FACTORTIERRA

    Photographs provided by Dandy Ruíz Estrada, distributed by FACTORTIERRA.   MARCAVELICA, Peru – Perhaps the most difference between an artist and somebody who’s not in it lays over his skill to see the beauty, or the possibility to make it up, right there where we see something usual or insignificant. That was why Dandy Ruíz Estrada , a.k.a. El Dandy, made as much as possible for the wall of a school turned a canvas of a collective creation.   “We’re losing the identity,” stresses the 40-year-old visual artist, Mallaritos-native, a town forming now one urban zone with Marcavelica, both part of Sullana Metro Area, the largest of Chira Valley .   At Andrés avelino Cáceres School, also known as Mallaritos, El Dandy and students of the three first high-school grades took over than 120 feet of wall –almost the front yard of 4 average houses in Sullana—and they started to represent frames of the local identity and ecology , as well as the histor...

The relationship between Piura City and the water has not been one of the most positive, misunderstandings are older than its Spanish foundation.  By Nelson Peñaherrera   PIURA CITY , Peru - It is supposed that Francisco Pizarro founded San Miguel on August 15th, 1532, becoming the first Spanish Empire's city in South America, locating  it over the Tallan [pronounce "Tajahn"]  town of Tangarara, actual Marcavelica District, just beside Chira (then Turicarami in Tallan language) River.  What promised to be a productive convivence -the soil was pretty fertile- turned disease soon. Malaria decimated the immigrant population, that decided to move away the river . In 1534, it went about 50 miles SE of Tangarará, next to Pilán Mount, Monte de los Padres Acres and Las Damas Creek, actual La Matanza District. Although Lengash River ran nearby,  the city did not located beside this time. It could be renamed as Piura (supposedly from quechuan "Pir...