New York Times
29 October 2014
By WILLIAM NEUMAN
AREQUIPA, Peru — The locals here call it the Iron
Bridge, a narrow, graceful span across the Chili River with pale green garlic
fields below and the cleft-topped Misti volcano rising above it in the
distance. Travel books, tour guides and residents all proudly point to the
bridge, a fluent expression of the Industrial Revolution, as the work of
Gustave Eiffel, the 19th-century French engineer who built the Eiffel Tower and
designed the iron skeleton inside the Statue of Liberty.
Except that it is not. And neither are a great many other
bridges and buildings around Peru and the rest of South America that are
popularly attributed to the famous Frenchman. […]
