Left behind in modern Peru, rural poor find a voice ahead of election

Puna: When Luceli Banda Medina, 21, the first woman in her family to read and write, left the poor, isolated northern Peruvian village of Puna to study nursing, she always dreamed what her life would have been like had she been born in a city.

"Why do the people of the countryside not have the same ability to study as people in the cities, who have practically everything they need?," Banda Medina, her father and mother's family names, told Reuters from her adobe house in Puna. Three generations of the Medina family - daughter, mother and grandfather - live together in the house without running water, plumbing or a hard floor. Outside low clouds hug the dark-green hills dotted with roaming chickens and horses.