Costa (Peru)
Costa (Peru)
Costa (Peru), one of the three principal geographic regions of Peru, with the selva and sierra. The costa is between the Pacific and the Andean mountains; it constitutes only 12 percent of the national territory but contains around 53 percent of the population—largely as a result of the massive migration from the less developed rural Andean interior during the second half of the twentieth century. Most of the coast is a desert where rainfall is scant due to the peculiarities of the Humboldt Current, but where numerous, fertile valley oases are watered by the fifty-two rivers that flow out of the Andes east to west, emptying into the Pacific. Historically, the coast, by virtue of its orientation toward Europe and the West, has tended to be more modernized and developed than the highland interior as well as more racially and ethnically mixed.
See alsoAndes .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática, Migraciones Internas en el Perú. http://www.inei.gob.pe/biblioineipub/bancopub/Est/Lib0018/cap31002.htm.
James Higgins, Lima: A Cultural History (2005).
Peter K. KlarÉ N