fujimori is now in jail for corruption, which is another story.)
Even though I have only been in Lima for 1.5 days, the scenes which I have seen in the city area has been rather impressive and totally different from how I imagined Lima to be. It is fairly modern and clean, with lots of green spaces. Perhaps I have only been to the nicer parts of Lima and have not actually seen the real bad side of the city!
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