My husband spent a good bit of time there in the late 90s and early 2000s, around the time when Shining Path was at war with the government of Peru. He said that one, you could stand on the balcony of his friend's high-rise apartment and hear the bombs going off here and there, and two, eventually everyone just learned to incorporate it into their daily lives. If, for example, a restaurant where you had made reservations got firebombed, everyone would get together to figure out where to go instead, and you had to make sure you abided by the curfew or else you might end up sleeping overnight in a park.
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"To sustain the life of a large, modern city in this cloying, clinging heat is an amazing achievement. It is no wonder that the white men and women in Greenville walk with a slow, dragging pride, as if they had taken up a challenge and intended to defy it without end." -- Rebecca West for The New Yorker, 1947
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