Five Months On, the Oil Spill’s Effects Linger
Out of work and short on cash and food, a fishing community in Peru is simultaneously paralyzed by exhaustion and ready to boil over.
The port in Ancón, just north of Lima, Peru, should be bustling. It’s a cold and gray Friday morning, around the time when fishers should be returning to port and unloading their catch. But ever since January, when the Spanish oil company Repsol spilled 11,900 barrels of crude oil just off the coast—a spill the United Nations calls the worst environmental disaster in Peru’s recent history—the port has come to an almost complete standstill.