Pursuits
Peru’s New President Knows Leprosy, Coups and Terrifying Escapes
- At 77, Kuczynski is one of the region’s oldest elected leaders
- He is frank, easygoing, trilingual and very self-sufficient
This article is for subscribers only.
As a boy, he lived with his family in the Peruvian Amazon where his father ran a leper colony, a chimp served Scotch in the evening and the language of the house was French.
When he was 30 and working as a top official of Peru’s central bank, a general carried out a coup and called him in, laid a pistol on the desk and demanded access to the country’s stash of dollars. Unwilling to comply, he was imprisoned but escaped, wading through neck-high water into Ecuador, walking and riding a donkey for three weeks.