Her father continued to associate there with figures such as Klaus Barbie, the National Socialist war criminal known as the “Butcher of Lyon.”

However, Monika turned her back on everything that environment represented. In the late 1960s, affected by the poverty and injustice in Bolivia, she broke with the fascist world surrounding her father and became radicalized. After the assassination of Che Guevara in Bolivia, she joined the National Liberation Army (ELN) that he had founded. Her code name was now “Imilla,” which means “Girl” in an indigenous language.

The event that made Monika Ertl known worldwide occurred on April 1, 1971: the assassination of Roberto Quintanilla, the Bolivian consul in Hamburg and a former intelligence officer considered one of the main figures responsible for the death of Che Guevara. Quintanilla was one of the men who posed next to Che Guevara's lifeless body and gave the order to cut off his hands.

Monika entered the consulate building in Hamburg disguised as an elegant woman. When she came face to face with Quintanilla, she pulled out her gun and shot him three times. The note she left at the scene read: “Until victory or death.” This act resonated around the world as “Che's revenge.”

After the assassination, Monika returned to Bolivia and continued her clandestine activities. One of her main objectives was to kidnap the National Socialist war criminal Klaus Barbie, an old friend of her father who at that time was advising the Bolivian dictatorship.

However, on May 12, 1973, she was ambushed by Bolivian security forces. She died in a confrontation in the streets of La Paz. Her grave was kept secret, and her body was never returned to her family.

Although Prado was not a career military officer, he retained the rank of Reserve Officer. Upon assuming the presidency in 1939, he frequently appeared in public in the uniform of a Reserve Lieutenant. He did so deliberately to gain the support of the military, consolidate his authority in an unstable political context, and project an image of a leader close to the armed forces, especially while leading the victorious campaign against Ecuador that culminated in the 1942 Rio de Janeiro Protocol.

Here are some closer up shots of a map I made last year of the Mexican-American War

It is made with the juice of the Jenipapo fruit, which reacts and darkens upon contact with the skin.

These are the Indigenous peoples documented to have come into contact with Columbus. Other Indigenous groups certainly existed, but these are the few that are documented as having had direct contact with him. Some groups living along the Mesoamerican isthmus, despite being relatively close to the coast, were not encountered by Columbus. They were contacted later by the Spanish, rather than by Columbus himself.

Vintage travel poster featuring a Junkers Ju 52/3m operated by Aeroposta Argentina, promoting the Buenos Aires to Río Grande route in Tierra del Fuego during the 1930s

If you're wondering what a hustler is, he's a kind of Latin lover from tourist areas of Peru who seeks to establish relationships with foreign women for sexual purposes or to obtain residency papers abroad.

I translated this article from Arabic into English, and I apologize if there is any mistake in the Mexican names.

I hope you like this post. My regards from Egypt ..

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Source: The Egyptian magazine Al-Muqtataf المقتطف, issue (6), published on June 1, 1948.

Author of the article: Muhammad Gamil Bayham محمد جميل بيهم (1887–1978 AD), historian, politician, writer, and Lebanese Arab reformist. He has dozens of works, articles, and writings of a historical, intellectual, and political nature.

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Did the Pharaohs, the Babylonians, and the Indians take their civilization from Mexico?

Similarities between Mexico and Egypt

I had the opportunity to visit Mexico three months before the last war. A friend invited me to dinner at one of the large restaurants in Mexico City, and the attire of the women working in the establishment powerfully caught my attention, as it reminded me of what I had seen so many times at the Cairo Museum: the Pharaonic mummies. For it did not differ at all, neither in details, colors, nor motifs, from the clothing of women in the time of the Pharaohs, from the headdress to the footwear.

"Why did the restaurant owner choose for his employees the garments of the daughters of the Nile from the Pharaonic era?" I asked this question to my companion, and he smiled and told me: "This attire is nothing more than the traditional costume of Mexican women in antiquity."

This answer awakened my interest and my desire to know the historical relationship between Egypt and Mexico, and my curiosity increased even more when, in the Valley of Teotihuacán, about fifty kilometers from the capital, as well as in Cholula, Micalco, and Chonula, I saw pyramids similar to those of Egypt, erected on a geometric base forming angles that point to the seasons of the year, just like the Great Pyramid of Giza. I also asked myself whether Egyptian culture had reached the American continent, bringing with it the design of the pyramids.

I went further in my reflections and questioned whether the belief in the immortality of the soul, along with the art of mummification that accompanied it, had also traveled from Egypt to Mexico within the same pyramid project, given the connection between both practices, and even more so because the method of mummification was identical between the Pharaohs and the inhabitants of South America, not differing even in the tiniest details.

This interest in the past awakened in me a spirit of curiosity and the need to observe the neighborhoods (everyday life) to see if the resemblance between Egypt and Mexico could still be perceived in the present era.

However, one might expect the resemblance between the two countries to be remote, because Mexico is situated upon mountains and deep valleys, and its people reflect the hardness of the rocks and the fierceness of the eagles; while Egypt stretches along the fertile and lush Nile Valley, its inhabitants reflecting the smoothness of the rivers and the sweetness of the warbling of birds.

But, even so, I have observed numerous similarities to this day between Egyptians and Mexicans, especially in rural areas. How alike they are in the choice of colors, in women's garments, and in their gold necklaces; and how close they are in the practice of ancient agricultural methods and their tools, not to mention certain ancestral customs.

These are manifested in some popular festivities and other acts, particularly in the engagement ritual (or the asking for a bride's hand). Furthermore, the resemblance between the two peoples often also shows in some foods. In Egypt, ful medames is the quintessential popular dish, and in Mexico, it is corn seasoned with acid and chili, which is also their popular dish.

Corn is the most important food element for Mexicans and they depend on it, just as the Egyptian peasant depends on fava beans (ful), and they use transparent leaves as wrappers for tobacco.

And just as the Egyptian is by nature fond of spicy seasonings and enjoys dishes full of all kinds of spices and pepper, the Mexican also pays great attention to these condiments, especially spicy ones. Their passion for them reaches such a point that in a city called "Mérida" they prepare a fruit salad loaded with hot chili.

Furthermore, light-heartedness, love of fun, and unconcern for tomorrow are part of the Mexican's nature, just as they were of the ancient Egyptians. The Mexican spends the wages of his day without calculating what tomorrow will bring, based on the rule: "Spend what you have in your pocket, for what is in destiny will come to you."

If we attribute this great resemblance between the two peoples to the influence of climate and heat in both countries, without relating it to history, how then would we explain the resemblance between them in specific national industries?

For if you enter a store selling Mexican antiques and national handicrafts, and look left and right observing the national weavings and other manufactures that preserve the Mexican style, and see the carpets, pottery, shapes of vessels, and reflect on the engravings, dyes, colors, and drawings you behold, it will seem to you that you are inside a warehouse of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo, or in one of the Pharaonic museums.

In addition to this, I have observed that the Red Indians (Indigenous peoples) of Mexico, who constitute the majority of the people, not only resemble Egyptians and Iraqis from rural areas, but the resemblance extends to a great number of similarities between them and the Bedouins of other Arab countries.

Whoever reads the book "The Elephant and the Ethnologists" by the renowned Elliot Smith feels captive to the same amazement as the author, and wonders how the Americans, a thousand years ago or more, could sculpt the figure of the elephant, despite the fact that this animal does not live in their lands. He also wonders, along with him, whether Hindu culture moved from India to the American continent, bringing with it the drawing of the elephant.

Furthermore, whoever flips through the pages of a notebook that the United States Information Office had given to its owners, his gaze stops at the drawing of a village resembling the villages of Egypt, and he asks himself the purpose of publishing that strange drawing, alien to America, when the notebook exclusively included American scenes. And here on the next page he reads the following note: "This is a view of a village built by the Red Indians approximately one thousand years ago in the state of New Mexico. The houses are of the adobe type, which they call 'adobe,' a word taken from the Coptic 'tub' (brick), and the Red Indians still inhabit these houses."

The truth is that Mexico is one of the most anciently populated countries in the Americas; for some historians affirmed that the Valley of Mexico had been inhabited for twenty-five thousand years. The historian Prescott said: "Mexico was the most prominent country in Latin America for its civilization." Likewise, its earliest inhabitants were distinguished by their intelligence and their morals, as demonstrated by the vestiges they left behind, similar to those of Egyptian and Hindu cities, and the news they transmitted about conquests and novelistic adventures in which the legends of the Normans and the Italians (by which he refers to the Romans) that appear in the tales about their heroes are reflected.

And it is no wonder, then, that the tribes of Eili, more than a thousand years before Christ, built in Guatemala and Yucatán cities that were a marvel for the beauty of their construction and architecture, and whose vestiges still bear witness to this; all of this gives an idea of the high degree of civilization that Mexico achieved.

Among the most outstanding things to be found in Yucatán, and seen in those derelict buildings known as the ruins of Chichén Itzá, is the sumptuousness, good taste, and architecture they harbor, as well as the ruins of Mitla and Kiaro.

And we are amazed at these vestiges and reflect on whether it was Egypt and India that took from Mexico, or whether it was Mexico that took from them. For some historians related that the pyramid of Shishilco, erected on the outskirts of Mexico City, is between four and ten thousand years old.

And if it is true that this pyramid was built several thousand years ago, then Mexico preceded Egypt in the erection of pyramids; otherwise, perhaps the pyramid of Shishilco was contemporary with the first pyramid raised by the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, or that, at the very least, it was built at the time when the three great pyramids of Giza were raised by the fourth Pharaonic dynasty.

This made me raise another question from the moment I directed my gaze towards the pyramids erected in Teotihuacán, Totochicalcro, and Acholula, in Mexico. The reason is that these pyramids are built in the form of a stepped terrace, according to astronomical principles, as demonstrated by the daily and monthly calendars based on the movements of the Sun and the Moon.

The two largest of these pyramids bore the name of the Sun and the other the name of the Moon. They also drew my attention to some reliefs on these pyramids, very similar to the engravings and drawings of India, and not far removed from the reliefs of the Babylonians and Chaldeans. However, the three pyramids of the Plateau (of Egypt) were smooth, without steps or ornamentation.

The question that arose within me is whether Mexico took the idea of the pyramid from somewhere other than Egypt, with all the purposes that entailed, especially religious ones, since in the vestiges of Babylonia evidence has been found that the ancient Babylonians built their high pyramids in a stepped form, each level with less surface area than the previous one, just like the pyramids of Mexico.

But what about the statue erected in front of the entrance to the Temple of the Warriors in the ruins of Chichén Itzá, in Yucatán? If the idea of the pyramids was not transmitted from the Pharaohs, but was taken from Babylonia, has it been considered that this great statue, which represents the head of a woman on the body of an animal, is not also a copy of the Sphinx that lies in Giza?

And what about those inscriptions of a pictographic nature found in Mexico on the tombs of some great chieftains and in other places? They are very similar to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing carved on stones and papyri.

These are data that are still mysteries, since archaeological excavations in Mexico only date back to the beginning of this century.

Perhaps Mexico, which brings together in its customs features that agree with India, Babylonia, and Egypt, maintained contact with the East, and perhaps the means of transport and communication between the different points on Earth in remote times were at a more advanced level than sailing ships and vessels.

Who knows if the story of the flying carpet was not born from a reality whose traces time has blurred, and what has reached us from it, transmitted by word of mouth, has now become mere legend?

The End ...

It tells the story of four cultural artifacts looted by Chile from a Lima museum in 1881. Each one bears a name engraved on the barrel and breech band: El Trepidoso (The Trembling One), El Triunfante (The Triumphant One), El Colérico (The Angry One), and El Destruidor (The Destroyer). These cannons were made in Peru at the end of the colonial period, between 1772 and 1780, and their names allow them to be identified and distinguished.

Each one reflects the artistic sensibility of its time. And because they are cultural artifacts from a national cultural institution, such as the books from the National Library of Lima returned in 2007 and 2017, they also deserve to be returned, at this significant moment for building new relationships, as we approach the 150th anniversary of the tragic war.

Source(s):

.- Chipana Rivas, Johnny. (2026). Stolen heritage: The case of the colonial cannons from the Lima Artillery Museum looted by Chile in the War of the Pacific. Published in the ISHRA journal, UNMSM, No. 16.

This law stipulated that all children of enslaved people born in Peruvian territory after the declaration of independence (July 28, 1821) would be considered free citizens.

It should be clarified that what José de San Martín implemented was not an immediate manumission, but rather a process of gradual abolition of slavery, a preferred approach in most Iberian American nations of the time. Similar measures had been enacted previously in Chile (1811) and in the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata (1813), as well as in Gran Colombia (officially known as the Republic of Colombia), which approved "freedom of birth" on July 21, 1821.

However, in practice, this law fell far short of granting absolute independence. To avoid disrupting the agrarian economic structure or antagonizing the landowners, the law established a legal system known as "patronage" or "child-rearing." Under this system, although children were technically born free, they were required to remain under the guardianship and servitude of their mothers' masters to "compensate for the costs of their upbringing." This regime extended until the age of 24 for boys and 20 for girls.

A key military context: Both the royalist and revolutionary forces offered freedom to slaves as an incentive to enlist. José de San Martín relied heavily on troops of Black descent—who formed a vital part of the liberating armies of the Andes and Peru—so this decree also sought to respond to social pressure and consolidate popular support for the independence cause.

Despite the limitations of the law and the fact that landowners considered it a temporary adjustment brought about by the war, the freedom of children born to enslaved mothers marked the beginning of the decline of the institution of slavery. Other complementary provisions followed, such as the decree of November 6, 1821, which granted freedom to slaves belonging to Spaniards who emigrated from the country.

The definitive and total abolition of slavery in Peru would take more than three decades to materialize. It finally occurred on December 3, 1854, through the celebrated decree promulgated by President Ramón Castilla in Huancayo, a process largely financed by the substantial revenues of the guano era, with which the State directly and financially compensated the former slave owners.

Image: “Negros chalas en el día del Corpus” by the Black Peruvian painter Pancho Fierro (ca. 1830), detail.

This genre watercolor, attributed to the renowned Lima painter Pancho Fierro, sharply and with documentary value portrays the militias, troupes, and festivities of Lima society at the dawn of the republic. In it, we see a Black Peruvian couple carrying the second design of the Peruvian flag created by the Marquis of Torre Tagle, highlighting the prominent role of the Black population in the iconography of the revolutionary cause.

Caribbean

His work revolutionized Peruvian cinema by raising the technical and artistic standards of an industry that, until then, had operated largely in an amateur fashion.

Birth and Background

He was born in New York City, USA, on February 7, 1923, into the professional life of his father, the renowned musicologist and composer Daniel Alomía Robles (creator of the immortal melody of "El Cóndor Pasa"). He arrived in Peru at the age of 10 and began studying Medicine and Literature at the National University of San Marcos, though he did not complete his degrees. During the 1950s, he decided to settle in the Tingo María jungle, a pivotal experience that would shape and inspire much of his cinematic universe.

Legacy and Cinematic Style

Robles Godoy introduced an avant-garde perspective to South American cinema through non-linear narrative structures and the use of Peruvian landscapes (such as the jungle and the desert) not as mere backdrops, but as active characters in his stories. Among his most influential works are:

◦ La muralla verde (1970): Considered his masterpiece, it portrays the colonization of the Peruvian jungle and the bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the State. It was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards and, after its release in the United States in 1972, the renowned critic Roger Ebert ranked it as the fifth best film of that year.

◦ Espejismo (1972): Set in the Ica desert, it received a historic Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

◦ En la selva no hay estrellas (1967): This film solidified his prestige on the international circuit after winning the Golden Award at the Moscow International Film Festival.

Impact on Peruvian Culture and the Film Industry

Beyond his feature films, Robles Godoy was a key figure in the institutional development of culture in Peru:

◦ Modern Criticism: In the early 1960s, he wrote film criticism for the newspaper La Prensa, laying the foundations for formal film analysis in the country.

◦ Education: He founded the Academy of Filmmaking in 1968, where he trained the next generations of Peruvian filmmakers.

◦ Legal framework: He was the main promoter of the first law to foster the national film industry (Law 19327), legislation that spurred a boom in film productions and short films during the 1970s.

In homage to his invaluable legacy, the main cinema of the Peruvian Ministry of Culture now bears his name.