Indigenous Ways in Peru: Postcards from Students

The freedom of movement, which is guaranteed to me (and you) by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is wonderful to have. Because of it, I was able to leave the United States and enter Peru and then travel all around Peru. But this human right only applies to movement between and within nations. What about between and within private properties? What about within the commons? I would think about this a lot during our trip.

Our trip itinerary was organized around museums, buildings, artifacts, and archaeological ruins, but one of the most impressive things I experienced on this trip was the variegated and quickly changing landscape as we moved from place to place. I remember looking at Machu Picchu after the fog completely cleared, able to see and appreciate the whole thing, and thinking, Well, it’s kind of more of the same. What I did find worthy of waking up at four in the morning was the location and the views that came with it. The manipulated and natural landscape was a highlight for me on this trip. We traveled from sea-level to 12,000 feet. One hour our tired feet would be shuffling on the cobblestone streets in the bustling downtown of Lima, the next hour they would be climbing sandy hills in the desert, the next hour they would be sinking in the sand in the cool Pacific Ocean. One minute you could be descending and slipping down the terraces on the face of a mountain, the next you could be on the steps of a magnificent altar, neck craned, eyes on Our Lady of Los Remedios.

I gave my in-country presentation on the changing concepts of land and land ownership on top of Pachamama (which means “Mother Earth” in Quechua), a mountain on Amantaní Island in Lake Titicaca, as the sun went down. I wondered if the beautiful view behind me of the lake and other surrounding islands served as a contrast to the ugly practice of privatizing common resources, the audacious idea that one could ever own a part of Mother Earth, which is a notion that is not only common in the capitalist world but is embedded in its institutions.

Sapci, or the commons

The earliest concept of land use and possession was under the framework of a word called sapci. Sapci is a word that best translates to the commons. The commons could refer to any and all resources, including land, water, minerals, and guano among other things. Under the framework of sapci, anyone could have rightful claim to a resource if they were using it fruitfully and without waste.[1] So, to claim and have a piece of land, one must cultivate the land.

To us, this concept initially appears as a foreign one. The first question to arise would be, how does one register and defend their possession of a resource is anyone is free to take and use it? Some communities have records of a ritual surrounding the claiming of land in order to “register” it. One example is the coastal community of Lambayeque, which dates back to the late 16th century. If someone was claiming a piece of land that had a known history of previous possessors, the new family made offerings and sacrifices to their memory before beginning to cultivate. They would name all the tillers of a piece of land that they could in chronological order in order to “register” their possession.[2] Some families placed stones in the middle of the fields which represented past tillers to which current tillers presented offerings and sacrifices for a successful and abundant harvest.[3] This practice shows the intimate relationship between Andeans and the land through its emphasis on paying respects to previous tillers and caretakers. It particularly reminds me of the western theology of stewardship that says that humans are responsible for taking care of the environment. The valuing of earth and its resources is a constant, but it is expressed in different ways among cultures.

One’s right to the land that they cultivate continues until it is given up. This could be for several reasons, including, but not limited to, the infertility of the land, drought, and death without heirs, in which case the land eventually reverts to its natural state, available for another family to claim and cultivate. With the understanding of sapci, rather than owning land, one cultivates and takes care of it.

The erosion of sapci

During the colonial era, the concept of sapci was challenged. Andeans slowly began to lose land. The encomienda system had a devastating impact on the commons. The combination of the exploitation of indigenous laborers and the introduction of diseases led to a severe depopulation which the Spaniards mistakenly or willingly understood as the vacancy of lands. They used as grazing pastures where the land was suited and grew livestock on these “unused” lands, encroaching on indigenous livelihoods. These Spaniards would transition into the first settlers. There is evidence to suggest that encomenderos intentionally kept their laborers from working their own land.

“…1541, encomenderos kept their charges so busy that they had no time to plant and (in the long run) lost their fields, and that Spaniards took the lands of dead natives (to the chagrin and suffering of their families).”

Ramirez, Susan E. (2016) “Land and Tenure in Early Colonial Peru: Individualizing the Sapci, “That Which is Common to All”,” The Medieval Globe: Vol. 2 : No. 2 , Article 4, 44.

During this time period, the colonies collected a tribute tax levied only on indigenous communities which was to be paid in commodities such as foodstuffs and, later, partially in cash. The result of the tribute tax on land enclosures was that the foodstuff contributions of the indigenous communities controlled the Spaniards’ demand for agricultural land, which in turn controlled some of the land enclosures. However, enclosures of the commons would be encouraged and accelerated after Peru’s independence.

The exploits of Liberalism

In the mid-19th century, a caudillo by the name of Ramón Castilla became president in the emerging young nation of Peru. In 1854, Castilla abolished the tribute tax. He said:

“…starting in 1855 the indigenous contribution is suppressed, and thenceforth they will not contribute except in the same way that the rest of the inhabitants of Peru do…Emancipated from the humiliating tribute imposed upon its head three and half centuries ago, and elevated by the natural effect of civilization, Peru will gain a numerous and productive population in the indigenous race, which will undoubtedly offer her a richer contribution.”

Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University Press 1997), 52.

Castilla was hailed for emancipating the indigenous population of Peru, for lifting the unfair tribute tax, for treating Andeans as Peruvians equal before the law. This was the liberal revolution, a dream to be fulfilled. On paper, it upheld and embodied all of the liberal ideals that Peru needed to instill. However, Castilla and his succeeding liberal presidents failed to follow through on this change. They failed to successfully implement alternatives to the tribute tax, a universal taxation plan that would pass congress and also last. But Lima could not control the politics of the hinterlands.

Landlords took advantage of Lima’s decentralized control and successfully enclosed commons, dispossessing many Andeans of land. This created a landless indigenous peasantry population searching for work. Landlords took advantage of the indentured indigenous labor. The liberal state also encouraged leasing out community lands and expropriated Church properties, increasing enclosure pressures on peasant communities.[5] Thus, the system of paying tribute to the state was replaced by a system of tribute to landowners as they enclosed land and charged fees for access and use.[6] It was often the case that indigenous people that were made landless by the enclosure ended up working on the same fields that they used to work, but for their landlords.

Peru’s leaders believed that the new nation could strengthen its economy if they passed policies to maximize productivity. It was the liberal stance to believe, like we in the capitalist system do, that the way to do this was to encourage the private ownership of resources. They took no issue with incorporating the indigenous population into the “productive population,” as Castilla said.

Dead capital?

Fast-forwarding to today, we see the impacts of the neoliberal vision playing out on modern Peru.  Raised and educated in Switzerland, Hernando de Soto Polar, Peru’s most well-known economist, coined the term “dead capital,” which is the concept that informally held property is less valuable than property that is legally recognized. There is an immediate tension between this reasoning and the philosophy behind sapci. It is a dismissal of the value of the commons and traditional indigenous conceptions of land. Implied in the definition of dead capital is that value is determined according to what is legible to institutions. This further excludes marginalized communities.

De Soto supports his theory by arguing that the best way to protect indigenous land rights is for them to secure title to their lands. The land and property of indigenous people is protected under the Peruvian constitution, but de Soto does not believe that this holds up under the pressure of foreign investors. However, though there is plenty of empirical evidence that securing private property leads to capital accumulation, there is no empirical evidence that it defends land rights.

One example of how land rights have been plowed over by foreign companies is the story of the resettlement of Morococha by the Chinese mining company Chinalco. Chinalco built a new town for the resettlement of Morococha, a site of a large copper deposit, and has tried to incentivize those who refuse to move with quotes for buildings and other property, but not for the land, and certainly not for the profitable minerals underneath the surface.[7] In this situation, the company is able to completely ignore and refuse to recognize the land ownership rights of the residents with impunity. This is among the biggest copper mining projects in Peru, slated to expand on a budget of $1.36 billion USD. Lima will never take the side of the few remaining families in Old Morococha over Chinalco, and it is very easy within Peru’s institutions to transfer ownership of land. The company cited two laws to take ownership of 34 hectares that previously belonged to the municipality of Morococha.[8] One was a statute that barred land ownership in high-risk areas. The other declared that owners shall not have a say in any expropriations that the government deems necessary and that all housing in hazardous areas are uninhabitable.

Hernando de Soto Polar’s argument that if one has the right to land ownership it will be recognized by extractive companies and left alone is flawed because it does not take into account the strength of the legal institutions of Peru and the obvious and severe inclination of the Peruvian government to support decisions and policymaking that facilitate foreign direct investment. However, the Peruvian government benefits from individual land ownership because this makes land easier to buy and sell and therefore easier to consolidate. The ease of consolidation of land is good for foreign investors and more attractive to them than the idea of fighting indigenous communities for the commons. If we want to defend indigenous land rights, we should find ways to defend the commons, not split them up into individual plots.

One grave problem with depicting privatization as a cure-all is that it frames capitalism as a saving or liberating system for indigenous people. I argue that this could not be further from the truth. De Soto sees migration to shantytowns on the edges of Lima and praises it as a step that is part of upward mobility for Andeans. He believes that these slums are paragons of entrepreneurial hubs that are only held back by their informality.

Peru has chosen foreign direct investment as its primary avenue of development. The government is inclined to take the side of companies when there are disputes over what belongs to indigenous communities. During the trip, we observed a lot of signs in Chinese as well as many Chifa restaurants, which served Cantonese-Peruvian fusion cuisine. The restaurants indicated an existing Chinese-Peruvian demographic. These were a few of the examples of how Peru encourages Chinese foreign direct investment.

When people are asked to think about how indigenous people adapt to or practice capitalism and “western” ideas, they often point to the tourism industry and the commodification of their cultures and cultural exchanges. The issue of land ownership is not an obvious one to point to. But during our second week, the class was asked to read “Andean Translations: New Age and Cultural Exchange in the Sacred Valley” by Macarena Gomez-Barris. From this article, we learned how tourism and the issue of land ownership intersect. The influx of non-nationals in the tourism industry drives up the property values out of the reach of people who actually live in the area. This has occurred in the Sacred Valley with Q’ero communities; as foreigners from North America and Europe buy up property in the valley, Q’eros are both figuratively and literally being pushed to the margins.

Closing thoughts

The Q’ero story is one of a tragic contradiction. Our freedom of movement as tourists denies the freedom of movement of Q’eros in their own home country. It is true that this is the result of many layers of interlocking gears of problematic mechanisms and systems and histories of colonialism and neo-imperialism. But in this increasingly globalizing world, it can be difficult to see the relations between our actions and their impacts on someone else.

The commons is for all, and the privatization of the commons should alarm anyone who enjoys their freedom of movement. From sapci to “dead capital,” we have seen how the freedom of movement of indigenous peoples has slowly been chipped away in Peru. For the tourist, the freedom of movement is about getting through customs, and this freedom is granted (usually) without any hesitation. For many people in Peru, however, the freedom of movement is about access to life-giving resources, access to land, and for some, the right not to be removed from your home, and this freedom is oftentimes denied. I wonder what Pachamama would think about this injustice.

I am not saying one should never leave the country again to be a tourist somewhere because, unfortunately, that would make no difference. What could make a difference, however, is to know about the commons, to take care of them, to defend them, and lastly, to be grateful for them from time to time.

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References

[1] Ramirez, Susan E. (2016) “Land and Tenure in Early Colonial Peru: Individualizing the Sapci, “That Which is Common to All”,” The Medieval Globe: Vol. 2 : No. 2 , Article 4, 38.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[5] Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University Press 1997), 52.

[6] Thurner, 44.

[7] Gonzalo Torrico December 5, 2018. “The Chinese Mining Giant and the Ghost Town.” Dialogo Chino. ChinaDialogue, August 30, 2019. https://dialogochino.net/15576-the-chinese-mining-giant-and-the-ghost-town/.

[8] Ibid.

By: Katie Strickland

Prior to our first pre-departure meeting for the “Indigenous Ways in Peru” Honors Passport Study Abroad, the Inkas and their associated empire were almost a myth to me: a mystical entity that, while bearing truth in its being, was also associated in my mind with visions of adventurous grandeur, lost paradises, and Indiana Jones-esque sentiments of legend and lore. Sixth grade world history had informed me of Francisco Pizarro’s seemingly effortless conquest of the last Inka Atahualpa and his empire holdings at the time. Movies such as The Emperor’s New Groove caricatured the Inka into a kid-friendly story, cartooning the dynamics of the Andes. While Western power phenomenon such as the Roman Empire and the British monarchy were definitive, nuanced institutions, the Inkans formed almost a blob in my mind’s mental history: a blob with hazy edges, yet somehow featuring a collage of textbook images of stone terraces, feather headdresses, and Machu Picchu. Mystery was crafted through ignorance like a heavy-hanging fog over a ruin.

Just as my lack of knowledge played into the initial obscurity of the Inka, it also led to an all-too-easy oversimplification of the empire as we began to try to conceptualize the empire in history. On one end of a power dichotomy, the Inka were a strong people and a robust institution. Covering land now spanning multiple countries in South America along the coast of the Pacific Ocean, the Inkas were not people to me: they were a monolith of power, defined by their conquests both physically and politically and with origins as mystical to me as their current existence. Opposing this image of Inkan might was the other end of the dichotomy, on which features a weak and sickly empire which readily falls to the Western brains and brawn of conquistador Francisco Pizarro (whose name is mainly remembered by middle school history students due to its resemblance to a popular food item). In the face of European adversity, the Inka were to be relatively unable to defend themselves, depicted by many as the culmination of a longer process of deterioration of the Inkan Empire. Its dissolution was merely inevitable, with its conquering being seen as a natural process of the organic political process.

Either evaluation of the Inka leaves much to the reader’s imagination as it oversimplifies the true nature of the empire’s existence, an empire whose descendants still assign relevance and meaning to even today. One of our jobs historically when entering this endeavor was to find the complex, thoughtful, and layered middle ground between two ill-defined poles of thought. Who really were the Inka and how does their identity then, both as a people and as an empire, continue to hold relevance for indigenous peoples, particularly those of Peru, now?

In my humble opinion, I believe Pachacamac, one of, if not the most, important Andean and eventually Inkan ceremonial centers in the empire, is the key to revealing and understanding this aforementioned complexity of the Inkas. It is here that we see how indigeneity has roots and finds its application, even without people, homes, or physical ways of life being present there.To many now (or at least to many in our group when our bus pulled into the site’s parking lot), Pachacamac looks like a bunch of dirt moved and shaped into indistinguishable slopes and platforms. The only shade you would be finding here was provided by your own hand, in many instances. Yet, this sandbox holds the key to understanding the strategy of the Inka, the political mind which allowed them to build their empire as quickly as they did, and it lays out how those same attitudes and strategies are still present in indigenous life today.

In order to fully understand how dirt can really have meaning, I must first go back and give a grand, swooshing overview of how the Inka themselves built their empire, framing Pachacamac in the proper context it belongs in: a powerful exception to many of the conventions utilized by the Inka. So, without further ado, allow me to present my brief, hopefully comical (*please laugh*) guide to Inkan empire building!

Katie’s Guide to Building an Empire: Inka Edition

Purpose in People

In building an empire, it is indeed important to consider military strategy, the amount of weapons you have stockpiled, all of the logistics that actually go into the physical act of conquest. However, if you do not have the manpower necessary to intimidate people into surrender or engage them in conflict if they do not, then the empire you are building will consist of only one thing: yourself. 

So, the linchpin to your empire’s formation, what functions as both your greatest strength and most volatile variable, are the people you are able to recruit to your cause. People need to be inspired to leave their jobs and follow you, convinced that the purpose you are fighting for is one worth rallying themselves around and putting their literal lives on the line for. 

For the Inka, that purpose was “Tawantinsuyu,” meaning “Land of the Four Quarters” or “Realm of the Four Parts.” This word was more an idea, an idea of a Inkan empire whose space had meaning. Almost like a South American manifest destiny, the idealization of the physical space of the empire gave any soldiers who joined the Inkan cause, whether they had volunteered or had been initially conquered and then forced into service, a ‘something’ to fight for, a something that was physical and was quantifiable. This idea of Tawantinsuyu, or a united land for the Inka, still lasts as a rallying cry to this day for Inka nationalists, an emblem of a time where the Inka Empire traversed current state boundaries in its empire’s mighty height of being. 

If I don’t sound like a business professor by this point, with talks of employee morale and buying into the product you’re investing in (in this case, the empire), than something is wrong. While the Inka were working in a much different setting of both time and place than today, the variable of people and the tendencies/instincts of humanity (i.e. tendency towards community, towards the most beneficial side of a cost-benefit analysis, and towards a purpose and cause which they believe in) have remained relatively constant.

The Myth of the Conqueror

When I say the word conquest, what idea comes to your mind? Is it two opposing armies meeting on a field in battle formation, waiting with bated breath for hand-to-hand bloodshed to ensue? Or is it of a town on fire, with a mysterious conqueror on a horse watching over from a ridge, flag rippling in hand?  Whatever you imagine, the basic themes probably involve, in no particular order: chaos, violence, blood, and decimation. 

Remember my quick spiel about getting people to buy in to your empire, allowing them to believe in your purpose? Destroying someone’s village and livelihood in a conquest is no way to breed good will and inspiration among a people; in fact, all you are doing is sowing seeds of discourse which will eventually sprout into branches of resistance, rooted throughout your holdings. 

The Inka recognized this fatal trap for their empire, a recognition which allowed them to gain most of their land holdings and complete most of their conquering effectively within the span of thirty years, crafting Tawantinsuyu over the course of one century. Instead of a blanket sweep of violence, the Inka became sparing with their sword, discarding the myth that a conqueror had to be brutal and senseless. Rather, the Inka ‘read the crowd’ and catered to the audience they were trying to subdue, resulting in three distinct approaches to empire-building which were designed to fit the specific situations they were encountering in other communities. Just as a Lego house can only be built sturdily with the different pieces which fit each other specifically, so too could a community only be acquired through the proper techniques to fit that specific, unique group of people. The Inka were like Play-Doh, molding themselves into various models to be effective. In this way, the mystical monolith of the Inka, the two-dimensional version depicted in world history textbooks, gains depth and complexity through the recognition that the Inka weren’t just blind forces moving across wide swathes of now-South America. They were calculating, they were strategic, and they were effective; and, the ways in which they achieved their goals, honoring Tawantinsuyu, reflects that.

Cutting out the Cancer

When doctors encounter a malignant cancerous tumor in a patient, the first and most pressing operation to perform is an excision. Malignant tumors have the potential to metastasize, that is, to have cells break off from it and spread through the bloodlines to other parts of the body, planting and growing their own malignant tumors there. Combating this requires the entire tumor, or as much of it as possible, to be removed from its host organ in an attempt to stop the spreading of cancerous, harmful cells to the rest of the body before the growth becomes uncontrollable and eventually disrupts central, vital functions for living. 

To the Inka, this same approach was used for those communities they wished to conquer who posed to much of a threat to the empire if they were added in as is. If volatile communities were merely annexed without any form of restriction or precaution being taken to ensure that volatility was controlled, the Inkas would basically be welcoming a malignant tumor into their empire, only asking it politely to not spread and naïvely hoping for the best. 

Rather than play this waiting game, the Inka utilized such circumstances as these to justify the previously discussed method of bloodshed into forced submission, an excision if you will. Take for example, the Huárco people, who lived in the Cañete Valley near modern-day Lima, Peru. When the Inka were approaching their communities, obviously hungry for expansion, the Huárcos decided that they would not just surrender, but would have to go kicking and screaming into the imperial fold if the Inkas wanted them so badly. Kick and scream, they did, as the Huárcos fortified their territories, rallied their troops, delivered three years of fighting to the Inkas. A final surrender on the part of the Huárcos would then result in the complete massacre of the chiefs and other high-ranking, influential people, effectively and violently knocking out the Huárcos’ capacity for resistance. The malignant tumor’s ability to spread resistance and cause faultiness within the empire had been tamed through the bloody approach reserved by the Inka for special threats which couldn’t be tamed.

Molding the Lego Block (i.e. Surrender and Assimilate)

For the majority of communities which the Inka spread into and claimed, the type of conquering they utilized was less one of ‘clearing shop’ and cleanly sweeping away any mark of the previous community, and more one of working with the conquered peoples and their already established cultures and conventions, personalizing their approaches in order to cater to what each community necessitated in order to assimilate them into Inkan society. This approach was often implemented in communities who might have shown slight demonstrations of resistance, but who relatively easily surrendered and only showed a minimal capacity for unrest.The goal was not total annihilation, but of transforming the physical aspects of a community to something distinctly Inkan, hoping to inspire a conversion of the mental/emotional through physical reminders of Inkan presence closely associated with benefits to the people. Just as the Inka closely sculpted their building stones to fit together so tightly, not even a pin could be stuck in the rocky seam, so too were communities molded into Inkan prototypical Lego blocks, enabling the empire itself to fit together tightly in one seamless Lego masterpiece, one Tawantinsuyu. 

Such changes often fit a model, to steal a slogan from the Roman Empire, of Panem et Circenses. In order to gain and hold the people’s trust and pacify them into Inkan rule, conquered peoples were often offered a multitude of new resources and benefits through their membership in Tawantinsuyu, just as the Roman people were offered free food and entertainment through their Roman membership and allegiance. 

New perks included the building of new, distinctly Inkan infrastructure and architecture around conquered communities, physical reminders of Inkan presence and permeation of the atmosphere. New roads connected benefitted not only the empire through the fast transportation of troops during outbreaks of violence and resistance, but it also gave the communities within Tawantinsuyu channels of communication through which they themselves could move, communicate, and trade more easily, aiding both social and economic efforts. Other strategic actions involving the movement of people and places included the relocation of a people’s elites and nobles to large, Inkan urban centers such as Cusco, subsequently diluting out any form of power a community had and exercising a lighter version of the excision of a malignant community as mentioned in the previous section. 
Even within communities, spatial changes by the Inka in the architecture and layout of a village made sure that the people who were allowed to continue living in their previous homes prior to Inka occupation were still aware of the Inkas’ power to manipulate their current political and urban structures. In several towns, the city core would be cleared to make way for a large pampa, or grassy plaza with a ceremonial ushnu, or platform, in the middle for any ceremonies featuring the Inka (ruler). Meanwhile, any town elites left after relocation were then concentrated into long, niched kallankas, or halls, which overlooked the pampa; residentially, even regular citizens were to live in Inka-style kancha homes, made of multiple buildings grouped together within one compound, allowing ‘Inka-ness’ to seep into even the most personal aspects of a person’s life, their home. Peoples now were to be physically uniform and dependent upon Inka ways of life, all under one Inka banner in the hopes that such constant, reminding exposure would eventually lend itself to a conversion of heart towards the empire. Such uniform Lego blocks of living were to fit together perfectly, again forming that sturdy, seamless empire.

The Exception

All of these explanations of how the Inka modified their landscape, both physically and politically, in order to fit their image and deactivate threats makes the Inka sound like perfectionists in a sense, always finding issues in everything but their own selves and looking for ways to modify new communities to make them the perfect match to be assimilated in. However, there were some societies, albeit a select few, that were exceptions to these rules and conditions: societies which showed almost no obvious traces of Inkan occupation, yet were known to be reutilized by them. Pachacamac, that sandbox that we discussed earlier, was one of, if not the most, important of these exceptions.

Pachacamac and the Indigeneity Underneath

Pachacamac itself is a sight to behold, even without the historical context providing additional meaning to the site. Regardless of the archaeological significance, just arriving at the highest point of Pachacamac, the Inkans’ Temple of the Sun, to take in a panorama of the Pacific Ocean, featuring two islands in the hazy distances and a cool breeze sneakily rushing in from above the waves, is enough to make the June cover of any travel calendar. However, the Pacific Ocean is not just visible from one spot at Pachacamac; it extends all the way down the coast, bordering the entire western edge of South America. So, if the gorgeous views do not give Pachacamac enough significance to merit driving for almost an hour outside of Lima into the hot, shadeless plains of dirt, then what does? 

I am an International Studies and Political Science major. My days are spent reading text after text on the political processes of countries, the contexts through which such systems were formed, and the climates through which they now operate. Pachacamac, when placed within the grand political schema of the Inka, represents not the overall might of the empire, but rather its prudence in strategy, a conscientiousness unrealized by myself prior to this study abroad (and still unrealized by many trapped in the clutches of a mythical ignorance of the Inka’s true nature). 

The remarkable aspect, the reason that tourists and scholars alike can find value in Pachacamac, is not through the ability to marvel at stone ruins of Inka homes or analyze the spatialization of large stone terraces (giants’ steps, as dubbed by members of my group). Rather, Pachacamac’s significance comes through the absence of major physical manipulation or social assimilation. Instead of feeling the need to annihilate or physically assimilate, the Inka felt a brand of reverence towards Pachacamac, a centuries-old seaside ceremonial center whose sacred nature, whose energy (an indigenous spiritual theme later emphasized by our Quechuan tour guide) stirred in the Inka a type of respect for the space. 

This respect is evidenced as one walks through the space of Pachacamac. While little stands in terms of structures at the site (again: sandbox), the massive scale and grandeur of the site, with sweeping hills and formations of old pillars and walls tucked into mounds of packed dirt and mudbrick, allows for visitors even now to experience even a fraction of the awe the Inka must have felt upon arrival in the region. These ruins weren’t Inkan constructions. These were remnants of pre-Inkan temples and ceremonial sites, predating any Inkan conquest and obviously not being majorly razed or changed after the fact. 

In fact, what makes Pachacamac unique is truly its absence of major Inkan manipulation of space. Instead of implanting themselves right into the core of the region, the Inka adapted; they took into account the spaces and power constructs already in place and prominent in the region and mapped themselves onto the existing and local rather than crafting their own. An acknowledgement is made by the Inka of the merits of another system, simply changing the name of the previous site to its current title of Pachacamac and building its new structures, minimal in comparison to many of its other conquests, on the relative fringes of the center, not clearing big spaces for a pampa or implanting itself and its practices right in the center of life For example, the placement of the Acllahuasi, a niched complex meant to house upper-class girls training and being educated to either be priestesses or elite wives, is not within the center of Pachacamac, as one might assume such a place so important to both society and religion and so emblematic of the customs of the Inka within society to be on high ground, prominent both to the eye and to the gods in heaven. Yet, it is not until one looks down from a ridge level with the normal ground that one sees the Acllahuasi not in the center of the pre-existing city or on high ground, but tucked away into the side of a border valley. It is these types of spatial recognitions which only reveal themselves when you are standing in Pachacamac, the sun beating down, waves crashing in the distance and the same wind swirling about you. 

Seeing how the Inkas adapted to to their conquests, how they took the space of Pachacamac, recognized its already revered reputation with pre-existing societies, and decided to incorporate it with the acknowledgement of its already effective power/spiritual structures rather than erase its rich religious history as a point of pride, gives modern scholars, and even the average Joe, not only a look inside the complicated political mind of the Inkas, but a look also at the current of indigeneity flowing throughout the site. A current characterized by adaptation to the cards one is  dealt; an energy that recognizes the dignity in other ways of life and that isn’t afraid to join a new practice or tradition into the fold like a new square onto a quilt of cultural heritage. 
Indigeneity was a term difficult for me and my classmates to define on our study abroad because indigeneity and indigenous ways cannot be summarized into a tangible object or specific physical qualifiers that can be checked off like the instructions on building the Mouse Trap gameboard or the ingredients that go into a recipe. Indigeneity was a spirit, an attitude, a resolve connecting together community after community, generation after generation in a spirit of resilience, of maintenance of traditions and heritage through the means available, yet also of an openness to change, of the progress of time, and of the sustaining of a people through a new age. Indigeneity applied to the Uros families living on a floating totora island in Lake Titicaca and to the Taquile family who used iPhones to film their little cousins presenting traditional Taquile clothing. Indigeneity applied to Jacínto performing an age-old ritual at the top of Pachamama on Amantaní and to the same Amantaní family Jacínto was member to that utilized the foreign-originated eucalyptus in their traditional cooking of pachamanca. And, the case of Pachacamac, indigeneity is evident not simply in the archaeological ruins present on the site, but in patchwork quilt of assimilated, conglomerated culture evident there which would have, and still does, represent a meaningful whole to the Inka and others, despite differing origins.

All in All

In conclusion, did my the backs of my knees get sunburned during my trip to Pachacamac? Yes. Was the view from Pachacamac my first time ever seeing the Pacific Ocean? Also, yes. However, the true value from this sight, and the true reason that I believe that seeing this site is crucial to understanding indigenous ways, especially in Peru, did not come from its calendar-worthy panoramas or its terrifyingly high UV Index, but from its blending of physical space with political and religious significance. Through glimpsing at Pachacamac through these lenses, by putting this site into the proper historical context which honors its meaning for not only the Inka, but for all who utilized this site, we can begin to make sense of the sandbox. Pachacamac is not solely about one Acllahuasi or one Temple to the Sun, but rather a testament not only to the artistry of the Inkas in crafting their empire, but to the spirit of indigeneity, of persistence and cultural hybridity,  underlying the whole of it, a spirit sustained to this day in the inheritors of Tawantinsuyu and all other forms of Andean society.

References

(While my blog post never makes a specific reference, most of my explanations and conclusions not supported by my own observations have been in some way, shape, or form informed by or synthesized from the following:)

Branch, Nick, Francisco Ferreira, Millena Frouin, Rob Kemp, Colin McEwan, Frank Meddens, Gabriel Ramon, Cirilo Vivanco, and Katie Willis. “Introduction: what is an ushnu?” The British Museum, 2010, https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/research_projects/complete_projects/featured_project_inca_ushnus/what_is_an_ushnu.aspx. Accessed 10 Dec. 2019. 

Cartwright, Mark. “Pachacamac.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, 13 June 2016, https://www.ancient.eu/Pachacamac/. Accessed 8 December 2019. 

Davies, Nigel. The Incas. Boulder, University Press of Colorado, 1995. 

Dillehay, Tom D. “Tawantinsuyu Integration of the Chillon Valley, Peru: A Case of Inca Geo-political Mystery.” Journal of Field Archaeology, vol. 4, no. 4, 1977, 397-405. 

Doutriaux, Miriam. “Power, Ideology and Ritual: The Practice of Agriculture in the Inca Empire.” Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers, vol. 85, 2001, 91-108. 

McEwan, Gordon. Pikillacta: The Wari Empire in Cuzco. Iowa City, University of Iowa Press, 2005. 

McEwan, Gordon. “The Rise and Fall of the Inca Empire.” Youtube, uploaded by TED-Ed, 12 Feb. 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO5ktwPXsyM. 

“Pachacamac.” Current World Archaeology, no. 92, 22 Nov. 2018, https://www.world-archaeology.com/features/pachacamac-pilgrimages-and-power-in-ancient-peru/. Accessed on 8 December 2019. 

Quilter, Jeffrey. The Ancient Central Andes. London, Routledge World Archaeology, 2014. Stanish, Charles. Ancient Titicaca: The Evolution of Complex Society in Southern Peru and Northern Bolivia. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003.

By: Gigi Powell

There lined the museum shelves rows and rows of pots, jammed together, each standing, arguing for attention, to be noticed over the others. The museum barely had enough room for them, and even barely could be considered an overestimate, as if rooms and rooms of pots displayed less than 5 inches from each other with little to no description was a display worthy of the mastery of the pots. To be fair, within the actual part of the museum, there were pots with proper explanations as part of the different exhibits, but the main, jaw-drop worthy portion of the pots was in the aptly named “visible storage” areas in a separate area. Even the name “visible storage” implies that there are more of the pots, sitting in a dark room somewhere, hopefully being studied but probably not.

We wandered through the storage area for maybe 5 minutes and barely scratched the surface, walking through row after row of towering shelves, the sheer numbers of the pots beating in like humidity on a hot summer’s day. Had I allotted more time to the discovery of the visible storage area, I would have searched in vain for the end. It reminded me of a bookstore on Dixon Street back in Fayetteville. Every time I go I swear to myself that this time will be the time that I find it, the back of the bookstore, and every time I think I do until I see another room smiling at me from beyond a lined bookshelf. The pots, when studied on their own, were in beautiful condition, the red and white and black clays bragging intricate, fascinating designs, but when taken in as a whole, the result was almost suffocating. The most shocking part about taking in the pots in person is that the map of the museum shows about eight rooms that contain these pots, which, despite being the equivalent of a medium sized house in room number, doesn’t seem that outrageous. Seeing the space in person, you also get to account for height, which is a large part of what makes the space seem so overwhelming. 

The museum in question is the Museo Larco, named after Rafael Larco Hoyle (1901-1966) (Evans p.233). Rafael Larco Hoyle was an interesting character, his reputability argued by many of the sources I could find on him. Some praised him as having “exhibited an intimate knowledge of the tens of thousands of objects in his museum,” while others described his works as biased and self-convicted  (Evans p.235) (Scott p.93-95). It is agreed upon, however, that his visual depictions of Andean artifacts, specifically the infamous pots, are the “real justification for the publication of [his book, Peru] for Europeans and non-Europeans alike” (Schaedel p.824). His pots are his real claim to fame, though, the pieces that he acquired from his uncle and his father as a gift in 1925, and the ones that he collected as part of his archaeological practices (Evans p.235). The pots, or rather, the care and collection of the pots is the curious part, for, although Rafael Larco Hoyle was an archaeologist by the standards of the time, his practices in reality betray more of the aspects of a collector. 

Why Can’t the Archaeologist and the Collector Be Friends?

The main difference between the collector and the archaeologist is the context in which they view the object. The collector, normally of art, views the object as an object itself. If they see something as physically beautiful, they are going to regard it as such, even if the people in the time that it was made would have thought it the most mundane thing in the world. Collections are interesting too because there are no real limitations on where the object can and cannot be stored. If a wealthy person wants to hang a beautiful object in their home, the piece becomes simply an object of decoration for that person (Colburn p.38). Some collections do end up in museums, but once again if they were collected as an art piece that is most likely what they will be displayed as (Colburn p.38). 

Meanwhile, archaeology attempts to place the object discovered in the cultural context of the civilization that created it. If an archaeologist dug up the most beautiful object they’d ever seen, they would first try to figure out the context in which it was created, and (in a perfect world) if the object ended up not being culturally significant it wouldn’t have as much importance placed upon it. Placing the objects in their context is a more accurate representation of indigenous cultures, it does rely heavily on archaeologist interpretations, and, while archaeology has come a long way, for a while it was used as a means of colonization, treating the objects discovered more as a collector would than an archaeologist. Even after colonialism, “in Latin America, dictatorships during the Cold War used archaeology for their own purposes, supported by the United States, whose democratic credentials were not enough to moderate autocratic rule and abuse of archaeology” (Funari p.120).  If the archaeologist’s interpretation is off, it impacts the views about the object, and so if someone wants to shape a culture’s history, they can control the interpretation of the object. However, like most modern academic disciplines, archaeology is a fluid state and most people accept and anticipate discoveries that will alter the field in the future. 

Collecting and archaeology can, at first glance, feel very similar, but their importance lies in their motivations for discovering artifacts. For instance, imagine that you have a bowl. It’s a cute bowl, I’ll give you that, but it’s just a bowl, and although you really like the pattern (there’s little alpacas on it, come on, this is a blog about a Peruvian trip), your main enjoyment from the bowl comes from what you put inside of it. You eat your favorite soup from it; you consume cereal at late hours in the night while binge-watching Netflix, and that’s what makes the bowl so special. Yes, it has alpacas on it, and yes, the alpacas are wearing sunglasses and little shoes, but in the end it’s just a bowl, a vessel for food, and you wouldn’t consider it anything deserving of special treatment. 

A Section in Which I Discuss Your Soup Vessel Extensively

Now, imagine, years from now, and I’m talking years, as in you and everyone you love is dead and has been for a very long time– your bones are decaying somewhere in a nice cemetery (they don’t get discovered for another hundred years)(you’re currently under a newly-constructed Walmart because we all know that those are eternal). There is, however, an archaeological dig happening in the very space where you last consumed soup from that awesome alpaca bowl, and it’s about to be discovered. Now, depending on whether these future archaeologists operate more as collectors or more as archaeologist, your beautiful bowl can end up in one of two places. First, if the future archaeologists are more collectors, then one of them will see the bowl, decide it is the most beautiful thing they have ever laid eyes on, and they will give it to the rich person who has commissioned the dig and the rich person will mount it on their living room wall so that they can show it off to all the other rich people who come to visit. 

However, if the future archaeologists are, indeed, honest to goodness archaeologists, they will see the bowl, and, while it still could be the most beautiful object they have ever laid eyes on, they will put aside those personal feelings of beauty and grace and will instead look to their research and the research of their colleagues and discover that you ate soup out of this bowl and it served no cultural significance in your world. It will then be written about and most likely displayed in an archaeological museum in the middle somewhere with other cutlery and dishes and cups, important enough to be displayed before, say, fossilized toilet paper, but not nearly important enough to be put before the Gucci belt of the same era. 

The Part for Which the Blog is Named: The Soup Bowl Conundrum, Machu Picchu, and You

Why did I just spend ~literally~ 430 words describing to you the schematics of your future soup bowl instead of recounting the details of my fabulous trip to Peru? Because, if you go to Peru with no knowledge of what I will be from here on out referring to as The Soup Bowl Conundrum, you will be like those ignorant future humans who find your soup bowl and consider it a glorious piece of art and hang it on their wall like the idiots they are. There is an abundance of instances of The Soup Bowl Conundrum in Peru, which become a lot more apparent when you’re aware that things like that actually exist. It also promotes a healthy dose of curiosity, if not skepticism, and will help you to determine what aspects of your trip is real indigenous culture and what is hyped up to appeal to the tourism industry. 

I will start by going there: the most famous instance of The Soup Bowl Conundrum is perhaps the one that brings the most people to Peru– Machu Picchu. Yes. I went there, literally and figuratively. Machu Picchu was “discovered” (AKA a white man saw it and took all the credit)  by Hiram Bingham in 1912, and the “discovery” was recounted in Bingham’s book Inca Land (Poole p.124). Bingham’s descriptions of Machu Picchu add to the sense that he, much like the future rich person who hangs your soup bowl on their wall, is anticipating Machu Picchu to be this huge discovery, a pivotal point in understanding the Incan Empire. However, although Bingham did see Machu Picchu as a great lost city, “what captured Bingham’s imagination was not the immaculate Inca masonry of the walls that surrounded him, but rather the ‘tantalizing glimpses of snow covered mountains’ that he caught during breaks in the clouds” (Poole p.124). 

I stood at Machu Picchu and watched as the fog rolled across the ruins, turning the landscape from a void of white mist to a fully formed landscape with towering, breathtaking mountains, with this sprawling stone structure tucked away in one of the crannies. I also happened to take pictures, which I was kind enough to include below. 

The view was perhaps the most stunning part of the site, the draw that brings thousands of people to Peru every month, if not week, if not day. Bingham had “discovered” something beautiful, but not particularly culturally significant. In fact, all that Bingham had been led to was a summer palace of an Inca, similar to a Versailles but of Peru and in the 1400s. The question then becomes why is Machu Picchu a national heritage site, instead of, say, Ollantaytambo, a site that was much more culturally significant to the Incas but remains a less popular tourist destination. My answer is that, among other things, Hiram Bingham tipped the first domino in an extreme account of The Soup Bowl Conundrum.

Hiram was operating as an archaeologist, but with a collectors mindset. The mentality surrounding the Andes at that time cherished the perceived untouched beauty of the Andes, but it ignored the shaping of the landscape of indigenous people, instead painting them as ignorant savages, among other things (Poole p.114). Bingham took this emphasis on the natural world in the Andes and enhanced it, glorifying Machu Picchu as a lost city and spreading ideas about it in North America. It was during this time that Machu Picchu became such a tourist destination, and as the decades went on and the tourist industry surrounding the site only grew Peru acknowledged the fascination with the site and played it up. 

A curious phenomenon has happened with Machu Picchu though. The site did not hold much weight for the Incas– it was simply a summer home for an Incan noble. Modern Peruvians have created a new identity for Machu Picchu, one that combines a strong Incan nationalism while also taking back control over their cultural heritage in a way. Peruvians have embraced the icon that Machu Picchu has become, whether for show for the tourists or from a real fire in their hearts to embrace their national history. This is where the knowledge of The Soup Bowl Conundrum comes in handy– before I had done much research I believed that Machu Picchu held significant status in the Incan empire and that was why it had become such a must-see attraction. After learning about The Soup Bowl Conundrum and Bingham’s archaeology that better reflected the influences of a collector, I understand that Machu Picchu holds so much weight now because modern era humans have instilled it with that importance. We go take pictures in front of Machu Picchu because everyone goes to take pictures in front of Machu Picchu, and without understanding where our assigned significance comes from, it is very easy to get caught up in the touristic masses who are consuming the culture and spaces of Incan and indigenous Peru. 

I will admit that Machu Picchu was gorgeous; I am not denying that it holds a special place in the modern traveler and Peruvian’s heart. What I will say is that the significance placed upon Machu Picchu is a recent development, and even though the Incas would not have placed as much importance upon it as we do currently, it does not mean that the evolution of Machu Picchu as the cultural monument is a negative thing. It brings a fair amount of revenue to the country, and provides a point of pride for the Peruvian people today. You should go to Machu Picchu if and when you go to Peru, because it is currently an important site and you can take a picture in front of it and caption it something nonchalant like “I see you, Machu Picchu” and stunt on that girl who always humble-brags about her vacations by posting a picture of her in front of some beach. 

I did not mean for that to sound so bitter, but the main point is that if you want to go to Machu Picchu, you should go to Machu Picchu. But, remember The Soup Bowl Conundrum, and when you want to go to Machu Picchu, go ahead and schedule that day in Ollantaytambo, to get a sense for what is important for modern Peruvians, and what was significant for the Incas in their time. 

So, you visited Machu Picchu, it was fabulous and you got to take a selfie with a llama similar to the one of me right below this sentence. 

You got to be a collector, a consumer; you went to Machu Picchu not because of the cultural context in which it was created but because millions of other people have made the pilgrimage and it’s a really beautiful place. You should have no shame, honestly. I went to Machu Picchu and I loved it. I hiked around and I took the above selfie with a llama, who is now my best friend. I took more than one picture of myself with the Machu Picchu ruins in the background, and if I was going back to Peru I would do it again. The main point of me spending so long explaining the difference between archaeologists and collectors and The Soup Bowl Conundrum is that if you want to contextualize the Incas, you have to go to different, often less popular places. And, if you’re not lucky enough to travel to Peru with two professors who have literally dedicated years of their life to understanding the history of the country, then at least you are lucky enough to have me, a girl who spent 12 days in Peru with those two professors, outline some places that were significant to the Incas based off of what I picked up from those two professors. A fair trade, if we’re being completely honest (and by “completely honest” I mean “not honest in the least bit; if I were Pinocchio my nose would be at least three feet long). If given the option, definitely discuss your Peruvian itinerary with an expert. If you do not have the option, or if you just don’t want to work that hard (which is also respectable), continue reading. 

Ollantaytambo: Not Just a Stop on the Way to Machu Picchu

Perhaps most important site to visit would indeed be the one that I have happened to already have mentioned twice: Ollantaytambo. It is often referred to as the Sacred Valley of the Incas, and if I am (actually) being completely honest, the only real reason why I am mentioning Ollantaytambo now is because one of the two aforementioned professors, during the time on Ollantaytambo, said that it was more culturally significant than Machu Picchu and that it was probably more deserving of all the hype. I do remember that it was home to large structures that would have been used as backup storage for water and food. We also learned from a site report that it was also another rich guy’s house and surrounding land, but that the real significance comes from a battle won against the Spanish when they came in the 16th century. As we know now, the Incas did eventually fall to the Spanish, but the remembrance of the victory sealed the identity of Ollantaytambo as an important place for the Incas.

If you are still reading this blog, at this point I believe that you have gotten the gist of my message and you are most likely going to be a curious and conscientious tourist, keeping in mind whether your attitude towards the sites and lifestyles you are exposed to veers towards that of a collector mindset or that of an archaeologist. It is also worth noting that collecting is not inherently bad, nor is archaeology inherently good. Some collectors donate their collections to museums, where they can be seen by much larger populations than if they had remained in the home area. Some archaeologists ignore other scholarly works and instead interpret artifacts in ways that could be true but probably not, setting the field back. The main thing is to notice when these things happen, and, during your time in Peru, to be diligent at spotting these things, but, also, it’s okay to take your picture in front of Machu Picchu. Just admit that you understand the reasoning behind your picture-taking, and then flaunt that fit you spent all trip planning.

Works Cited

Colburn, Forrest D. “From Pre-Columbian Artifact to Pre-Columbian Art.” Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, vol. 64, 2005, pp. 36–41. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3774832.

Evans, Clifford. “Rafael Larco Hoyle: 1901-1966.” American Antiquity, vol. 33, no. 2, 1968, pp. 233–236. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/278526.

Funari, Pedro Paulo A. “Historical Archaeology and Global Justice.” Historical Archaeology 43, no. 4 (2009): 120-21. www.jstor.org/stable/25617586

Poole, Deborah. “Landscape and the Imperial Subject: U.S. Images of the Andes, 1859-1930.” Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural Historyof U.S.-Latin American Relations, edited by Gil Joseph et al., Duke University Press, 1998.

Schaedel, Richard P. American Anthropologist, vol. 70, no. 4, 1968, pp. 824–824. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/670623. Accessed 19 Jan. 2020.

Scott, John F. The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 48, no. 1, 1968, pp. 93–95. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2511413.

Our day started dark and early at 4 am in a small touristy town named Aguas Calientes. We left so early to ensure we got the best possible viewing time to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, Machu Picchu. We met our group and guide in the hotel lobby and boarded a bus. The previous day we had taken a 4 hour bus ride and a 1 hour train ride to arrive at Aguas Calientes. I was pretty pumped we were here because we had been told we were not actually going to be able to make it to Machu Picchu because the rain had washed out part of the railroad track. However, we made it and the bus ride to the top of Machu Picchu was rather nerve-racking; we zig-zagged up the side of the mountain frantically, with busses passing just inches away and near the edge of a deadly drop-off. Once we reached the top, it was full of tourists and a dense fog. Our tour guide took us up the steps to the entrance of Machu Picchu where we saw a site full of tourists. They seemed to be disappointed as the fog was so dense, you could only see a few feet in front of yourself. However, the guides reassured everyone that by some sort of “divine intervention,” the fog would lift just in time to take our $200 selfie! Even though Machu Picchu was just a summer home for the Inca, it receives a staggering 1.6 million visitors a year! It is Peru’s most popular attraction that highlights the Inca citadel. Sooo why exactly are we here on an honors study abroad trip, if Machu Picchu was just a summer home for the Inca? In my presentation at Machu Picchu I explained how there are essentially 3 eras that shape the narrative of tourism at Machu Picchu. History can help us understand the majority of why the making of Machu Picchu is responsible for such a large number of tourists per year. I also explain what makes Machu Picchu such an important site that elaborates the indigenous ways of the Inca. 

The first era occurred from 1900 to 1948, where Peru’s political and economic environment was dominated by a group of elites who had ambitious financial and commercial endeavors. They wanted to shape tourism into an official historical and cultural narrative that emphasized Peru’s national identity. In this time Indigenous culture played a central role in the modernizing national project of Peru. A man named Albert Giesecke is responsible for laying the foundation for future development of cultural tourism in Cusco. He established education reform that created a generation known as the “Generation of the Sierra.” This group had a key role in establishing folklore, indigenismo, archeological studies, and North American institution connections. He is also responsible for linking Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu. Hiram Bingham is known for “discovering” Machu Picchu on his 1911 expedition to locate Vilacamba, the last refuge of the Inca before it fell to the Spanish forces in 1572. Upon Hiram’s arrival in 1911, he met the Richartes, a family living in the ruins of what we now know to be Machu Picchu. Pablito Richarte, a young boy, can be credited for being the first tour guide of Machu Picchu, as he guided Hiram Bingham around the site on July 24, 1911. This ultimately proved Hiram Bingham’s reputation of being THE discoverer of the lost city false. However, across the world Bingham was known for being the discoverer of Machu Picchu and received national recognition through The New York Times and other major titles. His exploits of Machu Picchu began to overshadow earlier efforts of legislation to protect cultural heritage of indigenous people. Eventually at the beginning of the 20^th century, Peru initiated legal reforms in regard to archeological protection that implemented a requirement for state excavations and exploration of artifacts. Prior to his 1911 expedition Bingham received broad permission and priority access over locals However, on his third expedition he angered locals with the exportation of indigenous artifacts to the United States. This began the theme of the Peruvian government picking favor of international people over their locals. With his “discovery” of Machu Picchu, several international travelers visited Machu Picchu, however they discredited the hype saying it was “gruesomely undeveloped and inconvenient to travel in Peru.” This lead the local elite to see a need for infrastructure development. United States visitors began to see a need to travel to the Andes and believed it represented an exotic “other” America. While elite and locals saw a need for more modernization of Peru, the new Peruvian government was strongly against. This was a major blow to Cusqueños. As a result, they reverted back to their old ways to attract tourism through politics, artistic, and literacy to establish their regional identity and folklore to make it compatible to the modern world. Giesecke wrote several articles and labeled Peru “The Mecca of South America.” He highlighted how Cusco could accommodate the modern traveler and how it was far from dirty and outdated. 

Elite and locals used three main aspects to begin shaping the narrative of tourism at Machu Picchu in the first era. The first was culture, where Cusqueños authored guidebooks and visualized Inca architecture of the region. They highlighted its appeal in being superior to other global cultural artifacts. Martín Chambi is also known for creating the framing of Machu Picchu; he promoted Cusco’s tourists’ sites by working extensively with Indegenistas and guidebook authors to visually capture the regions touristic qualities. Photography was another tool that focused on architectural sites to create a new narrative for tourism consumption. It invited international travelers to imagine themselves as travelers to faraway exotic sites. Institutional promotion also promoted tourism material through an academic’s perspective. They promoted their increasing number of archeological sites and ruins of Peru. The Peruvian government also greatly overlooked Indegienistas in this period as well. Wealthy landowners also confiscated land from Indian communities, forcing them to relocate. Following these events Indigenistas focused on political efforts to push for more inclusion in national and regional politics. Around this time Cusco began claiming its title as being the center of Peruvian nationality. Cusqueños had employed tourism to craft a narrative that highlighted the region’s modernity and defined their vision of indigenismo. The Quadricentennial, which marked the 400^thanniversary of the Spanish foundation of the city was hosted to establish Cusco’s cultural and touristic importance on a national level. They shaped the narrative to use the Quadricentennial to attract outside travelers to Cusco by organizing tourism propaganda in various international regions. This event ultimately gave political and intellectual leaders the tools of tourism to define the regional vision of indigenismo over competing narratives. This lead to increased calls of tourism in Cusco. Elite and government began constructing more roads, railways, and hotels to attract more tourism. They also created the National Tourism Corporation in 1944 which built hotels and increased investments in tourism initiatives. However, despite all these initiatives, the tourism narrative of Machu Picchu still overlooked the grassroots political and cultural demands of Cusco’s indigenous communities. 

The second era occurred from 1948 to 1975 and is when tourism is seen as a more positive modernizing force for the Peruvian economy. Developmental tourism initiatives were ceased when Roca Muella resigned from the CNT, who was a strong advocate for tourism development in Cusco and Machu Picchu. Following this, Giesecke encouraged locals to go back to their original grassroots approach used in the first decades of tourism promotion. This mainly consisted of individual volunteers to establish international connections. Another aspect that turned out to be a blessing in disguise was increased seismic activity. Cusco’s government took an opportunity for development and economic modernization through funds provided by seismic activity restoration efforts. UNESCO also began providing assistance in the restoration of Machu Picchu. They also lobbied for the protection of indigenista’s cultural heritage in Peru. However, locals were angered by more outside involvement in the restoration of Machu Picchu, forcing UNESCO to halt their aid. In the 1960’s they began catering towards the “cultured international traveler” and brought in numerous European models to do photo shoots at Machu Picchu. A new government was formed, that strongly supported UNESCO’s involvement with Machu Picchu. This lead to increasing foreign investments in Peru. Hotel Machu Picchu was another initiative by the state to construct a modern hotel adjacent to Machu Picchu; this strongly angered Indigenistas who lead many opposition efforts. The government created the National Culture Institute that assumed control of all historical sites in 1947. During this time period Peru began being seen as an emerging travel experience for the “elite traveler.” They also had an initiative to cater towards backpackers who essentially just brought drugs to the community, causing them to rethink this initiative. They eventually decided to re-create Machu Picchu as a destination for the modern traveler and bring a stronger cultural significance, by promoting indigenous culture of Cusco and Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu was also declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in this time period, which provided more funding and increased tourism as well.

The third era was from 1975 – 2011 when Machu Picchu emerged as the national symbol of Peru. Tourism began shifting from the locals and state to more privatized outside interests. A militant group, known as Shining Path, bombed a train killing and injuring many tourists. This greatly hindered the perception of Peru being the go-to travel destination. Booming tourism also had drastic effects on the site as well, as it was being overused by tourists. Overuse lead to UNESCO calling for decreased development of Machu Picchu, saying it was destroying the cultural integrity of the site. Locals also expressed much outrage over the highly profitable tourism venues owned by outsiders. Peruvian state officials hosted a lavish party, marking the centennial of Hiram Bingham’s arrival at Machu Picchu and his spark that brought tourism to Machu Picchu. The media and Indigenistas spoke publicly about the false narrative that Peruvian government was shaping, which caused much backlash for officials and the President of Peru. This lead to him trying to swoon the other side, by requesting artifacts Bingham had exported to the United States; a major win for Indigenistas as artifacts were sent back to Peru. 

While Machu Picchu was simply a summer home for the Inca, one can see how the making of Machu Picchu and the narrative that was shaped is historical in itself. Elites and locals working together ultimately shaped the narrative of Machu Picchu becoming a national symbol of Peru. While from its origins, the imagery of tourism in Cusco and Machu Picchu has remained an elite-oriented cultural project constructed to serve the outside gaze. However, locals of Peru played a key effort in ensuring the cultural integrity of their heritage. This helped establish the National Culture Institute, which lead to the protection of cultural heritage in Peru. Machu Picchu also became the national symbol of Peru from the effort of many political and economic initiatives. By the 20^th century, tourism shifted to adventure travel, ecotourism, and luxury tourism to promote the Andes and indigenous culture as an unchanged naturalist, and purist link to an Inca past.

At the end of our guided tour we were able to see re-enter the site and travel around on our own! We took this opportunity to walk up the Inca Trail to the Sun Gate. The Inca Trail was also made out of stone, however it wasn’t tightly cut together like most of the buildings and terraces at Machu Picchu. The Sun Gate overlooked Machu Picchu, and from the top we were able to see the carve out of a head in the mountains overlooking Machu Picchu. The view from atop was astonishing and we had climbed so high up, Machu Picchu looked small in perspective. Unfortunately, we were unable to hike to the Inca Bridge or the other side of Machu Picchu that supposedly had another outstanding outlooking! However, the hike up the Inca Trail was quite a challenge and provided a phenomenal view of the valley and Machu Picchu.

            Multiple aspects of Inca culture are incorporated into this one site. This can make visiting Machu Picchu an all-in-one stop for somebody wanting to learn about the Inca! First, the site is located considerably high; a staggering 8,000 feet above sea level. It is also located at the top of a mountain with a view overlooking the valley and surrounding mountains. Being located on high ground was very important in Inca history, as they valued building atop higher areas. Water was another major feature to the Inca. Machu Picchu was built next to a river, that just so happened to be roaring when we visited. Our guide also showed us several water fountains in the Inca’s chambers. Some of these water fountains even had water running from the mountainside through them. He also explained how there were around sixteen other water fountains at the site as well. There are also over 150 buildings making up Machu Picchu; those consist of baths and houses to temples and sanctuaries. The Inca also built a Temple del Sole, the temple of the sun, at Machu Picchu as well. The Temple del Sole was created in a semi-circular manner and built over a large granite rock that trapped heat. The sacred temple had a trapezoidal window facing the east towards the sun. It was positioned along the curved wall to directly capture sunlight on June 21^st for the winter solstice. The Inca strongly worshipped their Sun God in this temple and is considered one of the most sacred temples at Machu Picchu.

            Machu Picchu tends to blend in with the tropical mountain forest atop of the Andes. This is thanks to the outstanding craftmanship of the Inca. They built many terraces, stairways, ramps, and walls to blend the architecture into the natural landscape of the mountains. The site also strongly displays the Inca’s landscape engineering skills. Over 700 terraces help shape Machu Picchu. Through their terraces the Inca preserved soil for agriculture uses and also for irrigation. Building these terraces allowed the Inca to create farmland on the side of a mountain. The terraces absorbed heat from the sun during the day, and radiated the heat back out during the night. They filled each terrace with a layer of small gravel and topped them off with sand and fine gravel. The top layer was then filled with topsoil and seeds of corn or potatoes. While the terraces at Machu Picchu no longer are used for farming, one can visualize how the Inca previously farmed by visiting Machu Picchu.

            Another important feature about Machu Picchu is its location. It is located in the Cusco Region along the Inca Trail. Thousands of tourists walk the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu every year. The begin at Cuscu and take the 1-5 day trip on foot to Machu Picchu. The Inca Trail travels through the town of Ollantaytambo and travels up the to the lost city. We actually got to hike up the Inca Trail when we were hiking to the Sun Gate. The Sun Gate was located about two and a half miles uphill from Machu Picchu. It was a a very challenging hike, so I am sure a 1-5 day journey along the Inka Trail would be quite the challenge. I find it funny that the Inca Ruler also had to make this journey on foot or by alpaca, since they did not have any other form of transportation. 

            Ultimately, Machu Picchu is truly an extravagant site that should not be overlooked when visiting Peru. Machu Picchu is full of such a rich history and information about the Inca. It portrays all aspects of Inca architecture, engineering, rituals, and lifestyles. Machu Picchu’s history is ideally one of a kind and the narrative that was shaped to the world by leaders of Peru have taken the hype of the lost city to a whole new level. While our day at Machu Picchu was one of the LONGEST, I will never forget the breathtaking site and the history in the making of such a elicit site. If you ever get the chance to visit Machu Picchu, I strongly recommend. I also highly recommend arriving to Machu Picchu as early as possible as there are less tourists in the morning. While the dense fog might be a slight turn off in the morning, I can assure you along with ALL the tour guides, some sort of divine intervention will lift the fog early in the morning for the view of a lifetime! I also recommend travelling to Ollantaytambo on your way to Machu Picchu, as it provides rich history on the Inca too – and if you are feeling really adventurous, travel along the Inca Trail. The trip to Peru and Machu Picchu were most definitely one of the top highlights of my life and something I will cherish forever. While the Inca may now cease exist, their vast history and remaining ruins will leave you in awe at the amazing wonders of their empire.

It can be easy for tourists to parachute in without context to a place and simply absorb at face value what they are told by their guides and the locals around them. Indeed, this is what some guides count on, because, like all other people, guides have their own opinions that shape how they see things, and they wish to impart that worldview onto others. I do believe, though, that when we fail to pick up on the context of a society, and the realities of the spaces that these historical sites are now placed in, we miss a far more interesting picture of a country’s history. The Incan past can often be exaggerated by those telling it, but where they exaggerate is part of the story, and very often in the places where they seem to be bending the truth, they might be revealing a deeper sentiment in Peruvian society. It can be very easy for (white) Westerners to assume that Indigeneity is incompatible with modernity, that the Inca were a people that existed solely in the past and with no connection to the present. That narrative, of course, is problematic. For one thing, the Quechua and Aymara are still very much around, and on the second point, they are still very much involved in modern power dynamics. 

The topic I chose to write my report about was the recent events in Bolivia, because this country best exemplifies how Indigeneity still factors into politics. To set the scene, Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia until very recently, when he was ousted in a military coup and replaced by the right-wing leader of the Senate, was the first Indigenous president in Bolivian history. (New York Times) This, of course, was a big deal in a country that was majority Indigenous, and his tenure represented not just the symbolic gain of having one of their own in power, but also many concrete policy gains from the Morales administration. (The Guardian) The country saw robust economic growth and dramatic reductions in poverty. However, some Bolivians were itching for someone new, since he had been in power since 2005, and for many young people it was hard to imagine the President being anyone else other than Morales. (America’s Quarterly) The election of 2019 was fraught by its very existence: a referendum in 2016 had said that Morales had reached his term limit and could not seek re-election. However, a tribunal, seen as stacked with people sympathetic to Morales, said that it was basic human right to stand in election and therefore could not place term limits on him. Perhaps because of this, there was a chance that Morales would not be re-elected. In Bolivia, in order to be elected on the first round of voting, a candidate must either get an outright majority, or 40% of the vote plus a 10% lead over all other competitors. (New York Times) It was widely seen that if Morales failed to win in the first-round, he would lose in the run-off to his nearest opponent, Carlos Mesa. All eyes were on the election. Then, as the votes were being counted, the election administration went dark. When they came back online, Morales had enough votes to win on the first round but a thin margin. The opposition cried foul. What happened next was utter chaos. Violent demonstrations with dozens of deaths took place in the aftermath, and a military coup ousted Morales, who was then replaced with the right-wing Jeanine Añez. Añez is of European descent, and has said things that mark her as hostile to Indigenous interests. She has referred to Indigenous rites as “Satanic”, and once tweeted a caricature of Morales that labeled him as a “pobre indio”, a racist attack. (New York Times) After her installation as president, some police forces were reported to have removed the Whipala, an official Bolivian flag and the representation of Bolivia’s diverse Indigenous groups from their uniforms. Many Indigenous groups saw these as signs that the gains they had made under Morales could soon be reversed.

This matters because Morales’ election was the culmination of decades of Indigenous organizing. Indigenous organizing had been a centuries-long tradition, as groups banded together against Spanish rule (though it should be noted that at first, there was no pan-Indigenous identity, and such an identity was only formed after centuries of Spanish oppression). The 1930s and 40s marked the beginning of modern Indigenous organizing, with the formation of the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (Postero, 27) though at first Indigenous people did not organize along their identity, but along their identity as “campesinos” or peasants. This was because Indigenous identity was heavily stigmatized, so being seen as a class rather than a race was a step up for them. (Postero, 28) The Indigenizing of the movement would take place later, in the 1970s, with the Katarista movement, named after Túpac Katari, an 18th century resistor to Spanish colonial rule. (Postero, 28) The Katarista movement fused Indigenous and class identity, as a pueblo, and especially in Bolivia, this identity would form the basis of its political developments. As neoliberalism came to be the dominant economic and political ideology, political reforms created a greater space for political expression, while economic reforms led to inequality that hurt Indigenous people, leading to a greater chance of protest. Indigenous thinkers began to question the legitimacy of the Spanish colonial states, as well as question the legitimacy of other Western ideas and structures. (Postero, 29) The neoliberal reforms also weakened unions, the traditional vector of leftist organizing, so it was up to Indigenous organizing models, such as the ayllu, to fill the void. (Postero, 31) Morales came into power because of Indigenous organizing. The event that propelled MAS into government was the 2003 Gas War, where Indigenous peoples protested the gas extraction policies of the previous administration, and formed a political crisis acute enough to justify new elections. (Postero, 31) Once Morales was in power, he drew very consciously on Indigenous political organizing history, such as holding a 2015 rally in front of a representation of Tupac Katari. (Postero, 37) The Katarista movement formed the ideological underpinnings of Morales’ own party, the Movimiento al Socialismo, or MAS. Or rather, it formed one part of the party, because the party was a sometimes tenuous coalition between Indigenous leftists, which saw the world through the lens of an intersectional race-class identity of Indigeneity, and more run-of-the-mill leftists who hewed more towards Marxist, class-based identity. Indigenous leftists were more likely to want to see the state decentralized, and focus on sustainable development, whereas other leftists wanted a centralized, industrialized state. (Postero, 34-39) But the coalition held, until recently. But, if Morales’ tenure was successful for a great deal of people, and perhaps led to a rising middle-class, why did that middle-class not want to vote for another Morales term? This is perhaps a sign of one of the weaknesses of the race-class identity; as people no longer saw themselves as poor, they also did not identity with the Indigenous label as strongly as in the past. There has been a marked decline in the number of Bolivians self-identifying as Indigenous, and this was Morales’ base. There is still a sizeable portion of Bolivia that sees themselves as Indigenous, to be sure, but it is not enough to put Morales over the top. The young, college-going middle-class is seeing itself “Westernize”, and there is a tension between the younger generation and the older ones who still see themselves as Indigenous. (New York Times)

But why does this matter to a tourist in Peru? The same debates and divisions that have taken place in Bolivia are often mirrored in Peru as well. There are some key differences between Peru and Bolivia, to be sure. On one hand, Peru does not have nearly as many Indigenous people as Bolivia does (though it is still at 20-30%), (Cleary, 59-60) so it is a lot harder for Indigenous people to take power. Organizing in Peru is still done mostly along class lines still, but there is definitely a sense of Indigenous identity. During our tour of Machu Picchu, our particular guide was explaining an aspect of the Incan empire, before launching into a polemic about how the Lima region (the capital region, defined by a rising middle class with a taste for American culture) was parasitic and the Cusco region (where the guide lived, and much poorer than Lima with a greater proportion of Indigenous people) was the area with all of the resources and historical sites and therefore could sustain itself. It is important to note that the split is somewhat cultural, but overwhelmingly it is political. Indigenous people will still use iPhones and drink Coca-Cola products, so it is not that Indigenous people are “rejecting modernity”, which is demonstrably false and is also a trope that tends to be used to justify the erasure of Indigenous culture and identity, because if Indigenous people really did reject modernity, then they have to be swept aside for the inevitable march of “progress.” And indeed, in the States, very similar rhetoric was used to justify expulsion of our Indigenous people. We often conflate Westernization and modernization, and this conflation is problematic. The issues that Indigenous people take to the changes occurring in their countries is often centered around the environmental degradation that has taken place at the hands of international corporations (framed as attacks against Pachamama, or Mother Earth in Quechua), and the economic inequality that has been caused by neoliberal policies. 

This internal debate can be best seen in the discussion by Indigenous thinkers around the ideas of decolonization. One idea of decolonization is the decolonization of politics, and focuses around the idea of Indigenous people taking back control and self-determination. (Postero, 12-13) Another strain of decolonization sees the process as inherently violent, and in the process, a new, decolonized subject would be formed, that is separate from the pre-colonial Indigenous identity. The third strain of decolonization focuses around the decolonization of thought, and that Indigenous peoples should imagine a political future for themselves outside of Western ideas of the relationship between people and government. Modernity is not in conflict with Indigeneity, and the discussion within Indigenous movements about how to approach the current state of the world is one that is very nuanced. 

From this model of a formation of a Indigenous political consciousness, comes the question of how to interpret the history of South America.. History is often not just fascinating in its own right, but also fascinating in how the society grapples with and interprets its own past (or for that matter, what a society considers to be its own past). In Peru, for example, the dominant motif is the Inca. Many brands invoke the Inca in some way, and there is even a soft drink named after the Inca. While a lot of this could be chalked up to indulging the tourists’ visions of Inca glory, there are far more serious political themes undergirding these associations. As mentioned before, during our tour of Machu Picchu, our guide brought up how he perceived the Cusco region to have everything it needed to be self-sustaining, whereas the Lima region got its wealth by taking from the rest of Peru. Another one of our guides said that the reason why the Inca were able to complete the Machu Picchu quickly was because the workers on the project were “happy” (spoiler alert: it was forced labor and the Inca had no problem breaking up communities to quash dissent). But again, the reason why Indigenous guides cast the past in this way is because they are making an argument in the present, and for a tourist in Peru, there is a lot more to be gained out of not simply accepting things at face value but trying to pick at who is telling the story of Peru’s past, how that affects the story being told, and if there is some other story being told underneath the surface.The existence of the Inca for Indigenous people, since they are descendants of the Inca, is invoked not merely as a point of historical pride, but as an argument for self-determination outside of the colonial power structures that have oppressed Indigenous people in modern Peru. The leftist thinker Hugo Blanco contrasted the Inca against the neoliberal order, by stating that the Inca, even when they were a little oppressive, focused their efforts on improving the well-being of their subjects, whereas the neoliberal order focuses entirely on the profits of multinational corporations. (Blanco, 162) There is also a critique of the individualism of neoliberalism, contrasted with the tight, collective kinship structures that dominated Inca society, and even an argument for how the Inca were skilled at agronomy. (Blanco, 152-168) Now, this narrative is a little on the problematic side, because, as mentioned before, the Inca were not as benevolent as they are sometimes made out to be by their descendants. As a general historical rule of thumb, rapidly expansive empires owe at least some of their success to being very brutal, and the Inca were not okay in the least bit when their subjects failed to meet their quotas. At the same time, it is important to also understand the context in which these comparisons are taking place, and whether or not they are in service to an oppressed group or an oppressor group, and these seem to be in the service of the former. Not all Indigenous people connect themselves to the Inca, however, so this question is a bit complicated. One other fallacy that shows up in this “Incanismo” is the idea of the originality of the Inca, that they were the first, and perhaps only, culture. The same guide at Machu Picchu that I mentioned earlier presented the Inca as this culture that had existed in some form for thousands of years, and erased the cultures that had come before it, such as the Wari or the Moche. In reality, the Inca were a very recent culture, only being around for about 150 years before the Spanish arrived. The Inca, of course, borrowed from previous cultures, and there is some truth in saying that new cultures aren’t created so much as they are blended together from existing ideas and beliefs, but the Inca were definitely a distinct political organization, and this was papered over in the guide’s presentation. 

Understanding the political, social and cultural context of a place is crucial for tourists or students who wish to learn about a place and take its contributions seriously. There is a lot to learn just from the ruins themselves, to be sure, but there is not a point where history ends and the contemporary begins; it is continuous. Therefore, part of understanding the significance of these sites is seeing how they, and the people who built them, connect to the present. Indigenous identity has not remained constant, and the meaning of these places for Indigenous people have not remained constant, and for tourists and students, this story can be learned by the way that Indigenous people present the history of their country, and how that speaks to the current political situation of the day. It is not enough just to look, one must also listen.

Works Cited:

Anatoly Kurmanaev and Clifford Krauss. “Ethnic Rifts in Bolivia Burst into View with Fall of Evo Morales.” The New York Times. November 15, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/americas/morales-bolivia-Indigenous-racism.html

Edward L. Cleary. Resurgent Voices in Latin America: Indigenous Peoples, Political Mobilization, and Religious Change. (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004)

Hugo Blanco. We The Indians: The Indigenous Peoples of Peru and the Struggle for Land. (Exeter: Imprint Digital)

Elizabeth S. Penry. The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019)

Juliana Barbassa. “Thanks, But Goodbye, Why Evo Morales’ Former Supporters Want Him Gone” America’s Quarterly. https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/thanks-goodbye-why-evo-morales-former-supporters-want-him-gone

Linda Farthing. “‘Democracy in Bolivia has two faces’: ambivalence as Evo Morales seeks fourth term”. The Guardian. October 17, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/17/bolivia-election-evo-morales-seeks-fourth-term

Nancy Postero. The Indigenous State: Race, Politics, and Performance in Plurinational Bolivia. (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017)

Oliver Balch. “How a Populist President Built Himself a Palace”. The Guardian. March 7, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/07/how-a-populist-president-helped-bolivias-poor-but-built-himself-a-palace

Shane Greene. Customizing Indigeneity: Paths to a Visionary Politics in Peru. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).