Peru

Peru is a unitary semi-presidential republic in western South America, bordered by Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile along the Pacific Ocean, with Lima as its capital and largest city; at 1,285,216 square kilometers it is the nineteenth largest country in the world and the third largest in South America, organized into 25 regions. The territory hosted the Caral-Supe civilization from the tenth millennium BCE, considered one of the cradles of civilization, and later the Inca Empire, the largest known state in the pre-Columbian Americas, before Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Peru formally proclaimed independence from Spain in 1821 following military campaigns led by Jose de San Martin and Simon Bolivar, and completed its independence in 1824 after the decisive Battle of Ayacucho. With more than 34 million people, described as a megadiverse country spanning arid Pacific plains, Andean peaks and Amazon rainforest, Peru's population is about 62 percent Mestizo and 21 percent Indigenous.