In 2004 when anti-terrorism and readiness grants appropriated by Congress to the states had reached a multibillion-dollar height, what was then known as the House Select Committee on Homeland Security issued a scathing report that said much of the money had been spent without local recipients knowing what their emergency-response needs were.
In the mountains of Peru, a smokestack towers over a bustling city of one-room tin houses, where women carry babies on their backs and hang laundry to dry in the wind.