Slideshow: Pisco earthquake anniversary

Welcome to Venezuela Street, Peru. The rows of pristine white plastic houses and manicured green lawns were built as a gift to 100 families from Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's leftist president, following the 8-point earthquake that destroyed up to 75,000 homes in the Pisco region, south of the capital of Lima, on August 15 2007

Milagros Collagos Olavarria, 25, won her house by lottery in the suburb Mr Chávez named after Simón Bolívar, the hero of Latin America's independence wars with Spain. "It's like Miami," said one aid worker of the small suburb. "I am very happy, life is much, much better than before," said Ms Collagos

A community of flimsy chipboard dwellings by the side of the Pan-American Highway outside Pisco contrasts with the Chávez houses

Firefighters work on a collapsed church in Pisco in the aftermath of the quake in 2007

Ruins of a colonial church on the main square of Pisco today. The town, on Peru’s central coast, south of the capital, Lima, is a fishing and agricultural port, famous for its eponymous white brandy that forms the basis of the nation's favourite cocktail, a pisco sour. The quake's epicentre was just offshore.

Citizens clean up and remove debris in Pisco following the earthquake which killed more than 500 people and devastated whole towns

Jimmy Aicho Romero, 31, and Victor Salas Anchante, 30, tour guides, standing outside similar ruins two years later. Both men lost their homes in the quake, but neither have received the government’s promised direct subsidy of 6,000 soles (about $US2,000) for rebuilding. “There is always much more help for Ica. Ica is beautiful and there is nothing for Pisco,” says Salas Anchante.

Pisco's police headquarters on its main square is still a tent, two years after the quake.

A glimpse of portacabins inside the newly built hospital in Pisco

Emilio del Solar, mayor of Chincha Baja, a small rural community north of Pisco, says 95 per cent of the largely rural population had adobe houses that collapsed, along with half the town's schools, colleges and public buildings. Three days after the quake Tacna [a region south of Pisco] sent six earth-moving machines and the people to operate them. They stayed for eight months. It must have cost a mountain of money. They helped us very much. Aside from that our most important friends have been the NGOs: many from Spain, Peru, Italy, the Red Cross, Belgium, Canada, Germany and the US."

Rocio Huarjua, 23, lives in Centro Mancea, a village between Chincha and Pisco in which every house was destroyed. She and her two daughters live in a temporary hut that lets in water and holds very little heat. "I am still waiting for the famous bond [a direct government subsidy for rebuilding]," she says.

Mamaine, a chef and community leader in the Afro-Peruvian barrio of El Carmen, says communities have pulled together and are better prepared for disaster now

A farmer drives past a billboard advertising construction projects that are part of the fiscal stimulus package announced by Alan Garcia, president of Peru, to counteract the international financial crisis

Adobe bricks, strengthened with dried fronds of rice plants, lie in the sun drying

A plastic netting commonly used in road construction is a key part of a fast, simple but effective technique developed by Lima's Catholic University after the earthquake to build seismic-resistant adobe huts

Children in Centro Mancea, south of Chincha, play in front of one of the new adobe huts being built south of Chincha. The plastic tags mortared between adobe bricks are used to attach the plastic netting tightly

Mercedes Julca Urtiz and Roberto Ambia Almeyda with their three sons, Roberto, 12; Joel Alexander, 10; and Enrique, 9 in the community of Santa Catalina. A fourth son, Angel David, four months, is resting inside the family's new home. Their community provided labour to rebuild 36 houses that were destroyed in the quake, with assistance from Care Peru and Banmat, the Peruvian state bank. "My children have a lot of fear of tremors," says Julca Urtiz. "They had nightmares for a long time afterwards. Almost a month ago we had big tremor and they imagined it was happening again. But here they were much more secure. They don't have to leave the house."

Two of the finished houses at Santa Catalina. "Everyone worked, even children and old people," Roberto Almeyda, resident, says of the project

Jaccqueline Ramirez, days away from moving with her daughter Akemy into her new earthquake-resistant adobe home she helped build. "We are not frustrated, because if we give in to that feeling we cannot advance. We are working to build lives again."