Iquitos

The rivers around Iquitos were long home to Indigenous peoples, among them the Iquito, who had moved to the Nanay, Amazon and Itaya from other rivers. Between 1638 and 1769 Jesuit missionaries from Quito gathered the peoples of the region into missions, and according to Spanish records the settlement that became Iquitos was founded around 1757 on the Nanay as San Pablo de Napeanos. In 1861 President Ramón Castilla created the department of Loreto and ordered a river port built on the Amazon, and Iquitos grew so quickly that it became Loreto's capital in 1897.

The rubber boom of about 1880 to 1914 transformed it. Rubber houses multiplied, immigrants arrived from around the world, and the city's merchants built the rubber-era mansions that still stand around the Plaza de Armas and the Malecón. The wealth rested on terrible abuse: rubber companies, above all Julio César Arana's Peruvian Amazon Company, held Indigenous workers in near-slavery, and slave raids killed many people, until reports by Roger Casement and others exposed the crimes on the Putumayo. After rubber seeds were smuggled out to plantations in British colonies in Asia and Africa, prices collapsed and many merchants and workers left.

Iquitos later found new income in timber, fishing, oil and minerals. It remains reachable only by river and air, and floods are its main hazard: those of 2012 were the worst in its history, and in 2021 a large solar power plant was announced to replace much of the diesel that generates its electricity.

Iquitos calls itself the capital of the Peruvian Amazon, and its culture mixes the riverside mestizo life known in Peru as ribereño with Indigenous traditions, Catholic festivals and the memory of the rubber era. Local Spanish has its own features, and the city's mood is relaxed, warm and loud. Mario Vargas Llosa's comic novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service even tells its own story of how the Iron House came to the city.

The great festival is San Juan on 24 June, honouring John the Baptist, patron of the Peruvian Amazon: families eat juane, the dish named after the saint, and dances such as the shunto are performed. Many Indigenous peoples live along the rivers, and their crafts are sold in the city's markets.

Traditional healing with plants, including ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic brew that is legal in Peru, is part of local life and has grown into an industry of retreats for foreigners; Iquitos is a major centre of ayahuasca tourism. The practice carries real dangers.

Iquitos is the ninth most populous city in Peru, and the 2007 census counted about 406,000 people; the metropolitan area of four districts — Iquitos, Punchana, Belén and San Juan Bautista — was projected at about 472,000 for 2015. San Juan is the largest district and keeps spreading south along the Nauta road.

The city lives from commerce, transport, public services and tourism, with industries in timber, oil and gas, flour milling, rum and camu camu. Almost everything arrives by river or by air. Belén shows the other side of the city: some 65,000 people, many in extreme poverty, live there without clean water or proper sanitation, in houses that float or stand on stilts as the river rises from February to July.

The streets belong to more than 25,000 motokars. Days start early to beat the heat, markets are busiest at dawn, and in the evening people gather on the Plaza de Armas and the Malecón above the river.

The Amazon kitchen is built on plantain, cassava and river fish. Juane, rice seasoned with turmeric and filled with chicken, egg and olive, wrapped in bijao leaves and boiled, is the dish of San Juan and one of the main dishes of the Peruvian jungle. Tacacho is made from fried plantain mashed with chicharrones, often served with cecina, smoked pork, and inchicapi is a chicken soup thickened with peanuts and maize.

River fish are central: paiche, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, and other river fish are roasted wrapped in leaves as patarashca. Mercado Belén is the place to see the ingredients, from fish and spices to fruits little known outside the region — camu camu, rich in vitamin C, aguaje, the fruit of the moriche palm, resold in small quantities by the women of Belén, and cocona, used in juices.

Masato, a fermented cassava drink, is still prepared in the traditional way by Indigenous groups.