Pucallpa

The Ucayali valley was home to Pano-speaking peoples long before Europeans arrived, among them the ancestors of today's Shipibo-Konibo, who lived along the river and its tributaries and on the shores of lakes such as Yarinacocha. Franciscan missionaries founded villages along the Ucayali from the colonial era, and Pucallpa itself began in the 1840s as a small settlement where the missionaries settled Shipibo-Konibo families and newcomers gradually arrived.

There is no single founding act. Tradition dates the city's founding to 13 October 1888, the date still celebrated in its anniversary week, during the rubber era, and the honour of being its founder is disputed between Eduardo del Águila Tello and the Brazilians Agustín Cáuper Videira and Antonio Maya de Brito. A municipal council was formed in 1901. For decades Pucallpa stayed small, cut off from the rest of Peru by forest and mountains, while railway plans to connect it with the Central Railway were started and abandoned repeatedly from the 1880s to the 1920s.

Its isolation ended in 1945, when a highway through Tingo María reached Lima, opening the way for timber, farm produce and migrants. Pucallpa became the river port linking Lima's road with the Amazon, and in the 1980s it merged with Puerto Callao and San Fernando into one conurbation, today divided between the districts of Callería, Yarinacocha and Manantay.

Pucallpa's identity is shaped by the river and by the Shipibo-Konibo, who give the city its own name, May Ushin. Shipibo-Konibo women paint and embroider kené, the maze-like geometric designs that decorate their textiles and pottery and are recognised as national cultural heritage, and their work is sold in the city's markets and in the communities around Yarinacocha. The city also draws visitors interested in shamanism.

Painting has a following here too. The house of the painter Pablo Amaringo, in the south of the city, keeps a collection of his works and serves as a painting workshop, and Shipibo-Konibo artists sell their textiles and ceramics in the city.

The biggest festival is San Juan, on 24 June, celebrated above all at Yarinacocha, when families eat juane and tacacho and the lagoon fills with visitors from across Peru. Carnival in February includes felling the humisha, a tree hung with gifts, and October brings the city's anniversary week. Football is the most followed sport, and Christianity is the main religion, with Catholic, Adventist and other Protestant congregations.

Peru's statistics institute ranks Pucallpa as the country's tenth-largest city. The three districts that make up the city, Callería, Yarinacocha and Manantay, had about 341,000 people in 2017, according to the same institute, and about a third of those living in the region come from other parts of Peru.

The economy rests on trade, timber, fishing, farming and livestock, with tourism growing. The river port is the second most important in the Peruvian Amazon after Iquitos, and the highway to Lima is vital for moving raw materials and manufactured products. The San Juan brewery has operated in the city since 1970, and a small oil refinery and a gas plant in the region supply fuel.

Life follows the heat and the river. Mototaxis fill the streets from early morning, nine municipal markets and several informal ones supply the city, and in the high water season floating ports are used along the bank. Power cuts have long been a complaint, and pollution of the Yarinacocha lagoon by the city's drainage is a serious environmental problem.

Pucallpa eats like the rest of the Peruvian Amazon, from rivers and forest. Paiche, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, stands out among the river fish and is prepared in many ways. Juane — rice seasoned and filled with chicken, egg and olive, wrapped in bijao leaves and boiled — is the dish of San Juan, and tacacho, plantain mashed with lard and pieces of pork rind, is eaten with cecina. Inchicapi, a chicken soup thickened with peanuts and maize, and patarashca, fish wrapped in leaves and grilled, are common across the region.

Eating wild meats from the forest, such as peccary, tapir, armadillo and large rodents, is a long tradition in the region. Across the Peruvian Amazon, markets sell tropical fruits little known elsewhere — aguaje, cocona and camu camu among them — which are pressed into juices, and the city's markets by the Ucayali are the place for river fish and produce.

To drink there is masato, a fermented drink made from cassava, fruit juices of every kind, and beer from the San Juan brewery, opened in the city in 1970.