Some have moved to Lima and other coastal cities, especially since the outbreak of guerrilla warfare in the highlands in the 1980s, but many continue to live in the sierra where they farm and herd animals. About 100 other indigenous groups live in the rain forest of eastern Peru. The Indians of eastern Peru live in virtual isolation from the rest of Peru’s population, speaking traditional languages and surviving by hunting, fishing, and agriculture.

Peru’s population was once largely rural. In 1960, 42 percent of the people lived in urban areas. Today, 75 percent of the people are urban residents.

The majority of city dwellers live along the Pacific coast, territory that represents the heart of Peru’s political and economic life. Peru’s cities grew rapidly in the last decades of the 20th century as people migrated from the sierra and settled in shantytowns on the outskirts of Lima and other urban areas. Migration to the cities had slowed by the late 1990s.

Politically and economically, Peru is a divided society. At the top of the social structure is a minority of Spanish-speaking Europeans living on the coast, especially in Lima. They control most of the country’s wealth and political power. At the bottom are Quechua- and Aymara-speaking Native Americans living in the highlands and in the shantytowns surrounding Arequipa, Lima, and other coastal cities. In between is a largely mestizo middle class of professionals, business people, army officers, and government employees. The military government that ruled from 1968 to 1980 carried out several reforms to curtail the power of wealthy Peruvians and benefit people in the middle and lower-middle classes. These reforms redistributed land to highland Native Americans, turned sugar plantations over to worker cooperatives, and extended the government’s role in all sectors of the economy. In the end, however, soaring inflation and unemployment left the mass of Peruvians as poor as they were before the reforms, and the majority still have a very low standard of living. Much of rural Peru lacks electricity, safe drinking water, adequate sanitary facilities, and accessible health care, as do most of the shantytowns to which former rural residents emigrated during the later decades of the 20th century.

People of Peru. wildernessclassroom.com

The population of Peru (2009 estimate) is 29,546,963, giving the country an estimated overall population density of 23 persons per sq km (60 per sq mi). The distribution of people across the country is uneven, however. About 50 percent of the people inhabit the sierra region and about 40 percent inhabit the coastal plain. The remainder live in the dense forests of the east. Encarta