Location
The province of Ancash is along the Peruvian Pacific coast, about 150 miles north of Lima, along the Pan-American Highway. Huarmey is a fishing town on the Pan-American, with a population of about 10,000 people. The town has both electricity and telephone communication.Two rivers empty into the Pacific near Huarmey - Rio Huarmey and Rio Culebras. The rivers flow out of the Andes mountains, which loom above the town just a few miles to the east. 
Casma, the city of the eternal sun, located about 200 miles north of Lima, holds a population that is primarily dedicated to agriculture and fishing. The hospitals in Huarmey and Casma, and the Catholic Parish (Virgen del Rosario, which is supported by the Saint James Society) provide services to the seventy or so villages scattered along the valleys of these two rivers, reaching up into the Andes to an elevation of about 13,000 feet. 
Many of the mountain villages lack a source of electric power. There is very little cash flow in the mountain economy. There are few opportunities and few comforts. Partly as a result of this, people leave the mountains to go to the city of Lima in great numbers. Of the 24 million citizens of Peru, upwards of one third of them live in Lima, and that staggering percentage increases annually. This vast city cannot even begin to support that many people. Unemployment reaches forty percent in the poorer areas, and underemployment is much higher than that. |