Peru

Famous Peruvian People: Peruvian Artists, Scientists, Leaders, Musicians, Politicians and Athletes

Peru is a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities with outstanding individuals who made a difference with their remarkable achievements.

:: List of Famous People from Peru ::

Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America’s most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat”.

Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Coversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). He writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service(1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films.

Like many Latin American authors, Vargas Llosa has been politically active throughout his career; over the course of his life, he has gradually moved from the political left towards the right. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted. He ran for the Peruvian presidency in 1990 with the center-right Frente Democrático (FREDEMO) coalition, advocating neoliberal reforms. He has subsequently supported moderate conservative candidates.

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar y de la Guerra is a Peruvian diplomat who served as the fifth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1, 1982 to December 31, 1991. In 1995, he ran unsuccessfully against Alberto Fujimori for President of Peru. He was President of the Council of Ministers, as well as Minister of Foreign Affairs from November 2000 until July 2001, during the turbulent period following Fujimori’s resignation over corruption charges. In September 2004, he stepped down from his position as Peru’s Ambassador to France, where he formerly resided. With the death of Kurt Waldheim in June 2007, he became the oldest former Secretary General of the United Nations.

Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori served as President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000. A controversial figure, Fujimori has been credited with uprooting terrorism in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic stability, though his methods have drawn charges of authoritarianism and human rights violations. Even amidst his 2008 prosecution for “crimes against humanity” relating to his presidency, two-thirds of Peruvians polled voiced approval for his leadership in that period. A Peruvian of Japanese descent, Fujimori fled to Japan in 2000 amidst a corruption scandal, where he attempted to resign his presidency. His resignation was rejected by the Congress of the Republic, which preferred to remove him from office by the process of impeachment. Wanted in Peru on charges of corruption and human rights abuses, Fujimori maintained a self-imposed exile until his arrest during a visit to Chile in November 2005. He was finally extradited to face criminal charges in Peru in September 2007.

César Vallejo
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza was a Peruvian poet. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. Thomas Merton called him “the greatest universal poet since Dante”. Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his books was distinct from the others and, in its own sense, revolutionary. Clayton Eshleman and José Rubia Barcia’s translation of The Complete Posthumous Poetry of César Vallejo won the National Book Award for translation in 1979. The late British poet, critic and biographer Martin Seymour-Smith, a leading authority on world literature, called Vallejo “…the greatest twentieth-century poet in any language.”

Alfredo Bryce Echenique
Alfredo Bryce Echenique is a Peruvian writer born in Lima. His first novel, Un mundo para Julius, published in 1970, became a big success and counts today as one of the classics of Latin American literature. The novel, which has since been translated into ten languages, tells the story of a young boy who grows up as the youngest of four children of a rich, Peruvian upper class family. Although Julius actually belongs to the ruling classes he feels a stronger bond with the servants which surround him and this brings him into conflict with his family. With biting irony the author exposes, through the eyes of a child, the great social differences in Peruvian society. Un mundo para Julius marked the start of an extremely productive literary career, in which he has until today written nearly twenty novels and story volumes.

Sofía Mulánovich
Sofía Mulánovich Aljovín is a Peruvian surfer. She is the first Peruvian surfer ever to win an Association of Surfing Professionals World Championship Tour event, and the first South American ever to win the World Title. In 2004, Sofía Mulánovich won three out of the six World Championship Tour events and finished the season as World Champion.

Gian Marco Zignago
Gian Marco Javier Zignago Alcóver is a singer-songwriter. He has won the Grammy Latino 2005 for the best ‘álbum Cantautor’ (Singer-Songwriter Album) and was named UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in Peru. His mother is the well-known Peruvian actress and singer Regina Alcóver Ureta, and his father was the late Peruvian composer and singer Javier Zignago, known in the musical world as “Joe Danova”.