Cows on parade in Lima

Some years ago, fiberglass cows started showing up in cities around the world. The first ones were developed by a Swiss fellow interested in promoting the dairy industry. The concept moved to the US in 1999, where a Chicago businessman acquired the rights and used the cow sculptures as a big fund-raising activity. The cows are painted and named by local artists or groups, then sold at auction with the proceeds going to designated charities.

In DC, we never had the cows, but we had our own versions: first, the party animals, which were decorated donkeys and elephants, followed by the painted pandas.

I think it would have been really fun if for the Peruvian version of this perfectly wonderful activity they'd come up with colorful "cuy" (guinea pigs) or painted camelids (taking their pick of alpaca, llama, or even the wild little vicuna). But no one asked me.

I've read that there are about 80 of the Cows on Parade scattered around Lima. I've seen only a fraction of them. Here are a few:

These cows are all from the Plaza Bolivar in the Pueblo Libre neighborhood of Lima. The National Museum of Anthropology and Archeology is located on this square, as is the house in which Simon Bolivar lived.

This cow is made up of small photos of people holding up glasses of milk. Interestingly, you can't buy much fresh milk here in Lima. It's primarily available in the long-term-conservation format, packaged in rectangular cartons.

The blue skies, green hills, and smiling people depicted on this cow are a bit utopian. Peru is not really cow-raising country. Most of the land is not suitable for it, unlike those vast expanses of grassland in Argentina or Uruguay. Along the desert coast, you mainly see people raising chickens (they taste a bit fishy because they are fed fish meal). In the highlands, there are some cows and cattle, but they can be pretty scrawny. And its not an animal you see in the Amazon (which covers 2/3 of the country). There are big dairy farms in the northern part of the country, evidently. Otherwise, the livestock of choice are fish (ocean varieties, river trout, and exotic ones from the Amazon), alpaca, chicken, and guinea pigs.

In the background, behind this cow sculpture, there was a pair of young men with 2 afghan dogs plus another lap dog. They were sitting in front of Simon Bolivar's bust and gave the scene an unusually NYC-ish feel.